Courtney Ray Ray থেকে নিউ ইয়র্ক থেকে নিউ ইয়র্ক

Once, a potential housemate I’d never met emailed me a cheery note introducing herself. She was 22, a recent college graduate, she hoped to teach, and one of the three hobbies she listed was “going shopping.” I laughed. It’s hilarious to me that shopping could in itself be an end. Imagining that people spend their free time by wandering around with no aim but to trade superfluous cash for objects they don’t need is both depressing and amusing. But it’s only recently that I’ve started to let go of my self-righteousness and put my own consumer habits in context. I hate shopping—the trying on of clothes, the spending of money I don’t have, the whole mall culture. But Giles Slade’s latest book points me to the consumer web I nonetheless participate in, along with most others in the Western world. Made to Break showcases the corporate strategy emerging from the 1920s that challenges the nation’s overproduction of goods by creating wants and needs in consumers. This book represents a phenomenal organization of a massive amount of information. With a staggering assortment of primary sources, Slade produces 281 pages that are clear, concise, and unite product histories that previously seemed, to me anyway, separate.

Starts strong and gets slightly weaker as it goes on. He kind of recounts his life somewhat cronologically and in terms of all the famous people he knew in his life. There's some priceless bits in here, but there's some rambling too.