Between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries, gilds were the basis of industrial and commercial organization in England. Surprisingly, however, the disappearance of gilds has been neglected by historians. In The Most Necessary Luxuries, Ronald Berger uses the Mercers' Company of Coventry to follow the eclipse of an entire trading community in one of England's premier medieval cities and manufacturing centers. Berger charts the difficulties faced by mercers and grocers in a growing capitalist economy and discusses their unsuccessful efforts to maintain their prosperity. The book helps to explain both the development of a new urban system and the rise of shops in Midland England. It shows how shops replaced markets and fairs and uses the economics of the fashion trades to explain why provincial shops could not overcome the competition put forward by the metropolis. The Most Necessary Luxuries unites the fields of social, urban, and economic history to explain the decline of a medieval city, the evolution of the English urban middle class, and the transformation from an amalgam of wealthy wholesalers and distributors of luxury goods to an association of mere shopkeepers. It demonstrates that the rise of commercial capitalism between 1550 and 1700 in England undermined the medieval economy that was based on protected markets, restrictive trading practices, and entrenched oligarchies that dominated towns.

Matt Erlin considers books and the culture around books during this period, focusing specifically on Germany where literature, and the fine arts in general, were the subject of soul-searching debates over the legitimacy of luxury.

In A Necessary Luxury Julie E. Fromer analyzes tea histories, advertisements, and nine Victorian novels, including Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Wuthering Heights, and Portrait of a Lady. Fromer demonstrates how tea functions as an arbiter of taste and middle-class respectability.

NECESSARY LUXURIES Topher Payne just wants a little peace, and to settle down with someone nice. Both seem to consistently elude him. Always leaving the house with the best of intentions, he somehow manages to humiliate himself in front of Martha Stewart, wander onto a porn set, steal a cat, get in an alley fight in Ireland, march with gay Native Americans in the New York Pride Parade, and serve as best man at a Las Vegas transsexual wedding. Topher tries to hold out hope for a Mr. Right who'll accept his life of almost-manageable chaos. Along the way he discovers that maintaining a happy life takes more than the bare essentials everyone requires a few necessary luxuries.

The consumer revolution of the eighteenth century brought new and exotic commodities to Europe from abroad—coffee, tea, spices, and new textiles to name a few. Yet one of the most widely distributed luxury commodities in the period was not new at all, and was produced locally: the book. In Necessary Luxuries, Matt Erlin considers books and the culture around books during this period, focusing specifically on Germany where literature, and the fine arts in general, were the subject of soul-searching debates over the legitimacy of luxury in the modern world.Building on recent work done in the fields of consumption studies as well as the New Economic Criticism, Erlin combines intellectual-historical chapters (on luxury as a concept, luxury editions, and concerns about addictive reading) with contextualized close readings of novels by Campe, Wieland, Moritz, Novalis, and Goethe. As he demonstrates, artists in this period were deeply concerned with their status as luxury producers. The rhetorical strategies they developed to justify their activities evolved in dialogue with more general discussions regarding new forms of discretionary consumption. By emphasizing the fragile legitimacy of the fine arts in the period, Necessary Luxuries offers a fresh perspective on the broader trajectory of German literature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, recasting the entire period in terms of a dynamic unity, rather than simply as a series of literary trends and countertrends.

A guide to reaching and profiting from China's expanding luxury consumer class China's growing consumer base and expanding economy means more disposable income for more Chinese citizens. The Chinese market for luxury goods is expected to expand from $2 billion this year to nearly $12 billion by 2015. Today's biggest global luxury goods retailers expect China to make up a large and ever growing portion of their customers, and those businesses are responding with new stores and investments in China. Luxury China gives readers–particularly professionals in advertising, marketing, and the luxury brands industry–a deep look into the future of the Chinese luxury goods market and shows them how to tap into China's tremendous market potential.