The Golden Age of Consumption (2024)

The All-Consuming Nation: Chasing the American Dream Since World War II

Mark H. Lytle

Published:

2021

Online ISBN:

9780197568286

Print ISBN:

9780197568255

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The All-Consuming Nation: Chasing the American Dream Since World War II

Mark H. Lytle

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Mark H. Lytle

Mark H. Lytle

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Pages

174–197

  • Published:

    October 2021

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Lytle, Mark H., 'The Golden Age of Consumption', The All-Consuming Nation: Chasing the American Dream Since World War II (New York, 2021; online edn, Oxford Academic, 21 Oct. 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197568255.003.0008, accessed 30 May 2024.

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Abstract

The chapter opens with a survey of the corporate displays and product features at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, highlighting the irony of the civil rights protest around the new Ford Mustang. It then explores major trends in consumer patterns with a focus on automobiles. The following section explores how the “Great Compression” influenced patterns of consumption, recreational pastimes, and leisure. It also looks at trends in home and household goods design, as well as growing diversity in consumption such as the new popularity of ethnic foods, led by pizza. The next section looks at the sources of the prosperity that fed the boom in consumerism. Finally, the last section deals with trash, a dark side of the consumerism where ironically some people measured the strength of the economy by the number of garbage trucks at landfills.

Keywords: 1964 World’s Fair, lowering income inequality, new styles of consumption, automobiles, prosperity, trash

Subject

History of the Americas

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

The All-Consuming Nation. Mark H. Lytle, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197568255.003.0008

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