In his book-length essay "The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism", Thomas Frank explores the ways in which Madison Avenue co-opted the language of youthful "60s rebellion. It is "the story", Frank writes, "of the bohemian cultural style"s trajectory from adversarial to hegemonic; the story of hip"s mutation from native language of the alienated to that of advertising."This appropriation had wide-ranging consequences that deeply transformed our culture - consequences that linger in the form of "90s "hip consumerism". (Think of Nike using the song "Revolution" to sell sneakers, or Coca-Cola using replicas of Ken Kesey"s bus to peddle Fruitopia). This is no simplistic analysis of how the counterculture "sold out" to big business. Instead, Frank shows how the counterculture and business culture influenced one another. In fact, he writes, the counterculture"s critique of mass society mimicked earlier developments in business itself,...