Customer Reviews

America's Kitchens

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a beautifully illustrated and well researched book that will appeal to many different audiences. I think it would be a great gift for a cook with too many cookbooks, or any fan of American history, particularly women's history. I also think it would be great for a school library, since kids just love to write papers and projects on topics like these (e.g. what did the colonists really eat?). While the book is written for adults and includes scholarly citations, the writing style is accessible enough for older children.

The book has seven chapters:
1) The kitchen in American life
2) The New England hearth 1720-1840
3) Kitchens in the plantation south 1830-1860
4) Cookstoves and servants 1850-1890
5) Kitchens along the Rio Grande 1821-1912
6) Towards the modern kitchen 1890-1945
7) The Postwar kitchen 1945-present

Thus the book moves through time and place in a very engaging way. The book is fully illustrated; a picture on nearly every page. It's the kind of book you could read cover-to-cover or just flip through and read a page here and there, and enjoy it both ways.

As a food fan myself, this book made me reflect. A lot of us foodies are so enthusiastic nowadays about "slow" and authentic food, and so against processed and prepared foods. Yet this book showed how preparing, cooking, and preserving food often dominated literally every minute of women's lives. For example, "by some estimates, women may have spent as much as six to eight hours a day grinding corn and another two or three hours making tortillas" (p. 111). Wow. Even the most dedicated foodie doesn't want to spend 10 hours a day making the same thing, every single day. Made me appreciate technology in and out of the kitchen much more. And it also made me realize why, for example, my grandmother was big into canned and frozen foods. What a relief it must have seemed after watching her own mother and grandmother work this much.

I highly recommend this book!

and the book exceeded them! A delightful book suitable to the casual kitchen person or serious academic.

First a disclaimer; I was one of the many consultants for this project: as a culinary historian who specializes in African American foodways. But I never saw any drafts of the book so come to it new. The illustrations alone make America's Kitchens a must read for anyone who is interested in the history of that space we all spend so much time in. But the text fills in a wonderful history of our many ways of cookery and family meals. Enjoy!

I've written about kitchens for Taunton Press and I'm always on the lookout for books about the history of kitchen design. I checked this out from my fantastic local library, but I'm very definitely going to purchase it, as it belongs in my personal library. This book contains a nice mix of academic research and original sources. It is stuffed full of photos, illustrations and quotes from original texts from all eras. And it has an incredible, huge bibliography, including a reference to some fascinating and comprehensive online sources. History buffs, designers, and cooks of all ages should enjoy seeing what Americans have considered ideal for kitchen design over our 200-plus year history.

I'm a history and material culture nerd, so this topic may be more appealing to me than the average person. But I am in love with this book. It's page layout is more like a magazine than a text, which makes it easier to read than a dense history text. That alone would probably warrant 5 stars from this former History major. The writing is not too academic but not dumbed-down. I learned so much new information about a topic that I thought I knew. The pictures and sidebars are full of interesting information. My only issue is that, because I kept stopping to look at all the pictures, when the text continued to a new page, I had to keep flipping back to see what they were talking about.

If you're interested in learning about kitchens, women's studies, food history or any related topic, you should pick this book up and don't put it down until you're done.

Interesting reading, lovely pictures, beautiful illustrations and presentation. The Hoosier cabinet becoming the book cover nicely sets expectations for the creativity waiting inside. A great read, and re-read. Enjoyable.