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The All-Consuming Nation examines how planners during World War II laid the foundation for a massconsumption
economy. High wages, full employment, new technologies, and a rapid growth in population known as the "Baby Boom" ushered in a golden age of economic growth. By the end of the twentieth century, consumerism triumphed over communism, socialism, and all other isms seeking to win hearts and minds around the world. Mark Lytle investigates the environmental and sociocultural costs of the consumer capitalism framework set in place in the twentieth century, shedding light on both the catalysts and consequences of a national identity forged through mass
consumption.
List of contents
- Introduction: Cold War, Warm Kitchen, and the Trump Dilemma
- Part I The Creation of a Consumer Democracy
- 1. Post War Choices
- 2. The Birth of a Consumer Democracy
- 3. Chapter Three: The Dark Side of Consumption
- 4. The Era of Populuxe
- Part II The Era of Identity Consumerism
- 5. Segmented America and the New Identity Politics
- 6. The American Way of Life Polluted
- 7. The Golden Age of Consumption
- 8. Vietnam: Consumers Go to War
- 9. The Consumer Movement
- 10. Identity Consumerism
- Part III The Age of Limits, The Age of Fractures
- 11. America Goes Green
- 12. The Age of Limits
- 13. The Environmental Battleground
- 14. In Debt We Trust
- 15. Fractured Science: The Battles Over Sustainability and Climate Change
- Part IV E-Commerce in the Age of Global Warming
- 16. High Tech Consumers
- 17. The All-Consuming Nation Imperiled
- Epilogue: Omens
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Mark H. Lytle is Lyford Patterson and Mary Gray Edwards Professor of History Emeritus at Bard College where he helped to found and direct the Environmental and Urban Studies and American Studies Programs. Since joining the History Education Project at Yale in the 1970s, he has been active in promoting the quality of teaching and learning history. His work in diplomatic, environmental, and cultural studies inspired the idea of consumerism as the organizing principle both in the United States and in its sense of mission abroad.
Summary
In his 1958 "kitchen debate" with Nikita Khrushchev, Richard Nixon argued that the freedom to consume defined the American way of life. High wages, full employment, new technologies, and a rapid growth in population known as the "Baby Boom" ushered in a golden age of economic growth. By the end of the twentieth century, consumerism triumphed over communism, socialism, and all other isms seeking to win hearts and minds around the world. Advertising, popular culture, and mass media persuaded Americans that shopping was both spiritually fulfilling and a patriotic virtue.
Mark Lytle argues that Nixon's view of consumer democracy contained fatal flaws -- if unregulated, it would wholly ignore the creativedestruction that, in destroying jobs, erodes the capacity to consume. The All-Consuming Nation also examines how planners failed to take into account the environmental costs, as early warning signs--whether smog over Los Angeles, the overuse of toxic chemicals such as DDT, or the Cuyahoga River in flames--provided evidence that all was not well. Environmentalists from Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson and Paul Ehrlich to Ralph Nader and Al Gore cautioned that modern consumerism imposed unsustainable costs on the natural world. Not for lack of warning, climate change became the defining issue of the twenty-first century.
The All-Consuming Nation investigates the environmental and sociocultural costs of the consumer capitalism framework set in place in the 20th century, shedding light on the consequences of a national identity forged through mass consumption.
Additional text
This fascinating study of the US covers 1945 to the present. It will appeal to thoughtful readers; those who most need this information will likely dismiss it as "fake news."
