Bought and Sold: Living and Losing the Good Life in Socialist Yugoslavia

(Cornell University Press) Patterson explores consumerism in Yugoslavia. During the Cold War, communist Yugoslavia embraced elements of both socialism and capitalism, leading to a society that emphasized consumption. He argues that this focus on consumption was one of the keys to holding together the multiethnic society in the 1960s and 1970s. When the economy turned sour in the 1980s, disillusionment spread, setting the stage for future conflict. Patterson is an associate professor of history at the University of California, San Diego.