Spree: A Cultural History of Shopping

Front Cover
arsenal pulp press, 2003 - Business & Economics - 231 pages

Ten years ago, Faith Popcorn declared "the end of shopping" in her bestselling book The Popcorn Report. But from the looks of things, shopping is as pervasive as ever; we are a culture obsessed and beguiled by the desire for consumer goods.

Journalist and shopping addict Pamela Klaffke documents the history of shopping, from a time when cattle were currency to the current age of contemporary shopping phenoms like QVC and eBay.

Topics covered include:

The history of shopping malls and department stores
The evolution of retail design
Inventions that made shopping easier: the cash -register (1884), the shopping cart (1936), the bar code (1952)
Information on the largest fashion retail chain (The Gap, 3,676 stores), the largest retail firm (Wal-Mart, with annual revenues of $191 billion), and the world's largest mall (West Edmonton Mall, at 121 acres)
Shopping meccas and customs from around the world
The dark side of shopping: kleptomania, shopping addictions, anticonsumerism
The myths of shopping: Men Who Hate Shopping and Women Who Love Shoes

Full of fun and informative sidebars and photos, Klaffke's book demonstrates that how we shop explains a lot about who we are.

Pamela Klaffke is a writer, editor, and media consultant. She is currently the literary editor of the Calgary Herald and her semiweekly column about popular culture trends can often be read in various newspapers across Canada. Spree: A Cultural History of Shopping is her first book.

 

Contents

Acknowledgments
7
Authors Note
9
Shopping Gets Its Start
13
Consumers and Consumerism
25
Inside the Retail World
41
Shopping at Home
61
Never Pay Retail Shopping for Bargains
89
Secondhand Shopping
103
Shopping and the Media
135
The Fame Game
153
Shopping and Gender
165
The Dark Side of Shopping
177
Shopping the Globe
189
From the Crystal Palace to the Crystal Ball
203
Bibliography
213
Index
222

Shopping for a Living
121

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About the author (2003)

Pamela Klaffke is a newspaper and magazine journalist turned novelist and photographer. She is the author of the the non-fiction book Spree: A Cultural History of Shopping and the novels Snapped and Every Little Thing. She lives in Calgary, Canada with her partner and her daughter.

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