Contact us on (02) 8445 2300
For all customer service and order enquiries

Woodslane Online Catalogues

9781421413570 Academic Inspection Copy

Home Fires

How Americans Kept Warm in the Nineteenth Century
  • ISBN-13: 9781421413570
  • Publisher: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
    Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
  • By Sean Patrick Adams
  • Price: AUD $54.99
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 14/07/2014
  • Format: Paperback 200 pages Weight: 0g
  • Categories: History of the Americas [HBJK]
Description
Table of
Contents
Reviews
Google
Preview
Home Fires tells the fascinating story of how changes in home heating over the nineteenth century spurred the growth of networks that helped remake American society. Sean Patrick Adams reconstructs the ways in which the 'industrial hearth' appeared in American cities, the methods that entrepreneurs in home heating markets used to convince consumers that their product designs and fuel choices were superior, and how elite, middle-class, and poor Americans responded to these overtures.Adams depicts the problem of dwindling supplies of firewood and the search for alternatives; the hazards of cutting, digging, and drilling in the name of home heating; the trouble and expense of moving materials from place to place; the rise of steam power; the growth of an industrial economy; and questions of economic efficiency, at both the individual household and the regional level. Home Fires makes it clear that debates over energy sources, energy policy, and company profit margins have been around a long time.The challenge of staying warm in the industrializing North becomes a window into the complex world of energy transitions, economic change, and emerging consumerism. Readers will understand the struggles of urban families as they sought to adapt to the ever-changing nineteenth-century industrial landscape. This perspective allows a unique view of the development of an industrial society not just from the ground up but from the hearth up.

Preface
Prologue
1. How the Industrial Economy Made the Stove
2. How Mineral Heat Came to American Cities
3. How the Coal Trade Made Heat Cheap
4. How the Industrial Hearth Defied Control
5. How Steam Heat Found Its Limits
Epilogue
Notes
Selected Further Reading
Index

""Adams's Home Fires does, indeed, tell a fascinating story in the well-researched methodology of a trained and experienced historian, with a keen interest in using history to learn how to deal with the pressing issues of the future.""

Google Preview content