Examines the interaction between style of writing and the intended reading audience in advertising, the press, magazines, bestsellers, classic writings, and scripts, from 1492 to the present. Includes ads for/by Modart, Listerine, Tiparillo, NOW Legal Defense & Education Fund, Mary Ann Restivo, Wrangler, U.S. Army, National Women's Political Caucus, Nike, American Express Company, White Owl, Charles Atlas, Joe Weider, Future Homemakers of America, Paco Rabanne, Aramis, Calvin Klein, Oaktree, Resinol Soap, Book of Etiquette, Symphony Press, LifeStyles, International Paper Company, San Francisco Black Coalition on AIDS, Neutrogena, Willys-Overland, Ford Closed Cars, Volkswagen, Oldsmobile Tornado, Mazda, Saturn, Suzuki, Wolfschmidt's Vodka, Ballantine Ale, Schrafft's, Coca-Cola, McCormick/Schilling, Campari, Burger King, McDonald's, Great Books, Seventeen, Eyewitness News, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, SONY, Mitsubishi, Army National Guard, United Negro College Fund, Distilled Spirits Council, Tobacco Institute, Bell System, National Rifle Association, Handgun Control, Rockwell International, Adelphi University, Central Intelligence Agency, and the U.S. Council for Energy Awareness. Includes writings by Marianne Moore, David Ogilvy, Patricia Volk, Neil Postman, Teresa Riordan, Michael Specter, David Beers, Catherine Capellaro, Stephen Crane, Francis Pharcellus Church, Heywood Broun, Jack Lait, George M. Mahawinney, Dorothy Thompson, Langston Hughes, William L. Laurence, Tom Wicker, Thomas O'Toole, Vivian Gornick, Mike Royko, Susan Jacoby, Jimmy Breslin, Debbie McKinney, Diana Griego Erwin, Samuel Francis, David Von Drehle, Michael Ventura, Anna Quindlen, Scott Higham, Ancil Davis, Tottie Ellis, Mona Charen, Juan Williams, Henry Louis Gates Jr., David Mills, Teri Maddox, Laura Parker, Luther Campbell, Russell Baker, Ann Powers, Nina Schuyler, George Lakoff, David G. Savage, Maureen Dowd, Patrick O'Connell, Jeffrey Hart, Karen Jurgensen, Paul Hemphill, Jack London, William Hand, Peter Homans, N. Scott Momaday, Toni Morrison, Gretel Ehrlich, Stephen King, Bob Greene, Lance Morrow, Jerry Adler, Martin Gottfried, Sallie Tisdale, Randy Shilts, Ann Hodgman, Elizabeth F. Brown, William R. Hendee, Sidney Hook, Ishmael Reed, Josh Ozersky, John Updike, Robert Hughes, Harriet Beecher-Stowe, P.T. Barnum, Ernest L. Thayer, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Dale Carnegie, Wilfred Funk, Norman Lewis, Ogden Nash, Mickey Spillane, Grace Metalious, Vance Packard, Mario Puzo, Alex Haley, Benjamin Spock, Ron Kovic, William Least Heat Moon, Letitia Baldridge, Garrison Keillor, Barry Lopez, Allan Bloom, Amy Tan, Susan Faludi, Christopher Columbus, Tom Wolfe, Thomas Jefferson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kate Chopin, Stephen Crane, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, William Carlos Williams, E.B. White, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Flannery O'Connor, Tillie Olsen, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Maxine Hong Kingston, Walker Percy, Raymond Carver, Lewis Thomas, Annie Dillard, Eudora Welty, June Jordan, Orson Welles, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Dick Orkin and Bert Berdis, Robert Geller, Richard B. Eckhaus, and Matt Williams.