Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41562 in Books
• Published on: 1994-09-06
• Released on: 1994-09-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This NBA nominee is an outstanding cultural history of America's turn-of-the-century transformation into a nation of consumers.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
In an alternate history of modern American life from 1890 to 1927, Leach (History/Columbia; True Love and Perfect Union, 1980) offers an encompassing, learned, and fast-paced account of how entrepreneurs, manufacturers, bankers, clergymen, and government leaders produced a culture of consumers--as well as the rituals, morality, aesthetics, and institutions that identify the good with the goodies, acquisition with virtue. Innovative merchandising--initiated by the great department stores of the 1890's (Wanamaker's, Marshall Field, etc.) and extending in time to hotels, banks, public utilities, service industries, etc.--began with an excess of production: superfluous pianos, lamps, rugs, cheap jewelry, and food. To dispense with the surplus, merchant princes developed a technology of enticement, the arts of display--including posters, outdoor signs, light, color, glass, window trimming, packaging, catalogues, architecture, and, ultimately, an urban geography with entire shopping districts (epitomized in Manhattan in the showmanship of Times Square, the retail establishments of Fifth Avenue, the fashion and garment districts, and on Wall Street, the source of the financing). Beyond the visual were the rituals--holiday seasons, pageants, parades, children's culture--and the escalators and credit-granting through which department stores became democratized. Americans' getting and spending produced a standardization of taste and beauty, as well as colleges for business and design, fashion magazines, hotel chains, and intermediaries--brokers and agencies for everything from models to real estate. In 1932, Herbert Hoover's Department of Commerce and its imposing building in Washington made merchandising part of government--incarnating, as Leach sees it, the ethics and fantasies embodied in the Emerald City of The Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum also wrote the definitive text on window trimming). Fascinating, detailed, and evangelical: a yellow brick road full of rare adventures, intriguing characters, and surprising vistas. (Twenty-four pages of photos--not seen) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From the Publisher
"An extraordinary work of history, imaginatively conceived, thoroughly researched and absorbingly written. William Leach allows us to see the production of mass consumer culture and to see it whole, in its richness and its poverty. It is a fascinating and troubling tale, and Leach tells it with exceptional skill and sensitivity." --Jean-Christophe Agnew, Yale University

"A major reinterpretation of our cultural experience, Land of Desire is a brilliant, evocative, and highly readable study by an original, honest and courageous historian who has seen to the heart of American commercial culture. In a society in debt to the licentious 1980s and unfortunately still attempting to achieve social justice though endless growth, this is required reading."--Mary O. Furner, University of California, Santa Barbara

Customer Reviews

Interesting story, not enough analysis
W.R. Leach writes about the beginning of consumerism in the U.S. around 1910/20. He writes with much verve about his theme, which makes the book an ageeable read.
But for my taste the book is somewhat short on analysis. For example: there is much talk of the connection between selling and religion, but if this connection was by random or if there were some deeper links is left open.
If you are new to the subject of this book and you want an interesting read: get it. But be aware, the answers for a lot of questions this book poses are not to be found here.

Snooze
This has got to be the most boring book in the world!!!! I have to read it for one of my college courses and it is very nauseating. 30 pages on the history of window decorations!! Give me a break! If you're into analyzing the advertising industry, try Social Communications in Advertising by Leiss. Its a much better book and its much more interesting!

Leisure as Consumerism
In William Leach's Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture the author ignores the topic of leisure by making it self-evident through consumerism. Leisure, and in turn consumerism, became actual businesses to the likes of the Straus Brothers and Marshall Field, as well as to by-products of consumer industries such as banks, hotels, and museums. Leach's book brings the nature of leisure full circle, from Veblen's Leisure Class to leisure of the working class, whose consumption boosted businesses that used working-class techniques based in the theatre and vaudeville as "showmanship" in the shop window.