Reginal Lee Blaszczyk, Visiting Scholar in the Department of the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, received a B.A. from Marlboro College, an M.A. from George Washington University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Hagley Program at the University of Delaware. A specialist in the history of capitalism and consumer culture, Blaszczyk has published numerous books, articles, and reviews. Her first book, Imagining Consumers: Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning (2000), received the Hagley Prize for the Best Book in Business History for 2001, and her co-edited reader, Major Problems in American Business History; Documents and Essays (2006), is widely used in courses on American capitalism. Partners in Innovation: Science Education and the Science Workforce (edited; 2005) considers the skills needed to compete in the global business environment, while Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture, and Consumers (edited; 2008) suggests new approaches to the history of fashion, business, and consumer culture.Blaszczyk has received fellowships from Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center for Studies n American History, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Chemical Heritage Foundation. She has taught at Boston University, Rutgers University-Camden, the University of Delaware, and the University of Pennsylvania, and spent eleven years as a cultural history curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. In 2008, she received the Harold F. Williamson Prize in Business History for mid-career achievement from the Business History Conference, the largest international association of business historians.

"[American Consumer Society] is a clearly written, well-illustrated exploration of American consumerism, attentive to the need to define terms and make cultural references appropriate for college students today. This book draws on essential and revealing statistics and offers memorable stories to drive home themes. ...Blaszczyk does more than survey her topic. She offers original research from her scholarship on the history of design, advertising, and fashion...whatever your view, you will find this book a gold mine of information and analysis, and an example of just good writing." (Harvard Business School Business History Review, Winter 2009)

• Foreword viiIntroduction 1Shopping for a Perfect Self 1The Passion for Possessions 2Dissonant Voices 3Treasures and Throwaways 4From KnickKnacks to Kickin’ Back 5Part One 7Victorian America, 1865-1900 8 Victorians, Hierarchy, and Progress 8Early European Antecedents 10Opportunities for Display 111876 Centennial Exposition, the Industrial Cornucopia 14The Allure of Cities 16The Rise of the New Middle Class 18Labor’s Consumerist Turn 20Buying American or Pursuing Empire? 22Advertising Abundance 23Chapter One Home, Sweet Home 28 Separate Spheres 29Dreams of Home Ownership 31Womanly Creativity and the Art Craze 35The Victorian Parlor 38“Making Do” 40Toward Modern Simplicity: The Bungalow and the Living Room 43Martha Stewart Revisited 49Chapter Two: Dress Codes 51 Fashion and Social Identity 53Ready-to-Wear and the Democratization of Clothing 54The Clothes Make the Man: Dark Suits and White Collars 56Corsets and the Hourglass Shape 60The Art of Dressmaking 61The Easter Parade 64Stepping Out with the Gibson Girl and Arrow Man 67Why Fashion Mattered 70Chapter Three New Ways to Shop 73 Dry-Goods Emporiums 74Department Stores as “Palaces of Consumption” 76John Wanamaker’s Luxury Department Store 77Five-and-Tens 79Window Shopping 82Mail-Order Catalogs 84Old-Fashioned Retailers 90Tiffany Tastes and a Woolworth’s Pocketbook 91Part Two: Modern America, 1900-1945 94 The New Tempo 95From the Standard of Living to the American Dream 99Middletown, U.S.A.: Average America 101The Modern Identity Kit 102Resetting the Stage, Hollywood Style 104Down and Out 107Purchasing Power and the New Deal 110Patriotic Consumers at War 112Chapter Four Mr. Advertiser Meets Mrs. Consumer 116 National Magazines, National Brands 116Ladies’ Home Journal, the Bible of the American Home 118Selling Soap, or Selling Sex? 120The Colonel’s Lady and Judy O’ Grady 123Images of the Good Life 125Discovering Boys and Girls 128The Power of Marketing 130Advertising Overload 132Forging the American Way 133Chapter Five Sensing a Wider World 137 Bicycles, Cameras, and the Great Outdoors 137Giving a Human Face to Electricity 139The Phonograph in the Parlor 140Radio, the Electronic Hearth 145The Jazz Age Radio Craze 148The Electric Twenties 152The Golden Age of Radio 154Creating Unity amid Diversity 156Chapter Six Designing the Auto Age 159 Automobility and the Pursuit of Pleasure 160“The Proper Thing for a Man of Wealth”: Motor Racing and Car Collecting 162Ford’s Model T, The Car for the Common Man 164GM and the “Car for Every Purse and Purpose” 168Design Wars 170Buy Now, Pay Later 172The Paradox of the Auto Boom 174Streamlining the Great Depression 175Imaging the Future 176Part Three 179Boomer America, 1945-2005 180 Populuxe Push-Button Technology 182Keeping Away from the Joneses 185Plastics Triumphant 187Fallout of Affluence 188Rediscovering Diversity 190The Global Village of Goods 192Brands as Experience 194The New Mainstream 195Chapter Seven Destination Suburbia 198 America Moves from City to Suburb 199“We Got a Piece of the American Dream”: Levittown, New York 201Blue-Collar Aesthetics, Appliances, and Automobiles 204Mall Culture 206Making Ends Meet 210Edge Cities and Big-Box Retailers 211Chapter Eight Casual Style 215 The Mamie Look 215Rebels, Teens, and Beatniks 217Youth Quake 219The Me Generation 223Celebrity Style, Yuppie Tastes 226Polo Meets Hip-Hop 228Chapter Nine Electronics “R” Us 232 Information Snacking 232The Year of Consumer Electronics: 1948 233TV in the Fifties 234Radio, Records, and High-Fidelity 238Tape It! 244Video Games: New Devices and Desires 247Personal Computers before the Internet 249Connecting to the Internet 251Cable Television 255Everything is Digital 258Hardware to Software, Hearth to HDTV 262Conclusion264Who We Are 264Seven Big Themes 265Bibliographical Essay 276Acknowledgements 305Index 309Photographs follow pages 92, 178, and 275

Reginal Lee Blaszczyk, Visiting Scholar in the Department of the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, received a B.A. from Marlboro College, an M.A. from George Washington University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Hagley Program at the University of Delaware. A specialist in the history of capitalism and consumer culture, Blaszczyk has published numerous books, articles, and reviews. Her first book, Imagining Consumers: Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning (2000), received the Hagley Prize for the Best Book in Business History for 2001, and her co-edited reader, Major Problems in American Business History; Documents and Essays (2006), is widely used in courses on American capitalism. Partners in Innovation: Science Education and the Science Workforce (edited; 2005) considers the skills needed to compete in the global business environment, while Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture, and Consumers (edited; 2008) suggests new approaches to the history of fashion, business, and consumer culture.Blaszczyk has received fellowships from Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center for Studies n American History, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Chemical Heritage Foundation. She has taught at Boston University, Rutgers University-Camden, the University of Delaware, and the University of Pennsylvania, and spent eleven years as a cultural history curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. In 2008, she received the Harold F. Williamson Prize in Business History for mid-career achievement from the Business History Conference, the largest international association of business historians.

"[American Consumer Society] is a clearly written, well-illustrated exploration of American consumerism, attentive to the need to define terms and make cultural references appropriate for college students today. This book draws on essential and revealing statistics and offers memorable stories to drive home themes. ...Blaszczyk does more than survey her topic. She offers original research from her scholarship on the history of design, advertising, and fashion...whatever your view, you will find this book a gold mine of information and analysis, and an example of just good writing." (Harvard Business School Business History Review, Winter 2009)

• Foreword viiIntroduction 1Shopping for a Perfect Self 1The Passion for Possessions 2Dissonant Voices 3Treasures and Throwaways 4From KnickKnacks to Kickin’ Back 5Part One 7Victorian America, 1865-1900 8 Victorians, Hierarchy, and Progress 8Early European Antecedents 10Opportunities for Display 111876 Centennial Exposition, the Industrial Cornucopia 14The Allure of Cities 16The Rise of the New Middle Class 18Labor’s Consumerist Turn 20Buying American or Pursuing Empire? 22Advertising Abundance 23Chapter One Home, Sweet Home 28 Separate Spheres 29Dreams of Home Ownership 31Womanly Creativity and the Art Craze 35The Victorian Parlor 38“Making Do” 40Toward Modern Simplicity: The Bungalow and the Living Room 43Martha Stewart Revisited 49Chapter Two: Dress Codes 51 Fashion and Social Identity 53Ready-to-Wear and the Democratization of Clothing 54The Clothes Make the Man: Dark Suits and White Collars 56Corsets and the Hourglass Shape 60The Art of Dressmaking 61The Easter Parade 64Stepping Out with the Gibson Girl and Arrow Man 67Why Fashion Mattered 70Chapter Three New Ways to Shop 73 Dry-Goods Emporiums 74Department Stores as “Palaces of Consumption” 76John Wanamaker’s Luxury Department Store 77Five-and-Tens 79Window Shopping 82Mail-Order Catalogs 84Old-Fashioned Retailers 90Tiffany Tastes and a Woolworth’s Pocketbook 91Part Two: Modern America, 1900-1945 94 The New Tempo 95From the Standard of Living to the American Dream 99Middletown, U.S.A.: Average America 101The Modern Identity Kit 102Resetting the Stage, Hollywood Style 104Down and Out 107Purchasing Power and the New Deal 110Patriotic Consumers at War 112Chapter Four Mr. Advertiser Meets Mrs. Consumer 116 National Magazines, National Brands 116Ladies’ Home Journal, the Bible of the American Home 118Selling Soap, or Selling Sex? 120The Colonel’s Lady and Judy O’ Grady 123Images of the Good Life 125Discovering Boys and Girls 128The Power of Marketing 130Advertising Overload 132Forging the American Way 133Chapter Five Sensing a Wider World 137 Bicycles, Cameras, and the Great Outdoors 137Giving a Human Face to Electricity 139The Phonograph in the Parlor 140Radio, the Electronic Hearth 145The Jazz Age Radio Craze 148The Electric Twenties 152The Golden Age of Radio 154Creating Unity amid Diversity 156Chapter Six Designing the Auto Age 159 Automobility and the Pursuit of Pleasure 160“The Proper Thing for a Man of Wealth”: Motor Racing and Car Collecting 162Ford’s Model T, The Car for the Common Man 164GM and the “Car for Every Purse and Purpose” 168Design Wars 170Buy Now, Pay Later 172The Paradox of the Auto Boom 174Streamlining the Great Depression 175Imaging the Future 176Part Three 179Boomer America, 1945-2005 180 Populuxe Push-Button Technology 182Keeping Away from the Joneses 185Plastics Triumphant 187Fallout of Affluence 188Rediscovering Diversity 190The Global Village of Goods 192Brands as Experience 194The New Mainstream 195Chapter Seven Destination Suburbia 198 America Moves from City to Suburb 199“We Got a Piece of the American Dream”: Levittown, New York 201Blue-Collar Aesthetics, Appliances, and Automobiles 204Mall Culture 206Making Ends Meet 210Edge Cities and Big-Box Retailers 211Chapter Eight Casual Style 215 The Mamie Look 215Rebels, Teens, and Beatniks 217Youth Quake 219The Me Generation 223Celebrity Style, Yuppie Tastes 226Polo Meets Hip-Hop 228Chapter Nine Electronics “R” Us 232 Information Snacking 232The Year of Consumer Electronics: 1948 233TV in the Fifties 234Radio, Records, and High-Fidelity 238Tape It! 244Video Games: New Devices and Desires 247Personal Computers before the Internet 249Connecting to the Internet 251Cable Television 255Everything is Digital 258Hardware to Software, Hearth to HDTV 262Conclusion264Who We Are 264Seven Big Themes 265Bibliographical Essay 276Acknowledgements 305Index 309Photographs follow pages 92, 178, and 275