Meet me by the fountain : an inside history of the mall

Summary: Few places have been as nostalgized, or as maligned, as malls. Since their birth in the 1950s, they have loomed large as temples of commerce, the agora of the suburbs. In their prime, they proved a powerful draw for creative thinkers such as Joan Didion, Ray Bradbury, and George Romero, who understood the mall's appeal as both critics and consumers. Yet today, amid the aftershocks of financial crises and a global pandemic, as well as the rise of online retail, the dystopian husk of an abandoned shopping center has become one of our era's defining images. Conventional wisdom holds that the mall is dead. But what was the mall, really? And have rumors of its demise been greatly exaggerated?

Record details

ISBN: 9781635576023 (hardcover)
Physical Description: print
310 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm
Publisher: New York : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022.
Copyright: ©2022

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Introduction: Why we go to the mall -- Every day will be a perfect shopping day -- The garden -- The mall and the public -- Make shopping beside the point -- Whose mall is it anyway? -- Dawn of the Dead mall -- The postapocalyptic mall -- Conclusion: The mall abroad.