Face Value: The Consumer Revolution and the Colonizing of America

It is rare that one is asked to review a text that has already been hailed as a seminal work. But such is the case with Carson’s Face Value. The book’s genesis was an essay, “The Consumer Revolution in Colonial British America: Why Demand?,” initially published in the 1994 volume Of Consuming Interests.¹ Carson’s meaty chapter quickly became a “cult classic” (xv), as the author rightfully describes. The 1994 collected volume—with contributions by scholars interested in paintings, prints, architecture, clothing, dining, etiquette, shopping, and leisure—powerfully charted the dramatic cultural and material changes that took place in the long eighteenth century across the British Atlantic world, with a focus on elites in the North American colonies. It thus set out an interdisciplinary model that has remained at the core of a now-considerable body of scholarship about consumer taste and behavior. Yet, despite its importance, the volume went out...