America's Kitchens

It is amazing what this one room--at times a harried workspace and at others the sentimental heart of the home--has meant to people over the course of more than four centuries.

America's Kitchens tells the story of this important room and features New England hearths, detached kitchens on southern plantations, Spanish colonial kitchens of the Southwest, elaborate nineteenth-century kitchens in the Midwest, and middle-class open-plan homes of 1950s suburbia. The book traces technological developments such as the introduction of the cast-iron cookstove, the efficiency of the Hoosier cabinet, and the impact of the frozen food industry to suggest how these innovations have transformed kitchen work and changed women's lives.

Innovatively designed and lavishly illustrated with historic drawings, photographs, and a fascinating array of ephemera from Historic New England's diverse collections, America's Kitchens describes what it was like to live with and work in kitchens that had none of the conveniences we take for granted. At the same time, the book analyzes the profound place of the kitchen in our own lives today.