Select Bibliography
on Consumer Culture
The bibliographic outpouring on
consumer culture and consumerism, while of recent origin, is already vast and
without much shape, alas. The following
books represent a select listing, shaped in large measure by my reading and
research interests and focused mostly but not entirely by scholarship on
American culture and business and including advertising and women’s
history. I continue to add entries,
particularly on international topics.
Suggested additions (specific titles and sections) are encouraged!
Odds
‘n Ends
Search engines to find book
reviews on recently published books:
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showlist.cgi?sort=author&lists=h-business
http://eh.net/bookreviews/
Journal of Consumer Culture. This is now available in the OSUL
electronic journals.
Advertising Educational
Foundation: http://www.aef.com/index.html
with the journal, Advertising & Society Review, which is available in the OSUL electronic
journals.
Here is an interesting UK
bibliography (about 1,500 entries):
http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/slater/consumer/biblioa.htm
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/coolhtml/coolhome.html Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era
and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929 assembles a wide array of Library of
Congress source materials from the 1920s that document the widespread
prosperity of the Coolidge years, the nation's transition to a mass consumer
economy, and the role of government in this transition.
http://odyssey.lib.duke.edu/hartman/ John W. Hartman Center for Sales,
Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University
Classics
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward,
2000-1887 (1887).
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism (1904-05; translated into English in 1930 by Talcott
Parsons).
David
Riesman, et al., The Lonely Crowd (1950).
David M.
Potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character (1954).
John Kenneth
Galbraith, The Affluent Society (1958).
Daniel
Bell, The End of Ideology (1960).
_________, The
Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976).
Christopher
Lasch, The Culture of
Narcissism: American Life in an Age of
Diminishing Expectations (1979).
Richard
Wightman Fox, and T. J. Jackson Lears, eds., The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History,
1880-1980 (1983).
Warren I. Susman, Culture as
History: The Transformation of American
Society in the Twentieth Century (1984).
General
and Edited Collections
Regina Lee Blaszczyk, American Consumer Society, 1865-2005: From Hearth to HDTV (2009) (See
especially the “Bibliographical Essay.”)
Peter N. Stearns, Consumerism
in World History: The Global
Transformation of Desire (2001).
John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds, Consumption and the World of Goods (1993).
Reinhold Wagnleitner and Elaine Tyler May, eds., “Here, There and Everywhere”: The Foreign Policy of American Popular
Culture (2000).
________________________,
The Power of Culture: Critical Essays in American History (1993).
Victoria
De Grazia and Ellen Furlough, The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective
(1996).
John
McDonough and Karen Egolf, The Advertising Age Encyclopedia of Advertising (2003).
Ellen Furlough and Carl Strikwerda (eds), Consumers Against Capitalism? Consumer Cooperation in
Europe, North America, and Japan, 1840-1990
(1999).
European
Review
Essay, “The Renaissance and the Birth of Consumer Society,” Renaissance Quarterly 51(1998): 193-203.
Carole Shammas, The Pre-Industrial
Consumer in England and America (1990).
Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century
England (1982).
Colin
Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern
Consumerism (1989).
John
Benson, The Rise of Consumer Society in Britain,
1880-1980 (1994).
N. Reich and G. Woodroffe
(eds), European Consumer Policy after Maastricht (1994).
Victoria De Grazia,
The Culture of Consent
: Mass Organisation of Leisure in Fascist
Italy (2002).
Matthew
Hilton, Consumerism in Twentieth-Century
Britain: The Search for a Historical
Movement (2003).
Shelley
Baranowski, Strength
Through Joy:
Consumerism and Mass Tourism in the Third Reich (2004).
Anne Clendinning, Demons
of Domesticity: Women and the English
Gas Industry, 1889-1939 (2004).
Consumer Policy in Oecd Countries (various years).
Klaus G. Grunert
and John Thogersen (eds), Consumers, Policy and the Environment: A Tribute to Folke
Ölander (2005).
Woodruff Smith,
Consumption and the Making of Respectability, 1600-1800 (2002).
Sarah
Howard, “The Advertising Industry and Alcohol in Interwar France,” The
Historical Journal,
51, 2 (2008), 421–455.
Asian
Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (1999)
Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (2004)
Sherman Cochran, Chinese
Medicine Men : Consumer Culture in China and Southeast Asia (2006)
______________, Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial Culture in
Shanghai, 1900-1945 (2000)
Deborah S. Davis (ed), The
Consumer Revolution in Urban China (1999)
John McCreery,
Japanese Consumer Behavior: From Worker
Bees to Wary Shoppers (1999)
Simon Partner, Assembled
in Japan: Electrical Goods and the Making of the Japanese Consumer (1999).
Karl Gerth,
China Made: Consumer Culture and the Creation of the Nation (2003).
18th Century Anglo/American
Carole Shammas, The Pre-industrial
Consumer in England and America (1990).
John E.
Crowley, The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities and
Design in Early Modern Britain and Early America (2000).
Cary
Carson, et al., eds.
Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century (1994).
Jean‑Christophe
Agnew, Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theatre in Anglo-American Thought, 1550-1750 (1986).
T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American
Independence (2004).
19th Century U.S.
Wendy
A. Woloson, Refined Tastes: Sugar, Confectionery,
and Consumers in Nineteenth-century America (2002).
Lori Merish, Sentimental Materialism:
Gender, Commodity Culture, and Nineteenth-century American Literature (2000).
Stuart M. Blumin, The
Emergence of the Middle Class: The Experience of the City, 1760-1900 (1989).
Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution,
1815-1840
Melvyn Stokes and Stephen Conway, eds., The Market Revolution in
America: Social, Political, and
Religious Expressions, 1800-1880 (1996).
19th and Early 20th Century U.S.
Glenn Porter and Harold
Livesay, Merchants and
Manufacturers: Studies in the Changing
Structure of 19th Century Marketing (1971)
Simon J. Bronner,
ed, Consuming Visions: Accumulation
and Display of Goods in America, 1880-1920 (1989).
Daniel M.
Fox, The Discovery of Abundance: Simon N. Patten and the Transformation of
Social Theory (1967).
Lawrence Birken, Consuming
Desire: Sexual Science and the Emergence
of a Culture of Abundance, 1871-1914 (1988).
Susan
Porter Benson, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in
American Department Stores, 1890-1940 (1986).
Boris Emmet
and John E. Jeuck, Catalogues and Counters: A
History of Sears, Roebuck and Company (1950).
John F.
Kasson, Amusing the Million
: Coney Island at the Turn of the
Century (1978).
Richard Butsch, For Fun and
Profit: The Transformation of Leisure
into Consumption (1990).
Susan
Curtis, Consuming Faith: The Social Gospel and Modern American Culture
(1992).
Michael
Denning, Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture in
America (1987).
Ian Gordon, Comic Strips
and Consumer Culture, 1890-1945 (1998).
Daniel
Horowitz, The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Toward the Consumer Society in
America, 1875-1940 (1985)
Margaret
Mary Finnegan, Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women
(1999).
Daniel
Thomas Cook, The Commodification
of Childhood: The
Children’s Clothing Industry and the Rise of the Child Consumer (2004).
Regina Lee Blaszczyk, Imagining Consumers: Design and Innovation
from Wedgwood to Corning (2000).
Warren
Belasco and Philip Scranton (eds),
Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies (2000).
Marlis Schweitzer, When Broadway Was the Runway: Theater, Fashion, and American Culture
(2009).
Advertising U.S.
Pamela
Walker Laird, Advertising Progress: American Business and the Rise of Consumer
Marketing (1998).
Ellen
Gruber Garvey, The Adman in the
Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering of
Consumer Culture, 1880s to 1910s (1996).
Stuart Ewen, Captains of
Consciousness: Advertising and the
Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (1976).
Stephen
Fox, Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its
Creators (1984).
Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America
(1994).
Michael Schudson, Advertising,
The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society
(1984).
Roland Marchand, Advertising
the American Dream: Making Way for
Modernity, 1920-1940 (1985).
Elspeth H.
Brown, The Corporate Eye: Photography and the Rationalization of
American Commercial Culture, 1884-1929 (2005).
Lisa
Jacobson, Raising Consumers: Children and the American Mass market in the
Early Twentieth Century (2004).
20th Century—to
1945 U.S. (predominantly
pre-WW II)
Kathleen G. Donohue, Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Idea of the
Consumer (2003).
Sarah E. Igo, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass
Public (2007)
John
Burnham, Bad Habits: Drinking, Smoking, Taking Drugs, Gambling, Sexual
Misbehavior, and Swearing in American History (1994).
Janice Williams
Rutherford, Selling Mrs. Consumer: Christine Frederick and the Rise of Household
Efficiency (2003).
Gwen Kay, Dying to Be Beautiful: The Fight for Safe Cosmetics (2005).
Martha E.
Olney, Buy Now, Pay Later: Advertising, Credit, and Consumer Durables in
the 1920s (1991).
Lendol Calder, Financing
the American Dream: A Cultural History
of Consumer Credit (1999).
Andrew R.
Heinz, Adapting to Abundance: Jewish Immigrants, Mass Consumption, and the
Search for American Identity (1990).
Roy Rosenzweig, “Eight
Hours for What We Will”: Workers and
Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 (1983).
Susan J.
Matt, Keeping up with the Joneses: Envy in American Consumer Society, 1890-1930
(2003).
Marina Moskowitz, Standard
of Living: The Measure of the Middle Class
in Modern America (2004).
Liette Gidlow, The Big Vote: Gender, Consumer
Culture, and the Politics of Exclusion (2004).
Joseph G.
Knapp, The Advance of American Cooperative
Enterprise: 1920-1945 (1973).
Janice
William Rutherford, Selling Mrs. Consumer: Christine Frederick & the Rise of
Household Efficiency (2003).
Kelly Schrum, Some Wore
Bobby Sox: The Emergence of Teen Girl
Culture, 1920-1945 (2004).
Thomas Heinrich and Bob Bathelor,
Kotex, Kleenex, Huggies: Kimberly-Clark and the Consumer Revolution in
American Business (2005).
Thomas C. Blaisdell, Jr., “The
Consumers’ Place in the Organization of the New Deal,”
Lizabeth Cohen, Making a
New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago,
1919-1939 (1990).
Landon R.
Y. Storrs, Civilizing Capitalism: The National Consumers’ League, Women’s
Activism, and Labor Standards in the New Deal Era (2000).
Kathy M.
Newman, Radio Active: Advertising and Consumer Activism, 1935-1947
(2004).
William
Leach, Land of Desire (1993).
Jennifer
Scanlon, Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies Home Journal, Gender, and the
Promises of Consumer Culture (1995).
James C.
Worthy, Shaping an American
Institution: Robert E. Wood and Sears,
Roebuck (1984).
Hillel Schwartz, Never
Satisfied: A Cultural History of Diets,
Fantasies, and Fat (1986).
Thomas S. Dicke, Franchising in
America: The Development of a Business
Method, 1840-1980 (1992).
Susan Strasser, Satisfaction
Guaranteed: The Making of the American
Mass Market (1991).
Richard Tedlow, New and
Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in
America (1996).
Gary S.
Cross, An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America
(2000).
___________, Kid’s Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American
Childhood (1999 reprint).
John
Horne, Sport In Consumer Culture
(2005).
Patricia Campbell Warner, When the Girls Came Out to Play: The Birth of American Sportswear (2006).
Mandell, Lewis. The Credit
Card Industry: A History. (Boston: 1990).
Klein, Lloyd. It's In
the Cards: Consumer Credit and the American Experience.
(Westport: 1999).
Susan Porter Benson, Household Accounts: Working Class Family
Economies in the Interwar United States (2007)
20th
century—post-1945 U.S.
James L.
Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking and Broadcasting in
America Since 1941 (2nd ed., 1997).
_______________,
Same Time, Same Station: Creating American Television, 1948-61(2007)
Lizbeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar
America (2003).
David
Steigerwald, Culture's Vanities: The Paradox
of Cultural Diversity in a Globalized World (2004).
Daniel
Horowitz, Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture,
1939-1979 (2004).
Roy V.
Scott with Sandra S. Vance, WAL-MART: A History of Sam
Walton’s Retail Phenomenon (1994, 1997).
Jon
Savage, Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture (2007)(music journalist)
Christopher
Endy, Cold War
Holidays: American Tourism in France
(2004).
Susannah Handley, Nylon: The Story of a Fashion Revolution
(1999).
Brink Lindsey, The Age of
Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed
America’s Politics and Culture (2007).
Cynthia Lee
Henthorn, From
Submarines to Suburbs: Selling a Better
America, 1939-1959 (2006).
Dana
Thomas, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost
Its Luster (2007).
African American Consumerism
Stephanie Capparell, The Real Pepsi
Challenge: The Inspirational Story of
Breaking the Color Barrier in American Business (2007).
Robert E.
Weems, Desegregating the Dollar: African American Consumerism in the Twentieth
Century (1998).
Government Consumer Policy (antitrust)
Thomas C. Blaisdell,
Jr., The FTC:
An Experiment in the Control of Business (1932).
Hans B. Thorelli,
The Federal Antitrust Policy (1955).
Richard Hofstader,
“What Happened to the Antitrust Movement,” in Earl F. Cheit
(ed), The Business Establishment (1964).
Ellis W.
Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of
Monopoly (1966), especially Parts III and IV.
Joseph C. Palamountain,
Jr., The Politics of Distribution (1968).
Richard Posner, Antitrust Law: An Economic Perspective (1976).
Alan Stone, Economic Regulation and the Public Interest: The FTC in Theory and Practice (1977).
Robert Bork, The Antitrust Paradox (1978).