This is backstory. I'm Peter Onuf. Every year it's the same.

This was the scene on Black Friday at a Walmart in Texas at the start of the holiday shopping season a few years ago.

Here is Houston's KPRC reporting on the Mayhem.

This was just this flying at a sale on Stafford Shoppers brawled over a television early this morning.

Things got so bad police officers had to intervene.

So how did Americans reach this obsession with consumption?

There are four people lying on top of a flat screen TV box.

Today on Backstory will shop around for some answers.

We'll hear how big box retailers like Walmart came to be and about the buyers remorse of the man who helped invent the modern shopping mall.

In a 1978 speech in London he says I refuse to pay alimony for those bastard developments.

America's consumer culture today on Backstory.

Major funding for Backstory is provided by the ShiaCon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this is Backstory with the American History Guys.

Welcome to the show. I'm Brian Ballot. I'm Peter Onov. And I'm Ed Ayers. Picture this.

Macy's or any department store for that matter at Christmas time.

There's the tinsel, the shining windows, maybe even a line of children waiting their turn to visit with Santa Claus.

Well, in the 1890s gleam and glitz were on display all year round in these establishments.

The department stores then were only a few decades old, but in that span of time, men like Marshall Field and R.H. Macy had transformed their businesses into commercial palaces.

They were opulent and plush with goods, likely to appeal to their target customers.

It's mostly about women. The stores are foreign about women.

This is Elaine Abelson, a historian at the New School in New York.

She says this focus on women shaped the way the stores were laid out. Women's sections dominated.

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