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A smartphone screen shows a fork on a finished plate.

Who Was the Foodie?

What it would mean to take taste seriously again.
by Alicia Kennedy via The Yale Review on November 17, 2025
Food stand at a carnival advertising a wide ranging menu.

Why an Abundance of Choice Is Not the Same as Freedom

It’s only in recent history that freedom has come to mean having a huge array of choices in life. Did we take a wrong turn?
by Sophia Rosenfeld via Aeon on October 16, 2025
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 Magazine 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
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
Workers for the Insular Lumber company felling a small Almon
partner

The Mythical Mahogany that Helped Build the American Empire

How “Philippine mahogany” became America’s tropical timber of choice, thanks to a rebrand from a colonial logging company that drove deforestation.
by Pippo Carmona via JSTOR Daily on November 19, 2025
Birds-eye view of water park in Wisconsin Dells.

How the Wisconsin Dells Turned Nature Into the Ultimate Indoor Destination

What the rise of the “Waterpark Capital of the World” means for its namesake riverscape.
by Matthew King via The Metropole on November 11, 2025
Tori Amos singing, photo of pumpkin spice, and the words "Pumpkin Spice Can Be Used Many Ways."

The Curious, Contentious History of Pumpkin Spice Lattes

Starbucks didn’t invent them. But it’s possible that Tori Amos or a Midwest grandma did.
by Doug Mack via Snack Stack on October 21, 2025
A cassette copy of the film soundtrack for "Until the End of the World."

The Last Time I Rewound

VHS, Star Wars, and the freedom to remember.
by Nic Hoffmann via Tropics of Meta on September 30, 2025
Apples on a branch of an apple tree.

To Understand America, Look to the Everyday Apple

The country is losing neighbourhood orchards—and a connection to its origins.
by Priyanka Kumar via The Walrus on September 27, 2025
Four men model two-button suits of 1963 Paris.

The Economic, Political, and Cultural History of Menswear

Where Western men’s clothing traditions came from, how they have evolved, and how they're being continually reinterpreted.
by Derek Guy, Dennis M. Hogan via Jacobin on September 18, 2025
Image of a young boy carrying a pistol with women and children in the background.

Gun Culture Then and Now

Firearm ownership meant something very different when the United States was founded.
by Brian DeLay via Vital City on September 10, 2025
Pink maragine smeared on bread.

You Could Go to Jail for Selling This Now-Ubiquitous Food

In the 19th and 20th centuries, margarine defied the odds—surviving federal regulations, industry smear campaigns, and even a bizarre mandate to dye it pink.
by Jess Eng via Serious Eats on August 19, 2025
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