| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Sales & Celebrations: Retailing and Regional Identity in Western New York State, 1920–1940. By Sarah Elvins. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004. xxii, 222 pp. $42.95, ISBN 0-8214-1549-2.)

Sarah Elvins argues that local identity was much stronger and more persistent in the minds of many retailers and consumers than is commonly assumed during an era that saw the rise of national brand advertising, the spread of national chain stores, and the pervasive reach of modern consumer culture. Focusing on the cities of Buffalo and Rochester, Elvins shows how western New Yorkers used their regional institutions to "put a local spin on national trends and innovations" (p. xv). Retailers such as the Sibley, Lindsay, and Curr department store assumed the role of municipal boosters, conserving a sense of local pride while reeducating patrons on the values of modern materialism. For their part, consumers engaged in an active dialogue with these retailers, typically through their purchases but also by more explicit means, that sustained this sense of home rule. While the island communities of the late Gilded Age were seemingly colonized by a national marketplace, Elvins concludes that the "emphasis on local identities and local roots cultivated by retailers endured through the 1920s and well into the Depression and beyond" (p. 140).

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