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A portrait-by turns celebratory, skeptical, and surprisingly moving-of one of America's most iconic institutions, from an author who "might be the most influential design critic writing now" (LARB) . Few places have been as nostalgized, or as maligned, as the American mall. Since its birth around the turn of the 1950s, it has loomed large as the temple of commerce and the agora of the suburbs. And today, amid the aftershocks of the financial crisis and the global pandemic, as well as the rise of online retail, the dystopian husk of an abandoned shopping center has become one of our era's defining images. Conventional wisdom holds that the mall is dead, the relic of a time gone by. But what was the mall, really? And have rumors of its demise been greatly exaggerated? Having uncovered the histories of toys, classrooms, and playgrounds in her acclaimed The Design of Childhood, star critic and architecture historian Alexandra Lange now brings her needle-sharp eye and invigorating curiosity to another subject we only think we know, but have yet to truly see.