This is Backstory. I'm Peter Onoff.

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's Houston's KPRC reporting on the mayhem.

...fists 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, we'll shop around for some answers.

We'll hear how big box retailers like Walmart came to be and about the buyer's 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 Shia Khan Foundation,

the National Endowment for the Humanities,

the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation,

and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation.

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 Ono.

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.

...