Empire’s Old Clothes

In this powerful cultural critique, Ariel Dorfman explores the political and social messages behind the smiling faces that inhabit familiar books, comics, and magazines. He reveals the ideological messages conveyed in works of popular culture such as Donald Duck comics, the Babar children’s books, and the Reader’s Digest magazine. The Empire’s Old Clothes was widely praised when it was first published 1983. This edition, including a new preface by the author, makes a contemporary classic newly available.

Ariel Dorfman

"The Empire’s Old Clothes is as lively and relevant today as it was when it first came out. People like myself who have read it previously will re-read it with pleasure, use it in their work and courses, and re-sing its praises.”--Douglas Kellner, author of Guys and Guns Amok "An intellectual book of the highest order, one that uses criticism to point a way toward social action.”--Herbert Kohl, The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Dorfman has a serious point: that children and adult readers should be treated as intelligent beings with a capacity to absorb and recall details of historical and social concern. . . . He makes a compelling case against two-dimensional characters with no families, no past, and no responsibilities, who take actions with no real consequences, or who have adventures which change and resolve nothing.”--Warren Clements, The Globe and Mail (Toronto) "Dorfman has set out to reveal what everybody sees and nobody recognizes. . . . His case is persuasive (and also, not incidentally, often deadly humorous).”--San Francisco Chronicle Book Review