Shopping Mall (Object Lessons)

Shopping Mall (Object Lessons)

<p>Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.</p><p>The mall near Mat thew Newton's childhood home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was one of the state's first enclosed shopping malls. Like all malls in their heyday, this one was a climate-controlled pleasuredome where strangers converged. It boasted waterfalls, fish ponds, an indoor ice skating rink larger than Rockefeller Center's, and a monolithic clock tower illuminated year-round beneath a canopy of interconnected skylights. It also became the backdrop for filmmaker George A. Romero's zombie opus <i>Dawn of the Dead</i>. </p><p>Part memoir and part case study, <i>Shopping Mall</i> examines the modern mythology of the mall and shows that, more than a collection of stores, it is a place of curiosity, ritual, and fantasy.</p><p>Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in <i>The Atlantic.</i></p>