Customer Reviews:
Home as a technological system? It's a stretch........2007-04-02
When one thinks of industrialization, the image of a factory comes to mind. However, Cowan looks at the home as a productive venue. According to Cowan's thesis in an industrial society the work women perform as homemakers is tied to technological systems just like in a factory. Work inside or outside the home utilizes electricity, gas, or petroleum as sources of power, and manufacturing and homemaking each require the use of specialized tools.
Tools used in the home help to accomplish specific tasks but, Cowan argues, they "have a life of their own" and "set limits to our work."(9) While tools define behavior within the home, it is outside institutions (manufacturing firms, advertising agents, market researchers) that "mediate"(11) which devices are available for the woman to use in the home. For example Cowan points out that the electric refrigerator likely won out over the gas-absorption design due to the aggressiveness of electric utilities verses the more conservative gas manufacturing companies between 1920 and 1950.
Notwithstanding the use of labor savings devices, women's work has not become easier or less time consuming. Affluence and technology have made a woman's role more complicated and demanding. Partly due to circumstances such as the reduction of numbers of servants available to do drudge work in the home, the change has more to due with an innate human desire for "privacy and autonomy."(149) It is a "convention so deeply imbedded in our individual and collective consciousness that even the profound changes wrought by the twentieth century have not yet shaken it."(150)
Perhaps Cowan's best example of the effects of technology on the home is the stove. Food preparation was a cooperative effort between women and men to produce a simple one-pot meal over an open hearth in pre-industrial days. While the stove reduced the man's effort to maintain the fire, it allowed more complex meals to be prepared by the woman.
If industrialization seemingly reduces the effort necessary for a women to prepare and preserve food, make and maintain clothing, or be the health provider within the home, an entirely new role came with the advent of the automobile. The woman became the household's transportation provider!
The net effect of technology on homemaking has been to reduce drudgery but not labor. While women have become more productive in the home, what time is saved is now consumed by other tasks. In a further irony house work has helped to perpetuate the idea of homemaking as women's work thus reinforcing the stereotypical inequity between genders. However the decline in domestic servants would seem to imply greater equality between classes.
Unlike market labor, women are unpaid, work in isolated workplaces, and perform as unspecialized workers. The value of housework is difficult to quantify and critics argue that household's do not "produce" anything. But is not that the goal of industry; to produce a good or provide a service? Why does homemaking have to be seen in terms of output? What about family and childrearing? These are intangibles beyond monetary value.
Gimmie a break - just look around!.......2005-11-18
More work for mother? Gimmie a break!! This book attempts to further the fiction that it's women who are still doing the housework. While this may have been true 40 years ago, the feminization of the American male that's occurred since then makes this a thing of the past. Just look around! Men are pushing strollers, cleaning houses, cooking dinners, involved in selecting décor, PLUS doing all the "men's work" that they previously did, such as yard work, fixing the car, and doing all those other heavy and dirty jobs. To make matters worse, these are often men who work demanding jobs with lots of travel to bring in the money, often for wives that are just sitting home on their asses! When these men come home from a grinding business trip, the wife is on them to "be more involved," so you see them running around killing themselves around the house and with the kids while their wives are over at the spa or having coffee with their yenta friends. More work for Mother? The book we need is "Modern Marriage: What's in it for Father?"
A must read for moms.......2005-02-26
I thoroughly enjoyed this book which provides a lot of insight into why modern women still are spending an amazing number of hours doing housework, in spite of vacuum cleaners, washing machines, dryers, and dishwashers.
History with a political agenda.......2004-04-26
This book is history of housework and household technology in America. Cowan's thesis is that American women have paradoxically been required to take on more and more work as "labor-saving" technologies have been adopted. At the outset of the book, Cowan seems to state that she will show that developments in technology have not really made women's lives easier, but have served to bind women ever more tightly to the home. But by the end of the book, the message seems to be slightly different: that household technology has raised society's expectations of what women should be able to accomplish in the home, and that women must now work harder because of double duty- -doing the housework in addition to holding down fulltime jobs.
The book is organized along chronological lines, starting with pre-industrial conditions, moving on to industrialization, and finishing with the years following the Second World War. Food and laundry are two topics that receive heavy focus throughout the book. Cowan points out that in the pre-industrial times, food preparation required considerable help from men, for such things as butchering animals. But once meat was available in tins, men were released from such food preparation chores, while women's work increased, since new stove technologies made it possible for women to undertake more complicated methods of food preparation. Cowan argues that laundry duties also increased following industrialization, since when fabric was homespun, people only owned a few items of clothing that were hardly ever washed, but once cheap factory-made fabric became available, people got in the habit of changing clothes quite often, resulting in mounds of items to be laundered.
But I'm not sure I fully agree with these arguments. Cowan seems to suggest that the change from cooking over an open-hearth to cooking on a stove complicated women's lives by increasing possibilities, hence expectations and time spent on the task. Had Cowan been able to observe first-hand lunch preparations over an open-hearth during a hot summer day, she might have been more appreciative of the benefits of a stove. Anyone who has visited such reenactment museums as Plimouth Plantation in July, or even tried cooking a full meal over a campfire, comes away amazed at how women managed to deal with the heat and frustrations of cooking over an open hearth, especially when wearing long skirts that were constantly prone to catching fire from drifting into the coals or getting hit with sparks. And the health benefits of having enough clothing to allow frequent laundering are also tremendous- -memoirs of even the well-to-do of the pre-industrial age are full of descriptions of the usual louse and flea colonies that were an active part of every household. Industrialization in the areas of food preparation and laundry may have not have resulted in time savings for mother, but it certainly made it possible for her to greatly increase the health and safety of herself and her family.
Cowan notes that running a household in pre-industrial conditions involved so much work that no single person could manage it alone. That's why men got married, and why anyone who could afford to hired maids. But following industrialization, Cowan argues that maids could get better-paying factory jobs, so mother got stuck doing the work of the maids. But is this really more work for mother? If the work load was so heavy that a housewife couldn't get by without a maid, and the maid disappeared consequent with the adoption of household technology, it's not that mother was stuck spending more time than ever getting her housework done, but that the new technologies enabled her to accomplish more in the time she had available. Indeed, Cowan even cites time studies that confirm that women were spending more or less the same amount of time doing housework, but they were able to accomplish far more in that time thanks to new technologies, such as automatic washers. And the problems of the double-duty mother never even arose until technology had improved enough so that a woman could hold down an outside job as well as keep the home running.
From the outset, Cowan states that this book is about the history of American housewives and their work, so she doesn't look beyond our borders for evidence that would support or negate her thesis. Her cultural blinders seem overly tight, however, when she discusses the difficulty of finding and keeping hired help as being a peculiarly American problem. Anyone who has tried to work with hired help anywhere in the world has had similar experiences- -nobody grows up wanting to be a maid. Traditionally and worldwide, maids come from an immigrant class, migrating from rural to developed areas, if not across borders, and leaving at the first opportunity of higher pay or prestige elsewhere. Living with household help has an additional disadvantage that Cowan does not consider- -the loss of privacy for the family. Perhaps letting the family cook or laundress go meant more work for mother, but the benefits of finally getting food cooked the way you like it, and not having the maid sort through the family's dirty laundry made it all worthwhile, especially if household technology made it possible to get the chores done by yourself anyway- -and get them done right for a change!
I know that it's impossible to write history free from subjective judgments. However, I have rarely encountered a history where the political leanings of the author come through so blatantly. Although Cowan never states explicitly that she is a "Marxist-feminist", the term arises in several places in the text, suggesting a clear political affinity. Cowan came of age and wrote this book in an earlier time. Today, perhaps, conditions have changed, taking the edge off the urgency of the issues she was implicitly battling by writing this book. The factual information and the window that she provides into household material culture is fascinating, if you can free it from her political agenda and wavering argumentation.
A brilliant work!.......2003-09-21
I had sort of avoided this book because if its title--it sounded like it was going to be one of those books about how since Year One women have been shamelessly victimized by the evil patriarchy.
Boy, was I wrong! The book is a masterpiece of American social, cultural, and technological history. In a clear and sympathetic manner, it shows how home maintenance and upkeep have gradually changed in the U.S. over time. During colonial/pioneer days, everbody in a family had essential work to do: men chopped wood, plowed, and harvested; children carried wood and water; women spun, sewed, and cooked. If anybody fell down on the job, all suffered. Gradually, things changed--men (and sometimes children) increasingly left the house to work for wages during the day.
Superficially, this makes it look like, over time, American households quit being net producers of goods (grain, milk, eggs, cloth, etc.) to net consumers of finished products (pre-made clothes, canned goods, etc.). Cowan shows that this is not exactly the case. While "hard" goods did cease to be produced at home, services--health care, cooking, cleaning, etc.--were still produced for family use. And these services, in spite of in introduction of labor-saving appliances and tools--still, to this day, require both time and skill to use. In fact, while much of the drudgery (heavy lifting and water hauling, for example) was reduced, the complexity of the duties actually increased.
Cowan writes in a very clear style, and provides excellent examples to make her points. For example, she shows how diets changed with time, and gives a number of example of "failed alternatives" to private housework (co-operatives, residential hotels, etc.) Ultimately, she shows how housework/way of life evolved to the present day--working mothers, self-serve stores, few home deliveries--with the tacit consent of both the men and the women who created our current society. It provides an insightful study of many aspects of American life, addressing including such questions as "If I have so many labor- and time-saving devices, why am I so busy and tired so much of the time?"
Book Description
Ellen Dugan, the author of Garden Witchery, is the ideal guide to show us how to bring the beauty of nature and its magickal energies indoors. Using common household and outdoor items-such as herbs, spices, dried flowers, plants, stones, and candles-she offers a down-to-earth approach to creating an enchanted home.
From specialized spells and charms to kitchen conjuring and color magick, this hands-on guide teaches Witches of all levels how to strengthen a home's aura and energy. Readers will learn how to use begonias and lilacs for protection, dispel bad vibes with salt and lemon, perform tea leaf readings, bless the home with fruit, invite the help of home faeries, perform houseplant magick, and create a loving home for the whole family.
Customer Reviews:
absolutely wonderful!.......2007-10-01
Helpful and inspiring. Well written, in a matter of fact fashion this book is an exciting addition to my collection. I'm proud t say I own it!
~adp~
MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE!.......2007-10-01
Without a doubt, Ellen Dugan is my all-time favorite author of books on the Craft and this is my favorite work of hers. She is never preachy or boring. Her style is warm, inviting and conversational, all the while imparting some of the best information and advice on the subject that I have ever found. Of all Ellen's works, Cottage Witchery is the one that resonates with me. I have incorporated so many ideas into our home with such positive results. I have read it cover to cover twice and keep it in my permanent magickal library for reference.
Wonderful book on Indoor magick!!!!!!.......2007-03-31
I am a young witch, it's true, but that doesn't mean my opinion doesn't count. This book is AMAZING! I read my mom's copy and I love the author's sense of humor and breezy perspective on Wicca and spells. I love how she personalizes the book by including her own experiences! This book is a wonderful addition to any wiccan, beginner or not's bookshelf. Ellen Dugan is a talented author/witch who inspires the reader in all sorts of ways! Buy this book right away!
Loved it.......2007-02-05
I agree with the person below me. i really enjoyed this book. i loved the quote at the beginning of the book "I do not understand how anyone can live without one small place of enchantment to turn to."- Majorie Kinnan Rawlings. This book helped me find my place of enchantment.
Pleasing.......2006-12-31
I really enjoyed reading this book. Mrs. Dugan's writing style is, in my opinion, awesome! I liked her advise on sprucing up the home and her own stories mingled in with the book ~ I like that when an author is willing to share some of their own personal stories (keep it up!). This was just a wonderful overall reading experience, my next read will be Garden Witchery....looking forward to it!
Average customer rating:
- Ordering a Book
- Addicted to recipes
- Bring New England home
- Truly a taste of New England
- GET READY FOR SECONDS. AND THIRDS. AND ...
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The New England Cookbook: 350 Recipies from Town and Country, Land and Sea, Hearth and Home
Brooke Dojny
Manufacturer: Harvard Common Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 General
| Cooking, Food & Wine
| Subjects
| Books
New England
| U.S. Regional
| Regional & International
| Cooking, Food & Wine
| Subjects
| Books
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ASIN: 155832139X |
Amazon.com
Apart from Native American cooking, the dishes of New England are our country's most venerable. Brooke Dojny's The New England Cookbook offers more than 350 recipes, including traditional favorites such as Boston Clam Chowder as well as unexpected pleasures such as Athena Diner Avgolemono. Many of these come from the immigrants who have made New England their home over the years. Because Dojny has cast her recipe net widely, the book is comprehensive; readers interested in a complete view of Northeast cooking, and those seeking simple recipes for good food--plain to reasonably fancy, old-fashioned to contemporary--will welcome the book.
In chapters devoted to dish types, from starters to desserts, Dojny reveals a compelling culinary repertoire. Among her selection, cooks will want to try Vermont Chicken and Leek Pie with Biscuit Crust, Rosemary Grilled Bluefish with Rosemary Lime Butter, and North Fork Crusty Pan-Seared Scallops. A chapter on sandwiches and pizzas includes such savory temptations as Portuguese Chourico, Peppers, and Onion Grinder and Famous New Haven White Clam Pizza; one of two bread-baking chapters offers breakfast specialties such as Berkshire Puffed Apple Skillet-Baked Pancake. Dojny's dessert recipes are particularly attractive, presenting the likes of Hester's Sour Lemon Pudding Cake, Hungarian Crêpes with Walnut Filling and Warm Chocolate Sauce, or the eloquently simple and good Best Maine Blueberry Pie.
With anecdotal sidebars and a list of sources for down-home ingredients, the book invites the solid, flavorful American cooking that is our principal culinary heritage. --Arthur Boehm
Book Description
In he New England Cookbook , Brooke Dojny picks up the strands of culinary influence and provides, in 350 recipes and plenteous anecdotes, a portrait of the way New Englanders cook today.
Customer Reviews:
Ordering a Book.......2007-01-06
Just wanted you to know that I have had trouble ordering "The New England Cookbook". Amazon took my order but kept delaying their shipment of it, saying that they were out of stock (and kept pushing the date forward). I waited patiently for 2 months, then decided that they did not have the item they claimed was in stock.
This was not the first time I have had problems with Amazon. If they have the product they ship immediately, but if they don't.....
Sue in Illinois
Addicted to recipes.......2006-07-19
Let me start off by saying that I returned the book and never tried a recipe. I was stunned by how mundane and unsophisticated the recipes are. The cookbook reminded me of one of those fundraising cookbooks put together by schools and churches where everyone contributes one recipe. The reviews were so good I was expecting something exciting and innovative but instead it was filled with dishes that are as common as dirt. If you own Fanny Farmer you already have everything in this cookbook. I grew up on Buzzard's Bay in Massachusetts and I was looking forward to some real New England favorites. The clam chowder recipe was not as good as one I already posses and the author advocates corn meal on her fried clams. No thanks.
If you are looking for easy recipes that may or may not be authentically New England this may be a good cookbook for you. If you are a gourmet cook looking for sophisticated regional fare I say keep looking.
Bring New England home.......2004-06-21
I bought this book after my trip to New England, and I was not disappointed. I love to cook, and I prefer cookbooks written by professionals who know the difference between restaurant cooking and home cooking, know history of cuisine they present, and share personal stories. All of the above I found in the Brooke Dojny's book. I have tried 15 recipes over the past 6 weeks, and all of the results came out terrific and tasting very much like what I ate in Connecticut, Maine, and Massachusetts. I also find the recipes that I have tried to be very easy to follow. Following the recipe for Italian veal piccata, I produced the dish that tastes better than in most Italian restaurants in California and other parts of the States. The recipe for meat loaf is simply the best available! I also appreciate all the forewords and notes for recipes.
Many recipes are quite versatile. For example, the sauce for crab cakes is excellent for many fish or poultry dishes. Even if you serve it with boiled chicken or beef that you used for making broth, the dish becomes excellent instead of being something rather bland and eaten out of frugality and necessity :). This sauce can last in a refrigerator, too.
This book appears to be very helpful when planning a dinner, whether it is a special occasion dinner or just a middle of a week meal. All recipes have specifications as up to which step a cook can prepare a dish in advance. I recently made a sea food feast for my husband's birthday in a middle of a week, and I used this book's recipes only. The feast was spectacular and original, and I was able to do all the shopping and preparations ahead on a previous evening. On the actual celebration day I just spent an hour after work for making four dishes. All in all, they constituted a lovely original coherent special dinner.
After this book, I will gladly buy all books authored by Brooke Dojny.
Truly a taste of New England.......2003-12-10
This book is by far the most stained and used in my collection. Its spine is broken, its pages spotted with grease and cheese, its margins filled with notes.
Every special meal in our home has something from this book - on Thanksgiving, our table was graced by "Whipped Winter Squash with Cranberries," "Crumbly Cider Cornbread Stuffing," and "Shaker Cornmeal Pumpkin Bread." Included in this collection are glorious recipes for a traditional tuna casserole, (tuna casserole glorious, you balk? try for yourself and see!), banana nut bread, clams casino, pizzas and sandwiches, veggies and pasta, fin-fish and shellfish.
There is truly something for every occasion, from the fancy holiday table to the casual backyard lunch. If you are from New England, you'll feel right at home among these pages, whether you hail from the coast of Maine or inland Massachusetts. If you are from another region, you'll be inspired by the folklore and mystery of America's most frugally creative cooks. Fire up your stove and enjoy!
GET READY FOR SECONDS. AND THIRDS. AND ..........2003-05-26
What's cooking? How about Midsummer's Eve Fresh Pea Soup, Herbed Seafood Lasagna, Nor'easter Baked Fish Chowder. And, of course, Cape Cod Turkey . . . which has nothing to do with turkey but salted codfish. We have lots of cookbooks in our collection, but this is one that is going get lots of use. Real soon. Some of the recipe names are a bit tough to swallow (Marlene's Beauteous Butternut Bisque, Red Flannel Hash) but hey, if they can dish it out, we can eat it up. Save room for seconds. And thirds.
And . . .
Book Description
Filled with tantalizing recipes, Hearth and Home is so much more than a typical cookbook. Within these pages, the reader is challenged to find meaning at its deepest level - holiness and wholeness in Christ. Amongst the journaled reflections, inspirational quotes and nutritional recipes, you can almost smell the irresistible aroma of fresh-baked whole wheat bread. Hearth and Home is about life, about family and about the fullness God invites us to enjoy. Makes an ideal gift.
Customer Reviews:
Inspiring.......2000-12-09
I read Hearth & Home for the first time in 1997 and could not put it down. It truly did inspire me to make some major lifestyle changes in our home, becoming more "home oriented". Karey Swan's writing style makes you feel like you've known her for years, and she shares some wonderful recipes. Her thoughts on life in general are thought-provoking and inspirational.
Lots of great stuff in this attractive book!.......2000-06-20
Karey Swan not only shares dozens and dozens of her yummiest and healthiest food recipes, she also gives us a sweet taste of her life style and why we should pursue "homemaking beyond maintenance." The text is warm, witty and candid, and the illustrations are winsome.
Book Description
Nothing says home like the warmth of a fireplace. This brand new title in Sunset's hugely popular Ideas for Great series has everything a homeowner needs to plan, design, build, remodel, and install a fireplace, stove, or outdoor firepit. First, your interest is sparked with over 60 pages loaded with new photos of fireplaces and wood stoves-a pictorial survey of every style imaginable, from Southwest adobe to traditional cabin to contemporary 'wow.' Discover which type of fireplace works best for your needs, how to arrange furniture to maximize its ambience-enhancing potential, and ideas for decorating the mantel and hearth. An extensive list of suppliers and Websites is sure to light a fire under your imagination.
Customer Reviews:
Lots of pictures-lack of info.......2006-02-27
This is basically a picture book. the ideas are pretty conventional as far as fireplaces go. I bought this book for inspiration on a project that I have recetnly started for a client that was looking to update an existing fireplace in her 100+ year old Victorian. She was looking for fresh/ ideas, something to compliment the mix of historic and contemporary details throughout the interior.. I did not find anything of value from this book for this particular project. As far as design ideas go, this a meat and potatos book.
Average customer rating:
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The American Kitchen 1700 to the Present: From Hearth to Highrise
Ellen M. Plante
Manufacturer: Facts on File
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Cooking, Food & Wine
| Subjects
| Books
General
| United States
| Americas
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Social History
| Historical Study
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Kitchens
| Remodeling & Renovation
| Home Design
| Home & Garden
| Subjects
| Books
Household Hints
| How-to & Home Improvements
| Home & Garden
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Interior Design
| Home & Garden
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0816030383 |
Average customer rating:
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Hearth And Home: Women And the Art of Open Hearth Cooking
Fiona Lucas
Manufacturer: James Lorimer & Company,
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Cooking, Food & Wine
| Subjects
| Books
Culinary Arts & Techniques
| Cooking, Food & Wine
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Women's Studies
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
History of Technology
| Technology
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Canada
| Americas
| History
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 1550289217 |
Book Description
Explore the rich history of women's work and the art of cooking over an open hearth in historic Canadian kitchens.
Today the fireplace with its crackling logs is a romantic icon representing the heart of the home, but not so long ago its role was much more than symbolic. A hearth or fireplace was an essential first fixture in Canadian homes and its warmth sustained the family in many ways.
Whether in a longhouse, a fishing shack, a log cabin, a manor home, or on a thriving farm, the kitchen was the main workplace of Canadian women within family centred households for generations. Its central feature is the focal point of Hearth and Home, a social history that evokes the sights, smells, and tastes of historic kitchens. This book tells the story of the women who worked back-breaking hours tending the fire and using its energy with skill and resourceful creativity to nourish their families or feed a hungry fort.
Fiona Lucas, culinary historian and practiced hearth cook, synthesizes the shared experience of the family cook across decades and cultures, along the way introducing readers to fascinating dishes such as the hedgehog pudding and tools such as the salamander and the spider. The text is illustrated with photographs from historic sites including Black Creek Pioneer Village, Louisbourg, Kings Landing, Upper Canada Village, and many others. This is a book that will appeal to readers of Canadian history, and to anyone who has puzzled over the now unusual kitchen tools once common in 19th-century homes.
Product Description
These seven designs from Fig Tree Quilts all have a warm, antique feeling. Designer Joanna Figueroa and partner Lisa Quan chose soft romantic colors that were inspired by actual vintage quilts or vintage fabric that they discovered at a flea market.
Customer Reviews:
Love it!.......2006-09-15
A wonderful booklet of beautiful quilts. I am going to do the basket quilts and then on to the others. I already have my own ideas as to a few changes in color and design for the other quilts. Just sit and gaze at the quilts and you will find just what you can do with these patterns.
Book Description
Every room in your house can produce its own energy and personality. Painting the walls and arranging furniture is a beginning, but there's so much more you can do to make your home uniquely your own. You can imprint your heart energy in a room or even in a tiny space and ground it there.
Simple Spells for Hearth and Home will help you ensure ease and camaraderie in your dining room, create abundance and good health in your kitchen, and generally enhance the radiance of every inch of your living space.
With this wonderful book at your fingertips, Barrie Dolnick, the founder of Executive Mystic, gives wise and delightful advice that can make any home a haven. Learn which materials and elements give ease to a room, how to create a welcoming space for a new baby, and how to harness nature's harmony, including which trees to plant around your home -- fig for fertility, almond for prosperity, and apple for love. These are just a few of the plentiful and spellbinding things that Barrie Dolnick has to share. There are spells for special occasions -- from Father's Day to Thanksgiving to Passover -- and spells for family gatherings; rituals for blessing a new home and for leaving a home you have loved.
Simple Spells for Hearth and Home helps you recognize your power to influence and create a home blessed with the spirit of health, joy, and vitality.
Customer Reviews:
Simple & Useful with a Disturbing Undercurrent.......2004-03-04
"Simple Spells for Hearth and Home: Ancient Practices for Creating Harmony, Peace, and Abundance" delivers exactly what the title promises--something not many books do. I enjoy the inclusion of various goddesses who can assist with magickal house work--especially the Roman goddess Vesta. The spirit of "Simple Spells for Hearth and Home" is light and inspirational--the spells are easy to accomplish. My only quibble with the book is shared with another reviewer--she constantly tries to "hard sell" the concept of using spells to people faithful to Judeo-Christianity. There isn't a problem with this, since magickal books need not and indeed should not be exclusive. I do however suspect that her core audience come from Earth-based paths (Wicca, Witchcraft, Hoodoo, Shamanism, etc) Dolnick's hard-sell routine comes off as a book selling tactic; her otherwise gentle voice becomes brassy. In the future, if Dolnick let her gentle voice lead the way rather than allowing it to be overpowered by the pursuit of personal abundance, her books would be even stronger.
Brilliant book for wiccans!.......2002-06-12
This brilliant book focusing on spells and rituels for your home and holidays, is a must see for all wiccans! Plus, it is a series book!
More Fun than Fung Shui.......2001-10-17
The title and subtitle sum up what this book is pretty well. A little bit spell book, a little bit decorating book, she talks about making a house a home through some effort on your part.
It's a nice little book with some nice ideas, but she seems to try a little too hard to take Pagan ideas to non-Pagan readers. Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, for instance, presented in a Pagan way might appeal to many Pagans, but not to many Christian or Jewish readers. It has a feel of effort to it, like she's trying to sell the book to a group that never visits the "New Age" section of the bookstore.
Still, things are presented in a very clear way, suggesting materials and moon phases for the most appropriate times for the spells. None of the materials are very exotic, so the spells are indeed accessible to anyone who is of a mind to try their hand at a little magic.
The index is quite good, but unfortunately no bibliography. Not a bad book if Hestia/Vesta-type rituals are important to you.
simple Spells for Hearth and Home.......2000-10-23
In this time when most spell books are only about love and money it nice to find one dealing with home and family. With spells for Physic Housecleaning and Health and Joy for Grandparents to Nurturing and Love for the Kids Room this book is wonderful for makeing your home more of the kind of home we all want. Loving, cheerful and happy, the kind of home we all want to come home to.
Very nice!.......2000-04-14
I enjoyed this book very much and expect to use it quite often in the future. It's like Feng Shui but easier to understand and incorporate. I only wish there were more general spells (like how to create coziness, etc.) in the book.
Book Description
In this stunning celebration and reappraisal of the importance of "women's work," acclaimed journalist Jean Zimmerman poignantly addresses the tug that many Americans of the twenty-first century feel between our professional and private lives. With sharp wit and intelligence, she offers evidence that in the current domestic vacuum, we still long for a richer home life -- a paradox visible in the Martha Stewart phenomenon, in the continuing popularity of women's service magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, and Ladies' Home Journal -- whose combined circulation of over 17 million is nearly twice the combined circulation of Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report -- and the booming business of restorations, where onlookers get a hands-on view of domestic life as it flourished in past centuries. This book is about the ways home traditions passed from one generation to the next -- baking a birthday cake from scratch, cherishing family heirlooms, or discovering the satisfaction of piecing a quilt -- sustain our souls, especially in our ever more processed, synthetic world, where we buy "homemade" goods and fail to see the irony in that.
Made from Scratch tells the story of the unsung heroines of the hearth, investigating the history of female domesticity and charting its cultural changes over centuries. Zimmerman traces the lives of her own family's homemakers -- from her tiny but indomitable grandmother, who managed a farm, strangled chickens with her bare hands, and sewed all the family clothing, to her mother, who rejected her country upbringing yet kept a fastidious suburban home where the gender divide stayed firmly in place, to her own experiences as a wife and mother weaned on the Women's Movement of the 1970s, with its emphatic view that housework was a dirty word and that the domestic sphere was to be fled rather than cherished. In this book Zimmerman questions the unexamined trade-off we have made in a shockingly brief time span, as we've "progressed" from home-raised chickens to frozen TV dinners to McNuggets from the food court at the mall. What is lost when we no longer engage, as individuals and as a community, in the ancient rituals of food, craft, and shelter?
Customer Reviews:
Too Bad She Didn't.......2004-03-10
For the first 200 pages of this book, the author seems to have a love-hate view of "housewifery", appliances, societal changes, and never does seem to arrive at an opinion as to which is more desirable: a return to simpler times when the home was the center of family life versus the vissitudes and amenities of modern life. She advocates for both and neither. In the very end of the book, she finally lets slip that she enjoys and finds personal fulfillment in the needle arts of knitting, crocheting, and quilting. Read the last chapter and skip the rest.
This book does not contain illustrations, recipes, or much in the way of constructive suggestion as to how to recapture the presumed pleasure of the American hearth. It reads like a very long and dull diatribe lamenting that society and "home-made" have changed without ever getting her point across. The end notes and source lists are huge, leaving this reader wondering why this author never quite makes her point. Will she ever make up her mind?
A "pleasure" to read!.......2003-04-25
"Made From Scratch: Reclaiming the Pleasures of the American Hearth" by Jean Zimmerman is a beautifully written book describing the history and current state of the art of homemaking in America. Zimmerman, who comes from a long line of Southern roots matrons, was hit head on with the power of feminism in high school and college, catapulting her far away from her domestic foremothers. Now, a wife, mother and author, she has comprehensively researched her subject and presents it in straight-forward and intimate style. This book oozes with insightful anecdotes and facts about the modernization of American Homemaking, and what it reveals about our society in general. Vividly interesting, entertaining, and thought provoking. Highly recommended.
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