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| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 103.2 | The History Cooperative
103.2  
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June, 2007
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Reviews

Birth of a Salesman
The Transformation of Selling in America

By Walter A. Friedman
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. Pp. 356. Illustrations, notes, index. Paperbound, $16.95.)

In Birth of a Salesman, Walter Friedman traces the history of salesmanship in the U. S. from the itinerant peddlers of the early 1800s to the media strategists of our own time. In this systematic, yet lively and energetic history, Friedman argues that "the 'visible hand' of management, to borrow a phrase from historian Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., could not have succeeded in many industries without the 'visible handshake' of a team of salesmen out on the road" (p. 7). Historians typically disdain the idea of studying sales: it reeks of manipulation and crass consumerism. But Friedman shows that many useful products—from lightning rods to adding machines to serious books—might never have succeeded on the market had they not been promoted door-to-door by persuasive peddlers and bought by farmers and townsfolk who discovered value in what they were purchasing. . . .
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