Frank Trentmann is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London, and directed the £5 million Cultures of Consumption research programme. His last book, Free Trade Nation, won the Whitfield Prize for outstanding historical scholarship and achievement from the Royal Historical Society. He was educated at Hamburg University, the LSE and at Harvard, where he received his PhD. In 2014 he was Moore Distinguished Fellow at Caltech.
I have never encountered a work that so perfectly assesses the influence of shopping on the human experience. Empire of Things is a masterpiece of historical research but also, much more importantly, a delight to read ... This book consistently entertains while it informs. In contrast to so many historians, Trentmann has the ability to write for the multitude without compromising on intellectual rigour. A historian who can communicate is a rare and beautiful thing -- Gerard DeGroot The Times Empire of Things is an extraordinary, Braudelian achievement. It is impossible to imagine that any one person would be able to do this better than Frank Trentmann -- John Brewer, author of 'The Pleasures of the Imagination', winner of the Wolfson History Prize Empire of Things is something to behold; a compelling account of consumerism that revels in its staggering breadth and depth. Frank Trentmann has written a necessary and important book about one of the defining characteristics of our times -- Amanda Foreman, author of 'Georgiana', winner of the Whitbread Prize, and 'A World on Fire' Mad-cap consumption dwarfs population growth and war as the most destructive - and apparently irreversible - source of pressure on the resources of our planet. But, despite tenacious academic efforts, we still do not know why we got into this mess. Empire of Things - comprehensively informed, impeccably scholarly, vividly detailed, delightfully written - is the indispensable starting-point for anyone who wants to understand how in the last half-millennium every effort to restrain consumers failed, while revolutions in consumption kept piling up waste and warnings -- Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, author of 'Millennium' and 'Civilizations' In this magisterial volume, Frank Trentmann takes us through time and across national borders to provide a comprehensive history of how people the world over have come to live with more and more things. Here is the crucial backstory to every consumer exchange -- Lizabeth Cohen, author of 'A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America' A professor of history at Birkbeck college at the University of London, Trentmann covers 600 years of consumer culture. But he also chucks several bricks into one of the most important debates in politics and economics today -- Aditya Chakrabortty Guardian
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