Preface; Introduction; Part I. Politics, Markets, and the State: 1. The consumers' White Label campaign of the National Consumers' League, 1898-1918; 2. Democracy and political identity in the consumer society; 3. Changing consumption Regimes in Europe, 1930-1970; 4. Consumer research as public relations: General Motors in the 1930s; 5. The New Deal State and the making of citizen consumers; 6. Consumer spending as state Project: yesterday's solutions and today's problems; 7. The Emigré as celebrant of American consumer culture: George Katona and Ernest Dichter; 8. Dissolution of the 'dictatorship over needs'? consumer behavior and economic reform in East Germany in the 1960s; Part II. Everyday Life: 9. World War I and the creation of desire for cars in Germany; 10. Gender, generation, and consumption in the United States: working-class families in the interwar period; 11. Comparing apples and oranges: housewives and the politics of consumption in interwar Germany; 12. 'The convenience is out of this world': the garbage disposer and American consumer culture; 13. Consumer culture in the GDR, or how the struggle for antimodernity was lost on the battleground of consumer culture; 14. Changes in consumption as social practice in West Germany during the 1950s; 15. Reshaping shopping environments: the competition between the city of Boston and its suburbs; 16. Toys, socialization, and the commodification of play; 17. The 'syndrome of the 1950s' in Switzerland: cheap energy, mass consumption, and the environment; 18. Reflecting on Ethnic Imagery in the Landscape of commerce, 1945-1975; Part III. History and Theory: 19. Modern subjectivity and consumer culture; 20. Consumption and consumer society: a contribution to the history of ideas; 21. Reconsidering abundance: a plea for ambiguity.