Financing the American dream: a cultural history of consumer credit
- Princeton Princeton University Press 1999
- xv, 377 p.
Once there was a golden age of American thrift, when citizens lived sensibly within their means and worked hard to stay out of debt. The growing availability of credit in this century, however, has brought those days to an end--undermining traditional moral virtues such as prudence, diligence, and the delay of gratification while encouraging reckless consumerism. Or so we commonly believe. In this engaging and thought-provoking book, Lendol Calder shows that this conception of the past is in fact a myth. (http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6555.html)
9780691074559
Consumer credit --United States --History Consumption (Economics) --United States --History