Nostalgia is a highly effective way to manipulate people, and commercial brands use it to entice us to buy things
Nostalgia:
A History of a Dangerous Emotion
by Agnes Arnold-Forster Picador, 272 pages, £22
We are all familiar with nostalgia and its melancholic longing for the halcyon days of yore – and knowing that we’re spinning the past to suit our needs in the present in many ways only heightens the bittersweet taste. In this fascinating book, Agnes Arnold-Forster sets herself two goals: she tracks the changing meanings of nostalgia since the invention of the word by a Swiss doctor named Johannes Hofer in 1688; and she explores the histories of how and why people have become nostalgic ever since.