Mark H. Lytle is Lyford Patterson and Mary Gray Edwards Professor of History Emeritus at Bard College where he helped to found and direct the Environmental and Urban Studies and American Studies Programs. Since joining the History Education Project at Yale in the 1970s, he has been active in promoting the quality of teaching and learning history. His work in diplomatic, environmental, and cultural studies inspired the idea of consumerism as the organizing principle both in the United States and in its sense of mission abroad.

"Mark H. Lytle's All-Consuming Nation is not a traditional textbook. He frames the past through issues of consumption, capitalism, and the multiple physical environments in which Americans live. Lytle enlivens chronological history with telling anecdotes and revealing data, and his writing is so good that scholars as well as students will be happy. Finally, he provides an outstanding explanation of contemporary American social and economic stratification." -- Raymond Haberski Jr, Professor of History and Director of American Studies and the Institute for American Thought, IUPUI

"As Lytle makes abundantly clear in this imaginative new survey of U.S. history, understanding postwar America requires careful attention to the ways the ethos of consumption became a kind of secular religion over the past 75 years. Lytle has synthesized political, social, cultural, and, above all, environmental history into a provocative and deeply needed framework for both exploring the story of postwar history and understanding the consumerist roots of the climate crisis." -- Michael B. Smith, Professor of History and Environmental Studies, Ithaca College