Contents -- Introduction -- 1. No Place of Race: Consumer Culture's Critical Tradition -- 2. "Stage Business" as Citizenship: Ida B. Wells at the World's Columbian Exposition -- 3. Thrown into Relief: Distinction Making in The American Scene -- 4. Race-changes as Exchanges: The Autobiography of an Ex-coloured Man -- 5. A Black Culture Industry: Public Relations and the "New Negro" at Boni and Liveright -- 6. Confessions of the Flesh: The Mass Public in Epidermal Trouble in Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts and George Schuyler's Black No More -- Conclusion: Leaving Muncie -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.