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tomstbr's review against another edition
5.0
Overarching view of how consumerism has shaped our world and been shaped by our actions. Really quite insightful and highly recommend.
usernamemustbeunique's review against another edition
5.0
This is a well-written, information dense book on the history of things that gives its readers more than they would expect. It’s a hidden gem I would recommend to direct and indirect fans of material history.
finhatfield's review against another edition
4.0
This book is overall very good. Sometimes, it takes an impressive middle ground argument, but the authors passion for objects was infectious. Although, like any history of this scale, there are some issues with how much it focuses on each type of material good and geographical area. However, there were multiple points in which I felt like the author could have easily taken the easy way out, focusing mostly on European history with token handwaves towards the rest of the world, and he didn't. Personally, I feel like I would have loved to see the material costs of consumption weaved into the other chapters rather than lumped together at the end. I could tell from at least the halfway point that was where the book was going, and there were times in which it felt very successful and others where it was detrimental to the argument being made.
I'm glad that I've read this book in concert with other texts, it definitely increased my appreciation for all of the topics.
I'm glad that I've read this book in concert with other texts, it definitely increased my appreciation for all of the topics.
houlette's review against another edition
3.0
Chock full of interesting details, but ultimately not cohesive enough to keep this massive tome from being overwhelming.
losthitsu's review against another edition
4.0
Wouldn't have guessed it from the title but this was refreshingly nuanced and without a trace of the moralising tone and scaremongering most consumerism discourse seems to be keen on. It also doesn't happen very often that a book with such a global outlook actually manages to correctly interpret the history of such an often-forgotten part of the world as Eastern Europe. I wish the chapters had a bit more structure and offered brief conclusions, as particularly the earlier history felt rather anecdote-heavy and I found it difficult to pay attention - this might have to do with the fact that this is not the most suitable format for an audiobook (although the narrator's performance was stellar - full marks and not only because his German pronunciation was really good).
ashepard11's review against another edition
2.0
Lots of good info, but so dry. Too much of a slog to read all the way through
nghia's review against another edition
2.0
This book simply tries to do too much. A history of every non-essential thing in every country across five hundred years. In the introduction Trentmann writes "My intention has been to follow major themes across time and space, not to try to be encyclopaedic." But the resulting book very much comes across as "encyclopaedic". How can it not when it has frequent passages such as this one from 1609 listing the Chinese goods for sale to the Spanish in Manila.
And that's hardly an isolated occurrence. I just felt...weary...reading this. I struggled to see the forest for the trees, constantly buried in an avalanche of factoids, such as
I struggled to discern what the "major themes across time and space" were...other than the obvious "once people started having more than subsistence incomes they were able to start affording other things, what those things were was a complicated contingency of history and geography".
This isn't to say the book is terrible or has nothing interesting to say. Simply that the chaff outweighed the wheat for me. For every section on how "cotton [...] was the first truly global mass consumer good" there we be sections that retread the Great Divergence (between Europe and Asia/rest of the world) debate without adding much.
To some extent that is unavoidable -- how could such an all-encompassing topic like "the things we spend money on" not end-up touching on colonialism, post-colonialism, industrialization, religion, feminism, child labor, and so much more. So even as I disliked Trentmann's totalizing approach, I also struggled to see how he could have meaningfully reduced it without gutting the story and turning into another overly-simplistic "how coffee changed the world" type book.
At the end I felt like Trentmann's main message was, "Wow, everything is just vastly more complicated and interrelated than you can imagine and even 800+ pages I can only scrape the surface". But...at that point I begin to think the book has set itself an impossible task: this kind of book is doomed to failure, I think. The topic is just too broad.
white cotton cloth of different kinds and qualities, for all uses . . . many bed ornaments, hangings, coverlets, and tapestries of embroidered velvet; . . . tablecloths, cushions, and carpets . . . copper kettles . . . little boxes and writing-cases; beds, tables, chairs, and gilded benches, painted in many figures and patterns; . . . numberless other gewgaws and ornaments of little value and worth, which are esteemed among the Spaniards; besides a quantity of fine crockery of all kinds; . . . beads of all kinds . . . and rarities – which, did I refer to them all, I would never finish, nor have sufficient paper for it
And that's hardly an isolated occurrence. I just felt...weary...reading this. I struggled to see the forest for the trees, constantly buried in an avalanche of factoids, such as
In the early seventeenth century, for example, men and women in Bondorf and Gebersheim, two villages in Württemberg, Germany, owned 3 and 12 articles of clothing respectively. A century later, the number had shot up to 16 and 27 pieces. By 1800, it had doubled again.
I struggled to discern what the "major themes across time and space" were...other than the obvious "once people started having more than subsistence incomes they were able to start affording other things, what those things were was a complicated contingency of history and geography".
This isn't to say the book is terrible or has nothing interesting to say. Simply that the chaff outweighed the wheat for me. For every section on how "cotton [...] was the first truly global mass consumer good" there we be sections that retread the Great Divergence (between Europe and Asia/rest of the world) debate without adding much.
To some extent that is unavoidable -- how could such an all-encompassing topic like "the things we spend money on" not end-up touching on colonialism, post-colonialism, industrialization, religion, feminism, child labor, and so much more. So even as I disliked Trentmann's totalizing approach, I also struggled to see how he could have meaningfully reduced it without gutting the story and turning into another overly-simplistic "how coffee changed the world" type book.
At the end I felt like Trentmann's main message was, "Wow, everything is just vastly more complicated and interrelated than you can imagine and even 800+ pages I can only scrape the surface". But...at that point I begin to think the book has set itself an impossible task: this kind of book is doomed to failure, I think. The topic is just too broad.
wanserjc's review against another edition
4.0
A large, broad-brush look at changes in our consumption of material goods over the last few hundred years. Worldwide in scope, and providing a historical perspective lacking in much contemporary thought about affluence, economic models, and environmental consequences, it's a very useful antidote to simplistic answers. It is also intense, and at nearly 700 pages of text, a bear to get through.