Illusive Identity is a transnational exploration of the evolution of working-class consciousness within modern Western culture. The work traces how the rise of popular culture blurred the definition and dulled the influence of class identity in Europe and the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chapters tackling changing class consciousness in Britain, Germany, Italy, and the United States offer rich insight into the movement from a traditional community-based social identity to a modern consumer-based culture; a mass culture influenced by industrialization, new social institutions, and the powerful imagery of new media. Illusive Identity vividly demonstrates the transformative impact of modernity on the laboring classes, as advertising, entertainment, and the rise of the popular press replaced traditionally shared narratives about the nature of work with a new and liberating cultural paradigm.

Thomas J. Edward Walker is Professor of History, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences at The Pennsylvania College of Technology. He is the author of Pluralistic Fraternity: A History of the International Worker's Order (1991).

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Cocoa and Class in British Popular Press Advertising: A Process of Cultural Agency
Chapter 3 Nazi Labor to 1939: From Working-Class Consciousness to the People's Community
Chapter 4 Italian Workers and Paradiso: The Don Camillo Stories of Giovanni Guareschi in their Historical Setting
Chapter 5 From Guthrie through Dylan to Springsteen: Losing the Working Touch
Chapter 6 A Struggle for Hearts and Minds: Labor Age and the Popular Press, 1920-1930
Chapter 7 Tainted Sources: Government/Media Mispresentations in the Case of the IWO
Chapter 8 A Final Thought