America at the Mall:
The Cultural Role of a Retail Utopia
by Lisa Scharoun
HF5430.3 .S28 2012
New Arrivals, 2nd floor
If you’ve given your e-mail address to a retailer, I’m sure that you’re being inundated with flyers promising the lowest prices of the season. They act as though you have reasons to shop. Those fun little marketing ploys are trying to pull you into the focus of this week’s featured title: the mall.
Scharoun, graphic design professor at the University of Canberra, takes on the commercial center as the subject of her latest work. She covers the development of the shopping mall in the United States within historical and social contexts. The author details the rise and subsequent decline of the centralized collections of retail outlets, as well as the introduction and growth of the big box stores that contributed to the mall’s popularity. Scharoun utilizes case studies to illustrate the downfall of the mall, as well as provide thoughts on the future of these public spaces.
