Introduction
“a love song is being sung to her”: Jan Swafford, Johannes Brahms: A Biography (New York: Vintage, 2012), 338.
“veiled but identifiable parody”: Paul Berry, Brahms Among Friends: Listening, Performance, and the Rhetoric of Allusion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 63.
leisurely transatlantic voyage of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: Ora Frishberg Saloman, Beethoven’s Symphonies and J. S. Dwight: The Birth of American Music Criticism (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995), 162.
immigration to the United States soared: Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, Department of Homeland Security, 2008.
the highest-grossing movie in America: Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo.com/, accessed March 1, 2016.
according to Kodak’s 2000 annual report: Benedict Evans Blog, http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/6/24/imaging.
world shares more than eighty billion photos: “2016 Internet Trends Report,” www.kpcb.com/blog/2016-internet-trends-report.
Instagram did not invent the idea of filters: Robert Scoble interview with Kevin Systrom on SoundCloud, https://soundcloud.com/scobleizer/my-first-interview-of-kevin.
early versions of the app to San Francisco tech tycoons: Robert Scoble, comment on “How Did Instagram Build Up Its Community in Its Early Days?,” Quora, January 25, 2013, www.quora.com/How-did-Instagram-build-up-its-community-in-its-early-days.
twenty-five thousand people downloaded the app: Kara Swisher, “The Money Shot,” Vanity Fair, June 2013.
movie industry was the third-largest retail business: Edward Jay Epstein, The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood (New York: Random House, 2005), 6.
more than five hours watching: Robert Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).
fell from about twenty-five in 1950 to four in 2015: Barak Y. Orbach and Liran Einav, “Uniform Prices for Differentiated Goods: The Case of the Movie-Theater Industry,” International Review of Law and Economics 27 (2007): 129–53.
more profit from cable channels: Derek Thompson, “The Global Dominance of ESPN,” The Atlantic, September 2013.
spent more time interacting: “2013 Internet Trends Report,” www.kpcb.com/blog/2013-internet-trends.
eighty square inches for every living human: Benedict Evans Blog, http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/1/3/the-spread-of-glass.
technology analyst Mary Meeker reported: “2016 Internet Trends Report,” www.kpcb.com/blog/2016-internet-trends-report.
Part I: Popularity and the Mind
Chapter 1: The Power of Exposure
“the least known of the French impressionists”: “Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye,” National Gallery of Art, www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/exhibitions/2015/gustave-caillebotte.html.
team of researchers at Cornell University: James Cutting, Impressionism and Its Canon (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006).
seventy of his impressionist paintings in a national museum: “Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye,” National Gallery of Art.
His bequest included: John Rewald, History of Impressionism (New York: Museum of Modern Art), 572. In Gustave Caillebotte’s original will requesting the public exhibition of “intransigents ou impressionistes,” he includes Degas, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Cezanne, Sisley, and Morisot, “without excluding others.” The art historian Kirk Varnedoe’s 1987 biography of Caillebotte, however, does not list Morisot among the final “Caillebotte Collection.” Instead, he includes two paintings by Jean-François Millet, whose style is not really impressionism, but whose subjects, like peasant life, may have inspired impressionist artists. As Rewald’s History of Impressionism states, neither Morisot nor Millet was among the seven painters who were finally accepted and hung in 1897. Name checking each of the core seven, Rewald writes:
Despite Caillebotte’s provision that his collection should enter the Luxembourg Museum undivided, Renoir, as executor of the will, was forced to yield unless the bequest were to be rejected. Of 16 canvases by Monet, only eight were admitted; of 18 by Pissarro, only seven; of eight by Renoir, six; of nine by Sisley, six; of four by Manet, two; of five by Cezanne, two; only Degas saw all seven of his works accepted. (572)
Several historians reported that, in the final gift to the French state, Renoir included two paintings by Caillebotte, himself. But they were largely overlooked by the most influential art historians, perhaps due to their last-minute inclusion. In Rewald’s influential book, he notes Caillebotte for the legacy of his bequest, but hardly at all for the quality of his art. Finally, some readers might wonder why famous painters like van Gogh, Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec are not considered a part of the “core” seven. They are typically considered post-impressionists..
first ever national exhibition of impressionist art: “Origins: The Musée du Luxembourg,” Musée d’Orsay, www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/history-of-the-collections/painting.html. Manet’s Olympia, which first exhibited in 1865, was purchased by “friends of Manet” for the state in 1890. It was first displayed in the Louvre in 1893, before paintings from Caillebotte’s bequest hung in the Musée du Luxembourg. It is possible that Olympia was the first painting by any figure associated with the impressionist movement to hang in a state museum. But it is not really an impressionist painting. Therefore, I think it is fair to say that the Caillebotte bequest is the first-ever exhibition of impressionist art.
What came next was quite clever: Cutting, Impressionism and Its Canon.
sweet foods and harmonies without dissonance: Arthur P. Shimamura and Stephen E. Palmer, eds., Aesthetic Science: Connecting Minds, Brains, and Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 238.
preservation of the hunter-gatherer groups: Conducting research into the origins of human preferences, one comes across the term “caveman” quite a bit, particularly in reference to “caveman instincts” and “caveman psychology.” I’m not using that familiar term for two reasons. First, roughly half of our ancestors weren’t men. Second, they didn’t live in caves. If you go to East Africa in search of caves, you will be disappointed. The first evidence of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon in Europe were indeed found in caves in the nineteenth century, which probably led to a folksy belief that our ancestors made permanent homes out of the rocks. But these groups were nomadic. It’s understandable that we’d find the remains of ancient humans in a solid, covered area that’s shielded from rain and wind, because nature would have washed, eroded, or covered up the other artifacts of their existence. But truly believing that our ancestors lived in caves because that’s where their stuff has been preserved is like believing that mosquitos lived in amber. When somebody talks about the “caveman” brain, that person is really talking about the “hunter-gatherer” brain.
composite is even more bewitching: Judith H. Langlois and Lori A. Roggman, “Attractive Faces Are Only Average,” Psychological Science (1990): 115–21.
“pervasive Pleistocene taste in landscape”: Denis Dutton, “Aesthetics and Evolutionary Psychology,” in Jerrold Levinson, ed., The Oxford Handbook for Aesthetics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). Studies of children’s preferences are often controversial, and so is this one. The finding that tastes in scenery diverge throughout life—and that they, like so many preferences, can be driven by exposure—is on more solid footing than the finding that children have perfectly universal tastes in landscapes.
slink away toward a vanishing point: Ibid.
The first national public museum: “History of the British Museum,” The British Museum, www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/the_museums_story/general_history.aspx.
America’s first modern public museum: Liane Hansen, “Philadelphia Museum Shaped Early American Culture,” NPR, July 13, 2008, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92388477.
“depended on its system of distribution”: David Suisman, Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 58.
Spotify playlist by Napster cofounder Sean Parker: Steven Bertoni, “Why Sean Parker Is Obsessed with His Spotify,” Forbes, December 4, 2013, www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2013/12/04/why-sean-parker-is-obsessed-with-his-spotify-playlist/#2993655c529e.
Political campaigns spend half their money: Jörg L. Spenkuch and David Toniatti, “Political Advertising and Election Outcomes,” April 2016, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2613987.
Elected representatives spent: Lawrence Lessig, “More Money Can Beat Big Money,” New York Times, November 16, 2011.
One third of the White House staff: Matthew Baum and Samuel Kernell, “Has Cable Ended the Golden Age of Presidential Television?,” American Political Science Review 55 (March 1999): 99–114.
The most successful way for a president: Ibid.
Richard Nixon delivered nine prime-time addresses: Ibid.
the average presidential sound bite: Ibid.
about $140 million on television ads: Nicholas Confessore and Karen Yourish, “$2 Billion Worth of Free Media for Donald Trump,” New York Times, March 15, 2016.
Trump had earned $3 billion in “free media”: Robert Schroeder, “Trump Has Gotten Nearly $3 Billion in ‘Free’ Advertising,” MarketWatch, May 6, 2016, www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-has-gotten-nearly-3-billion-in-free-advertising-2016-05-06.
When consumers don’t know the true value: Derek Thompson, “Turning Customers into Cultists,” The Atlantic, December 2014.
diluting the brand power: Itamar Simonson and Emanuel Rosen, Absolute Value (New York: HarperBusiness, 2014).
“free play”: E-mail from Jesse Prinz to author, July 30, 2016. Kant’s theory of free play may not even be the philosopher’s most apt precursor to metacognition, says Prinz. That might be his theory of the sublime. People often enjoy aesthetic experiences that involve a bit of fear—like vistas of volcanoes or the sound of thunder outside of a house. These things are not just beautiful; they are “sublime,” according to Kant. “We see the danger, and start to fear it, but then realize we are safe, and thus, the intellect protects us from the fear,” says Prinz, a distinguished professor of philosophy and the director of the Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies at the City University of New York, Graduate Center.
the idea of “metacognition”: Norbert Schwarz, Mario Mikulincer, Phillip R. Shaver, Eugene Borgida, John A. Bargh, eds., APA Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 1: Attitudes and Social Cognition. (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2015), 203–29.
less thinking leads to more liking: Christopher K. Hsee, “Less Is Better: When Low-Value Options Are Valued More Highly Than High-Value Options,” Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 11 (1998): 107–21.
When something becomes hard to think about: The less-is-more effect turns out to be a great debate tactic, too. If you want to persuade somebody of your argument, try to get him to understand one big reason he might be wrong. Trying to make people understand several complicated reasons why they might be wrong can backfire. Too many objections are hard to process at the same time. Your opponent might misattribute the discomfort of hard thinking—disfluency—to the quality of your arguments, mistaking feelings for thinking. Him: “All of these objections don’t feel right, so there must be something wrong with your thinking.”
Chapter 2: The MAYA Rule
a French orphan aboard the SS France: Raymond Loewy, Never Leave Well Enough Alone, 1951 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 6.
The more Loewy thought about the invitation: Ibid.
Within a few decades of his arrival: “Up from the Egg,” Time, October 31, 1949.
Cosmopolitan magazine wrote: Raymond Loewy website, www.raymondloewy.com/about.html#7.
Artisans and designers of the nineteenth century: “Up from the Egg.”
It was available only in black: “The Model T Ford,” Frontenac Motor Company, www.modelt.ca/background.html.
inspired the idea of “planned obsolescence”: “GM’s Role in American Life,” All Things Considered, NPR, April 2, 2009, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102670076.
Hekkert’s grand theory begins: Paul Hekkert, “Design Aesthetics: Principles of Pleasure in Design,” Psychology Science 48, no. 2 (2006): 157–72.
“typicality, novelty and aesthetic preference”: Paul Hekkert, Dirk Snelders, and Piet C. W. van Wieringen, “‘Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable’: Typicality and Novelty as Joint Predictors of Aesthetic Preference in Industrial Design,” British Journal of Psychology 94, part 1 (February 2003): 111–24.
Loewy initially felt stuck: Loewy, Never Leave Well Enough Alone, 59–139.
“25 percent inspiration and 75 percent transportation”: “Up from the Egg.”
sales curve that swept up and rightward: Ibid.
“built-in forward motion”: Loewy, Never Leave Well Enough Alone, 312.
some livery sketches of America’s most famous airplane: Michael Beschloss, “The Man Who Gave Air Force One Its Aura,” New York Times, August 7, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/upshot/the-man-who-gave-air-force-one-its-aura.html.
a structure of such precise curvature: Loewy, Never Leave Well Enough Alone, 201.
“The consumer is influenced in his choice”: Ibid., 279.
rate paintings by cubist artists: Claudia Muth and C. C. Carbon, “The Aesthetic Aha: On the Pleasure of Having Insights into Gestalt,” Acta Psychologica 144, no. 1 (September 2013): 25–30.
most popular video game of all time: “About Tetris,” Tetris.com, http://tetris.com/about-tetris/.
second bestselling game of all time: Tom Huddleston, Jr., “Minecraft Has Now Sold More Than 100 Million Copies,” Fortune, June 2, 2016, www.fortune.com/2016/06/02/minecraft-sold-100-million/.
Minecraft, where users build shapes: Clive Thompson, “The Minecraft Generation,” New York Times Magazine, April 14, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/magazine/the-minecraft-generation.html.
an “achievable challenge”: Joshua A. Krisch, “Why the 2048 Game Is So Addictive,” Popular Mechanics, April 3, 2014, www.popularmechanics.com/culture/gaming/a10341/why-the-2048-game-is-so-addictive-16659899/.
popular online video: Axis of Awesome, “4 Chords,” YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ.
difference between new hits and old hits: Derek Thompson, “The Shazam Effect,” The Atlantic, December 2014, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/the-shazam-effect/382237/.
proposals were most likely to win funding: Kevin J. Boudreau, Eva C. Guinan, Karim R. Lakhani, and Christoph Riedl, “The Novelty Paradox and Bias for Normal Science: Evidence from Randomized Medical Grant Proposal Evaluations,” Harvard Business School Working Paper 13053, December 4, 2012, www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/13-053_f32904ed-0526-4c9e-99a4-703088bb1212.pdf.
most novel proposals got the worst ratings: Derek Thompson, “Why Experts Reject Creativity,” The Atlantic, October 10, 2014, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-new-ideas-fail/381275/.
sports network has accounted for half: Derek Thompson, “The Most Valuable Network,” The Atlantic, September 2013.
amount of time eighteen- to thirty-four-year-olds spent: Matthew Ball, “The Truth and Distraction of U.S. Cord Cutting,” Redef, October 20, 2015, https://redef.com/original/the-truth-and-distraction-of-us-cord-cutting.
These fees range: Rani Molla, “How Much Cable Subscribers Pay Per Channel,” Wall Street Journal, August 5, 2014, blogs.wsj.com/numbers/how-much-cable-subscribers-pay-per-channel-1626/.
network’s New York City headquarters: These paragraphs are adapted from my September 2013 column in The Atlantic, “The Most Valuable Network.”
reportedly referred to network president Jeff Zucker: Hadas Gold, “Joe Scarborough: Donald Trump Calls Jeff Zucker His ‘Personal Booker,’” Politico, June 9, 2016, www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/06/joe-scarborough-donald-trump-calls-jeff-zucker-his-personal-booker-224116.
the strongest rate of advertising growth: Jesse Holcomb, “Cable News: Fact Sheet,” State of the News Media 2016, Pew Research Center, June 15, 2016.
the average viewership of SportsCenter fell: Richard Sandomir, “Fox’s Sports Network Hires an ESPN Veteran for a Reinvention,” New York Times, May 8, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/05/09/business/media/jamie-horowitz-tries-again-this-time-to-revive-fs1.html.
In an average week, ESPN delivers: Paul Melvin, e-mail message to author, June 20, 2016.
team of computer science researchers at Stanford University: Himabindu Lakkaraju, Julian McAuley, and Jure Leskovec, “What’s in a Name? Understanding the Interplay Between Titles, Content, and Communities in Social Media,” Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, 2013, https://cs.stanford.edu/people/jure/pubs/reddit-icwsm13.pdf.
the “curiosity gap”: Chip Heath and Dan Health, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (New York: Random House, 2007).
eighty-one million listeners and twenty-one billion hours: Pandora 2014 Q4 and 2014 K1.
In the final pages of his memoir: Loewy, Never Leave Well Enough Alone, 376.
Chapter 3: The Music of Sound
Two hundred million, for example: “Chart-Topping Songwriter Savan Kotecha Renews Agreement with ASCAP,” American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, June 3, 2015, www.ascap.com/press/2015/06-03-savan-kotecha-renews.aspx.
If pop music were a global technology: Ola Johansson, “Beyond ABBA: The Globalization of Swedish Popular Music,” FOCUS on Geography 53, no. 4, www.nclack.k12.or.us/cms/lib6/or01000992/centricity/domain/519/64301138.pdf.
Led by Max Martin: Nolan Feeney, “Why Is Sweden So Good at Pop Music?,” The Atlantic, October 29, 2013, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/10/why-is-sweden-so-good-at-pop-music/280945/?single_page=true.
Swedish government actively promotes public music education: Marc Hogan, “What’s the Matter with Sweden?,” Pitchfork, March 29, 2010, pitchfork.com/features/article/7776-whats-the-matter-with-sweden/.
promotes major-chord melodies over lyrics: Saeed Saeed, “Ever Since Abba: The Swedish Influence on Pop Music Is as Strong as Ever,” The National, May 19, 2011, www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/music/ever-since-abba-the-swedish-influence-on-pop-music-is-as-strong-as-ever#page2.
Sweden has built a national industry: Johansson, “Beyond ABBA.”
When geographers at Uppsala University: Ibid.
the Michael Jordan of pop music: Sophie Schillaci, “Meet Savan Kotecha: The Man Behind One Direction’s Rapid Rise to the Top (Q&A),” Hollywood Reporter, February 6, 2013, www.hollywoodreporter.com/earshot/one-direction-meet-man-rapid-418682.
the “speech-to-song illusion”: Diana Deutsch, “Speech to Song Illusion,” deutsch.ucsd.edu/psychology/pages.php?i=212.
If you can read music, it sounds just like: If you can’t read music, you can listen here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJe2J0NMox4.
birds are considered singers: Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 19.
The power of repetition: Elizabeth Hellmuth Marguis, “One More Time,” Aeon, March 7, 2014, https://aeon.co/essays/why-repetition-can-turn-almost-anything-into-music.
listening to a song they’ve already heard: Ibid.
Mark Twain published a story: Mark Twain, “A Literary Nightmare,” Atlantic Monthly, 1876.
The Billboard Hot 100: Thompson, “The Shazam Effect.”
Niggaz4life by N.W.A. beat Out of Time by R.E.M.: David Samuels, “The Rap on Rap,” New Republic, November 11, 1991, https://newrepublic.com/article/120894/david-samuels-rap-rap-1991.
study of the last fifty years in U.S. pop music: Matthias Mauch, Robert M. MacCallum, Mark Levy, and Armand M. Leroi, “The Evolution of Popular Music: USA, 1960–2010,” Royal Society Open Science, May 6, 2015, rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/5/150081.full.
the ten bestselling tracks command 82 percent more: Thompson, “The Shazam Effect.”
he’ll tell you about mice: David Huron, “A Psychological Approach to Musical Form: The Habituation–Fluency Theory of Repetition,” http://musiccog.ohio-state.edu/home/data/_uploaded/pdf/form.pdf..
speech and music were nearly the same: Bruce Richman, “How Music Fixed ‘Nonsense’ into Significant Formulas: On Rhythm, Repetition, and Meaning,” Journal of Anthropological Sciences, June 2014.
“prosthetic memory,” to borrow Alison Landsberg’s wonderful phrase: Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
an emotional and widely shared online video: Alexandra Zaslow, “Gabby Giffords Sings ‘Maybe’ with Music Therapist,” People, February 18, 2015, www.people.com/article/gabby-giffords-sings-annie-maybe-music-therapist.
music therapy activates the right hemisphere’s melodic intelligence: “From Singing to Speaking: It’s Amazing to See,” American Stroke Association, www.strokeassociation.org/STROKEORG/LifeAfterStroke/RegainingIndependence/CommunicationChallenges/From-Singing-to-Speaking-Its-Amazing-To-See_UCM_310600_Article.jsp#.V3p2hpMrLBJ.
Favreau interrupted the rehearsal: Tracy Jan, “Leaving West Wing to Pursue Hollywood Dream,” Boston Globe, March 3, 2013, www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/03/03/obama-speechwriter-jon-favreau-leaves-west-wing-for-screenwriting/Evt7Rtg5ax9dwbnVjFfOgJ/story.html.
Kerry’s campaign had been such a disaster: Jon Favreau, “Jon Favreau, Speechwriter,” New York, January 12, 2016, nymag.com/news/features/beginnings/jon-favreau/#print.
met Obama in the Senate cafeteria: Matthew D’Ancona, “Jon Favreau Has the World’s Best Job,” GQ (UK), December 6, 2012, www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/gq-comment-jon-favreau-president-barack-obama-speechwriter.
“What’s your theory of speechwriting?”: Richard Wolffe, “Obama’s Speechwriter Speaks Up,” Newsweek, January 5, 2008, www.newsweek.com/obamas-speechwriter-speaks-87019. See also Larissa MacFarquhar, “The Conciliator,” The New Yorker, May 7, 2007.
one of the youngest chief speechwriters: Jan, “Leaving West Wing.”
a phrase so simple that he once rejected it: Amy Chozick, “David Axelrod: ‘I Don’t Think He’s Gonna Look Back,’” New York Times Magazine, February 12, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/david-axelrod-i-dont-think-hes-gonna-look-back.html.
you learn it somewhere, you hear it everywhere: Juliet Lapidos, “The Hottest Rhetorical Device of Campaign ’08,” Slate, September 12, 2008, www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2008/09/the_hottest_rhetorical_device_of_campaign_08.html.
“characterized by improvised free rhythms and idiomatic counterpoint”: William C. Turner, Jr., “The Musicality of Black Preaching: Performing the Word,” in Jana Childers and Clayton J. Schmit, eds., Performance in Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008).
“start low, go slow, climb higher, and strike fire”: Bob Darden, People Get Ready!: A New History of Black Gospel Music (New York: Continuum, 2005), 64.
presidential addresses have been more like a sixth-grader’s level: E. J. Fox, Mike Spies, and Matan Gilat, “Who Was America’s Most Well-Spoken President?,” Vocativ, October 10, 2014, www.vocativ.com/interactive/usa/us-politics/presidential-readability/.
coincides with at least four positive developments: Derek Thompson, “Presidential Speeches Were Once College-Level Rhetoric—Now They’re for Sixth-Graders,” The Atlantic, October 14, 2014, www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/10/have-presidential-speeches-gotten-less-sophisticated-over-time/381410/.
passed 50 percent penetration among U.S. households: Rita McGrath, “The Pace of Technology Adoption Is Speeding Up,” Harvard Business Review, November 25, 2013, https://hbr.org/2013/11/the-pace-of-technology-adoption-is-speeding-up/.
musical language can create the illusion of rationality: Matthew S. McGlone and Jessica Tofighbakhsh, “Birds of a Feather Flock Conjointly (?): Rhyme as Reason in Aphorisms,” Psychological Science 11, no. 5 (September 2000): 424–28.
many of the most shared lines are musical: Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936).
Interlude: The Chills
the arrector pili muscle: Niloufar Torkamani, Nicholas W. Rufaut, Leslie Jones, and Rodney D. Sinclair, “Beyond Goosebumps: Does the Arrector Pili Muscle Have a Role in Hair Loss?,” International Journal of Trichology 6, no. 3 (July–September 2014): 88–94, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4158628/.
muscles pull back: George A. Bubenik, “Why Do Humans Get ‘Goosebumps’ When They Are Cold, or Under Other Circumstances?,” Scientific American, September 1, 2003, www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-humans-get-goosebu/.
“Art is not, as the metaphysicians say”: Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art? (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1996).
a book is a coproduction: Peter Mendelsund, What We See When We Read (New York: Vintage, 2014).
aphantasia: Carl Zimmer, “Picture This? Some Just Can’t,” New York Times, June 22, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/science/aphantasia-minds-eye-blind.html?_r=0.
based on a thirteenth-century Norse myth: Constance Grady, “Hamlet, The Divine Comedy, and 3 Other Pieces of Classic Literature That Are Also Fan Fiction,” Vox, April 5, 2016, www.vox.com/2016/4/5/11363816/five-literature-fanfiction.
a linkage between thinking about the past and feeling good: John Tierney, “What Is Nostalgia Good For? Quite a Bit, Research Shows,” New York Times, July 8, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/science/what-is-nostalgia-good-for-quite-a-bit-research-shows.html.
Chapter 4: The Myth-Making Mind I
There are many wonderful histories of George Lucas and Star Wars. In this chapter, I am particularly indebted to two remarkable books. Chris Taylor’s How Star Wars Conquered the Universe is a delightful history of Lucas’s writing process and the commercial success of the films. The Secret History of Star Wars, by Michael Kaminski, is like a Jedi Talmud, a deep and wonderful compilation of interviews, commentary, and analysis of Lucas and his creations. They were both essential guides for this chapter’s history of Lucas and Star Wars, and for anybody interested in reading more, I cannot recommend these volumes more highly.
a desk made of three doors: Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 109.
more than $40 billion: “How Exactly Has Star Wars Made $37 Billion?,” Wired, November 22, 2014, www.wired.com/2014/11/geeks-guide-star-wars-empire/.
His goal was five pages: Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, 109.
“I did terrible in script writing”: Michael Kaminski, The Secret History of Star Wars (New York: Legacy Books Press, 2008).
written by hand with number 2 pencils: Ibid.
ten cents got an afternoon’s admission: Ibid.
Adventures of Captain Marvel, Batman, Superman, Dick Tracy: Ibid.
Flash appeared on television each evening: Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, 24.
screen wipes between scenes: Forrest Wickman, “Star Wars Is a Postmodern Masterpiece,” Slate, December 13, 2015, www.slate.com/articles/arts/cover_story/2015/12/star_wars_is_a_pastiche_how_george_lucas_combined_flash_gordon_westerns.html.
he sought to buy the film rights: Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, 83.
World War II dramas like The Dam Busters: Wickman, “Star Wars Is a Postmodern Masterpiece.”
As Michael Kaminski writes: Kaminski, Secret History of Star Wars.
half a billion dollars more: “Pottering On, and On,” The Economist, July 11, 2011, www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/07/film-franchises.
a new discipline called “psychohistory”: Isaac Asimov, Foundation (New York: Gnome Press, 1951).
“The individual molecules of a gas”: Mark Strauss, “What Absolutely Everyone Needs to Know About Isaac Asimov’s Foundation,” io9, November 19, 2014, io9.gizmodo.com/what-absolutely-everyone-needs-to-know-about-isaac-asim-1660230344.
second link is Joseph Campbell: Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (New York: Pantheon, 1949).
Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee: J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (New York: Allen & Unwin, 1954).
one does not simply walk into Mordor: “One Does Not Simply Walk into Mordor,” Know Your Meme, March 2016, knowyourmeme.com/memes/one-does-not-simply-walk-into-mordor.
PBS show The Power of Myth: “Ep. 1: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth—‘The Hero’s Adventure,’” Bill Moyers & Company, March 8, 2013, billmoyers.com/content/ep-1-joseph-campbell-and-the-power-of-myth-the-hero’s-adventure-audio/.
1985 memo from the Disney story consultant: Christopher Vogler, “A Practical Guide to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” 1985, www.thewritersjourney.com/hero’s_journey.htm.
Save the Cat: Blake Snyder, Save the Cat (Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 2005).
prostalgic: Walter Kirn, “The Improbability Party,” Harper’s, June 2016, harpers.org/archive/2016/06/the-improbability-party/4/http://harpers.org/archive/2016/06/the-improbability-party/4/.
above all an assembler, a master blender: Wickman, “Star Wars Is a Postmodern Masterpiece.”
adaptation of the 1912 pulp fiction character John Carter: Kaminski, Secret History of Star Wars.
King Features said no: Ibid.
one of the most costly cinematic catastrophes of all time: “The Biggest Flop Ever,” The Economist, March 23, 2012, www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/03/disneys-john-carter.
an echo of epics: Vili Maunula, “Film Club: The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail,” Akira Kurosawa Info, November 1, 2010, akirakurosawa.info/2010/11/01/film-club-the-men-who-tread-on-the-tigers-tail/.
“second viewing is always more satisfying”: Adam Sternberg, “Free Yourselves from the Shackles of Spoilers! Life Is Too Short,” Vulture, September 30, 2014, www.vulture.com/2014/09/free-yourselves-from-the-shackles-of-spoilers.html.
“Story Spoilers Don’t Spoil Stories”: Jonathan D. Leavitt and Nicholas J. S. Christenfeld, “Story Spoilers Don’t Spoil Stories,” Psychological Science, August 2011.
“A novel that can be truly ‘spoiled’”: James Wood, “Scenes from a Marriage,” The New Yorker, November 2, 2015, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/02/scenes-from-a-marriage-books-james-wood.
left the Modesto hospital after two weeks: Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, 42.
“semiotically nourished authors”: Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality (Orlando: Mariner Books, 2014).
Chapter 5: The Myth-Making Mind II
For their respective work on the dark side of stories, I’d like to thank Maria Konnikova, the author of a great book, The Confidence Game (New York: Viking, 2016), and Tyler Cowen, who delivered a 2009 TED talk, “Be Suspicious of Simple Stories.”
popular universal myths in the world: Paul Barber, Vampires, Burial, and Death (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988).
sarcastic entry in Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary: Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, Part 5, 1764, translated by William F. Fleming, http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/voltaire-the-works-of-voltaire-vol-vii-philosophical-dictionary-part-5.
The dead can bring death: Barber, Vampires, Burial, and Death, 3.
vampire hysteria gripped eastern Europe: Ibid., 195.
an old man named Peter Blogojowitz: Ibid., 5–9.
a “sensitive period” in a person’s life: “The Economics of Early Childhood Investment,” White House Council of Economics Advisers, January 2015, www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/early_childhood_report_update_final_non-embargo.pdf.
deaf kids who don’t learn sign language: Rachel I. Mayberry, Elizabeth Lock, and Hena Kazmi, “Development: Linguistic Ability and Early Language Exposure,” Nature 417 (May 2, 2002): 38.
children are born hating the flavor of broccoli: Joe Pinsker, “Why So Many Rich Kids Come to Enjoy the Taste of Healthier Foods,” The Atlantic, January 28, 2016, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/rich-kids-healthier-foods/431646/.
2015 study of Spotify data: Lara Unnerstall, “New Study Shows That People Stop Listening to New Music at 33,” A.V. Club, April 30, 2015, www.avclub.com/article/new-study-shows-people-stop-listening-new-music-33-218752.
Young people who grew up during popular Republican administrations: Dan Hopkins, “Partisan Loyalty Begins at Age 18,” FiveThirtyEight, April 22, 2014, http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/partisan-loyalty-begins-at-age-18/.
one study analyzing gender roles in 120 popular films: Stacy L. Smith, Marc Choueiti, and Katherine Pieper, “Gender Bias Without Borders,” Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, seejane.org/wp-content/uploads/gender-bias-without-borders-full-report.pdf.
Women accounted for just 30 percent of all speaking or named roles: Manohla Dargis, “Report Finds Wide Diversity Gap Among 2014’s Top-Grossing Films,” New York Times, August 5, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/08/06/movies/report-finds-wide-diversity-gap-among-2014s-top-grossing-films.html.
overwhelming whiteness, maleness, and straightness: Hollywood’s sexism problem isn’t just in the stories; the industry’s personnel is infamously male dominated, not to mention infamously white and straight. There is no replacement for diversity behind the camera, and I’m not suggesting that achieving more gender-balanced casts should be the only goal of a progressive reform movement in entertainment.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were 94 percent white: John Horn, Nicole Sperling, and Doug Smith, “Unmasking Oscar: Academy Voters Are Overwhelmingly White and Male,” Los Angeles Times, February 12, 2012, www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-unmasking-oscar-academy-project-20120219-story.html.
There is a precedent: “Support for Same-Sex Marriage at Record High, but Key Segments Remain Opposed,” Pew Research Center, June 8, 2015, www.people-press.org/2015/06/08/support-for-same-sex-marriage-at-record-high-but-key-segments-remain-opposed/.
“Shark cartilage is good for arthritis”: Ian Skurnik, Carolyn Yoon, Denise C. Park, and Norbert Schwarz, “How Warnings About False Claims Become Recommendations,” Journal of Consumer Research 31 (March 2005), https://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/780/docs/05_jcr_skurnik_et_al_warnings.pdf.
If there is a dark side to fluency: A. L. Alter, D. M. Oppenheimer, and N. Epley, “Disfluency Prompts Analytic Thinking—But Not Always Greater Accuracy: Response to Thompson et al. (2013),” Cognition 128, no. 2 (2013): 252–55.
Chapter 6: The Birth of Fashion
For this chapter, I’m particularly indebted to Stanley Lieberson’s magisterial work A Matter of Taste and the patient interviews with his former research assistant Freda Lynn, who coauthored the paper that coined that magnificent term “popularity as a taste.”
the country’s “worst recession brand”: Sean Gregory, “Abercrombie & Fitch: Worst Recession Brand?,” Time, August 25, 2009, content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1918160,00.html.
jaunty Chevy commercial featured the five-month-old song: Andrew Hampp, “How fun.’s ‘We Are Young’ Scored Chevy’s ‘Stunt Anthem’ Super Bowl Spot,” Billboard, February 5, 2012, www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/branding/1099054/how-funs-we-are-young-scored-chevys-stunt-anthem-super-bowl-spot.
one of the one hundred best-performing songs in music history: Fred Bronson, “Hot 100 55th Anniversary: The All-Time Top 100 Songs,” Billboard, August 2, 2013, www.billboard.com/articles/list/2155531/the-hot-100-all-time-top-songs.
the name Franklin soared in popularity while Adolf vanished: Stanley Lieberson, A Matter of Taste: How Names, Fashions, and Culture Change (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 71, 131.
Lieberson’s book is astonishing all the way through. One of his most interesting discussions is the history of black names in America going back to slavery. Before the Civil War, black names of African origin had been essentially wiped out. Slaves were often given the diminutive version of popular names (e.g., Jack or Will), and freed slaves would sometimes celebrate their dignity by adopting the formal counterpart (e.g., James or William).
By 1920, there were only subtle racial differences between black and white names. But as the century wore on, and particularly after the civil rights movement of the 1960s, blacks took on more names that reflected African and Islamic roots or honored civil rights heroes. The popularity of the name Marcus among Generation X and Generation Y, for example, could be traced to civil-rights-era interest in honoring Marcus Garvey, the nationalist who advocated for a return to Africa.
The other fascinating trend in black names is the evolution of black female names beginning with the prefix “La.” (The trend is not exclusive to women: Consider the star running back LaDainian Tomlinson or LeBron James.) Exactly two “La”-prefixed baby girls were born in Illinois in 1916, according to Lieberson: one Lavera and one Larenia. But starting in 1967, eight distinct “La” names cracked the top one hundred, and they peaked in popularity in this exact order: Latonya, Latanya, Latasha, Latoya, Latrice, Lakeisha, Lakisha, and Latisha. What’s incredible about the procession of “La” names isn’t just their surge in the 1960s, but also the orderliness of their evolution. The step between Latanya and Latonya is one new letter; from Latonya to Latoya is one less “n”; from Lakiesha to Lakisha is one less vowel and then to Latisha is one consonant changed. It’s a nice illustration of our theory of “familiar surprises.” People like new names with familiar roots, and culture evolves in tiny steps that from afar might seem like giant leaps.
Some names are cool today: “Top Names of the Period 2000–2010,” Social Security Administration, www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/decades/names2010s.html.
In the last decade of the twentieth century: “Top Names of the Period 1900–1910,” Social Security Administration, www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/decades/names1900s.html.
Jessica, Ashley, and Emily: “Top Names of the Period 1990–2000,” Social Security Administration, www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/decades/names1990s.html.
first names were more like traditions than fashions: The historical data on names and the inflection point when they started to behave like a fashion comes from the work of Stanley Lieberson and several conversations with his research partner Freda Lynn, herself a sociologist at the University of Iowa. Lieberson has retired and did not respond to several requests for comment, but his book A Matter of Taste is one of the most interesting academic books I have ever read. It has my highest recommendation, and this chapter would not be possible without it.
William, John, and Thomas accounted for half of all English men’s: Stanley Lieberson and Freda B. Lynn, “Popularity as a Taste: An Application to the Naming Process,” Onoma 38 (2003), 235–76.
Half of England’s women went by Elizabeth, Mary, or Anne: Ibid.
São Paulo baptismal records: Lieberson, Matter of Taste, 241.
Hungary, Scotland, France, Germany, and Canada: Lieberson and Lynn, “Popularity as a Taste.”
textile industries employed one third of Paris workers: Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, “The King of Couture,” The Atlantic, September 1, 2015, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/09/the-king-of-couture/402952/.
When did clothes become fashionable: Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 317.
Laver’s law: James Laver, Taste and Fashion (London, 1937).
Parents tend to pick similarly popular names: Lieberson and Lynn, “Popularity as a Taste.”
Samantha was the twenty-sixth most popular: “Top Names of the Period 1900–1910,” Social Security Administration.
other people’s tastes often become your tastes: Robert Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, revised edition (New York: HarperBusiness, 2006).
“number one bestseller”: Alan T. Sorensen, “Bestseller Lists and Product Variety,” Journal of Industrial Economics 55, no. 4 (December 2007): 715–38, www.ssc.wisc.edu/~sorensen/papers/sorensen_JIE_2007.pdf.
authors to artificially inflate book sales: Ward A. Hanson and Daniel S. Putler, “Hits and Misses: Herd Behavior and Online Product Popularity,” Marketing Letters 7, no. 4 (October 1996): 297–305.
popular might have unintended negative consequences: Balazs Kovacs and Amanda Sharkey, “The Paradox of Publicity: How Awards Can Negatively Affect the Evaluation of Quality,” Administrative Science Quarterly 59, no. 1 (2014): 1–33.
the biggest star in American television: Ed Cohen, “The Last Laugh,” Nevada Silver & Blue, Spring 2007, 36–41, www.unr.edu/silverandblue/archive/2007/spring/NSB07CannedLaughter.pdf.
Douglass was born in Guadalajara, Mexico: “Charles Rolland ‘Charlie’ Douglass,” Variety, April 21, 2003, variety.com/2003/scene/people-news/charles-rolland-charlie-douglass-1117884944/.
which he could play with keys: Cohen, “The Last Laugh.”
just about $100: Ibid.
Hearing people laugh gave audiences license: Kimberly A. Neuendorf and Tom Fennell, “A Social Facilitation View of the Generation of Humor and Mirth Reactions: Effects of a Laugh Track,” Central States Speech Journal 39, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 37–48, academic.csuohio.edu/kneuendorf/vitae/Neuendorf&Fennell88.pdf.
laugh tracks decreased the “mirth behavior”: Evan A. Lieberman, Kimberly A. Neuendorf, James Denny, Paul D. Skalski, and Jia Wang, “The Language of Laughter: A Quantitative/Qualitative Fusion Examining Television Narrative and Humor,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, December 2009, http://academic.csuohio.edu/kneuendorf/SkalskiVitae/Lieberman.etal.2009.pdf.
Literacy rates: Max Roser, “Literacy, Our World in Data,” accessed March 2016. https://ourworldindata.org/literacy/
It took less than ten years for cars: Rita McGrath, “The Pace of Technology Adoption Is Speeding Up,” Harvard Business Review, November 25, 2013, https://hbr.org/2013/11/the-pace-of-technology-adoption-is-speeding-up/.
It took the telephone almost forty years: Nicholas Felton, “Consumption Spreads Faster Today,” New York Times, February 2, 2010, www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/02/10/opinion/10op.graphic.ready.html.
eight years later, half the country owned a cell phone: “Device Ownership Over Time,” Pew Research Center, www.pewinternet.org/data-trend/mobile/device-ownership/.
six in ten U.S. adults said they had never heard of the Internet: Susannah Fox and Lee Rainie, “The Web at 25 in the U.S.: Part I: How the Internet Has Woven Itself into American Life,” Pew Research Center, www.pewinternet.org/2014/02/27/part-1-how-the-internet-has-woven-itself-into-american-life/.
Interlude: A Brief History of Teens
The term “teen-ager” dates back: Allan Metcalf, “Birth of the Teenager,” Lingua Franca blog, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 28, 2012, http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2012/02/28/birth-of-the-teenager/.
compulsory public education for kids: Grace Palladino, Teenagers: An American History (New York: Basic Books, 1994).
share of teenagers in high school: J. Spring, The American School, 1642–1993 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994).
doubled their spending on childhood “enrichment”: Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane, “Introduction: The American Dream, Then and Now,” in Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane, eds., Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011).
teenagers are chemically distinct: Elizabeth Kolbert, “The Terrible Teens,” The New Yorker, August 31, 2015, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-terrible-teens.
For Laurence Steinberg, a career investigating: Laurence Steinberg, Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).
Part II: Popularity and the Market
Chapter 7: Rock and Roll and Randomness
Peter Ford’s role in popularizing “Rock Around the Clock” has been reported elsewhere, but almost all of the details in this chapter come from conversations with Ford over the phone. I cannot go back in time to fact-check Peter’s claims that he gave the record to director Richard Brooks. For due diligence, I consulted several music history writers, including Alex Frazer-Harrison and Jim Dawson. In an e-mail, Dawson said that although Richard Brooks separately claimed to have heard the song on the radio, he also believed Ford’s account.
With more than 40 million copies sold: Martin Chilton, “Rock Around the Clock: How Bill Haley’s Song Became a Hit,” The Telegraph, April 17, 2016, www.telegraph.co.uk/music/artists/rock-around-the-clock-how-bill-haleys-song-became-a-hit/.
second bestselling song of all time: Jim Dawson, Rock Around the Clock: The Record That Started the Rock Revolution! (New York: Backbeat Books, 2005).
William Haley, Jr., grew up: Ibid., 26–30.
Blind in his left eye: “Bill Haley,” Billboard, www.billboard.com/artist/282385/bill-haley/biography.
the prominent kiss curl in his hair: “Bill Haley Biography,” Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, https://rockhall.com/inductees/bill-haley/.
a used guitar for Christmas: Dawson, Rock Around the Clock, 27.
swing group called the Saddlemen: Ibid., 34–36.
pushed the boundaries of rhythm and blues: “Bill Haley,” Billboard.
first rock-and-roll song to chart on Billboard: “Bill Haley Biography,” Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
he ripped up the music in front of Haley: Frank Mastropolo, “The History of ‘Rock Around the Clock’: How a B-Side Became a Rock Classic,” Ultimate Classic Rock, May 28, 2014, ultimateclassicrock.com/rock-around-the-clock/.
The Comets would have to record another song: Dawson, Rock Around the Clock, 73–80.
The session was scheduled: Ibid.
Danny Cedrone didn’t have time: Jim Dawson, e-mail message to author, July 12, 2015.
just seventy-five thousand records sold: “Bill Haley,” Billboard.
his take on the Mona Lisa as the most popular painting: Duncan Watts, Everything Is Obvious: Once You Know the Answer (New York: Crown Business, 2011).
the most expensive insurance policy on any art piece: Matthew J. Salganik and Duncan Watts, “Social Influence: The Puzzling Nature of Success in Cultural Markets,” in Peter Hedström and Peter Bearman, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 337.
the first DJ to play rhythm and blues: Myrna Oliver, “Hunter Hancock, 88; Brought R&B to L.A. Radio Stations in 1940s,” Los Angeles Times, August 11, 2004, www.articles.latimes.com/2004/aug/11/local/me-hancock11.
The Ford family lived: The details in this section come from conversations with Peter Ford and follow-up interviews and e-mails with Alex Frazer-Harrison and Jim Dawson.
a later overthrow of the system: Dawson, Rock Around the Clock, 127–43.
the box office returns of about three hundred movies: W. David Walls and Arthur De Vany, “Bose-Einstein Dynamics and Adaptive Contracting in the Motion Picture Industry,” The Economic Journal 106, no. 439 (January 1996): 1493–514.
The five most successful films: Ben Fritz and Erich Schwartzel, “Hollywood’s Banner Year at the Box Office Masks a Procession of Flops,” Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2016, www.wsj.com/articles/hollywoods-banner-year-at-the-box-office-masks-a-procession-of-flops-1451818332.
“A complex, adaptive, semi-chaotic industry”: Albert Greco, “Book Publishing: An Introduction,” in Albert N. Greco, Jim Milliot, and Robert M. Wharton, eds., The Book Publishing Industry (New York: Routledge, 2014).
one fifth of the movies took four fifths of the box office: Walls and De Vany, “Bose-Einstein Dynamics and Adaptive Contracting in the Motion Picture Industry.”
60 percent of all app store revenue comes from just 0.005 percent: Daniel Rowinski, “The Mobile Downturn: ‘An App for That’ Is Not a Business Model,” ARC, November 11, 2015, https://arc.applause.com/2015/11/11/app-discovery-strategy-and-monetization/.
Hollywood’s core strategy has shifted: Anita Elberse, Blockbusters (New York: Henry Holt, 2013).
visual Rosetta Stones: Derek Thompson, “Hollywood Has a Huge Millennial Problem,” The Atlantic, June 8, 2016, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/hollywood-has-a-huge-millennial-problem/486209/.
thirty biggest box office bombs in Hollywood history: “Movie Budget and Financial Performance Records,” The Numbers, www.the-numbers.com/movie/budgets/.
Chapter 8: The Viral Myth
Two of the most important books that mainstreamed elements of network theory and the “virality” of information spread were Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point (New York: Little, Brown, 2000) and Seth Godin’s Unleashing the Idea Virus (New York: Hachette, 2000). I would also like to thank Anne Jamison, whose work on this subject, and conversation over the phone, deepened my appreciation for fan fiction’s history.
world’s most popular erotic website for women: Ogi Ogas, “The Online World of Female Desire,” Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2011, www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704463804576291181510459902.
“Icy” had a golden ear: Anne Jamison, Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World (Dallas: Smart Pop, 2013).
more than fifty thousand comments: Emily Eakin, “Grey Area: How ‘Fifty Shades’ Dominated the Market,” New York Review of Books, July 27, 2012, www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/07/27/seduction-and-betrayal-twilight-fifty-shades/.
an Australian writer named Amanda Hayward: Amanda Hayward, e-mails to author, September 12, 2014.
It had gone “viral”: Julie Bosman, “Discreetly Digital, Erotic Novel Sets American Women Abuzz,” New York Times, March 9, 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/business/media/an-erotic-novel-50-shades-of-grey-goes-viral-with-women.html; also see Gladwell, The Tipping Point.
a disease that infects more than one person: Andrew Rice, “Does BuzzFeed Know the Secret?,” New York, April 7, 2013, nymag.com/news/features/buzzfeed-2013-4/.
the spread of millions of online messages: S. Goel, Duncan Watts, and Daniel Goldstein, “The Structure of Online Diffusion Networks,” Proc. 13th ACM Conf. Electronic Commerce 2012, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, 623–38, https://5harad.com/papers/diffusion.pdf.
The vast majority of the news that people see on Twitter: Sharad Goel, Ashton Anderson, Jake Hofman, and Duncan Watts, “The Structural Virality of Online Diffusion,” Management Science 62, no. 1 (January 2016): 180–96, https://5harad.com/papers/twiral.pdf.
another mechanism, called “broadcast diffusion”: Goel et al., “The Structure of Online Diffusion Networks.”
“driven by the size of the largest broadcast”: Goel et al., “The Structural Virality of Online Diffusion.”
a massive stinking cesspool of disease: Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World (New York: Riverhead, 2006).
killing 127 people in three days: Kathleen Tuthill, “John Snow and the Broad Street Pump,” Cricket 31, no. 3 (November 2003), reprinted by UCLA Department of Epidemiology, www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/snowcricketarticle.html.
“There were only ten deaths in houses”: John Snow, Medical Times and Gazette 9, September 23, 1854: 321–22, reprinted by UCLA Department of Epidemiology, www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/choleraneargoldensquare.html.
Note: Other accounts of Snow’s methodology, such as David Freedman’s paper “Statistical Models and Shoe Leather,” give more weight to Snow’s investigation of the water supply companies. A few years before the outbreak, one of London’s water suppliers had moved its intake point upstream from the main sewage discharge on the Thames, while another company kept its intake point downstream from the sewage. London had been divided into two groups, one drinking sewage and one drinking purer water. In other words, the London cholera outbreak was the result of something like an unintentional randomized controlled trial of disease theory. Several hundred thousand people were randomly distributed water from one company and were more likely to get sick, while several hundred thousand people were randomly distributed water from another company and stayed healthy.
the healthy brewers: Randy Alfred, “Sept. 8, 1854: Pump Shutdown Stops London Cholera Outbreak,” Wired, September 8, 2009, www.wired.com/2009/09/0908london-cholera-pump/.
spread in short bursts and die quickly: Goel et al., “The Structural Virality of Online Diffusion.”
“most viral video in history”: Samantha Grossman, “‘Kony 2012’ Documentary Becomes Most Viral Video in History,” Time, March 12, 2012, newsfeed.time.com/2012/03/12/kony-2012-documentary-becomes-most-viral-video-in-history/.
The video was shared by pop stars: J. David Goodman and Jennifer Preston, “How the Kony Video Went Viral,” Lede blog, New York Times, March 9, 2012, http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/09/how-the-kony-video-went-viral/.
How does popularity beget more popularity?: Matthew J. Salganik, Peter Dodds, and Duncan Watts, “Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market,” February 10, 2016, Science 311.
In a follow-up experiment: Thompson, “The Shazam Effect.”
women seek the comfort of a bodice ripper: Motoko Rich, “Recession Fuels Readers’ Escapist Urges,” New York Times, April 7, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/books/08roma.html.
Chapter 9: The Audience of My Audience
I got an e-mail from him: Vincent Forrest, e-mail to the author, July 17, 2015.
You are like the people around you: Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and James M. Cook, “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks,” Annual Review of Sociology 27 (August 2001): 415–44.
in many high school friendships: Simon Burgess, “Friendship Networks and Young People’s Aspirations,” Research in Public Policy, Centre for Market and Public Organisation, www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/cmpo/migrated/documents/friendship.pdf.
ninety-one white friends: Christopher Ingraham, “Three Quarters of Whites Don’t Have Any Non-White Friends,” Washington Post, August 25, 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/25/three-quarters-of-whites-dont-have-any-non-white-friends/.
The Making of a Moonie: Eileen Barker, The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing? (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984).
While many cults are seen: Derek Thompson, “Turning Customers into Cultists,” The Atlantic, December 2014, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/turning-customers-into-cultists/382248/.
an oppressive or illegitimate mainstream culture: Ibid.
various shades of self-expression: David Packman, “May I Have Your Attention, Please?,” The Mission, August 10, 2015, https://medium.com/the-mission/may-i-have-your-attention-please-19ef6395b2c3#.ijawp0j6o.
most downloaded nongaming apps: Mike Murphy, “These Are the Most Popular iOS Apps and Games of All Time,” Quartz, September 2, 2015, qz.com/492870/these-are-the-most-popular-ios-apps-and-games-of-all-time/.
visual, textual, and voice: Derek Thompson, “The Most Popular Social Network for Young People? Texting,” The Atlantic, June 19, 2014, www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/facebook-texting-teens-instagram-snapchat-most-popular-social-network/373043/.
rules for popularity: Duncan Watts and Peter Dodds, “Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation,” Journal of Consumer Research 34 (December 2007), www.digitaltonto.com/wp-content/uploads/WattsandDoddinfluentials.pdf.
“Her pitch was pretty genius”: Nick Summers, “The Truth About Tinder and Women Is Even Worse Than You Think,” Bloomberg, July 3, 2014, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-02/the-truth-about-tinder-and-women-is-even-worse-than-you-think.
“The avalanche had started”: Ibid.
“bowling pin strategy”: Chris Dixon, “The Bowling Pin Strategy,” CDixon blog, August 21, 2010, cdixon.org/2010/08/21/the-bowling-pin-strategy/.
more than three million users after the first fifteen months: Steve O’Hear, “Tinder Rival Bumble Is Majority-Owned by European Dating Behemoth Badoo,” Tech Crunch, March 25, 2016, https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/25/bumble-meet-badoo/.
Interlude: Le Panache
the top ten stories from 2014: Tim Peterson, “Ten Most Popular Stories on Twitter and Facebook in 2014,” AdvertisingAge, December 23, 2014, adage.com/article/media/ten-popular-stories-twitter-facebook-2014/296361/.
about one third of personal conversations: Diana I. Tamir and Jason P. Mitchell, “Disclosing Information About the Self Is Intrinsically Rewarding,” PNAS 109, no. 21 (May 22, 2012), www.pnas.org/content/109/21/8038.full.
size of the audience can shape the communication: Alixandra Barasch and Jonah Berger, “Broadcasting and Narrowcasting: How Audience Size Affects What People Share,” Journal of Marketing Research 51, no. 3 (June 2014): 286–99.
pause for an average of two milliseconds: Ed Yong, “The Incredible Thing We Do During Conversations,” The Atlantic, January 4, 2016, www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/01/the-incredible-thing-we-do-during-conversations/422439/.
this global recognition of ideal pauses: Stephen C. Levinson, “Turn-Taking in Human Communication—Origins and Implications for Language Processing,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 20, no. 1 (2016): 6–14.
Chapter 10: What the People Want I
Note: The story about Patch Culbertson and “Ride” is adapted from “The Shazam Effect,” my 2014 feature in The Atlantic.
Dressed in his ritualistic black turtleneck: Fred Vogelstein, “And Then Steve Said, ‘Let There Be an iPhone,’” New York Times Magazine, October 4, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/and-then-steve-said-let-there-be-an-iphone.html.
They said it would flop: Jemima Kiss, “iPhone Set to Struggle,” The Guardian, June 29, 2007, www.theguardian.com/media/2007/jun/29/digitalmedia.news?cat=media&type=article; also see Tom Smith, “Anytime, Anyplace: Understanding the Connected Generation,” Universal McCann, September 2007, www.slideshare.net/Tomuniversal/anytime-anyplace-um-global-research-sep-2007-presentation.
“so much better than anything else”: “Revealed: The Eight-Year-Old Girl Who Saved Harry Potter,” The Independent, July 2, 2005, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/revealed-the-eight-year-old-girl-who-saved-harry-potter-296456.html.
a British TV show called Pop Idol: Ken Auletta, “The Heiress,” The New Yorker, December 10, 2012, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/10/the-heiress-2.
“Nobody knows anything”: William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade (New York: Grand Central, 1983).
Warren Buffett’s 1990 bet on Wells Fargo: Warren Buffett, “Berkshire Hathaway Letter,” 1990, www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1990.html.
infamous bet against the U.S. housing market: Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (New York: Norton, 2010).
a cell phone app called Shazam: Derek Thompson, “The Shazam Effect,” The Atlantic, December 2012, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/the-shazam-effect/382237/.
Aditya Sood got an e-mail: Carla Guerrero, “Producer Aditya Sood ’97 on How the Box Office Hit ‘The Martian’ Came to Be,” Pomona College, October 8, 2015, www.pomona.edu/news/2015/10/08-producer-aditya-sood-’97-how-box-office-hit-“martian”-came-be.
half of all of television’s programming costs: Derek Thompson, “If You Don’t Watch Sports, TV Is a Huge Rip-Off (So, How Do We Fix It?),” The Atlantic, December 3, 2012, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/12/if-you-dont-watch-sports-tv-is-a-huge-rip-off-so-how-do-we-fix-it/265814/.
When Cheers debuted: Brian Raftery, “‘The Best TV Show That’s Ever Been,’” GQ, September 27, 2012, www.gq.com/story/cheers-oral-history-extended.
“No segment of the audience was eager”: Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016).
“No hugging, no learning”: Ibid.
nearly one thousand original reality series: Paul Cabana, e-mail to author, March 30, 2016.
“Your strategy becomes: Let’s go for quality”: Lacey Rose and Michael O’Connell, “The Uncensored, Epic, Never-Told Story Behind ‘Mad Men,’” Hollywood Reporter, March 11, 2015, www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/mad-men-uncensored-epic-never-780101.
AMC was a channel without renown or money: Ibid.
AMC didn’t need a blockbuster hit: Derek Thompson, “The Mad Men Effect: The Economics of TV’s Golden Age,” The Atlantic, April 3, 2015, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/the-mad-men-effect-the-economics-of-tvs-golden-age/389504/.
the most illegally downloaded show in the world: James Hibberd, “Game of Thrones Piracy Hits Record High Despite HBO’s Stand-Alone Service,” Entertainment Weekly, April 22, 2015, www.ew.com/article/2015/04/21/game-thrones-piracy-record.
“When you swing”: Jeff Bezos, “Amazon Letter to Shareholders,” April 5, 2016, www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312516530910/d168744dex991.htm.
increased subscriptions to the premium cable channel: David Zurawik and Chris Kaltenbach, “‘Sopranos’ Drives HBO Subscriber Numbers Up,” Baltimore Sun, January 19, 2000, articles.baltimoresun.com/2000-01-19/features/0001190248_1_hbo-sopranos-new-subscriptions.
network’s cable fee revenue rose 50 percent: Zachary M. Seward, “AMC Is Succeeding by Breaking the Rules of Legacy Television,” Quartz, August 13, 2013, qz.com/114483/amc-is-succeeding-by-breaking-the-rules-of-legacy-television/.
Chapter 11: What the People Want II
For this chapter, I am particularly indebted to Bill Bryson’s extraordinary book One Summer: America, 1927, for its lively and data-rich history of the world of letters in the 1920s, and to the University of Iowa for sharing George Gallup’s dissertation on the reading habits of Iowans.
Every day, writers compose several million: I could not find perfect data for average Facebook and Twitter posts per day, so I went with a low estimate, as reported by Business Insider; the number could easily be in the billions: Jim Edwards, “Leaked Twitter API Data Shows the Number of Tweets Is in Serious Decline,” Business Insider, February 2, 2016, www.businessinsider.com/tweets-on-twitter-is-in-serious-decline-2016-2.
trillions of gigabytes: “What Is Big Data?,” IBM, www-01.ibm.com/software/data/bigdata/what-is-big-data.html.
ten thousand unique titles: Bill Bryson, One Summer: America, 1927 (New York: Random House, 2013).
discovery became a fashionable problem: Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (New York: Norton, 2004), 215.
New York City had twelve daily papers: Bryson, One Summer.
“the century of combination and centralization”: Matt Novak, “One Newspaper to Rule Them All,” Smithsonian, January 3, 2012, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/one-newspaper-to-rule-them-all-14383197/?no-ist.
nearly one third of their inches to crime stories: Bryson, One Summer.
New York and New Jersey alone: List of New York State newspapers on microfilm at New York State Library, New York State Library website, www.nysl.nysed.gov/nysnp/title1.htm.
ways to measure the demands of their readership: George Horace Gallup, “An Objective Method for Determining Reader Interest in the Content of a Newspaper,” University of Iowa dissertation, August 1928, ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5318&context=etd.
private investigators to sneak up behind readers: Ibid.
PhD program in applied psychology: Jill Lepore, “Politics and the New Machine,” The New Yorker, November 16, 2015, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/politics-and-the-new-machine.
first applied anthropologists: Ann M. Reed, “History: Applied Anthropology,” Applied Anthropology, University of Indiana, May 1998, www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/theory_pages/Applied.htm#history; also see George M. Foster, Applied Anthropology (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969).
second-largest employer of anthropologists today: Graeme Wood, “Anthropology Inc.,” The Atlantic, March 2013, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/03/anthropology-inc/309218/.
“beneath the fold”: Susan Ohmer, “Gallup Meets Madison Avenue: Media Research and the Depression,” Milestones in Marketing History: Proceedings of the 10th Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing (CHARM), John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, May 17–20, 2001; also see Boris Doktorov, “George Gallup: Biography and Destiny” (Moscow, 2011).
surveys, a measure of the present, and polls, a measure of the future: Lepore, “Politics and the New Machine.”
from living room curiosity to household ubiquity: Robert Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016); also see James L. Baughman, “Television Comes to America, 1947–57,” Illinois History, March 1993, www.lib.niu.edu/1993/ihy930341.html.
“far more fascinating, far more varied”: David R. Davies, The Postwar Decline of American Newspapers, 1945–1965 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006); also see Richard W. Clarke, Speech to the Silurian Society, November 1947, quoted in George Britt, ed., Shoeleather and Printers’ Ink (New York: Quadrangle, 1974), 326–32; also see Sig Mickelson, “Two National Political Conventions Have Proved Television’s News Role,” Quill, December 1956, 15–16.
average time spent listening to the radio: Gordon, Rise and Fall of American Growth.
a young California girl named Kathy Fiscus: William Deverell, “Fueled by Obsession,” Huntington Frontiers, Spring/Summer 2009, www.huntington.org/uploadedFiles/Files/PDFs/S09obsession.pdf.
“the cathode-ray tube had out-and-out scooped the newspapers”: Will Fowler, Reporters: Memoirs of a Young Newspaperman (Malibu, CA: Roundtable, 1991), 160–61.
“the television convention”: “Television Convention,” Newsweek, July 14, 1952.
“informality, feeling, and emotion”: Karla Gower, Public Relations and the Press: The Troubled Embrace (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 29.
an upstart company will topple: Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma (New York: Harvard Business Review Press, 1997). My sentence here is an impressionistic reframing of Christensen’s thesis. It is, without question, informed by The Innovator’s Dilemma, but it’s not really an attempt to summarize the book.
newspapers sold per person plummeted: Ken Goldstein, “Sixty Years of Daily Newspaper Circulation Trends,” Canadian Journalism Project, 2011.
Internet uncrossed the subsidies: James Fallows, “How to Save the News,” The Atlantic, June 2010, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/06/how-to-save-the-news/308095/.
“by going directly to news providers”: “How Millennials Use and Control Social Media,” Media Insight Project, American Press Institute, March 16, 2015, www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-research/millennials-social-media/.
It’s my news now: Adapted from a passage in Jonathan Franzen, “Farther Away,” The New Yorker, April 18, 2011, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/04/18/farther-away-jonathan-franzen.
the average U.S. consumer spends fifty minutes daily: James B. Stewart, “Facebook Has 50 Minutes of Your Time Each Day. It Wants More,” New York Times, May 5, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/business/facebook-bends-the-rules-of-audience-engagement-to-its-advantage.html?_r=0.
Talking was social; radio was broadcast: Derek Thompson, “Facebook and Fear,” The Atlantic, May 10, 2016, www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/05/the-facebook-future/482145/.
“the perfect personalized newspaper”: Steven Levy, “Inside the Science That Delivers Your Scary-Smart Facebook and Twitter Feeds,” Wired, April 22, 2014, www.wired.com/2014/04/perfect-facebook-feed/.
the “dozen doughnuts” problem: Steven Levy, “How 30 Random People in Knoxville May Change Your Facebook News Feed,” Backchannel, January 30, 2015, https://backchannel.com/revealed-facebooks-project-to-find-out-what-people-really-want-in-their-news-feed-799dbfb2e8b1#.srntqeuy7.
“vicarious goal fulfillment”: Keith Wilcox, Beth Vallen, Lauren G. Block, and Gavan Fitzsimons, “Vicarious Goal Fulfillment: When the Mere Presence of a Healthy Option Leads to an Ironically Indulgent Decision,” NA—Advances in Consumer Research 37 (2010): 73–76.
Facebook “will be probably all video”: Cassie Werber, “Facebook Is Predicting the End of the Written Word,” Quartz, June 14, 2016, qz.com/706461/facebook-is-predicting-the-end-of-the-written-word/.
Forty-four percent of the entire U.S. population: Jeffrey Gottfried and Elisa Shearer, “News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016,” Pew Research Center, May 26, 2016, www.journalism.org/files/2016/05/PJ_2016.05.26_social-media-and-news_FINAL-1.pdf.
88 percent of people under thirty-five: “How Millennials Use and Control Social Media,” American Press Institute.
it is a social utility: Derek Thompson, “Facebook and Fear.”
Interlude: 828 Broadway
that he called OODA: See, for example, Grant T. Hammond’s lecture “On the Making of History: John Boyd and American Security,” Harmon Memorial Lecture, U.S. Air Force Academy, 2012, www.usafa.edu/df/dfh/docs/Harmon54.pdf.
“eighteen miles” of paper books: “Strand History,” The Strand, www.strandbooks.com/strand-history.
The Great Gatsby came out to awful reviews: Megan Garber, “To Its Earliest Reviewers, Gatsby Was Anything but Great,” The Atlantic, April 10, 2015, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/04/to-early-reviewers-the-great-gatsby-was-not-so-great/390252/.
“a memorable catastrophe”: Virginia Woolf, “How It Strikes a Contemporary,” The Common Reader, 1925.
Chapter 12: The Futures of Hits
Many thanks to Ben Thompson on the future of media, that inexhaustible subject of constant speculation, Tom Tumbusch on the legacy of Kay Kamen, and Ryan Leslie on his life story.
the century between the 1870s and 1970s: Gordon, Rise and Fall of American Growth.
the most visible technology changes: Ibid.
“weird” at scale: This is a term that I first heard from The Atlantic website’s deputy editor Matt Thompson.
an estimate of time spent consuming messages: Michael Chui, James Manyika, Jacques Bughin, Richard Dobbs, Charles Roxburgh, Hugo Sarrazin, Geoffrey Sands, and Magdalena Westergren, “The Social Economy: Unlocking Value and Productivity Through Social Technologies,” McKinsey Global Institute, July 2012, www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/the-social-economy.
In 1906, John Philip Sousa predicted: Alex Ross, “The Record Effect,” The New Yorker, June 6, 2005, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/06/06/the-record-effect.
“These talking machines”: Statement of John Philip Sousa. Arguments Before the Committee on Patents of the House of Representatives on H.R. 19853 to Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, June 6–9, 1906.
music technology would give black Americans: Ross makes a similar point about the democratizing power of music technology for black artists in “The Record Effect.”
the top 1 percent of bands and solo artists: Thompson, “The Shazam Effect.”
the number of transistors that fit on a microchip: Gordon E. Moore, “Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits,” Electronics 38, no. 8 (April 19, 1965), www.monolithic3d.com/uploads/6/0/5/5/6055488/gordon_moore_1965_article.pdf.
humans plod along at a leisurely Darwinian pace: Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage (New York: Norton, 2014), 41. I’ve seen several writers juxtapose the exponential pace of technology and the methodical evolution of humans, but the first place I recall reading this construction was in Carr’s book: “Where computers sprint forward at the pace of Moore’s law, our own innate abilities creep ahead with the tortoise-like tread of Darwin’s law.”
“Radio has become a companion”: J. Fred MacDonald, Don’t Touch That Dial. (New York: Wadsworth, 1979).
What can I do best?: Ben Thompson, “The Jobs TV Does,” Stratechery, June 3, 2013, https://stratechery.com/2013/the-jobs-tv-does/. I’m grateful to Thompson not only for this insightful piece, but also for his explication over the phone of the future of television and media.
ten films grossed $100 million: Worldwide Grosses 2015 and 2016, Box Office Mojo, www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?view2=worldwide&yr=2016&sort=ospercent&order=DESC&p=.htm, www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?view2=worldwide&yr=2015&sort=ospercent&order=DESC&p=.htm.
For the history of the early Disney years, I consulted several biographies, including: Bob Thomas, Walt Disney: An American Original (New York: Disney Editions, 1976); Neal Gabler, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (New York: Vintage, 2006); Tom Tumbusch, Walt Disney: The American Dreamer (Dayton: Tomart, 2008).
eight of the ten most popular amusement: Katia Hetter, “World’s 25 Most Popular Amusement Parks,” CNN, May 27, 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/05/26/travel/worlds-most-popular-amusement-parks-2015/.
Kamen was born Herman Samuel Kominetzky: Didier Ghez, e-mail to author, October 23, 2015.
In his thirties, Kamen found success: Ibid.
Families were streaming from farms to cities: Daniel Raff and Peter Temin, “Sears, Roebuck in the Twentieth Century: Competition, Complementarities, and the Problem of Wasting Assets,” in Naomi R. Lamoreaux, Daniel M. G. Raff, and Peter Temin, eds., Learning by Doing in Markets, Firms, and Countries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 227.
the Mickey Mouse watch: Several sources, including: Alan Bryman, The Disneyization of Society (London and Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2004), and Tumbusch, Walt Disney.
U.S. economy had shrunk by a third: See, for example, Robert A. Margo, “Employment and Unemployment in the 1930s,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 7, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 41–59, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/docs/meltzer/maremp93.pdf.
“In his room, bordered with M.M. wall paper”: Widely quoted, but see, for example, Dade Hayes, Anytime Playdate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008).
pathetic timidity of the capitalist: Ruud Janssens, Of Mice and Men: American Imperialism and American Studies (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004).
“Micky Maus is the shabbiest”: Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power (New York: Penguin, 2005), 130.
the gift was from Joseph Goebbels: Ibid., 131.
$2 million from the sale of toys: “Prosperity Out of Fantasy,” New York Times, May 2, 1938.
coloring books, candy boxes, cooking ware: Tom Tumbusch, Tomarts’s Merchandise History of Disneyana: Disney Merchandise of the 1930s (Dayton: Tomart, 2009).
“industrialized fantasy”: Ibid.
Hollywood greeted the dawn of television: The story of Walt’s foray into television draws equally from two sources: Tumbusch, Walt Disney, and Christopher Anderson, “Hollywood in the Home: TV and the End of the Studio System,” in James Naremore and Patrick Brantlinger, eds., Modernity and Mass Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).
“one of the most influential commercial decisions”: Anderson, “Hollywood in the Home.”
Shanghai Disney Resort: Ben Fritz, “Shanghai Disneyland Offers Springboard for Disney’s China Ambitions,” Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2016, www.wsj.com/articles/new-shanghai-resort-creates-high-stakes-for-disney-ceo-1465752586.