Is shopping an exercise in consumer freedom - or in corporate manipulation? It takes up a good deal of our time and a great deal of our imagination, but as consumers we know all too little about the hidden aspects of shopping: how our intimate, complex relationship with department stores and supermarkets affects our lives every minute of the day. In this fascinating look at a largely unexamined corner of our lives, Rachel Bowlby untangles some of our convoluted ideas about shopping and consuming. Ranging from 1940s trade journals to "The Stepford Wives" and novels by Zola, Virginia Woolf and Don Delillo, "Carried Away" traces the transformations in the shopper from the days of the glamorous department store to our own functionalist superstores and tells us not a little about the changing roles of women and men along the way. It is a witty and revelatory book that shines a light into the darkest corners of the shop-window.