Junk: The Brands That Raised Us, the Stuff That Shaped Us, and What We Leave Behind

From the editor-in-chief of the cult-favorite literary magazine Taco Bell Quarterly comes a narrative history of the branded objects that have shaped our culture and identities—from Happy Meal Toys to POGs to Coca-Cola bottles.

Junk: We all have it. Branded collectibles we hoarded as kids, the kind of things Boomer parents beg their grown Millennial children to retrieve from their childhood bedrooms. At one point, we thought if we preserved this stuff—our Teenie Beanie Babies and Pokémon car...