“Never Gonna Give You Up: How Plastic Seduced America,” The Guardian, June 21, 2019

“What’s in Your Microwave Oven” — Opinion page, New York Times, April 15, 2017

“Snake Oil Revisited: Household Medicine and the Condescension of Posterity” – from the Organization of American Historians blog Process: A Blog for American History, March 21, 2017

“Toward a History of Trashmaking,” in R. D’Arienzo and C. Younès, Recycler L’Urbain: Pour une Écologie des Milieux Habités (Métis Presses, 2014)

“Complications and Complexities: Reflections on Twentieth-Century European Recycling,” Contemporary European History, 22, 3 (2013).

“A Historical Herbal: Household Medicine and Herbal Commerce in a Developing Consumer Society,” in Uwe Spiekerman & Hartmut Berghoff, Decoding Modern Consumer Societies (Palgrave Macmillan,
2012)

“Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit,” in Ricky Solinger, ed., Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit exhibition catalog (Bennington Museum, 2008)

“Commodifying Lydia Pinkham: The Woman, The Company, The Medicine,” American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Clinical Review, July/August 2007.

“Sponsorship and Snake Oil: Medicine Shows and Public Culture,” in Marguerite Shaffer, Public Culture: Diversity, Democracy, and Community in the United States (Penn Press, 2006)

“Commodifying Lydia Pinkham: A Woman, A Medicine, and a Company in a Developing Consumer Culture,” Working Paper #32, ESRC/AHRB Cultures of Consumption Programme, online

“Woolworth to Wal-Mart: Mass Merchandising and the Changing Culture of Consumption,” in Nelson Lichtenstein, Wal-Mart: The Face of 21st Century Capitalism (New Press, 2005)

“The Alien Past: Consumer Culture in Historical Perspective,” Journal of Consumer Policy, 26, December, 2003.

“Making Consumption Conspicuous: Transgressive Topics Go Mainstream,” Technology & Culture, October, 2002.

“Ecology and Apocalypse,” in Norbert Finzsch and Hermann Wellenreuther, eds., Visions of the Future in Germany and America (Oxford: Berg, 2001)

“A Social History of Trash,” Orion: People and Nature,  Autumn 2000.

“Customer to Consumer: The New Consumption in the Progressive Era,” OAH Magazine of History, Spring 1999.

“From Walden to Wal-Mart: Consumers and their Critics,” in Michael Brower and Warren Leon, The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices (Harmony Books, 1999)

“Leftovers and Litter: Food Waste in Late 20th Century America,” The Yulee Lectures: Six Years of Domestic Controversies (Women’s Studies Program, George Washington University, 1997)

“Consumption,” Encyclopedia of the United States in the 20th Century, ed. by Stanley I. Kutler (New York: Scribner’s, 1995)

“The Smile That Pays: The Culture of Traveling Salesmen, 1880-1920,” in James B. Gilbert, The Mythmaking Frame of Mind: Social Imagination and American Culture (Belmont, California:
Wadsworth, 1992)

“Housework,” The Readers’ Companion to American History, edited by Eric Foner and John A. Garraty.  (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991)

“Chain Stores.”  Harvard Business School case 0‑386‑127 (revised), 1985.