Product Description: When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they promised to build a vibrant consumer society. But they faced a dilemma. They recognized that consolidating support for the regime required providing Germans with the products they desired...read more

Product Description: The sheer intensity and violence of Germany’s twentieth century—through the end of an empire, two world wars, two democracies, and two dictatorships—provide a unique opportunity to assess the power and endurance of commercial imagery in the most extreme circumstances...read more

The history of consumption is a prism through which many aspects of social and political life may be viewed. The essays in this collection represent a variety of approaches and raise such themes as consumption and democracy, the development of a global economy, the role of the state, the centrality of consumption to Cold War politics, the importance of the Second World War as a historical divide, the language of consumption, the contexts of locality, race, ethnicity, gender, and class, and the environmental consequences of twentieth-century consumer society. They explore the role of the historian as social, political, and moral critic. Unlike other studies of twentieth-century consumption, this book provides international comparisons. (view table of contents)