“For all its great cable channels, the excellent new global cyber capitalism is turning out to be a lot like the simple, grinding, exploitative capitalism of a hundred years ago,” writes Thomas Frank in the lead essay, in which he begins to explore the ways we deceive ourselves about our basic economic interests. Mike Newirth pours a nice frosty cosmo for the 1 percent, while Tom Vanderbilt calls Skyy vodka’s marketing efforts “a Reaganite shibboleth charted in the barroom.” Aaron Cohen praises thirties band-leader Artie Shaw; Artie Shaw remembers dealing with the music industry in the thirties. Gary Groth reads Quentin Tarantino. Daniel Harris writes about gay porn in the age of AIDS.

Publication date: February 1996
Pages: 128 pages