Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First

Frank Trentmann

Penguin Books Limited, Jan 28, 2016 - History - 880 pages

The epic history of consumption, and the goods that have transformed our lives over the past 600 years

What we consume has become the defining feature of our lives: our economies live or die by spending, we are treated more as consumers than workers, and even public services are presented to us as products in a supermarket. In this monumental study, acclaimed historian Frank Trentmann unfolds the extraordinary history that has shaped our material world, from late Ming China, Renaissance Italy and the British Empire to the present. Astonishingly wide-ranging and richly detailed, Empire of Things explores how we have come to live with so much more, how this changed the course of history, and the global challenges we face as a result.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - mcdenis - LibraryThing

This is a monumental work that describes what we value and accumulate as “stuff”from the 15th Century to the 21st Century with statistics, charts and copious footnotes. Trentmann debunks many of the ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - expatscot - LibraryThing

Full of fascinating little facts and well worth the read. Maybe better in the first and last phases and a little too polemic in the middle, but certainly should be on the list of anyone with an interest in how we live today and how we got here.

About the author

Frank Trentmann is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London, and directed the £5 million Cultures of Consumption research programme. His last book, Free Trade Nation, won the Whitfield Prize for outstanding historical scholarship and achievement from the Royal Historical Society. He was educated at Hamburg University, the LSE and at Harvard, where he received his PhD. In 2014 he was Moore Distinguished Fellow at Caltech.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First
• Author: Frank Trentmann
• Publisher: Penguin Books Limited, 2016
• ISBN: 0241198402, 9780241198407
• Length: 880 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Economic History; History / Social History