Catalog: The Illustrated History of Mail Order Shopping -- $ 35.00| Buy it here

We’re all familiar with mail order catalogs, and, yes, they do clog up the recycling bin, but have you ever thought about how they are documenting everything from our fashion to food styles? Catalogs from decades ago chart how we lived by what we bought, and this book gives an overview of the catalog’s history, from the first Montgomery Ward book to the most recent companies. My favorite: an overview of 45 years of the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book (what luxury at the time) and seeing celebrities model clothes in their pre-famous days. The background stories of how some companies began are quite interesting as well.

In Catalog: The Illustrated History of Mail Order Shopping, Robin Cherry traces the timeline of these snapshots from American history and discovers along the way how we dressed, decorated our houses, worked, played, and got around. From corsets to bell-bottoms, from baby-doll dresses and Doc Martens all the way to iPods, the history of these catalogs is the history of our lives and our culture…Insightful historical commentary places these catalogs in their social context, making this book a visual pleasure and a historically important piece of Americana.

$35.00, Buy it here.

[posted by katie on January 22, 2009 at 2:49 pm. Copyright BLTD LLC, 2009.]

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