The Clock That Had No Hands, and Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising

A clock without hands cannot tell you where it has been—or where it is going. Herbert Kaufman opens by comparing it to a merchant who expects customers to find him without advertising.

In the expanding cities of the early twentieth century, shops and homes are drifting apart, and the old neighborhood merchant can no longer count on being known around the corner. Across twenty essays, Kaufman makes advertising a matter of survival: a way to reach distant customers, defend a business from rivals, and earn trust through clear promises and patient effort. His arguments arrive with sharp comparisons, from a farmer’s seeds to the cannon that forced Japan to rethink its defenses. But if advertising is the merchant’s voice at a distance, what happens when he refuses to use it?

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