Customer Reviews

Empty Shells : The Story of Petaluma, America's Chicken City (Chicken House Chronicles)

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This is a fascinating book and well worth reading - even if, like me, you have no connection with Petaluma or chicken ranching.

Thea Lowry has meticulously researched the history of Petaluma and how it came to be the Colossus of egg production in the USA - in its heyday producing 450 million eggs a year. She also catalogs the subsequent decline of the industry and records the vanishing traces of its former prominence.

A book such as this could easily have turned into one of those numerous local history books recording the facts and figures of Nowheresville, USA. Ms Lowry has, like her birds, a beady eye and brings alive the history of Petaluma and its industry through dry wit, judicious use of anecdote and magnificent photographs.

This book was more than 10 years in the writing. The product of such effort is evident in every aspect of it. The book has some truly amazing photographs - from the cover picture of a collapsing chicken shed to the memorable picture of a rancher standing next to such a shed but dwarfed by what can only be described as a mountain of egg shells outside it.

It's a great book - I loved it.

Empty Shells: The Story Of Petaluma, America's Chicken City is the meticulously researched and superbly presented history of Petaluma, California. A small town 38 miles north of San Francisco and straddling a gentle river, Petaluma was justifiably known as "The World's Egg Basket". In the 1920s, millions of glossy white eggs were shipped by train to New York City where they brought top market prices because of their uniform high quality. Empty Shells is the story of the rise and fall of this unique poultry oriented community and the contemporary presence of abandoned hen houses scattered over the southern Sonoma County landscape. Illustrated throughout with period photography, Empty Shells is a marvelous work of local American history which makes for informative, fascinating reading.

Empty Shells: The story of Petaluma, America's Chicken City is much more than the title implies. Beginning in the 1500's with the "discovery" of California's coast, Thea S. Lowry chronicles the social changes and technological advances of America through the eyes of Petaluma's poultry industry. She notes the changes within the poultry industry, from assembly line manufacture of incubators, to the advances of transportation and roadways, to progress in the medical field (from using nicotine and mercury cures to modern day Coccidiostats and Tetracyclines). From marketing a few dozens of eggs or birds a year by individual farmers to the million bird co-operatives, the poultry industry has led the way, and reflected much of modern day business models. As the majority of these changes happened in the last century (or in the span of two lifetimes), Empty Shells is a must-read for anyone interested in a true perspective as to where our society is today.