The American Department Store Transformed, 1920-1960

Drawing on hundreds of newly available, top-secret KGB and party Central Committee documents, historian Matthew E. Lenoe reexamines the 1934 assassination of Leningrad party chief Sergei Kirov. Joseph Stalin used the killing as the pretext to unleash the Great Terror that decimated the Communist elite in 1937-1938; these previously unavailable documents raise new questions about whether Stalin himself ordered the murder, a subject of speculation since 1938.

The book includes translations of 125 documents from the various investigations of the Kirov murder, allowing readers to reach their own conclusions about Stalin's involvement in the assassination.

"No one knows more about the retail landscape of America than Richard Longstreth, and this is his most important contribution to date. Longstreth deftly combines architectural history, business history, and urban history to create a compelling story and a work of reference that will be the basis for scholarly exploration for many years to come." Robert Bruegmann, author of Sprawl: A Compact History

"Through a wonderful blend of design, business, and urban history, Richard Longstreth superbly demonstrates that the retail landscape in twentieth-century America has been a constantly shifting one. Anyone who has ever been dazzled by a department store will likewise be enticed by this book." Lizabeth Cohen, author of A. Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America

"Superb!...I simply cannot contain my respect and enthusiasm for the achievement that this book represents. A great metropolitan institution has found the historian it deserves." Robert Fishman, author of Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia

"A work of prodigious scholarship that is clearly written and profusely illustrated, Richard Longstreth's new book is a monumental achievement, a major contribution not only to the history of retailing in the United States but also to the history of the built environment in the twentieth century." Robert M. Fogelson, author of Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950

"Original, exhaustively researched, and a very substantial contribution. There is no directly comparable work; this will become the authoritative source on department stores in this period." Michael Holleran, author of Boston's "Changeful Times": Origins of Preservation and Planning in America

"The department store encompassed much that was exciting and much that was unsettling in twentieth-century America. Only Richard Longstreth has the broad vision, deep knowledge, and love of his subject to give this central institution its due. The American Department Store Transformed confirms Longstreth's standing as our premier interpreter of the twentieth-century commercial city." Dell Upton, author of Architecture in the United States

Matthew E. Lenoe is Associate Professor of History at the University of Rochester. He is the author of Closer to the Masses: Stalinist Culture, Social Revolution, and Soviet Newspapers.