A charmingly illustrated history of midcentury instructional records and their untold contribution to the American narrative of self-improvement, aspiration, and success. For the midcentury Americans who wished to better their golf game through hypnosis, teach their parakeet to talk, or achieve sexual harmony in their marriage, the answers lay no further than the record player. In
Designed for Success, Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder shed light on these endearingly earnest albums that contributed to a powerful American vision of personal success. Rescued from charity shops, record store cast-off bins, or forgotten boxes in attics and basements, these educational records reveal the American consumers' rich but sometimes surprising relationship to advertising, self-help, identity construction, and even aspects of transcendentalist thought.
Relegated to obscurity and novelty, instructional records such as
Secrets of Successful Varmint Calling, You Be a Disc Jockey, and
How to Ski (A Living-Room Guide for Beginners) offer distinct insights into midcentury media production and consumption. Tracing the history of instructional records from the inception of the recording industry to the height of their popularity, Borgerson and Schroeder offer close readings of the abundant topics covered by "designed for success" records. Complemented by over a hundred full-color illustrations,
Designed for Success is a wonderfully nostalgic tour that showcases the essential role these vinyl records played as an unappreciated precursor to contemporary do-it-yourself culture and modern conceptions of self-improvement.
一本迷人的插圖書，探討了中世紀教學唱片及其對美國自我提升、追求和成功敘事的無聲貢獻。
對於希望通過催眠來改善高爾夫球技、教鸚鵡說話或實現婚姻中的性和諧的中世紀美國人來說，答案就在唱片播放器中。在《設計成功》一書中，珍妮特·博格森（Janet Borgerson）和喬納森·施羅德（Jonathan Schroeder）揭示了這些令人愛不釋手的誠摯專輯對於美國個人成功的強大視覺的貢獻。這些教育唱片從慈善商店、唱片店的拋棄箱，或者被遺忘在閣樓和地下室的盒子中被拯救出來，它們揭示了美國消費者與廣告、自助、身份建構甚至超驗主義思想的豐富但有時令人驚訝的關係。
被遺忘和當作新奇玩意的教學唱片，如《成功的害獸呼叫秘訣》、《成為一名DJ》和《滑雪入門指南（客廳版）》等，提供了對中世紀媒體製作和消費的獨特洞察。博格森和施羅德追溯了教學唱片的歷史，從錄音行業的起源到它們的鼎盛時期，並對“為成功而設計”的唱片所涵蓋的豐富主題進行了仔細閱讀。《設計成功》配有一百多幅全彩插圖，是一次美好的懷舊之旅，展示了這些黑膠唱片作為當代自助文化和現代自我提升觀念的被低估的先驅所扮演的重要角色。
Janet Borgerson is Senior Wicklander Fellow at DePaul University.
Jonathan Schroeder is William A. Kern Professor in the School of Communication at Rochester Institute of Technology.
Borgerson and Schroeder are coauthors of
Designed for Hi-Fi Living: The Vinyl LP in Midcentury America and
Designed for Dancing: How Midcentury Records Taught America to Dance (both MIT Press).
