Dream Worlds

"The abundance of detail, the use of literary examples, the felicitous turns of phrase, all amplify the argument by creating a strong sense of time and place. Not content just to describe the consequences of the consumer revolution, Rosalind H. Williams also describes the contemporary wonder and bewilderment. . . . A signal contribution to the history of social science."—Priscilla P. Clark, American Journal of Sociology

"An adventurous, learned, and ambitious book. It addresses an issue historians have long ignored, to our general impoverishment. And it introduces, or reintroduces, a series of fascinating social critics absorbed by one of the major social movements of our time."—Neil Harris, Technology and Culture

"Insightful and well-written. . . . Williams' close attention to language and style (in both the narrowest and broadest senses of that word) makes her work particularly interesting and informative."—Barbara T. Cooper, Nineteenth-Century French Studies

"By reading the sociology of Durkheim and Tarde as a gauge of the power of consumerism in the period, Williams illuminates the motives of sociological theorists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. . . . Extremely beneficial for sociologists."—Chandra Mukerji, Contemporary Sociology

"Dream Worlds makes a genuine contribution to understanding how hopes and desires came to be invested in goods."—New York Times Book Review