Store Wars: Shopkeepers and the Culture of Mass Marketing, 1890-1939

Store Wars: Shopkeepers and the Culture of Mass Marketing, 1890-1939. By David Monod Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 1996. vii + 438 pp. Notes, Index. Cloth, $55.00, ISBN 0-8020-0650-7; paper, $22.95, ISBN 0-8020-7604-1.

Reviewed by Richard S. Tedlow

This is a difficult book to evaluate in a brief review because both its strengths and its shortcomings are complicated. Generally speaking, Store Wars makes its greatest contribution when it takes the reader down to ground level and shows him or her the differences among Canadian retailers in various product lines (e.g., pharmacists versus grocers) and serving various market segments (e.g., the "shoestring …