"Like it or not, commercial speech - advertising - makes up most of what we share as a culture. We live in a time when the vast majority of Americans can recite, almost without thinking about it, the ingredients of a McDonald's Big Mac but would be hard-pressed to do the same with, say, a line or two of Wordsworth's poetry. It's with this in mind that James B. Twitchell, one of the most respected advertising scholars and pundits, and the author of the classic advertising text Adcult USA, has chosen the twenty ads (complete with their artwork) of the twentieth century that have most influenced our culture and marketplace.". "Each ad and its overall campaign are deconstructed; we see firsthand how and why they are created, which needs they address, what boundaries they break. And we meet the geniuses of the business - Rosser Reeves, Leo Burnett, David Oglivy, Claude Hopkins - and learn what made them tick."--BOOK JACKET.