Free shipping on orders over $95Buy one with 1% offer on sale price
Zoom the image with the mouse
Barbieland: The Unauthorized History
ISBN:
9781668031827
Bulk Pricing:
Buy in bulk and save
List Price:
$27.99
Share:
Special Offers Available
Free shipping on orders over $95Buy one with 1% offer on sale priceBuy New
We can help you leverage the power of books
Customer Service
Connect with a dedicated account manager who is there every step of the way.
Price Match Guarantee
If you see better pricing elsewhere on your desired quantity, we will price match so you can be sure to get the best pricing.
Free Shipping
Enjoy free ground shipping on your order of $95 or more!
Brand New Guarantee
We only sell books that are brand new and protect that with a guarantee.
Customization
From author signatures to marketing inserts, custom packaging to brand stickers, we can help take your book marketing to the next level.
Details
For readers of The Secret History of Wonder Woman and DisneyWar, a fresh new history of Mattel’s Barbie.
In June of 1952, German publishing tycoon Axel Springer was sending a new paper to print: a four-page broadsheet he’d dubbed Bild Zeitung. The paper—image-heavy, emotional, and primed to contend with a burgeoning competitor called television—was almost ready, save for a narrow blank on the second page. With minutes to spare, Springer commissioned a one-block cartoon of a petite blonde with a predilection for rich men. That blonde was named “Lilli.” But in a span of seven short years, she would be reborn in plastic, across an ocean, and under a different name: Barbara Millicent Roberts.
If Barbie began as a blank space, the world has spent seven decades filling it in. No doll has elicited more adoration from fans, more hatred from detractors, more eyerolls from the indifferent. To boosters, she is the ultimate symbol of unabashed girlhood, an 11.5-inch figurine shot to the moon before American women could get credit cards, an evolving illustration that, per one tagline, “we girls can do anything.” To critics, she represents an inane vision of femininity that was going out of style just years after she was “born”—an homage to impossible body proportions, an emblem of Eurocentric beauty standards, a bimbo built on an empire of polyethylene. For everyone else, Barbie is to dolls what Xerox is to copy machines, or Kleenex is to tissues. She is, for better or for worse, an American icon, and one that has outlasted more coups, rivals, and beheadings than any dictator.
Barbie’s conquest over the American toy market did not happen by accident. It is the byproduct of meticulous marketing, occasional backstabbing, squadrons of designers with strong opinions on coral lip shades, and covert corporate maneuvers—many of which replicate, in miniature, the economic trajectory of the country Barbie seems to represent. Barbieland: The Unauthorized History is a new history of Mattel’s Barbie and a wry investigation into why she’s still around.
In June of 1952, German publishing tycoon Axel Springer was sending a new paper to print: a four-page broadsheet he’d dubbed Bild Zeitung. The paper—image-heavy, emotional, and primed to contend with a burgeoning competitor called television—was almost ready, save for a narrow blank on the second page. With minutes to spare, Springer commissioned a one-block cartoon of a petite blonde with a predilection for rich men. That blonde was named “Lilli.” But in a span of seven short years, she would be reborn in plastic, across an ocean, and under a different name: Barbara Millicent Roberts.
If Barbie began as a blank space, the world has spent seven decades filling it in. No doll has elicited more adoration from fans, more hatred from detractors, more eyerolls from the indifferent. To boosters, she is the ultimate symbol of unabashed girlhood, an 11.5-inch figurine shot to the moon before American women could get credit cards, an evolving illustration that, per one tagline, “we girls can do anything.” To critics, she represents an inane vision of femininity that was going out of style just years after she was “born”—an homage to impossible body proportions, an emblem of Eurocentric beauty standards, a bimbo built on an empire of polyethylene. For everyone else, Barbie is to dolls what Xerox is to copy machines, or Kleenex is to tissues. She is, for better or for worse, an American icon, and one that has outlasted more coups, rivals, and beheadings than any dictator.
Barbie’s conquest over the American toy market did not happen by accident. It is the byproduct of meticulous marketing, occasional backstabbing, squadrons of designers with strong opinions on coral lip shades, and covert corporate maneuvers—many of which replicate, in miniature, the economic trajectory of the country Barbie seems to represent. Barbieland: The Unauthorized History is a new history of Mattel’s Barbie and a wry investigation into why she’s still around.
