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Stacks of snacks, including donuts, cookies, crackers, candy, and pretzels.

How Snacks Took Over American Life

The rhythms of our days may never be the same.
by Ellen Cushing via The Atlantic on September 6, 2024
A yuppie surrounded by money and luxury items.

When Yuppies Ruled

Defining a social type is a way of defining an era. What can the time of the young urban professional tell us about our own?
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on July 22, 2024
1920s advertisement for a home refridgerator.

Homing Devices: Women’s Home Planning Scrapbooks, 1920s—1950s

Women on the homefront planned future homes with scrapbooks, blending wartime duty with dreams of postwar prosperity and modern comforts.
by Andrew M. Shanken via Platform on July 22, 2024
Croton aqueduct.

Testing the Waters in Gotham

The three forms of water distribution form a fluid archive of community formation, civic pride, and the many ways New Yorkers can choose the water they drink.
by Liviu Chelcea via Public Seminar on March 20, 2024
Women wearing hot pants.

The Great Leg Show!

Hot pants served as a sartorial riposte to the fashion industry’s relentless campaign for the midi.
by Oline Eaton via Contingent on January 30, 2024
A group of women sitting under hooded hair dryers at a salon.

A Short History of Hairdryers

The beauty parlor became a place of sociability for women in the twentieth century, partly aided by modern technology of hair drying.
by Katrina Gulliver, Jennifer Scanlon via JSTOR Daily on September 25, 2023
Different Barbie designs sitting around a table.

Decoding Barbie’s Radical Pose

The “Barbie” movie glides over the history of dolls as powerful cultural objects.
by Alexandra Lange via The New Yorker on August 2, 2023
Retro style American diner.

The Myth of the American Diner

Diners have always been considered a model of culinary democratization in the American public consciousness, but can they really be for everyone?
by Jaya Saxena via Eater on June 12, 2023

Activist Businesses: The New Left’s Surprising Critique of Postwar Consumer Culture

Activists established politically informed shops to offer alternatives to the consumer culture of chain stores, mass production, and multinational corporations.
by Joshua Clark Davis via Process: A Blog for American History on May 2, 2023
Illustration by Cristina Spano, picturing rulers and colorful shapes and designs coming out of the neck of a collared shirt

The Origins of Creativity

The concept was devised in postwar America, in response to the cultural and commercial demands of the era. Now we’re stuck with it.
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on April 17, 2023
Crowds and escalators in the Mall of America.

The Rise and Fall of the Mall

Alexandra Lange's "Meet Me by the Fountain" recovers the forgotten past and the still hopeful future of the American shopping mall.
by Melvin Backman via The Nation on December 12, 2022
Charlie Brown and his friends at a store with a Christmas sale.

When Christmas Started Creeping

Christmas starts earlier every year — or does it?
by Bill Black via Contingent on November 8, 2022
Twentieth-century porcelain dolls made by German company Armand Marseille

How Porcelain Dolls Became the Ultimate Victorian Status Symbol

Class-obsessed consumers found the cold, hard and highly breakable figurines irresistible
by Maria Teresa Hart via Smithsonian on November 1, 2022
Overhead view of people walking around in the Mall of America

The Most American Form of Architecture Isn’t Going Anywhere

A new book challenges the dominant narrative that malls are dying.
by Kristen Martin via The Atlantic on June 21, 2022
Postcard of Marshall Field & Co.’s Retail Store, Chicago.

Race and Class Identities in Early American Department Stores

Built on the momentum of earlier struggles for justice, the department store movement channeled the power of store workers and consumers to promote black freedom.
by Traci Parker, Phillip Loken via UNC Press Blog on February 23, 2022
A blurry pixilated image of Jimmy Carter on a television screen.

How the Ghost of Jimmy Carter’s Presidency Haunts Everything Biden Says About Supply Shortages

The last from-the-top critique of American overconsumption generated a massive backlash.
by Kevin Mattson via Slate on October 22, 2021
Black and white photo of a family sitting around the television together

A Brief History of Consumer Culture

Over the 20th century, capitalism preserved its momentum by molding the ordinary person into a consumer with an unquenchable thirst for more stuff.
by Kerryn Higgs via The MIT Press Reader on January 11, 2021
Collage by pop artist Tom Wesselmann depicting a kitchen table with food

Pop Art in the US

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.
by Virginia B. Spivey via Digital Public Library of America on September 29, 2017
People on a rollercoaster

Are We Having Too Much Fun?

In 1985, Neil Postman observed an America imprisoned by its own need for amusement. He was, it turns out, extremely prescient.
by Megan Garber via The Atlantic on April 27, 2017
Furniture and carpet store in the 1789 Boston directory.
partner

Revolutionary Spirit

On the widespread boycotts of British-made goods in the American Colonies.
via BackStory on December 15, 2016
A drawing of human eyes behind a variety of consumer goods, including milk, shoes, and toothpaste.

The Surprising History of the Ideology of Choice

How endless options became our only option.
by Andrew Lanham via The New Republic on April 11, 2025
A worker removes bottles of American-made Jack Daniel's whiskey from a shelf at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) Queen's Quay store in Toronto, Canada.
partner

The History Behind Canadian Boycotts of American Whiskey

A global marketplace has shaped the U.S. whiskey industry for a century, even as it brands itself distinctly American.
by E. Kyle Romero via Made By History on April 8, 2025
An illustration of a government building holding up an American home with a stylized hand.

The Good Society Department

Once upon a time, there was a federal government department that helped design and distribute tools for living the good life. What happened to that vision?
by John Last via Noema on April 3, 2025
A woman at a toy counter.
partner

“The End Is Coming! The End Is Coming!”

In the 1990s, an entire industry was born of trying to convince Americans that Beanie Babies were a great investment opportunity.
by Ross Benes via HNN on April 1, 2025
Neil Postman in front of a collage of the cover of "Amusing Ourselves to Death."

The One Book That Explains Our Current Era Was Written 40 Years Ago

NYT pundits and NBA writers alike can't stop recommending this four-decade-old book.
by Laura J. Miller via Slate on March 25, 2025
A Ford truck is loaded with ivory tusks in Essex, Connecticut.
partner

The Blood on the Keyboard

The history of ivory-topped piano keys and the invisible human suffering caused by our cultural commodities.
by Marina Manoukian via HNN on March 25, 2025
Arthur Morgan from video game Red Dead Redemption 2 sporting a gun and cowboy hat.

Cult of the Cowboy: Inside the Toxic Adoration of an All-American Obsession

Video games, violence and the enduring allure of the vigilante hero.
by Rachel Wagner via Literary Hub on February 26, 2025
A person carrying a table into a moving van.

Why American Mobility Ground to a Halt

Once a nation of movers, the US has lost its “culture of mobility,” a new book argues. That’s been a disaster for housing affordability and economic progress.
by Yoni Appelbaum, Patrick Sisson via CityLab on February 12, 2025
A moving truck on cinder blocks.

How Progressives Froze the American Dream

The U.S. was once the world’s most geographically mobile society. Now we’re stuck in place—and that’s a very big problem.
by Yoni Appelbaum via The Atlantic on February 10, 2025
The entrance of Fischer Bros, a Jewish grocery store, with a line of people going out the door.

The Rise of the Jewish Grocer

From kosher butchers, fruit peddlers, and herring dealers on the Lower East Side to supermarket innovators across the country
by Jenna Weissman Joselit via Tablet on February 3, 2025
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