Decoding Modern Consumer Societies (Worlds of Consumption)
The first book in the series I am copy-editing (and more), Worlds of Consumption, is now available. Decoding Modern Consumer Societies, edited by Hartmut Berghoff and Uwe Spiekermann (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), offers an introduction to and stocktaking of the relatively young field of consumption history.
Since I have a vested interest in the project, I won’t try to convince you that it is the best thing since sliced bread, but I will say that I have learned a lot and that I am firmly convinced of the value of consumption history. Indeed, I have included consumption history in my last two courses, Belinda J. Davis, Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000) for my graduate course on war and society and Uta G. Poiger, Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000) for my modern Germany course for undergraduates.
For more information about the German Historical Institute’s new book series, Worlds of Consumption, please view the linked PDF file on Dropbox, which includes tables of contents for Decoding Modern Consumer Societies as well as for two volumes that will appear later this year, The Development of Consumer Credit in Global Perspective: Business, Regulation, and Culture, edited by Jan Logemann, and The Rise of Marketing and Market Research, edited by Hartmut Berghoff, Philip Scranton, and Uwe Spiekermann.
