Table of Contents:
  • Behind the crisis : approaches to consumer culture and economics. Defining consumer culture
  • Road to the crisis : freedom, individualism, equality, and a neoliberal economy
  • Behind the post-crisis fury : consumer culture and its discontents
  • Neoliberalism and the American novel : history and method. The US economy and consumer culture in literature of the pre-crisis neoliberal period
  • Notes on method : theorizing the intersection of literature, the economy, and consumer culture
  • Economics, inequality and consumption : four post-crisis novels. Poverty and divisions : Elizabeth Strout's My name is Lucy Barton
  • The burden of the American Dream : Philipp Meyer's American rust
  • Wealth, power, and isolation : Sophie McManus' The Unfortunates
  • Living in the ruins : William Gibson's The Peripheral
  • Conclusions: Three steps forward, two steps back.