Adam Mack

Associate Professor, Liberal Arts (2007). BA (History) James Madison University; MA, PhD (U.S. History) University of South Carolina. Adam Mack is the author of Sensing Chicago: Noisemakers, Strikebreakers, and Muckrakers (University of Illinois Press, 2015), which won the Award of Superior Achievement by the Illinois State Historical Society. He is currently working on Limitless: Supermarkets and American Abundance, the first cultural history of supermarkets from their founding in the 1930s to 2020. Limitless argues that when shoppers navigated supermarkets, they encountered one of the central myths of American history: the idea that national abundance was inexhaustible and self-renewing, as grocery retailers designed their stores as metaphorical gardens where the overflowing shelves and produce bins inspired awe, wonder, and thrills. Yet the supermarket emerged as a complex cultural symbol, trumpeted by political leaders as evidence of economic freedom and security, even as authors of popular culture and consumer advocates critiqued the problem of equal access, the anxieties of mass choice, and how a popular religion of the marketplace seemed to be taking shape in the grocery aisles. Limitless considers the supermarket across business, food, and environmental history to uncover the cultural significance and social impact of the unending grocery choices that shoppers expect as a feature of modern American life. Adam’s work on supermarkets has previously appeared in the Journal of Social History, Senses & Society, and in the Cultural History of Senses in the Modern Age (Bloomsbury, ed. David Howes).