Check Out Spree: A Cultural History Of Shopping Imagined By Pamela Klaffke Distributed In Visual Format
love to read the "history of" books so I was pleased to find this book but it didn't quite live up to expectations.
Still it was cool to read about how shopping bags came about before you were limited to what you could carry or throw on the back of your animal, shopping malls what american's think of as malls indoor is not the original version as well shoplifters, kleptomaniacs not the same thing, haute couture, what people were shopping for, how selling toys became a big thing.
. . And many more. Definatly interesting but the very clear deliniation of chapters was a little annoying, I guess I've read a number of very classy well written "history of" or "all abouts" and so I was expected it to be a little more polished is terms of the formatting.
I guess it should be thought of in the same tone of "idiots guide to" in terms of the way it's set up, tone etc, which is fine but by no means high quality reading.
But these are small complaints really, I thought it was interesting and it distracted me from other books I have on my "currently reading" list and enjoyed it
a great deal.
I might even keep it, which I guess says a great deal very tiny keep shelf space available, An interesting read, light but informative,.KThis book had some really informative and entertaining information, but it wasn't presented very well, Interesting! 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, the shopping cart, the bar code
Information on the largest fashion retail chain The Gap,,stores, the largest retail firm WalMart, with annual revenues ofbillion, and the worlds largest mall West Edmonton Mall, atacres
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, Klaffkes 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, .