Embracing an argument-based model for teaching history, the Debating American History series encourages students to participate in a contested, evidence-based discourse about the human past. Each book poses a question that historians debate–How democratic is the U.S. Constitution? or Why did civil war erupt in the United States in 1861?– and provides abundant primary sources so that students can make their own efforts at interpreting the evidence. They can then use that analysis to construct answers to the big question that frames the debate and argue in support of their position. Politics of Prosperity poses this big question: Did mass consumer culture empower Americans in the 1920s?