A Consumers' Republic
The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America

Argues that Keynesian-paradigms of thought transcended the New Deal brain-trusters and was adopted by grassroots consumers. In short, consumption became a political act in and of itself during the New Deal, and this dollar activism has remained in the United States ever since. In her examination, sh......more

Cohen's thesis--and this is very much a thesis driven book, sometimes to its determent--is that in the years since World War II, the United States is best understood as a "consumers' republic," and that, for the most part, that has operated to the detriment of political citizenship. The consumers' r......more

Great start for anyone who wants to think or write more intelligently about our shared shopaholic tendencies.......more

Cohen’s sweeping history of the postwar period paints a vivid picture of a rapidly changing society. The author describes a cultural landscape in which the terms of citizenship had shifted dramatically, placing production and, more importantly, consumption as the primary term of involvement in this......more

Interesting to learn that modern consumerism is not just an outgrowth of natural human frailty in the form of greed but was instead the creation of government policies to apply war production capacity to civilian needs after World War II. That's hopeful. It means that humans aren't doomed by nature,......more