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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.
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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 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.
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Revolutionary Spirit

On the widespread boycotts of British-made goods in the American Colonies.
via BackStory on December 15, 2016
Photo collage of 20th century women's fashion.

The 20th Century Designer Who Put Common Sense Into Women’s Fashion

A new book recognizes Claire McCardell as a pioneer of American womenswear as we know it.
by Camille Freestone via Harper's Bazaar on July 7, 2025
Highways & Horizons, front and back covers of brochure for the General Motors pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. [Prelinger Library]

Highways and Horizons

The Interstate Highway System created a national polity defined by circulation. To rethink the Interstates is to rethink the United States.
by Reinhold Martin via Places Journal on June 20, 2025
Magazine ad for a shower radio, showing a man happily singing while he bathes.

The Wet History of Media in the Bathroom

How media technologies made themselves at home in one of the most private spaces of modern life.
by Rachel Plotnick via The MIT Press Reader on June 12, 2025

My Freedom, My Choice

A new book illuminates how freedom became associated with choice and questions whether that has been a good thing—for women in particular.
by David A. Bell via New York Review of Books on June 5, 2025
Avocados

Why Are We So Obsessed With Avocados?

Why are avocados everywhere?
by Sarah Allaback, Monique F. Parsons via Literary Hub on May 21, 2025
Dyed ostrich feather samples in a book.

As Bright as a Feather: Ostriches, Home Dyeing, and the Global Plume Trade

In the 19th century, dyed ostrich feathers were haute couture, adorning the hats and boas of fashionistas on both sides of the Atlantic.
by Whitney Rakich via The Public Domain Review on May 7, 2025
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.
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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.
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“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
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