Non-academic history – ‘public history’ – is a complex, dynamic entity which impacts on the popular understanding of the past at all levels.
In Consuming History, Jerome de Groot examines how society consumes history and how a reading of this consumption can help us understand popular culture and issues of representation. This book analyzes a wide range of cultural entities – from computer games to daytime television, from blockbuster fictional narratives such as Da Vinci Code to DNA genealogical tools – to analyze how history works in contemporary popular culture.

Demon Seed

Dean Koontz - Demon Seed

In the privacy of her own home, and against her will, Susan Harris will experience an inconceivable act of terror. She will become the object of the ultimate computer's consuming obsession: to learn everything there is to know about human flesh.

Consuming Angels - Advertising and Victorian Women

Timid and retiring, the Victorian housewife was an "angel in the house," or so says the stereotype. But when this angel picked up a popular magazine--The Lady, for instance--she saw in its advertisements images of Grecian goddesses, women warriors, queens, actresses, adventurers. These arrestingly sexual and surprisingly powerful images are the subject of Consuming Angels, a major examination of how Victorian ads shaped social values. Stylishly written and featuring 73 reproductions, this book shows how ads used the hedonistic aspects of Victorian culture to sell their wares, glorified consumerism, and mythologized the middle-class life.

This text seeks to overcome an imbalance in traditional consumer behavior texts by incorporating biological, sociological, and anthropological theories into the core of the work. The aim is to provide a challenging and interesting book which addresses important issues such as time, space and consumption; consuming needs and values, semiotics, identity, the body, eating disorders and drug-taking. The text looks at consuming behavior in the context of...