Our Own Snug Fireside

Our Own Snug Fireside
Title Our Own Snug Fireside PDF eBook
Author Jane C. Nylander
Publisher Knopf
Total Pages 627
Release 2013-05-15
Genre Architecture
ISBN 0307828166

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This charming book portrays domestic life in New England during the century between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Drawing on diaries, letters, wills, newspapers, and other sources, Jane C. Nylander provides intimate details about preparing dinner, spinning and weaving textiles, washing and ironing laundry, planning a social outing, and exchanging food and services. Probing behind the many myths that have grown up about this era, Nylander reveals the complex reality of everyday life in old New England.

A New England Prison Diary

A New England Prison Diary
Title A New England Prison Diary PDF eBook
Author Martin J. Hershock
Publisher University of Michigan Press
Total Pages 257
Release 2012-06-22
Genre Biography & Autobiography
ISBN 0472051814

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A microhistorical examination of early American culture

Three Squares

Three Squares
Title Three Squares PDF eBook
Author Abigail Carroll
Publisher Basic Books
Total Pages 344
Release 2013-09-10
Genre History
ISBN 0465040969

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We are what we eat, as the saying goes, but we are also how we eat, and when, and where. Our eating habits reveal as much about our society as the food on our plates, and our national identity is written in the eating schedules we follow and the customs we observe at the table and on the go. In Three Squares, food historian Abigail Carroll upends the popular understanding of our most cherished mealtime traditions, revealing that our eating habits have never been stable—far from it, in fact. The eating patterns and ideals we’ve inherited are relatively recent inventions, the products of complex social and economic forces, as well as the efforts of ambitious inventors, scientists and health gurus. Whether we’re pouring ourselves a bowl of cereal, grabbing a quick sandwich, or congregating for a family dinner, our mealtime habits are living artifacts of our collective history—and represent only the latest stage in the evolution of the American meal. Our early meals, Carroll explains, were rustic affairs, often eaten hastily, without utensils, and standing up. Only in the nineteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution upset work schedules and drastically reduced the amount of time Americans could spend on the midday meal, did the shape of our modern “three squares” emerge: quick, simple, and cold breakfasts and lunches and larger, sit-down dinners. Since evening was the only part of the day when families could come together, dinner became a ritual—as American as apple pie. But with the rise of processed foods, snacking has become faster, cheaper, and easier than ever, and many fear for the fate of the cherished family meal as a result. The story of how the simple gruel of our forefathers gave way to snack fixes and fast food, Three Squares also explains how Americans’ eating habits may change in the years to come. Only by understanding the history of the American meal can we can help determine its future.

Family Life and Sociability in Upper and Lower Canada, 1780-1870

Family Life and Sociability in Upper and Lower Canada, 1780-1870
Title Family Life and Sociability in Upper and Lower Canada, 1780-1870 PDF eBook
Author Françoise Noël
Publisher McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages 385
Release 2003-02-18
Genre History
ISBN 0773570659

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She notes that courtship usually took place within the social network of interactions with kin and neighbours and shows that family life was located in a broad social space that included people of various ages. By examining the correspondence and diaries of francophone and anglophone middle-class families of various faiths, Noël presents touching stories of family life in the Canadas in the early nineteenth century.

The Making of Home

The Making of Home
Title The Making of Home PDF eBook
Author Judith Flanders
Publisher Macmillan
Total Pages 361
Release 2015-09-08
Genre Social Science
ISBN 1466875488

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The idea that 'home' is a special place, a separate place, a place where we can be our true selves, is so obvious to us today that we barely pause to think about it. But, as Judith Flanders shows in her best and most ambitious work to date, "home" is a relatively new idea. In The Making of Home, Flanders traces the evolution of the house from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century across northern Europe and America, showing how the homes we know today bear only a faint resemblance to homes though history. What turned a house into the concept of home? Why did northwestern Europe, a politically unimportant, sociologically underdeveloped region of the world, suddenly became the powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution, the capitalist crucible that created modernity? While investigating these important questions, Flanders uncovers the fascinating development of ordinary household items--from cutlery, chairs and curtains, to the fitted kitchen, plumbing and windows--while also dismantling many domestic myths. In this prodigiously researched and engagingly written book, Flanders brilliantly and elegantly draws together the threads of religion, history, economics, technology and the arts to show not merely what happened, but why it happened: how we ended up in a world where we can all say, like Dorothy in Oz, "There's no place like home."

From Fireplace to Cookstove

From Fireplace to Cookstove
Title From Fireplace to Cookstove PDF eBook
Author Priscilla J. Brewer
Publisher Syracuse University Press
Total Pages 368
Release 2000-09-01
Genre Social Science
ISBN 9780815606505

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Priscilla J. Brewer examines the development and history of the first American appliance—the cast iron stove—that created a quiet, but culturally contested transformation of domestic life and sparked many important debates about the role of women, industrialization, the definition of social class, and the development of a consumer economy. Brewer explores the shift from fireplaces to stoves for cooking and heating in American homes, and sheds new light on the supposedly "separate spheres" of home and world of nineteenth- century America. She also considers the changing responses to technological development, the emergence of a consumption ethic, and the attempt to define and preserve distinct Anglo-American middle class culture. There are few works that treat this significant subject, and Brewer covers impressive new ground. Extensively documented—based on letters, diaries, probate inventories, census records, sales figures, advertisements, fiction, and advice literature-this book will be valuable to scholars of American history and women's studies.

Holy Day, Holiday

Holy Day, Holiday
Title Holy Day, Holiday PDF eBook
Author Alexis McCrossen
Publisher Cornell University Press
Total Pages 225
Release 2018-08-06
Genre History
ISBN 1501728687

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The mass protests that greeted attempts to open the 1893 Chicago World's Fair on a Sunday seem almost comical today in an era of seven-day convenience and twenty-four-hour shopping. But the issue of the meaning of Sunday is one that has historically given rise to a wide range of strong emotions and pitted a surprising variety of social, religious, and class interests against one another. Whether observed as a day for rest, or time-and-a-half, Sunday has always been a day apart in the American week.Supplementing wide-ranging historical research with the reflections and experiences of ordinary individuals, Alexis McCrossen traces conflicts over the meaning of Sunday that have shaped the day in the United States since 1800. She investigates cultural phenomena such as blue laws and the Sunday newspaper, alongside representations of Sunday in the popular arts. Holy Day, Holiday attends to the history of religion, as well as the histories of labor, leisure, and domesticity.