"This book puts the illegal economy of the German capital during and after World War II into context and provides a new interpretation of Germany's postwar history. The black market, it argues, served as a reference point for the beginnings of the two new German states"--

"The history of consumption has experienced remarkable growth since the 1980s, driven by the interest of scholars in a variety of historical subdisciplines and other social scientific fields. This volume seeks to bring the resultant diversity of specialized approaches into one common discourse....