Outrageous Ads : Meet Your Father’s Automobile, the Nervous Housewife, the Smoking Doctor and the Bearded Baby by Kate Parker

This hilarious treasury of old ads, accompanied by Parker’s bright quips, celebrates an age of innocence (or idiocy) when advertisers could show us any old thing. How about a baby with a razor or tobacco chew? Or a gal combing her sleeping guy’s trousers in search of war-bond dollars, a wife in love with cutlery. Unhealthy claims include soda pop promoted as a baby drink and bone-crushing corsets urged for little girls. Among other dubious propositions are the chin-reducing head cage and bile beans as the key to physical fitness. Outrageous Ads reminds us not to believe everything we’re sold.