| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890–1945. By Charles F. McGovern. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. xvi, 536 pp. Cloth, $65.00, ISBN 978-0-8078-3033-8. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 978-0-8078-5676-5.)

As consumer studies move from the margins to the mainstream of many academic disciplines, scholarship that explores our market-related experiences is becoming more plentiful. One of the latest additions to the field is Sold American, an eloquently written, meticulously researched, and well-illustrated book about "consumption and citizenship" from 1890 to 1945. During this period, argues Charles F. McGovern, a professor of history at the College of William and Mary, the United States became a consumer society, and Americans came to understand spending as a form of citizenship, defining their common heritage "as much by goods and leisure as by political abstractions or historical figures" (p. 3). Central to that process were not only advertisements, but writers, social scientists, engineers, and consumer advocates represented by groups, such as Consumer's Research and Consumers Union, that the author refers to as "consumerists."

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