The most famous designs of the twentieth century are not those in museums, but in the marketplace. The Coca-Cola bottle and the McDonald's logo are known all over the world, and designs like the modernistic `Frankfurt Kitchen' of 1926, or the 1954 streamlined and tail-finned Oldsmobile, or `Blow', the inflatable chair ubiquitous in the late sixties, tell us more about our culture than a narrowly-defined canon of classics. Drawing on the most up-to-date scholarship (not only in design history but also in social anthropology and women's history), Jonathan Woodham takes a fresh look at the wider issues of design and industrial culture throughout Europe, Scandinavia, North America, and the Far East. He explores themes such as national identity, the `Americanisation' of ideology and business methods, the rise of the multi-nationals, Pop and Postmodernism, and contemporary ideas of nostalgia and heritage, and sets the proliferation of everyday design against the writing of critics as different as Nikolaus Pevsner, the champion of Modernism, and Vance Packard, author of The Hidden Persuaders. In the history which emerges design is clearly seen for what it is: the powerful and complex expression of aesthetic, social, economic, political, and technological forces.

"Twentieth-Century Design is extremely thoroughly researched" - Art Review, April 1997

"for a good general introduction to the subject you could not go very far wrong with Jonathan Woodham's excellent Twentieth Century Design ... Yet another example of the impressive new Oxford History of Art series." - The Bookseller

"Fully and often surprisingly illustrated, carefully annotated and captioned, each combines a historical overview with a nicely opinionated individual approach." - Independent on Sunday

"Woodham gives a deftly organised, extremely cool-headed account of the ideological spoon-fights behind the product ranges of modern capitalism: his range of reference and eye for detail are superb." - The Guardian

"a superb piece of publishing" - Rupert Christiansen, Spectator