Carried away or loaded down, love it or hate it, we take shopping for granted as one of the pleasures or burdens of our lives. Yet we are curiously unaware of how we became the consumers that we are.

In this witty and revelatory book, Rachel Bowlby looks at some of the turning points of 20th-century consumer history: when department stores gave way to supermarkets; when packaging made everyday things into objects of desire; when self-service created a close new relationship between shoppers and merchandise. Carried Away looks at arguments about chocolate boxes and bars of soap, at modernist shop windows and hypermarket shelves, at Stepford Wives and Rupert Bears - at the many extraordinary ways that modern shopping and shoppers have been imagined and invented.