This fascinating volume draws on papers from a 2013 international conference on World War II civilian consumption, jointly organized by the German Historical Institutes in London, Moscow, and Washington, D.C. Reflecting its origin, The Consumer on the Home Front provides a sweeping comparative perspective on the important topic of modern mass consumerism. By bringing together scholarship on Germany, Japan, and Russia, as well as the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, the editors sought to do more than make simple comparisons. Instead, their volume sheds light on the transnational exchanges taking place in the period immediately leading up to World War II, during the conflict, and into the postwar era. Although focused on vastly different consumer experiences and political contexts, the chapters’ authors reflect on other contributions in the volume, making explicit the interrelations of these six nations at war. As one of its contributors, Uwe Spiekermann, notes in his chapter on the German food industry, the term “home front” serves as a “cipher for looking more closely at the impact of war on people and economies” (p. 311).

Organized in four parts, the essays address the topics of food, advertising and the media, fashion and the media, and the wartime impact on postwar mass consumption. Each section moves across national boundaries in a way the editors hope will transcend the historiography of the different home fronts. Despite opposing political ideologies and vastly different national contexts, the history of modern consumer society was “a transnational experience from the beginning,” as one of the volume editors, Hartmut Berghoff, argues. World War II “was not a break in the development of modern consumer society but an integral part of its rise,” he argues (p. 24). The essays gathered here make explicit the global nature of this rise. By pairing essays on Nazi Germany and Communist countries with work on liberal democracies, the volume greatly contributes to recent scholarship on the importance of mass consumption during this period. While many important differences remain between nations’ experiences with mass consumption, the similarities that emerge in this volume are striking. For example, World War I shaped each nation's response to civilian consumer issues. Seeking to avoid the hardships and conflicts that emerged then, the major powers paid attention to civilian consumption during World War II. Moreover, similar solutions to consumer problems were attempted, with state intervention and public consumption increasing during and after the war.

Addressing food, part 1 demonstrates how the organization and experience of subsistence and survival varied widely between belligerents. Sheldon Garon's story of food insecurity in wartime Japan and Wendy Z. Goldman's account of hunger, inequality, and corruption in Soviet wartime food provisioning contrast with Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska's picture of successful British food policy. Although scarcity is a major theme in this section, Nicole Petrick-Felber's essay on Nazi tobacco consumption looks at luxuries deemed essential for morale and analyzes the motives behind the regime's regulatory efforts.

Part 2 explores the themes of diversion, compensation, and postwar promises within advertising and the media. British, Japanese, and German advertisers sought to influence consumer demand within the constraints of a war economy. Each chapter demonstrates varying degrees of state involvement as businesses in these countries attempted to survive the war sometimes without products or customers. Across national boundaries, advertising and media were turned to political ends. As Annika A. Culver shows, Japanese department store sales campaigns were keyed to military victories; Pamela E. Swett documents how German companies provided the Nazi dictatorship with free propaganda that legitimized the conflict; David Clampin shows how British advertising aided the Labour Party's rise by fostering “the perception that well-being was engendered by the acquisition of consumer goods” (p. 140).

Fashion and the media is the subject of part 3, with two essays that look at German media and film between 1939 and 1943 and Soviet wartime fashion, by Mila Gavena and Sergey Zhuravlev, respectively. Here, a key question is the degree to which fashion and media in these nations were integrated into international trends.

Part 4 deals with the impact of World War II on mass consumption in the late 1940s and 1950s. Here, the question is the extent to which wartime home front experiences were transformative, or the degree to which there was continuity with prewar consumer patterns, policies, and institutions. Again, the fascinating variety of experiences between different nations is highlighted by the volume's comparative approach. Bettina Liverant finds Canada's postwar plan following a middle path between British austerity and American consumerism. Jan Logemann, also one of the volume editors, writes about the influence of European émigrés Kurt Lewin, Paul Lazarsfeld, and George Katona on American wartime consumption. Spiekermann's essay on the German experience reveals links between consumption on the military front and on the civilian home front. Writing on the Soviet Union, Oleg Khlevniuk identifies a growing gap between consumer expectations, which increased after victory, and the harsh reality of continued shortages. And finally, an interesting conclusion provided by Frank Trentmann explores the impact of war on consumer societies, focusing on the ways in which it transformed the public-private dynamics of consumption.

The international scope of this volume should bring it a broad audience. Business historians will find much of interest here. Many of the chapters look closely at business organizations and the ways in which they interacted with government agencies and state institutions during and after the war. While only two chapters deal explicitly with the North American experience, the volume will especially be of value to historians of American history who might wish to broaden their knowledge of the global experience of the home front.