| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Stronger than Dirt: A Cultural History of Advertising Personal Hygiene in America, 1875 to 1940. By Juliann Sivulka. (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity, 2001. 369 pp. Paper, $28.00, ISBN 1-57392-952-2.)

Juliann Sivulka's knowledge of advertising is extensive and exhaustive. In her second cultural history of advertising (her 1998 Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes is a textbook), she narrows her focus to personal hygiene. She argues that 'the transformation of soap from a luxury product to a staple necessity' triggered a broader set of changes in both architecture and city planning to provide increased supplies of water. Sivulka sees cleanliness as giving people 'a system of meaning' through which to negotiate the complexities of modernity. Consequently, she examines advertising's contribution to that meaning. 1

Sivulka is nothing if not a diligent researcher. Her work bears the hallmarks of long hours looking at advertisements in magazines and working in museums and archives across the country. While her reading of individual ads is usually quite nuanced, her work is less convincing when she tries to relate advertising and the advertising industry to processes of historical change. . . .

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