Regular marked price: $14.95Discount Price: $10.92
Cost Savings: $4.03 (27%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.4
EAN num: 9780060916060
ISBN number: 0060916060
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 384
Printing Date: November 01, 1989
Publishing house: Harper Perennial
Release Date: November 01, 1989
Sale Popularity Level: 33029
Studio: Harper Perennial
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
'Compact and insightful. '--New York Times Book Review 'Jack Larkin has retrieved the irretrievable; the intimate facts of everyday life that defined what people were really like.'--American Heritage
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
History is not just about great men and wars; as this book astutely illustrates, it's also about the daily lives of the majority of the people. Dealing with the time period 1790-1840, a pre-industrialized era for the most part, Jack Larkin examines what life was like for most Americans at that time. Housing, occupations, entertainments, and family life are described; what it was like to travel, what happened when one got sick, the life of children, and how holidays were celebrated are also dealt with. Somewhat unique for a book like this, a long chapter concerns itself with the "private" lives of people: dating, marriage, sexual relations, pregnancies and child bearing, the role of the privy and chamber pot all get their due. Larkin's book is a compendium of facts and information regarding everyday life, including those for slaves, urban and rural dwellers, rich and poor - and is fascinating in that regard. It would be difficult to think of those times as "the good old days," though many old-timers of the day probably did, as, for example, "simple" chores (to most of us) such as washing clothes took all day and could exhaust many a hardy woman, not to mention the disease and filth that seemed to be everywhere. But by 1840 older citizens could detect changes (mainly new inventions and techniques) that reduced socializing and diminished craftsmanship, and mourned a way of life that was passing away. Progress has its penalties for every generation, and Larkin's book offers a glimpse at a way of life long since eclipsed by newer ways. There was actually life before TV (not to mention electricity and plumbing) - yikes!
Rated by buyers -
Absolutely great and SO informative for anyone who wants to know the day to day details of life during this period. Not how the wealthy lived - but how the majority of Americans actually lived. It is very hard to find this quality of information. Thank you Amazon, for recommending it!
Rated by buyers 
-
Good introduction to everyday life as it evolved during this time. The book touches on practices and terms that would have been commonplace in that time that are unfamliar to modern Americans. This easy to read volume is one of a series.
Rated by buyers -
I am currently engaged in the effort of writing a family history and wanted to understand better the rythms of everyday life in New England in the early Republic.
I found Mr. Larkin's book insightful, extremely well researched, and a trove of rich anecdotes about life in this period.
I was surprised in my own research, for instance, to discover that my early ancestors had a child just five months after their wedding. I realized from Mr. Larkin's book that early births in this era were quite common. Sturbridge Village Society conducted exhaustive reviews of marriage and birth certificates in the 1780s and 1790s and calculated that fully a third of New England rural women were already pregnant when wed. This is the kind of meticulous research that enriches social history.
Equally interesting for me was his description of how TB destroyed entire families, as happened in a branch of my family in the 1870s. I was unaware tuberculosis was such a common and ferocious killer at the time.
The book proved invaluable in understanding the world of my ancestors.
A final pleasure is Mr. Larkin's confident and flowing prose. Works on social history can be ponderous, especially if well documented. Larkin achieves the rare combination of copious detail and elegant style.
Rated by buyers -
As Larkin bascially explains in his introduction: in early America, life was comprised of your existence, plain and simple. This book does an incredible job at making life, all of it, every detail, "back then" a tangible learning experience.
Meticulously researched, "Reshaping of Everyday Life" does a fantastic job of spanning all sections of America, and all facets of American life. It showcases a heap of information derived from diaries, letters, censuses, artifacts, news clippings, etc. etc. etc. It's a monumental deal of info that could easily calculate into a dry piece of reading, but it's not dry. It's very lively, and very interesting, shedding light on aspects of American life easily taken for granted today, but vitally important to their very existence. The book is wonderfully laid out in easy to acess sections and index (sounds trivial, but when dealing with history books you don't know how helpful this is), with these fascinating pieces of information strewn about every single page in a humanistic fashion. But the best part of the book is it's ability to flow. It doesn't matter where you start reading, it moves quickly, with style and a sense of purpose. I must say, other than memoirs, I've never had such an enjoyable time, or felt like I immediately assimilated the material as I read it.
This is a solid and excellent book for anyone who wants to learn a great deal of quality information quickly and easily. Highly recommended.
Find other books like this one:
