The economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) introduced the term "conspicuous consumption" in 1899 in his book "The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions". Veblen described the behavioural characteristics of the "nouveau riche" (new rich) social class which emerged as a result of capital accumulation during the Second Industrial Revolution ( 1860–1914). In that nineteenth-century social and historical context, the term "conspicuous consumption" applied narrowly in association with the men, women, and families of the upper class who applied their great wealth as a means of publicly manifesting their social power and prestige, either real or perceived.