A dryly witty and deeply thoughtful essay collection that delves into everything from the bulk-buying psychology that powers Costco's popularity to what it's like to work seasonal shifts at Ulta Beauty.--Emma Specter "Vogue"
Sly and brilliant...looks not only at the rise of ever more disposable goods but at the relationship we as consumers have with them.--Emma Brockes "Guardian"
[American Bulk] excels at restoring texture to the smooth banalities of our consumer existence. Mester is like a Midwestern Baudrillard....[A] cultural critic of such promise deserves a big welcome mat.--Alexandra Jacobs "New York Times Book Review"
Inquisitive and deeply observed....In a late-stage capitalism heaving with choice, Mester assumes the role of a millennial Virgil with both style and grace....Mester forges a compassionate route through brand-name overabundance to better understand the impulse to consume.-- "Shelf-Awareness"
Paints a vivid portrait of American consumerism....A thought-provoking view of our relationship with consumption and excess.-- "Kirkus Reviews"
American Bulk is composed of some of my favorite nonfiction essays on family, capital, love and dysfunction that I've ever read. It's a refreshing and needed reframing of what all these things mean, today, right now, as the neon haze of fast-food signs flicker from their long-time dominion of the American experience. Mester examines our compulsion to consume with careful incisions that I kept highlighting and coming back to, just to whisper the words to myself to make their clear-eyed cleverness my own.--Arabelle Sicardi, beauty writer and author of the forthcoming The House of Beauty
With compassion, wit, and piercing honesty, Emily Mester delves into our love of consumerism--and what our desires say about who we want to become. Bravely personal, incisively critical, American Bulk is a report on our national psyche and a captivating family story.--Larissa Pham, author of National Book Critics Circle John Leonard finalist Pop Song
A funny, incisive, humane dispatch from a brilliant new voice in nonfiction. American Bulk had me cringing, laughing, and yes, even tearing up as it drew the contours of my own, and our national, appetites. I remain amazed that a book so clear-eyed in its scrutiny of our capitalistic perversity left me with so much hope.--Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism