Attention to Retail

A few months ago, the shelves and hanging rods in my closet fell down. Thankfully, my caring contractor installed a new system, but first I had to empty the closet. Being the daughter of a math professor, I did some counting: twenty-five black skirts, thirty black suits, fifteen black dresses, twenty-five cashmere sweaters, twenty white shirts. And, most appallingly, 250 pairs of shoes. I could not avoid the reality of my grotesque abundance — the reason everything fell down. Embarrassed by the episode, I was excited to read Steve Penfold’s The Dominion of Shoppers, hoping to gain insights into what drives shopping and consumption.

Penfold lays out a tidy linear narrative of the growth of shopping in this country, from colonial trading posts and settlement commerce to the birth of department stores, malls, and consumer capitalism. A historian at the University of Toronto, he shows how need shaped convenience, convenience built communities, and communities...