Ax, corset, and sewing machine - what do everyday objects reveal about a community? What significance do they have in history? In American cultural studies particularly, nothing is too small, no object too primitive to become the subject of historical research. In a methodologically and theoretically innovative way, the contributions to this volume show how national identity, but also gender and ethnicity, are significantly influenced by material culture. Everyday objects thus gain a key role in cultural history. Against this background, this volume makes key texts from the American cultural debate accessible to the German-speaking readership. Chronologically organized, it pursues the Thing History of the 19th and 20th Centuries.