Living in the Number One Country.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Brief Article

Herbert I. Schiller died on January 29, 2000. One of the pioneers in the field of media studies, his most influential work was Culture Inc.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression (Oxford, 1989). But he left us with an affecting memoir, Living in the Number One Country (Seven Stories Press, 2000). In it, he recounts his Depression-era childhood, noting how devastating it was for him and his entire family when his father, a jeweler, lost his job and was unable to get another decent one for ten years. "I have never forgotten how the deprivation of work erodes human beings, those not working and those related to them," he writes. "And from that time on, I loathed an economic system that could put a huge part of its workforce on the streets with no compunction."

During the war, Schiller spent two-and-a-half years in North Africa, and coming face-to-face with abject poverty "was a powerful prod to consciousness," he writes. In the Third World, "great numbers of people live and die under frightfully deprived conditions. In their midst are enclaves of lavish wealth and power. Over time, I realized that these tragic destinies continue to be ordered by foreign owners and investors, and local oligarchs, whose one public concern is undisturbed profit-making."

When he returned, he found that his views were not in the mainstream. And he became preoccupied by...