Waste and want : a social history of trash / Susan Strasser.
Material type: TextPublication details: New York, N.Y. : Henry Holt and Company, 1999Edition: 1st Owl Books edDescription: 355 p. : ill. ; 24 cmISBN:- 0805065121
- 363.728 STR
Item type | Current library | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Standard Loan | LSAD Library Main Collection | 363.728 STR (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 39002000384017 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
An unprecedented look at that most commonplace act of everyday life-throwing things out-and how it has transformed American society.
Susan Strasser's pathbreaking histories of housework and the rise of the mass market have become classics in the literature of consumer culture. Here she turns to an essential but neglected part of that culture-the trash it produces-and finds in it an unexpected wealth of meaning.
Before the twentieth century, streets and bodies stank, but trash was nearly nonexistent. With goods and money scarce, almost everything was reused. Strasser paints a vivid picture of an America where scavenger pigs roamed the streets, swill children collected kitchen garbage, and itinerant peddlers traded manufactured goods for rags and bones. Over the last hundred years, however, Americans have become hooked on convenience, disposability, fashion, and constant technological change-the rise of mass consumption has led to waste on a previously unimaginable scale.
Lively and colorful, Waste and Want recaptures a hidden part of our social history, vividly illustrating that what counts as trash depends on who's counting, and that what we throw away defines us as much as what we keep.
Originally published: New York : Metropolitan Books, 1999.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [295]-338) and index.
Table of contents provided by Syndetics
- Toward a History of Trashmaking (p. 3)
- Chapter 1 The Stewardship of Objects (p. 21)
- Chapter 2 Any Rags, Any Bones (p. 69)
- Chapter 3 Trash and Reuse Transformed (p. 111)
- Chapter 4 Having and Disposing in the New Consumer Culture (p. 161)
- Chapter 5 Making Do and Buying New in Hard Times (p. 203)
- Chapter 6 Use It Up! Wear It Out! Get in the Scrap! (p. 229)
- Chapter 7 Good Riddance (p. 265)
- Notes (p. 295)
- Acknowledgments (p. 339)
- Index (p. 343)
Excerpt provided by Syndetics
Author notes provided by Syndetics
Susan Strasser is the author of the award winning "Never Done" & "Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market." Her articles have appeared in "The New York Times," "The Washington Post," & "The Nation." A professor of history at the University of Delaware, she lives near Washington, D.C.(Bowker Author Biography)