"Call of the Mall" is also far more varied than its subject -- and less fatiguing. The book is something of a travelogue: Underhill and various companions take us through one of the 1,175 regional enclosed malls in the United States.
With women's apparel as their mainstay, malls are cash cows: "Today, malls account for around 14 percent of US retailing (not counting cars or gasoline)," writes Underhill. What these suburban emporia have in common are indistinguishable and ill-defined entrances, and a lack of venues where one can linger, like a book store, home electronics store, or office supply store -- retail categories that typically attract adult males.
Underhill guides us through the mall department by department, gender by gender, lure by lure. He enlivens his tour with conversation designed to help us identify with mall shoppers.
While his book is convincing and methodical, it could have been more critical. It's one thing to note that malls lack character and cohesion because of their internal split: They are built by real estate concerns but are retail oriented. It's another to go after those concerns and the communities that often accede to mall developers' demands and explore and express opinions about the forces that bring malls to fruition.
Underhill says we are entering the postmall era, when people shop where it's convenient, easy, and semiurban, rather than suburban. In a sense, the escape from the cities that the mall once represented is no longer available. Retail's new embodiment is "Main Street developments or `neo-villages' -- twenty-first century attempts at recreating urbanesque (or is it small-town?) American shopping," he writes. Other attractions of these "genuinely fake" complexes include parking lots near stores, allowing "hit and run" activity in which customers dart into a store and quickly leave. The chapters on how teenage girls shop, the way jewelry stores differentiate themselves by class, and how the sneaker has replaced the shoe are piquant. Even though Underhill has a sharp eye for the modern -- "Our eyes are trained to watch for the next hot thing," he says of the eye candy of Times Square and Las Vegas's Fashion Mall -- his heart is in the city.
