A smart and empathetic look at this waning icon of 20th-century American consumer culture.

Pittsburgh City Paper

Matthew Newton evokes the American mall as symbol of white flight, aspirational fantasy, and shop-till-you-drop consumerism of the late 1980s. These are striking tales of suburban isolation in which Newton reveals life from the employee side of the counter to the idealistic architects' designs. Above all, he takes an aging mainstream phenomenon and makes it personal and present.

Yona Harvey, author of Hemming the Water

The best passages are those about the actual idea of the mall, designed by figures such as the Viennese Victor Gruen as a new sort of civic space that could replace the lost town square in a post-WWII America reshaped by the rise of suburbia. Newton wraps up with evocative reflections on instances of violence in shopping malls and questions about a possible renewal for these spaces, the popularity of which has flagged since their heyday nearly 30 years ago. To put it into the vernacular, this book about the mall is at its best when it's, like, totally about the mall.

Publishers Weekly

Shopping Mall is for anyone who enjoys intelligent, thoughtful writing. It is surprisingly emotional for a book nominally about an impersonal space. It's safe to say this is the very best book I have ever read about a mall.

Pittsburgh Magazine

This series really gets better and better. Newton linking his own life to the malls he knew growing up, and telling not only his story, but the fall of a very American institution, is engaging and profound.

Jason Diamond, author of Searching for John Hughes

Newton explores the life of the shopping mall from the first ground-breaking, in the 1950s, through the chaos and excess of the 1980s to the present, including the death rattle of many malls … In exploring a personal connection to the mall, he reveals a good bit about himself. The memoir elements of the book are eloquent and intimate, detailing his struggles with depression and anxiety. They also provide a reader with a walking bridge, an avenue for connection to the mall itself.

Pittsburgh City Paper