Howard (history, Hartwick Coll.; Brides, Inc.) has produced a history of the American department store from its origins in the 19th century to its demise in the 21st century. The book aims to also cover the role of government, business, and consumers in the department store industry. It starts with a decade-by-decade approach to the rise of the department store, followed by an in-depth examination of the aspects of political policy, economics, and buyer expectations in the struggles and eventual failure of the institution. While the emphasis seems to be mainly on urban retailers, Howard acknowledges the differences found in "provincial America." The author explores the effects of regulations, lawsuits, national organizations, the emergence of the middle class, and associated pressures related to prices, offerings, and locations. She concludes that the current nostalgia for the Main Street store is similar to feelings in the past for other kinds of commerce, such as the peddler and his horse-drawn wagon. VERDICT For anyone who wants to read another book on the rise, decline, and fall of department stores.-Bonnie A. Tollefson, Rogue Valley Manor Lib., Medford, OR © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In the tradition of her previous book, Brides, Inc. (2006), Howard (history, Hartwick College) takes readers on a pop culture voyage through the rapid and pervasive rise of shopping concourses in the US. Consumer society research is a burgeoning field, often overflowing with studies on the matrix of shopping and its spaces, but this engaging analysis provides readers with a fresh, expanded, much-needed examination of the field. Howard demonstrates just how callously small chains, independent shops, and community standbys were pushed out, swallowed up, and cast aside by big businesses pushing cheap trinkets en masse. The removal of local shops paved the way for neighbors to become strangers and for communities to lose their centers as reliance on automobiles to transport families to enclosed, climate-controlled stores of mass-produced goods replaced milk deliveries and tailor-made clothing. Howard's study provides a firm social background for how US society evolved to its current status of box stores' occupying nearly every retail mile and how the chain equates with quality in the public's mind. This well-done study is a great read that will engage lay readers and advanced researchers. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Annessa Ann Babic, New York Institute of Technology