This work, whose target audience includes both historians and practitioners, is a socioeconomic history of American consumers. The author shows how over the past century Americans’ personal and national identities became heavily defined by how they spent money in the marketplace. The American consumer is presented as a character on the national stage whose role changed significantly over time based on varying social, economic, and political conditions. What did not change over the course of five different eras, however, was a continual transformation of Americans from citizens to consumers...