Material culture in America : understanding everyday life / Helen Sheumaker and Shirley Teresa Wajda, editors.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 485-536) and index.

Adolescence -- Adulthood -- Advertisements and advertising -- Aesthetic movement -- African America -- African American foodways -- Agricultural architecture -- Agricultural fairs and expositions -- Agricultural work and labor -- Air and space transportation -- Alternative foodways -- Animals -- Anthropology and archaeology -- Antiques -- Apartments, tenements, and flats -- Architectural history and American architecture -- Art deco -- Art history and American art -- Art nouveau -- Arts and crafts movement -- Attics -- Auctions -- Automobile camping (auto-camping) -- Automobiles and automobility -- Base metalwork and metalware -- Bathrooms -- Bedrooms -- Boardinghouses -- Bodily cleanliness and hygiene -- Body modification -- Books -- Burial grounds, cemeteries, and grave markers -- Cellars and basements -- Ceramics -- Childhood -- Children's dress -- Children's material culture -- Children's toys -- Child's body -- Chippendale style -- Cities and towns -- City parks -- Civic architecture -- Classical revival (neoclassicism) -- Collecting and collections -- Colonial revival -- Commercial architecture -- Commercial food venues -- Commercials -- Commodity -- Community -- Company towns -- Computers and information technology -- Consumerism and consumption -- Cosmetics, toiletries, perfumes, and colognes -- Cultural geography -- Cultural history -- Cultural studies -- Decorative arts -- Department stores -- Design history and American design -- Dining rooms -- Disability and disability studies -- Domestic architecture -- Dower right -- Dress, accessories, and fashion -- Eastlake style -- Education and schooling -- Empire style -- Ephemera -- Ethnicity -- Etiquette and manners -- Factory and industrial work and labor -- Fakes -- Fanzines -- Federal style -- Flea markets -- Floor coverings -- Folklore and folklife -- Food and foodways -- Funerals -- Funerary (sepulchral) monuments -- Furniture -- Games -- Gay consumerism -- Gender -- General (country) stores -- Georgian style -- Gifts and gift giving -- Glass -- Gothic revival -- Graphic design -- Grocery stores -- Halls -- Handicraft and artisanship -- Heirlooms -- Highways and national highway system -- Historic preservation -- Holidays and commemorations -- Homeless residences -- House, home, and domesticity -- Houses of worship (ecclesiastical architecture) -- Human aging and the aged -- Human body -- Illicit pleasures and venues -- Industrial design -- Interior design -- International style -- Junk, scrap, and salvage -- Kitchens and pantries -- Land and landscape -- Land transportation -- Leisure, recreation, and amusements -- Light, lighting devices, and lighting systems -- Literary studies and American literature -- Living rooms

"You can tell a lot about people by looking at their stuff - the things they make, process, and value. That is the idea that drives the field of material culture, in which scholars explore the meaning of objects of a given society. This book is the first encyclopedia to look at the study of material culture and what it reveals about life in the United States."--BOOK JACKET.