Primary Source Databases at the Newman Library

Consumer Culture

"We read advertisements...to discover and enlarge our desires. We are always ready--even eager--to discover, from the announcement of a new product, what we have all along wanted without really knowing it", Daniel J. Boorstin

The rise of industrialism in the first half of the nineteenth-century, meant that for the first time goods could be mass-produced. From the small town farmer to the city dweller, consumerism became an obsession. The beginning of advertising agencies by the late nineteenth-century meant that this new profession would present their message in a way to influence the consumer. Advertising has transformed the American economy, society and culture.

Studying Financial History

The following websites provide primary materials for the study of financial history.

About Me

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Jessica Wagner Webster
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Newman Library, 523