American Consumer Society, 1865-2005: From Hearth to HDTV (review)

Thematic historical surveys form a difficult genre; authors must integrate large quantities of mostly known facts under broad generalizations obvious enough for undergraduates but innovative enough for specialist scholars. There are few surprises in Regina Lee Blaszczyk's engaging, energetic account of the development of a consumer society in the United States, but there is much to applaud. Her bibliographical essay lists hundreds of recent titles ranging from general economic, technological, social, and cultural surveys to studies of advertising, retailing, domestic economy, suburbia, home furnishings, fashion, the automobile, media, and information. This exhaustive scope is confirmed by the main text, which is admirably synthetic rather than mechanically additive. Blaszczyk opens the bibliographical essay by referencing two well-known works, David M. Potter's People of Plenty (1954) and Daniel J. Boorstin's The Americans: The Democratic Experience (1973). Boorstin's paired themes of the democratization of abundance and the related dematerialization of things are central to Blaszczyk's interpretation of the consumer experience. Indeed, her prose sometimes echoes Boorstin, as when she characterizes opposing uses of recorded music in the 1970s: "Boom-box aficionados redefined public zones as their personal space—Walkman owners carried their private space wherever they went" (p. 247).

American Consumer Society has three major sections, each with an introduction, three chapters, and a portfolio of apt illustrations. "Victorian America, 1865–1900" describes an urbanizing society marked by class division but moving toward a standardized middle-class way of living. The chapters focus on domesticity and the home as the major site of increased consumption; on fashion and such commercial icons as the Gibson Girl and the Arrow (shirt) Man; and on new sources of consumption—drygoods stores, department stores, dime-store chains, and mail order catalogs. Opening a transnational thread, Blaszczyk defends her use of "Victorian" by observing that a relatively small American middle class emulated the British upper class. However, American domesticity may have differed not so much by expressing a desire to emulate one's social betters as by creating a personal sphere protected from the turmoil of an industrializing society.

Part 2, "Modern America, 1900–1945," discusses the increasing tempo of everyday life with consumption overshadowing production as the major concern of a growing middle class. Invoking the Middletown studies, Blaszczyk marshals copious details in chapters on the discovery by advertisers and retailers of the American woman as the primary consumer; on expansion of experience through such new technologies as photography, the bicycle, the phonograph, and radio; and on the automobile's rise to near social and cultural hegemony, with particular attention paid to the warring production/consumption models of Henry Ford and General Motors. Although the outlines are familiar, Blaszczyk uncovers fresh, unfamiliar quotations and recuperates figures like Helen Resor, a copywriter married to the head of the J. Walter Thompson agency, whose promotion of a particular soap as facilitating "A Skin You Love to Touch" (p. 121) exhibited the era's obsession with manipulating personal images and identities.

In the final section, "Boomer America, 1945–2005," Blaszczyk describes the postwar emergence of democratized affluence, heterogeneous consumption tastes, and a paradoxical flattening of status markers in the move from an industrial economy to a service economy. She emphasizes social and cultural roles of ever more ephemeral media in an era opening with network television and eventually witnessing limitless expansion of internet-driven communication. Individual chapters focus on postwar suburbia and the rise of regional shopping centers and edge cities; on casual fashions for both genders and all classes as style became a matter of personal identity rather than a status marker; and on consumer electronics from stereo sound systems and transistor radios to iPods and cyberspace.

American Consumer Society offers an engaging, well-organized interpretation, stuffed with relevant details both familiar and unfamiliar. However, the Victorian section suffers from a strategy of creating anachronistic relevance for younger readers that threatens to date the book before its time. Martha Stewart appears frequently...