"The American Beauty Industry Encyclopedia" is the first compilation to focus exclusively on this pervasive business, covering both its diverse origins and global reach. More than 100 entries were chosen specifically to illuminate the most iconic aspects of the industry's past and present, exploring the meaning of beauty practices and products, often while making analytical use of categories such as gender, race, sexuality, and stages of the lifecycle.

Focusing primarily on the late-19th and 20th-century American beauty industry--an era of unprecedented expansion--the encyclopedia...