The 1950s, much like the 1920s before it, is attracting revisionist histories, especially on the textures of everyday life. As result, the cultural landscape of the 1950s-once dismissed by high-modernist liberals and cultural radicals as gray, middle-brow wasteland-is brightening considerably. Building on earlier accounts, especially Thomas Hine's Populuxe (1986), Karal Ann Marling's As Seen on TV finds the 1950s to be aglow in dazzling colors. From the nation's First Lady, with her Pink, to its King, Elvis Presley, with his pinksplashed wardrobe and pink-toned Cadillac, bright hues color this revisioning of the 1950s-the decade that begot Trix, the first multicolor breakfast cereal. Even the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit sports pink, button-down, Brooks Brothers shirt and pink tie. Nearly everyone, it seems, wanted to look pretty in pink. More broadly, argues Marling, in the 1950s was coming to revolve around people who wanted to look-and to be looked at. With TV at the center of visuality, there was growing emphasis on appearing bright, fresh, and new. From the New Look in women's fashion, popularized in the United States by Mamie Eisenhower, to exotic looking food items, life in the age of television was feast for the eye (p. 240). Detroit replaced designers with stylists (p. 154), and the automobile became a piece of figurative sculpture, powerful work of art (p. 140). The 1950s provided a visual, visceral dazzle, an absorbing sense of pleasure in the act of perusal (p. 5). The decade's most colorful icons, including Elvis at full throttle on All Shook Up and Detroit's chrome-encrusted behemoths, accentuated motion. Once the culture of the 1950s picked up speed, it toppled old values and rolled over traditional hierarchies. Television, Marling's study repeatedly reminds, should be seen as central to these changes. Even in black and white, its moving images made everything look new. Or rather, TV looked-and that was new (p. 286).