Barbarian Architecture: Thorstein Veblen's Chicago

A richly visual architectural history and theory of modernity that reexamines Thorstein Veblen’s classic text The Theory of the Leisure Class through the lens of Chicago in the 1890s.

An important critic of modern culture, American economist Thorstein Veblen is best known for the concept of “conspicuous consumption,” the ostentatious and wasteful display of goods in the service of social status—a term he coined in his 1899 classic The Theory of the Leisure Class. In the field of architectura...