Stronger Than Dirt:A Cultural History of Advertising Personal Hygiene in America, 1875-1940. Juliann Sivulka. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2001. 369 pp. $28 pbk. Juliann Sivulka's Stronger Than Dirt: A Cultural History of Advertising Personal Hygiene in America, 1875-1940 uses personal hygiene as a case study to trace America's transition from an agrarian, production culture to an urbanized, cosmopolitan, consumer culture. Individuals came to define themselves through their purchases. Goods, once mere objects of utility, came to be understood as commodities rich with social meaning. In eight chapters, generously illustrated with black-and-white advertisements, Sivulka teases out a complex web of relationships between the material artifacts of personal hygiene; cultural values, attitudes, beliefs, and rituals; the needs of manufacturers and the marketing efforts in which they engaged; advertising content; and emerging media industries. In short, Stronger Than Dirt is the story of the collusion of the culture of and the culture of consumption, viewed through the lens of advertising. In this collusion, soap, once homemade and of unpredictable quality, was mass produced, differentiated, and promoted extensively, first as a luxury and then, as an everyday staple linked to notions of cleanliness, purity, romance, and beauty. Outdoor privies became indoor bathrooms, status symbols separating the middle from the lower class. These utilitarian shrines of evolved into luxurious showplaces of style, glamour, and indulgence made possible by the addition of elaborate fixtures, color-coordinated accessories, and fashionable towels. Once scorned, bathing became a daily ritual associated not only with cleanliness, but with character, material success, gentility, and beauty. Sivulka, an assistant professor in the College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of South Carolina, and author of Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising, has done extensive primary research. Much of this story is told through case studies. Some are familiar-Ivory, Pears, Sapolio, Woodbury. Others are less wellknown-Babbitt's Best Soap, Packer's Tar Soap, American Standard Company, Madame C.J. Walker. Through these cases, Sivulka demonstrates the role advertising plays in the construction of a social reality in which soap was stronger than dirt, and cleanliness [became] an indicator that some individuals morally superior, of better character or more civilized than others. Never stated explicitly, Stronger Than Dirt is a narrative about the ideological power of advertising. Sivulka locates that power (accurately, I believe) amid a host of other marketing tools (packaging, branding, sampling, premiums); developments in media (magazines, soap operas) and distribution (chain stores); cultural artifacts (household manuals, advice columns); and social movements (women's clubs, settlement houses, public health education). Culture, thus, is both shaped by and mirrored in mass marketing efforts. Advertising is both shaped by and mirrored in culture. Popular advertising formulas, Sivulka notes, were not merely a projection of beliefs and values onto society, rather they drew legitimacy from dominant cultural myths, beliefs, and values in America. Nowhere is this interplay more evident than in matters of gender and race. As late-nineteenth century middle-class society began to define itself through gender roles, women relegated to the domestic sphere, increasingly cast in the role of consumer, and constructed as natural agents of cleanliness, responsible for their own hygiene as well as that of their home, husband, and children. …