Charles F. McGovern. Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890 1945

Charles McGovern's Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship,1890–1945, explains how Americans came to see consumerismas central to their national identity. More specifically, itexamines how two key interest groups—advertisers and consumeractivists—battled over and ultimately helped define thepolitical meaning of consumerism. According to McGovern, in the early twentieth-century, advertisersassumed consumers were "childlike, irrational, ungovernable,and unpredictable" (p.60), and hoped to sway this malleablemass by convincing them of the deeper value of consumerism.To