Customer Reviews

Colonial and Early American Lighting

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The author gave many cutesy anecdotal examples of how lighting related to ordinary life in the 18th and 19th century, but his approach was so scattershot that the book became very hard to follow. e.g.(you might be reading on page 100 of the book and the author would refer back to a photo plate on page 10 and then to another photo on page 137). The writing is not structured along a logically progressive timeline as most people are used to following in modern research texts. Also the photgraphic plates yield photos of lamps and candlesticks which are quite small with difficult to determine details, due to the large number of items displyed in each plate. The plates are in black and white and the paper is not the best quality for photographic reproduction.

However, on a more positive note, the anecdotes were a refreshing change from an otherwise boring treatise. I wouldn't recommend this as your first or only choice for scholarly study of the field, but as an adjunct to other texts and for some interesting background material it is fine.