Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Friday, February 23, 1962.

Vance Packard, noted author, will lecture to students and faculty at assembly Monday, February 26, at 10:00 a.m. in MacVicar Chapel.

Nine o’clock classes will be cancelled and 10:00 a.m. classes will meet at 9:00 a.m.

Three of Packard’s recent bestsellers include “Hidden Persuaders,” “Status Seekers,” and “The Waste Makers,” his latest non-fiction work concerning the over-commercialization of our society.

As a social critice Packard has had considerable popular success. For example The Status Seekers has been translated into nine languages and nearly a million copies are now in print.

A native of Pennsylvania, Vance Packard has been an author, writer, and teacher ever since he received his master’s degree from the Columbia Graduate school of Journalism twenty years ago.

For the past ten years he has specialized in bringing to public attention new developments in the social sciences. His magazine articles have appeared in such publications as The Atlantic Monthly, Look, Reader’s Digest, Ladies’ Home Journal and The New York Times.

Before concentrating on social sciences, Packard spent five years as a newspapermen in Boston and New York, after which he switched to writing magazine articles and books.

At one time he was on the staff of Collier’s magazine.

Packard has recently concentrated his criticism of American society on “consumerism,” claiming that the enormous increase in American productive capacity is now fast outrunning the market and therefore a new “philosophy of waste takes hold as the American national virtue.”