"Shopping has a lot in common with sex," Thomas Hine observes near the beginning of this wide-ranging exploration of the history and psychology of one of the most commonplace and important activities of modern Life. "Just about everybody does it. Some people brag about how well they do it. Some keep it a secret. Most people worry, at Least a little, about whether they do it right. And both provide ample opportunities to make foolish choices."
Choosing and using objects is a primal human activity, and I Want That! is nothing less than a portrait of humanity as the species that shops. We shop to nourish our bodies and to feed our fantasies. We shop to belong to groups. We shop to define ourselves as individuals. We shop to be powerful. We shop to be responsible. We shop to celebrate. We shop because we don't want to miss out on the excitement of life. I Want That! shows how these fundamental desires play out in today's malls, Web sites, boutiques, and superstores.
The book also offers a lively, fast-paced history of finding, choosing, and spending. It makes stops in the crossroads markets in which prehistoric merchants traded gold, amber, and obsidian; in the agora in Athens, where sharp setters wet their wool to make it weigh more, and everyone came to buy, talk, eat, and get their hair done. It visits the great fairs of medieval times -- brief, gaudy moments in monotonous, laborious lives -- and it considers the cities of Renaissance Europe, where shopping districts and the idea of individual expression arose side by side. It demonstrates how one simple idea -- manufacturing garments that were ready to wear -- brought the explosive growth of department stores and turned cities into vast shopping centers. It continues the story to the age of the Internet, when the buying never seems to stop, and, in times of crisis, political Leaders tout shopping, not sacrifice, as the act of patriots.
I Want That! tells the fascinating story of how shopping came to be the way it is -- and how you became the shopper you are.

I Want That!: How We All Became Shoppers

Hine, Thomas

History

Harper

Shopping has a lot in common with sex. Just about everybody does it. Some people brag about how well they do it. Some keep it a secret. And both provide ample opportunities to make foolish choices.
Choosing and using objects is a primal human activity, and I Want That! is nothing less than a portrait of humanity as the species that shops. It explores the history of acquisition -- finding, choosing, spending -- from our amber-coveting Neolithic forebears to Renaissance nobles who outfitted themselves for power to twenty-first-century bargain hunters looking for a good buy on eBay. I Want That! explores the minds of shoppers in the quest to nourish and feed fantasies, to define individuality, to provide for family, and to satisfy the needs for celebration, power, and choice -- all of which lead us to malls, boutiques, websites, and superstores.

Business & Money

Economics

Harper-perennial

Exploring the evolution of packaging throughout history with an eye to the profound and absurd, a cultural critic describes the exploits of hucksters, psychologists, and engineers who have made the modern American package a dominant form of commercialism. 17,500 first printing.

The Total Package: The Evolution and Secret Meanings of Boxes, Bottles, Cans, and Tubes

Arts & Photography

Graphic Design

Little,Brown & Co

Today's manufacturers have to create instant desire for their product, and this book shows how they play with people's minds in an attempt to sell you another bar of soap or a box of cereal.

The Total Package: The Secret History and Hidden Meanings of Boxes, Bottles, Cans, and Other Persuasive Containers

Marketing & Sales

Back Bay Books

In the sixties, as the nation anticipated the conquest of space, the defeat of poverty, and an end to injustice at home and abroad, no goal seemed beyond America’s reach. Then the seventies arrivedbringing oil shocks and gas lines, the disgrace and resignation of a president, defeat in Vietnam, terrorism at the 1972 Munich Olympics, urban squalor, bizarre crimes, high prices, and a bad economy. The country fell into a great funk. But when things fall apart, you can take the fragments and make something fresh. Avocado kitchens and Earth Shoes may have been ugly, but they signaled new modes of seeing and being. The first generation to see Earth from space found ways to make life’s everyday routineseating, keeping warm, taking out the trashmeaningful, both personally and globally. And many decided to reinvent themselves. In Populuxe, a textbook of consumerism in the Push Button Age” (Alan J. Adler, Los Angeles Times), Thomas Hine scrutinized the looks and life of the 1950s and 1960s, revealing the hopes and fears expressed in that era’s design. In the same way, The Great Funk: Falling Apart and Coming Together (on a Shag Rug) in the Seventies maps a complex era by looking at its ideas, feelings, sex, fashions, textures, gestures, colors, demographic forces, artistic expressions, and other phenomena that shaped our lives. Hine gets into the shoes and heads of those who experienced the seventiesexploring their homes, feeling the beat of their music, and scanning the ads that incited their desires. But The Great Funk is more than a lavish catalogue of seventies culture: it’s a smart, informed, lively look at the Me decade” through the eyes of the man House &amp; Garden called America’s sharpest design critic.”

The Great Funk: Falling Apart and Coming Together (on a Shag Rug) in the Seventies

Humor & Entertainment

Pop Culture

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Avocado kitchens! Shag rugs! Dacron leisure suits! Earth shoes!
At long last, the author of the beloved celebration of 1950s and '60s design Populuxe turns his sights on that most confusing and confused decade of all: the 1970s.
The '70s were tough, man. The president resigned; we lost a war; there were gas lines, urban squalor, bizarre crimes, and soaring inflation. The country fell into a great funk. But when things fall apart, you can take the fragments and make something fresh. Plaid maxi-dresses and macramé may have been ugly, but they signaled new modes of seeing and being. The 1970s were all about reinvention.
In The Great Funk, Thomas Hine scrutinizes the looks and life of this complex era, climbing into the heads (and platform shoes!) of those who experienced the '70s-exploring the design of our homes and our fashions and scanning the ads that set our desires on fire.
The Great Funk is more than a lavish catalog of 1970s culture and design: it's a brilliantly original, wonderfully lively look at the "Me Decade" through the eyes of the man House &amp; Garden has called "America's sharpest design critic."

The Great Funk: Styles of the Shaggy, Sexy, Shameless 1970s

Sarah Crichton Books

In the groundbreaking work, Thomas Hine examines the American teenager as a social invention shaped by the needs of the twentieth century. With intelligence, insight, imagination, and humorm he traces the culture of youth in America-from the spiritual trials of young Puritans and the vision quests of Native Americans to the media-blitzed consumerism of contempory thirteen-to-nineteen -year-olds. The resulting study is a glorious appreciation of youth that challenges us to confront our sterotypesm, rethink our expectations, and consider anew the lives of those individuals who are blessing, our bane, and our future.

The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Mental Health

A social history of U.S. teenagers focuses attention on this uniquely American social construct, exploring its impact on the nation from the Puritans to the present. 25,000 first printing.

Politics & Social Sciences

Anthropology

William Morrow

Surveys the diversity of products that flooded the consumer markets in the decade from 1954 to 1964 and occassioned the formation of a mass suburbia

Populuxe: The Look and Life of America in the '50s and '60s, from Tailfins and TV Dinners to Barbie Dolls and Fallout Shelters

KNOPF

Explains how concepts of the future have been shaped by past traditions, integrating biblical prophecy and utopian theories with contemporary theory and models of diverse disciplines to provide a unified futuristic vision of "subtle progress"

Facing Tomorrow: What the Future Has Been, What the Future Can Be

Social Sciences

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hine, Thomas. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hine, Thomas

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hine, Thomas. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

I Want That!: How We All Became Shoppers

I Want That!: How We All Became Shoppers

The Total Package: The Evolution and Secret Meanings of Boxes, Bottles, Cans, and Tubes

The Total Package: The Secret History and Hidden Meanings of Boxes, Bottles, Cans, and Other Persuasive Containers

The Great Funk: Falling Apart and Coming Together (on a Shag Rug) in the Seventies

The Great Funk: Styles of the Shaggy, Sexy, Shameless 1970s

The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager

The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager

Populuxe: The Look and Life of America in the '50s and '60s, from Tailfins and TV Dinners to Barbie Dolls and Fallout Shelters

Facing Tomorrow: What the Future Has Been, What the Future Can Be