Elsewhere, USA

I have blogged about the fact that most books we read for the blind are text books. Dull. complicated. tedious. text books. Most often, it is something like the 18th edition of a college sociology text; the first 90 pages are spent pointing out all of the new and exciting things that set the 18th edition apart from the 17th edition, and the next 20 how this particular book is now the best sociology text in the world. Not to mention 10 pages of glowing biographical garbage about the authors. [insert picture here of someone pretending to gag. Okay, just imagine it - that's gross enough]

But occasionally you get a book you really enjoy reading. Like the one this week, Elsewhere, USA. Written by Dalton Conley, Chair of the Department of Sociology at New York University, the cover blurb for this book reads: "Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms, and Economic Anxiety."

Now this is not a book review - I only read aloud most of two chapters of the book during my session. I did - for the very first time of all the books I've read from - put my name in it as a purchaser when the book has been read (and checked, and finalized, and sent to New Jersey, etc. before the hard copy is released). In other words, don't hold your breath for my review.

But in my two chapters, I learned the answer to a question I have often asked, "Who was the first person to think it would be a good idea to print an advertisement on a T-shirt?" And the answer will surprise you. Thomas Dewey, candidate for President in 1948. You know, the one that defeated Truman, according to the Chicago Daily Tribune. Okay, probably not Thomas himself, but someone in his campaign came up with T-shirts printed with "Dew it for Dewey" and handed them out to workers and supporters.

But to get to this answer - and beyond - Conley reviews the history of the T-shirt, beginning with the US Navy, who ordered a ton of "crew-neck" undershirts because the standard seaman's v-necked uniform showed too much skin back in the more refined era of the early 1900's. It wasn't long before sailors realized the tee itself was the appropriate uniform for the South seas. Later, of course, all branches of the armed forces adopted the T-shirt as standard dress.

In 1936, the USC athletics department asked Jockey, Intl. to make an under shirt to prevent chafing of the athletic gear and they foolishlessly stamped them "Property of USC Athletics." They recovered quickly and soon were selling the shirts in the campus store - the first "branded" T-shirts. Dewey's supporters wore the first advertising shirts and Walt Disney and then the Budweiser company knew a good thing when they saw it and the rest, as they say...

How cool is a book that answers questions like that?