Grant McCracken is a member of The MIT Laboratory for Branding Cultures and a visiting scholar at McGill University and author of several books.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. History
One. The Making of Modern Consumption
Two. "Ever Dearer in Our Thoughts": Patina and the Representation of Status before and after the Eighteenth Century
Three. Lois Roget: Curatorial Consumer in a Modern World
Part II. Theory
Four. Clothing as Language: An Object Lesson in the Study of the Expressive Properties of Material Culture
Five. Meaning Manufacture and Movement in the World of Goods
Part III. Practice
Six. Consumer Goods, Gender Construction, and a Rehabilitated Trickle-down Theory
Seven. The Evocative Power of Things: Consumer Goods and the Preservation of Hopes and Ideals
Eight. Diderot Unitites and the Diderot Effect: Neglected Cultural Aspects of Consumption
Nine. Consumption, Change, and Continuity
Notes
References
Index

Grant McCracken is a member of The MIT Laboratory for Branding Cultures and a visiting scholar at McGill University and author of several books.