"Wendy Woloson considers seriously the detritus of everyday consumerist Western lives--a category that comprises objects that function as art, jokes, tools, embodiments of fantasies, cultural signifiers, status symbols, and much more; a.k.a. "crap." She seeks to use these possessions to illuminate our society, culture, and economy. Why do we--as individuals and as a culture--have these things? Where do they come from, and why do we want them? In her...

This book explores the minds of Victorians by examining some of their most distinctive and fascinating creations. Featuring five once-prominent home furnishings, he reconstructs a vanished culture and demonstrates the centrality of the artifact to historical understanding as he considers these objects in relations to issues of class, gender, and place.