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The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Toward the Consumer Society in America 1875-1940
"For centuries," Daniel Horowitz writes, "Americans have worried about the consequences of comfort, affluence, and luxury. They have often greeted a rising standard of living with a mixture of pleasure and disquiet. Anxious about the impact of ease on the commitment to hard work, savings, and self-control, and ambivalent about the implications of increased wealth, many in the United States have expressed concern about new levels and kinds of consumption. This book traces the development of such misgivings." "Clear, judicious, thorough and unfailingly interesting; a solid work on a most significant topic."― Technology and Culture . "An illuminating study...intelligent and perceptive...full of interesting insights."― Reviews in American History . "Daniel Horowitz has made creative use of diverse sources in order to integrate several fascinating strands of American cultural history.... His findings have broad implications...."― American Historical Review . "An imaginative and carefully researched study.... The Morality of Spending accomplishes what it sets out to do: not a sociology of money but a history of ideas about money."― Journal of Social History .
288 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1985
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About the author
Daniel Horowitz
59 books15 followersDaniel Horowitz is a historian whose work focuses on the history of consumer culture and social criticism in the U.S. At Smith College (1989–2012), he directed the American studies program for 18 years and was, for a time, Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman Professor of American Studies. Before coming to Smith, he taught at Scripps College in Claremont, California (1972–88), where he eventually was Nathaniel Wright Stephenson Professor of History and Biography.
For 2010–11, he was the Ray A. Billington Visiting Professor of U.S. History at Occidental College and Huntington Library. He has also taught at the University of Michigan (1983–84), Carleton College (1980), Harvard (1964–66 and 1967–70), Skidmore College (1970–72), and Wellesley College (1966–67).
Among the honors Horowitz has received are two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and one from the National Humanities Center; an appointment as Honorary Visiting Fellow at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Harvard University; and for 2008–09 he received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 1997, the American Studies Association awarded him the Constance Rourke Prize for his 1996 article “Rethinking Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique: Labor Union Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America,” American Quarterly. The American Studies Association awarded him its 2003 Mary C. Turpie Prize for “outstanding abilities and achievement in American Studies teaching, advising, and program development at the local or regional level.”
Among his publications are The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875–1940 (1985), selected by Choice as one of the outstanding academic books of 1985; Vance Packard and American Social Criticism (1994); Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique: The American Left, The Cold War, Modern Feminism (1998); The Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1939–1979 (2004), selected by Choice as one of the outstanding books of 2004 and winner of the Eugene M. Kayden Prize for the best book published in the humanities in 2004 by a university press; Consuming Pleasures: Intellectuals and Popular Culture in the Postwar World (2012); On the Cusp: Yale College Class of 1960 and a World on the Verge of Change (2015); and Happier?: The History of A Cultural Movement That Aspired to Transform America (2018).
His book on the Reality TV show “Shark Tank” will be published by University of North Carolina Press in late 2020. He has edited two books for Bedford: Suburban Life in the 1950s: Selections from Vance Packard’s Status Seekers (1995) and Jimmy Carter and the Energy Crisis of the 1970: The “Crisis of Confidence” Speech of July 15, 1979.
For 2010–11, he was the Ray A. Billington Visiting Professor of U.S. History at Occidental College and Huntington Library. He has also taught at the University of Michigan (1983–84), Carleton College (1980), Harvard (1964–66 and 1967–70), Skidmore College (1970–72), and Wellesley College (1966–67).
Among the honors Horowitz has received are two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and one from the National Humanities Center; an appointment as Honorary Visiting Fellow at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Harvard University; and for 2008–09 he received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 1997, the American Studies Association awarded him the Constance Rourke Prize for his 1996 article “Rethinking Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique: Labor Union Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America,” American Quarterly. The American Studies Association awarded him its 2003 Mary C. Turpie Prize for “outstanding abilities and achievement in American Studies teaching, advising, and program development at the local or regional level.”
Among his publications are The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875–1940 (1985), selected by Choice as one of the outstanding academic books of 1985; Vance Packard and American Social Criticism (1994); Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique: The American Left, The Cold War, Modern Feminism (1998); The Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1939–1979 (2004), selected by Choice as one of the outstanding books of 2004 and winner of the Eugene M. Kayden Prize for the best book published in the humanities in 2004 by a university press; Consuming Pleasures: Intellectuals and Popular Culture in the Postwar World (2012); On the Cusp: Yale College Class of 1960 and a World on the Verge of Change (2015); and Happier?: The History of A Cultural Movement That Aspired to Transform America (2018).
His book on the Reality TV show “Shark Tank” will be published by University of North Carolina Press in late 2020. He has edited two books for Bedford: Suburban Life in the 1950s: Selections from Vance Packard’s Status Seekers (1995) and Jimmy Carter and the Energy Crisis of the 1970: The “Crisis of Confidence” Speech of July 15, 1979.
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December 8, 2016
Dan Horowitz is such a good historian. So solid, insightful, measured, and useful: if only more studies were written like his. Impossible not to learn something; probable that you'll learn much, including how to research and write better histories.
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