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Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture
This monumental work of cultural history was nominated for a National Book Award. It chronicles America’s transformation, beginning in 1880, into a nation of consumers, devoted to a cult of comfort, bodily well-being, and endless acquisition. 24 pages of photos.
560 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
46 people are currently reading
1311 people want to read
About the author
William R. Leach
8 books2 followersWilliam R. Leach is a professor of history at Columbia University. His books include Butterfly People, Country of Exiles: The Destruction of Place in American Life, and Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture, which was a National Book Award finalist.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
October 26, 2007
a damn fine book detailing the transition in America from a culture of need and use to a culture of want. Manufactured demand gets a good looking-at in this book. Leach also gives some good stuff about the beginnings of advertising and design used to entice people to buy shit they don't need.
May 20, 2021
I've recently gotten really into topics dealing with the sociological factors leading to common day ideologies, i didn't really take these topics seriously. I thought i was smart enough to understand history and to connect the dots and trace things back to what they mean with my "common sense", but to really enjoy things in life and appreciate their value i think we should take time to understand how we got here. What happened down the line that led us to all needing to own countless amounts of useless items?
I've always been interested in american culture, whether it be their politics, alternative scene, industrialized markets, or history. I think that this sort of curiosity is prevalent in all of us due to the american boom in the globalized economy and it holding the biggest share in creating this new international-range society. From all sorts of media that we consume, the most accessible are the ones constructed by campaigners and tycoons in the states. Since we've all been desensitized to differentiate from "real life" and this new culture, i think it's important to understand its influence and how it has formed to become a consumerist culture.
Leach does an amazingly good job at keeping you entertained, from witty comments and his sarcastic attitude, to the slow and daunting idea that sinks into your mind when you realized "oh shit, i've been tricked too". He proves to you how important this issue is and how it is naive for us to think that we aren't caught in the traps of this gigantically complex and rooted machine.
It describes the reason for such shifts in societies, how did a somewhat conservative, protestant-dominated, "grow your own vegetables" country turn into the epicenter of the global market and the poster child of the consumerist economy?
Leach answers all these questions in a really admirable way, he gives the reader examples that seem tangible and not too theoretical and explains the rise of this "advancement" (or maybe regression) in a way that keeps the reader curious and thoughtful of what he might consume from the media next.
I've always been interested in american culture, whether it be their politics, alternative scene, industrialized markets, or history. I think that this sort of curiosity is prevalent in all of us due to the american boom in the globalized economy and it holding the biggest share in creating this new international-range society. From all sorts of media that we consume, the most accessible are the ones constructed by campaigners and tycoons in the states. Since we've all been desensitized to differentiate from "real life" and this new culture, i think it's important to understand its influence and how it has formed to become a consumerist culture.
Leach does an amazingly good job at keeping you entertained, from witty comments and his sarcastic attitude, to the slow and daunting idea that sinks into your mind when you realized "oh shit, i've been tricked too". He proves to you how important this issue is and how it is naive for us to think that we aren't caught in the traps of this gigantically complex and rooted machine.
It describes the reason for such shifts in societies, how did a somewhat conservative, protestant-dominated, "grow your own vegetables" country turn into the epicenter of the global market and the poster child of the consumerist economy?
Leach answers all these questions in a really admirable way, he gives the reader examples that seem tangible and not too theoretical and explains the rise of this "advancement" (or maybe regression) in a way that keeps the reader curious and thoughtful of what he might consume from the media next.
September 2, 2020
"Land of Desire" traces the rise of American consumer culture since the late 1800's from several viewpoints: individuals purchasing goods, businesses retailing them, advertisers discovering how to spur demand for new items, the entry of fashion into mass marketing, and government encouragement of production and sales. The most interesting parts of the book dealt with the rise of large department stores, and the ways they evolved increasingly effective ways to generate demand for goods that people, initially, expressed no interest in buying. The tone of the book is on the academic side, and often degenerated into recitations of actors or events with little insight into each, but overall I found it interesting enough to finish.
March 28, 2009
In Land of Desire, William Leach delineates the factors that led to the emergence of the contemporary consumer culture among Americans. He states that beginning in the late nineteenth century, American culture began to evolve (or, more appropriately, regress) into one that increasingly saw the consumption of goods as the best way to achieve “the good life.” This was accomplished, in part, through the work of merchants (John Wanamaker, the most powerful department store magnate chief among them) and their increasingly gaudy department stores. These factors played a part in changing the consciousness of America from a more agrarian, simple life of living off of the land into one dominated in popular culture by philosophies of “consumptionism” and “mind cure.” Wait till you hear about influential author L. Frank Baum's embracing of the "mind cure" philosophy--you'll probably never think of "The Wizard of Oz" again the same.
This consumer culture also appeared to be at tension with religion and spirituality, and the author uses examples from the lives of Wanamaker and associates to illustrate this. Finally, Leach makes an important distinction at one point in the text that these stores also widened the gap between the producer and the consumer: the gaudy and colorful glass displays in these stores only reinforced this gulf.
It's a great book. I found a lot of parallels with Ewen's "Captains of Consciousness," though that one focuses more on advertising.
This consumer culture also appeared to be at tension with religion and spirituality, and the author uses examples from the lives of Wanamaker and associates to illustrate this. Finally, Leach makes an important distinction at one point in the text that these stores also widened the gap between the producer and the consumer: the gaudy and colorful glass displays in these stores only reinforced this gulf.
It's a great book. I found a lot of parallels with Ewen's "Captains of Consciousness," though that one focuses more on advertising.
September 10, 2012
A fascinating history. I always thought that consumer culture began after WWII in America, but I could not have been more wrong. The amount of work that went into creating this culture at the turn of the last century, and the way in which the cycle he describes keeps repeating in our society make this book a must-read for somebody who wants to understand the genesis of consumerism. The author manages to move seamlessly between large scale analysis and stats, pithy examples, and personal stories of individuals involved in the transition. Well written, perhaps a bit longer than some might like, but terrific nonetheless. Disclaimer: I'm not a historian, so I don't know how to judge qua history nor how to judge the accuracy of his claims, but it's certainly well-documented.
August 7, 2017
Have I bought too much into consumer culture that I felt uncomfortable with his attitude at times? I agree with him frequently but the constant satire could get wearing. What price have we paid for our access to "things"? He does an amazing job showing the transition between one world and another (metaphorically speaking). The anecdotes are interesting, amusing and sometimes frightening.
January 26, 2015
Intriguing historical read. Never knew much about the birth of department stores and consumerism as we know it.
April 7, 2019
unbelievably boring
Read
September 12, 2020A very delightful account of the rise of consumer culture from the 1880s up to the 1929 economic crash. Business schools, art critics, corporate tycoons, and authors produced an all-encompassing, "non-consensual culture" that valorized consumption and the novel as a means to happiness for all. This, Leach argues, foreclosed any possibility for most turn-of-the-century Americans to live in a social world where money value wasn't the predominant value. It's very accessible Frankfurt school-style analysis that (reminiscent of think pieces today) tries to be forgiving towards the middle-class people who could experience the joys of consumption for the first time. I had lots of fun reading about the life of earnest religious corporate tycoon / postmaster general John Wanamaker and seeing the fascination with flashy consumerist "color and light" pop up in IWW pageant-strikes. I wonder how people today who don't identify as anti-capitalist would react to the critique of the mind cure. Plus, there are loads of fun pictures that prompted me to reflect on the work done by space and commercial layouts--the grandiose feeling of entering a high-ceilinged department store, the satisfaction of "finding" an affordable version of a product right across from a high-end version, deliberately easy way you can move through a mall without ever having to cross a threshold.
Some of the moralizing condemnation of consumerism at the bookends seeps into the middle, as in a strange critique of the Wizard of Oz that suggests the story is a stealthy capitalist parable because Dorothy never confronts any "real" evil. It's a good reminder for me to lay off the polemics in academic writing. Facts are timeless, interpretations are more psychologically revealing than you think, and obliquely calling society "primal" and "child-like" is rarely a good look.
Some of the moralizing condemnation of consumerism at the bookends seeps into the middle, as in a strange critique of the Wizard of Oz that suggests the story is a stealthy capitalist parable because Dorothy never confronts any "real" evil. It's a good reminder for me to lay off the polemics in academic writing. Facts are timeless, interpretations are more psychologically revealing than you think, and obliquely calling society "primal" and "child-like" is rarely a good look.
March 3, 2025
A book everyone who studies American history should read!
December 25, 2009
Leach's argument oversteps itself in the chapter about religion, but by and large this is a valuable text, located chiefly within studies of consumption but also, importantly, within urban studies. Leach devotes much of his attention to the ways in which architecture--and street-level architecture, like window displays--facilitated commerce as well as commercial ideologies.
August 16, 2017
Land of Desire: Merchants, Power and the Rise of a New American Culture by William Leach (Pantheon Books, New York, 1993)
The original American culture was an idealized blend of Republican virtue, Christian piety and community values overlaid against a backdrop of slavery, gambling, genocide and war. Whatever its true ideals and real scope, Americans believed themselves deeply moral creatures immersed in a system of villages and hamlets, self-sustaining farms, and Church communities, despite the presence among them of squalid slave sales, Native American removals, and immigrant bias. Soon after the Civil War, however, a new American culture arose, a business culture on a quest to produce and sell goods cheaply and “in constantly growing volume and at higher profit levels,” a nearly utopian social culture that after 1890 acquired such power, and “despite few wrenching crises along the way, has kept it ever since. That culture, the one we’ve inherited and currently inhabit, is a pure state-sponsored corporate consumer capitalist enterprise, one that is now degenerate, divided and lost.
According to the brilliant historian William Leach that culture, from the 1890’s on, gave birth to American corporate business that, “in league with a key institutions, began the transformation of American society into a society preoccupied with consumption, with comfort and bodily well-being, with luxury, spending, and acquisition, with more goods this year than last, more next year than this. American consumer capitalism produced a culture almost violently hostile to the past and to tradition, a future-oriented culture of desire that confused the good life with goods. It was a culture that first appeared as an alternative culture—or as one moving largely against the grain of earlier traditions of republicanism and Christian virtue—and then unfolded to become the reigning culture of the United States. It was the culture that many people the world over soon came to see as the heart of American life.
Leach’s brilliant, incisive and detailed book deals with the formative years of that culture, 1880-1930. It is not the story of Robber Barons, but of educated, scientific, and sometimes obsessed retailers, salesmen, marketers, publicity agents, brokers, designers, philosophers, educators, advertisers, showmen and hucksters, who, in league during the 1920’s with the Federal Government, spread mass consumer culture to every corner of the country.
In this new culture, the one we all inhabit now, money is the prime value and acquisition its logical consequence. Dreams are forever on sale, new ones appearing as old ones die. The state and business are profoundly intermingled, with business dependent on government in many ways. The corporate aesthetic mantles every square inch of our country and the average American is plied day and night by banks and corporations with messages urging them to buy. The corporate concept of the American human is an insatiable, desiring machine or as an animal governed by an infinity of desires. What is most human about people is their quest after new experiences and goods, fashions and modes without boundary or end.
This American idea rejects the “humanity” of commitment, binding relationships, permanent roots, land love, continuity, community and even country. The consuming self is the whirlwind of ego clothed in the ideology of the “market”.
Leach’s grand book, “Land of Desire” is the preeminent picture of the rise of department stores, theaters, movie houses, saloons, brokerages, financial institutions, museums, Universities, the Department of Commerce, distribution networks, and marketing and advertising during an age of ferment and turmoil, an age beset with downturns, crises and, eventually, the Great Depression.
Leach’s conclusion: “The good is not in ‘goods’. The good is in justice, mercy and peace. It is in consistency and integrity, in living according to truth and right. It inheres in men and not in things. It is other than the goodness of goods and without it goods are not good.”
Read this book and vote with your conscience.
The original American culture was an idealized blend of Republican virtue, Christian piety and community values overlaid against a backdrop of slavery, gambling, genocide and war. Whatever its true ideals and real scope, Americans believed themselves deeply moral creatures immersed in a system of villages and hamlets, self-sustaining farms, and Church communities, despite the presence among them of squalid slave sales, Native American removals, and immigrant bias. Soon after the Civil War, however, a new American culture arose, a business culture on a quest to produce and sell goods cheaply and “in constantly growing volume and at higher profit levels,” a nearly utopian social culture that after 1890 acquired such power, and “despite few wrenching crises along the way, has kept it ever since. That culture, the one we’ve inherited and currently inhabit, is a pure state-sponsored corporate consumer capitalist enterprise, one that is now degenerate, divided and lost.
According to the brilliant historian William Leach that culture, from the 1890’s on, gave birth to American corporate business that, “in league with a key institutions, began the transformation of American society into a society preoccupied with consumption, with comfort and bodily well-being, with luxury, spending, and acquisition, with more goods this year than last, more next year than this. American consumer capitalism produced a culture almost violently hostile to the past and to tradition, a future-oriented culture of desire that confused the good life with goods. It was a culture that first appeared as an alternative culture—or as one moving largely against the grain of earlier traditions of republicanism and Christian virtue—and then unfolded to become the reigning culture of the United States. It was the culture that many people the world over soon came to see as the heart of American life.
Leach’s brilliant, incisive and detailed book deals with the formative years of that culture, 1880-1930. It is not the story of Robber Barons, but of educated, scientific, and sometimes obsessed retailers, salesmen, marketers, publicity agents, brokers, designers, philosophers, educators, advertisers, showmen and hucksters, who, in league during the 1920’s with the Federal Government, spread mass consumer culture to every corner of the country.
In this new culture, the one we all inhabit now, money is the prime value and acquisition its logical consequence. Dreams are forever on sale, new ones appearing as old ones die. The state and business are profoundly intermingled, with business dependent on government in many ways. The corporate aesthetic mantles every square inch of our country and the average American is plied day and night by banks and corporations with messages urging them to buy. The corporate concept of the American human is an insatiable, desiring machine or as an animal governed by an infinity of desires. What is most human about people is their quest after new experiences and goods, fashions and modes without boundary or end.
This American idea rejects the “humanity” of commitment, binding relationships, permanent roots, land love, continuity, community and even country. The consuming self is the whirlwind of ego clothed in the ideology of the “market”.
Leach’s grand book, “Land of Desire” is the preeminent picture of the rise of department stores, theaters, movie houses, saloons, brokerages, financial institutions, museums, Universities, the Department of Commerce, distribution networks, and marketing and advertising during an age of ferment and turmoil, an age beset with downturns, crises and, eventually, the Great Depression.
Leach’s conclusion: “The good is not in ‘goods’. The good is in justice, mercy and peace. It is in consistency and integrity, in living according to truth and right. It inheres in men and not in things. It is other than the goodness of goods and without it goods are not good.”
Read this book and vote with your conscience.
August 31, 2025
William Leach is a dynamite historian. He knows precisely what facts and figures to dredge up and what time period in America to focus on (here, largely 1900 to 1929) to support a thesis. Leach's thesis is relatively straightfoward (and gets more complicated as he unpacks it, largely by studying the marketing innovations, for better or worse, by department store magnate John Wanameaker, taking his cue from Selfridge's across the pond). The rise of department stores in cities created the mass consumption culture that we are all familiar with in America today. More products were made, bought, and consumed by Americans on every level. In only a few decades, massive stores were shifted into air conditioned multifloor places of "beauty" where you had to walk past expensive goods on your way to the escalator and you were tempted to buy buy buy as you were surrounded by aesthetically attractive displays and tile. The casinos would pick up from these innovations in the 1950s and the 1960s. But Wanamaker was there first. And so, for that matter, was L. Frank Baum with his window displays. Yes, that's who the Oz man was before he was a writer. Leach also includes one of the most original analyses of THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ that I've ever read, but it's helpful in pointing out that Oz's distinctively "American fairy tale" matched the fairy tale like shenanigans of turning millions of Americans into obsessive Veblenian consumers. This is a must read for anyone keen to know where America went wrong. I'm definitely reading Leach's other books.
December 7, 2023
The level of detail that William Leach goes into in describing the emergence of consumer culture is astounding. I am astounded at the amount of information on people who should have been fairly obscure historical figures that he was able to find. He is adept at describing people and their influences without really giving into the sort of great-man narratives that a lot of histories succumb to.
The book doesn't make it entirely clear what Leach's political views are, but it does feel apparent that he would perceive a lot of modern American culture's emphasis on commercialism negatively. However, he still provides a fully human treatment of figures like John Wanamaker who were so instrumental in shaping that culture. His treatment of Frank Baum and the Wizard of Oz was, to me, the most impressive example of this.
There are a few instances of editorializing that I don't think contributed much, but the history is very thorough and interesting. What could be a very dry topic, like the evolution of store window displays, is made fascinating and given surprising stakes.
The book doesn't make it entirely clear what Leach's political views are, but it does feel apparent that he would perceive a lot of modern American culture's emphasis on commercialism negatively. However, he still provides a fully human treatment of figures like John Wanamaker who were so instrumental in shaping that culture. His treatment of Frank Baum and the Wizard of Oz was, to me, the most impressive example of this.
There are a few instances of editorializing that I don't think contributed much, but the history is very thorough and interesting. What could be a very dry topic, like the evolution of store window displays, is made fascinating and given surprising stakes.
December 20, 2024
This book hits such a sweet spot for me: a historical cultural critique of consumer culture? Hot damn! The topics and content are top notch - tying together a lot of strands that I wouldn't have guessed were so intertwined - like, how does the Wizard of Oz fit into all this?? This is impressive research, integration and analysis; it really broadened my understanding of how America evolved rather quickly from a nation of Puritanical penny-pinching to one of rampant shoplifting and credit card debt. I wish Leach had permitted himself to write less formally - the most compelling bits are those where his voice sneaks out more authentically (and, often, angrily). Ultimately this is a story about spiritual drift - and how consumer culture played a unique role in spurring it on, while also absorbing its fallout - both cause and remedy for the breakdown of community in America. Enlightening and depressing, and definitely recommended.
January 21, 2022
A history of the emergence of consumer culture in the US after the Civil War. Leach examines four features that changed dramatically in the US economy from roughly 1880-1920
1. increasingly consumerism got touted as a means to happiness
2. marketing and society became obsessed with "the cult of the new"
3. there was a democratization of desire, which means that everyone suddenly felt entitled to want the same things (even if everyone could not afford the same things)
4. money suddenly became the central value of the economy (rather than land or trades)
Though these transformations began 140 years ago, we are still living deeply under their thrall. A very thorough history about a dramatic economic transformation that historians were reluctant to address before Leach took it on.
1. increasingly consumerism got touted as a means to happiness
2. marketing and society became obsessed with "the cult of the new"
3. there was a democratization of desire, which means that everyone suddenly felt entitled to want the same things (even if everyone could not afford the same things)
4. money suddenly became the central value of the economy (rather than land or trades)
Though these transformations began 140 years ago, we are still living deeply under their thrall. A very thorough history about a dramatic economic transformation that historians were reluctant to address before Leach took it on.
November 30, 2017
If every American read this book and understood how our culture was long ago converted to the collective pursuit of luxury, comfort and endless consumer goods there would be a revolution overnight. But alas, the transformation is so complete no one remembers the days when we were free from the influence of retail moguls and consumer culture. This book is an open historical account of the deep undercurrent that has more sway over our society than even politics or religion - a seriously dangerous book that should be studied, taught and discussed widely.
July 6, 2019
A fascinating, incredibly thorough look at the rise of American consumer culture between the 1890s and the 1920s. Leach looks deeply at his subject from a wide variety of angles, both on the ground (the rise of department stores, the birth of the advertising industry) and in the broader culture (shifting American Christianity, societal ideas about children, local and national government restructuring) - he covers so much ground so well, and none of it feels superfluous, or like an academic overreach. Just absolutely excellent.
April 7, 2024
consumer culture - we may take it for granted that this is synonymous with the US, however this was not always the case. this book goes into the beginnings of when/how this culture took hold and who the architects were that drove this change
October 29, 2024
After reading Chip Colwell's So Much Stuff, I wanted to take a deeper look at how the industrial revolution spawned a complementary movement of "manufacturing desire," artificialy stimulating demand to meet ever-growing supply. It is a truly stupid cycle if you step back and look at it. Creating stuff that no one needs, then convincing people that they can't live without it. That is basically the basis of our entire economy.
Couldn't we focus our attention on things that really do contribute to a good life-- good educations, relationships, health care, food, shelter, and safety? Could we foster abundant life without producing an overabundance of stuff and warping people's desires about what is worth striving for?
Maybe yes, maybe no. Humans have arranged themselves in many different societies over the millennia, some of which probably met people's real needs, and many of which didn't. There is inevitably going to be a lot of turnover in cultures, largely because we aren't born with an instruction manual of how to live. However, what troubles me is that even if a group does figure out how to serve its members well, they can be overrun by other groups that prioritize political power. Recognizing this reality, a healthy society could develop a strong civil defense, but what's to stop it from being hijacked by bad actors who turn it towards acquisitive ends? Given the wide spectrum of human moral orientation, it seems like societies are inherently unstable. We would do well to learn from groups that have persisted for thousands of years, but they've dwindled rapidly under the influence of various empires across history, including our present day.
Maybe healthy communities can't be scaled to millions people. Perhaps the best we can do is foster vibrant communities at local levels and recognize that the macro-level will be beset by the will to power and zero-sum competition.
Couldn't we focus our attention on things that really do contribute to a good life-- good educations, relationships, health care, food, shelter, and safety? Could we foster abundant life without producing an overabundance of stuff and warping people's desires about what is worth striving for?
Maybe yes, maybe no. Humans have arranged themselves in many different societies over the millennia, some of which probably met people's real needs, and many of which didn't. There is inevitably going to be a lot of turnover in cultures, largely because we aren't born with an instruction manual of how to live. However, what troubles me is that even if a group does figure out how to serve its members well, they can be overrun by other groups that prioritize political power. Recognizing this reality, a healthy society could develop a strong civil defense, but what's to stop it from being hijacked by bad actors who turn it towards acquisitive ends? Given the wide spectrum of human moral orientation, it seems like societies are inherently unstable. We would do well to learn from groups that have persisted for thousands of years, but they've dwindled rapidly under the influence of various empires across history, including our present day.
Maybe healthy communities can't be scaled to millions people. Perhaps the best we can do is foster vibrant communities at local levels and recognize that the macro-level will be beset by the will to power and zero-sum competition.
November 25, 2017
a pleasure to read, vivid descriptions, however a little one-sided.
October 18, 2018
Awesome book about the birth of capitalist consumer culture in America
March 3, 2022
I am very much a product of this book and I hate it.
I love tracking orders so much. MY TREATS ARE ON THE WAY.
I love tracking orders so much. MY TREATS ARE ON THE WAY.
April 6, 2024
The sort of book I love: deeply and thoughtfully researched while remaining highly readable and entertaining.
Read
December 13, 2024DNF painfully dry
August 7, 2025
I learned a ton, but more importantly, the author uses the word “impresario” upwards of 5 times.
November 2, 2025
A dense narrative of the interwoven nature of commerce, politics, education, and popular culture - very enlightening and equally depressing
August 13, 2016
Leach writes with beauty and force about the creation of our consumer culture through a history of department stores and their apologists. It is a great read, though it almost feels like it could be more than one book. The three sections feel distinct, though his arguments are carried throughout. The first on fashion and display and the growth of stores as "cathedrals" of consumption in the late 19th century is glorious in description and argument. The second on institutional connections, linking museums and universities, as well as religion, evangelical and mind cure, to consumer society felt tentative (the one on Wanamaker and evangelicalism felt too narrow in scope - I wanted an entire book on this subject, especially as there is more of a connection between evangelical religion and consumerism than Leach offers here), offering a mix of connections and hints. The last section takes the selling into the 1920s with new goods, methods, including consumer credit, and an increased role for government. A wonderful book to read through or to dip into, with remembered goods and displays, and wonderful characters like retailer John Wanamaker, economist of consumption Simon Patten and window dresser and novelist, L. Frank Baum. It is also a challenge, wondering at the desiring self we have become, at the limitation of our understanding of freedom to things we can purchase.
From the introduction:
"From the 1890s on, American corporate business, in league with key institutions, began the transformation of American society into a society preoccupied with consumption, with comfort and bodily well-being, with luxury, spending, and acquisition, with more goods this year than last, more next year than this. American consumer capitalism produced a culture almost violently hostile to the past and to tradition, a future-oriented culture of desire that confused the good life with goods. It was a culture that first appeared as an alternative culture - or as one moving largely against the grain of earlier traditions of republicanism and Christian virtue - and then unfolded to become the reigning culture of the United States. It was the culture that many people the world over soon came to see as the heart of American life."
From the conclusion:
"At the same time, the conception of the desiring self, as expressed in capitalist terms and exploited by capitalism, offers a one-sided and flawed notion of what it means to be human. It rejects what is also 'human' about human beings; their ability to commit themselves, to establish binding relationships, to sink permanent roots, to maintain continuity with previous generations, to remember, to make ethical judgments, to seek pleasure in work, to remain steadfast on behalf of principle and loyal to community or country ... to seek spiritual transcendence beyond the self, and to fight a cause through to the end."
From the introduction:
"From the 1890s on, American corporate business, in league with key institutions, began the transformation of American society into a society preoccupied with consumption, with comfort and bodily well-being, with luxury, spending, and acquisition, with more goods this year than last, more next year than this. American consumer capitalism produced a culture almost violently hostile to the past and to tradition, a future-oriented culture of desire that confused the good life with goods. It was a culture that first appeared as an alternative culture - or as one moving largely against the grain of earlier traditions of republicanism and Christian virtue - and then unfolded to become the reigning culture of the United States. It was the culture that many people the world over soon came to see as the heart of American life."
From the conclusion:
"At the same time, the conception of the desiring self, as expressed in capitalist terms and exploited by capitalism, offers a one-sided and flawed notion of what it means to be human. It rejects what is also 'human' about human beings; their ability to commit themselves, to establish binding relationships, to sink permanent roots, to maintain continuity with previous generations, to remember, to make ethical judgments, to seek pleasure in work, to remain steadfast on behalf of principle and loyal to community or country ... to seek spiritual transcendence beyond the self, and to fight a cause through to the end."
February 11, 2015
Leach's analysis of the growth of consumption and materialism in America is interesting and insightful, however, I did have some doubts while reading. There's nothing wrong with the book, but I do feel that the title promised a somewhat different premise. The author often goes into details of personal careers, which is fine, but I can't shake the feeling that this was at the cost of a more comprehensive view.When we get the history of the people behind Wanamaker's, Macy's and other large department stores, the reader never learns if this was endemic to the most developed part of the US, or universal throughout the country. The analysis of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is interesting, but redundant in this book. I see the similarities, but I do have doubts whether it should be detailed to such a degree. Some elements of advertising are painfully missing. The term "planned obsolescence" appears only once, although it could have been discussed in the chapter about advertising. The selection of discussed figures is somewhat arbitrary, and such figures as Alfred Sloan are never mentioned. Although the discussion of department stores takes up a majority of the book, general stores and supermarkets are almost never mentioned, while catalogs are only present in passing, to the point that some books that were written rather as textbooks for students actually have more information on such topics.
A good book that fails to fully deliver on its premise.
A good book that fails to fully deliver on its premise.
March 24, 2010
For someone who gets Mall Fatigue by the time I park and traverse Macys, I felt the task of completing this to be somewhat arduous. However, for those interested in the rise of US commercialism on the basis not only of the dramatic evolutions within retailing but also in consideration of certain intellectual outpourings and certain institutional support within the decades in question, then you should find this to be a great book. Leach covers the transformation of a Mother-stitching-one’s-britches nation into one where department stores sought to coerce consumers into purchasing completely new wardrobes every year. It’s certainly an important history that sheds much light on of the origin of the “shop ‘til you drop” paradigm that defined Generation Me, Generation X, Generation Y, the Millennials, or whatever other dubiously designated groups that have been attacked for lacking the frugality of the previously accused generations.
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