2024 the best state to live in america review

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A fascinating history of the daily lives of Americans in the first fifty years of the new republic, told often in their own words.

The years between the patrician leadership of George Washington and the campaign that elected William Henry Harrison marked a period of startling changes in American life. However, most American were enmeshed in the myriad ordinary concerns of their lives, and although deeply affected by the great events of the time, their concern with them was intermittent. Jack Larkin describes the often gritty texture of life as these Americans experienced it, weaving the disparate threads of everyday life into the rich, complicated tapestry of American history during this transitional period.

“Recounting the customs and styles of life of ordinary people during a period of rapid and unsettling social and economic change, Jack Larkin, the chief historian at Old Sturbridge Village, the outdoor history museum in Sturbridge, Mass., illuminates an astonishing range of activities. These include infant feeding; the care of chamber pots, privies and grave yards; the use of broadside ballads, parlor songs and communal dances; the celebration of holidays and routines of travel; the production, design and use of clothing and household items; even the treatment of pets. Habits of speech and manners are sketched, as well as broad patterns of work, religion, sexuality and family life. Virtually all human activity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries comes in for scrutiny in this compact and insightful work.” —The 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

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003JBHVFE
Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperCollins e-books; Illustrated edition (September 7, 2010)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 7, 2010
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2432 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 414 pages
Reviewer: Rivermanmiss
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A rich treasure trove of information about the everyday details of life in America between 1790 and 1840
Review: Overview This is a 349-page, hardbound book in 6" x 9" format that deals with exactly what the name implies, namely, how everyday life changed in the period from 1790 when George Washington was President to 1840 when William Henry Harrison was running for President on a campaign of "log cabins and cider." It was written in 1988 by Jack Larkin who was then the 45-year-old Chief Historian at Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts. His occupation was an excellent background for writing this book, because he is able to reach into the rich resources of that historical village to describe the way ordinary people lived in that 50-year period. He explains that it is his mission to uncover and write about the things that have been taken for granted in everyday life. For example, how did a person travel from Boston to New York in 1790 and how did that change? We learn that if one could afford it, they took the stage coach in 1790. It took 10 or 11 days and cost the equivalent of eight days' wages. Then he goes on to give a detailed description of a stage coach including the perils of such a ride. We read about the crowding of nine people in a small, dark space on three seats, the bumpy ride, the snow whipping through the curtains and the primitive lodgings along the way. The railroad would revolutionize such a trip.Organization The book is organized into seven meaty chapters, each of which focuses on a separate aspect of daily life from typical working conditions, to schooling, to travel and transportation, to simple pleasures and entertainment, to marriage and family customs, and housing arrangements. The book concludes with a rich bibliography of primary sources such as "Domestic Manners of the Americans" written in 1832 by the upper-class Englishwoman, Frances Trollope, as well as excellent secondary sources that the author used for each of his seven chapters. There is also an excellent index. In the middle of the book are inserted a dozen glossy pages which offer excellent, high quality illustrations - maps and reproductions of period paintings.What I found useful My particular interest happens to be "everyday life" in all its richness. I wanted to learn how people dressed, what their houses were like, their courting customs, their religious lives, how they traveled from place to place and so on. The book was richly satisfying in these themes. The author has a gift for recreating a scene so that you feel you are there. For example, when the pianoforte (the precursor of the modern piano) first appeared in American homes around 1800, it caused quite a sensation. First, it was expensive. A good pianoforte cost about $600 or equivalent to the price of a small house in those days. It was a status symbol. Second, for a world accustomed to the simple sounds of a fiddle or flute or drum, the richness of the sounds and the chords was mesmerizing. Young boys would gather under the living room window in the evening to listen to the lady of the household playing this wonderful instrument. It is this recapturing of sights, sounds and smells that I found so enjoyable.What was disappointing Let me confess that I just loved this book. So, the only thing that disappointed me was that I wished the book were twice as long and presented twice as much material.Who might like this book? This is a very accessible, readable book. It is certainly aimed at the general reader. It might be refreshing background reading for a serious professional student of American history, but that is not its forte. Its strength is that it is a lovely read for the general reader who is curious about how everyday people lived when President Washington was in office and the remarkable changes that took place during the first half of the 1800's as American expanded fourfold in population and people began moving to the cities. I give it five stars.

Reviewer: Driven to Distraction
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Very detailed and interesting.
Review: Fascinating book for lovers of American history. I imagined my ancestors living during this time. My only "complaint" is that it is written in a somewhat older style of writing with lots of passive sentences. Hence the 4 stars.

Reviewer: Danny T
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great Social Historical Narrative
Review: This is a social history narrative. It is well written and full of interesting information concerning the daily lives of people in the post-colonial period. For example: Chimney's were sometimes cleaned by dropping a chicken down it so the flapping wings would remove built up pitch and creosote. The Justice of the Peace in local villages was responsible for tax collection, inspecting fences, an arrest of individuals accused of crimes. Often, they would only visit offenders and tell them of the accusation and pending trial -they would not follow through with the arrest because it would take people away from daily work which was necessary for the common good of the village. Every farmer rating livestock cut idiosyncratic shapes into their animals ears and those shapes were registered with the county clerk to determine branding/ownership. Learn when houses were first painted, what people did with their trash, traffic jams -yes, there were often traffic jams when someone lost a wagon wheel because roads were crude, narrow and alignment to furrowed wheel ruts where necessary for smooth, efficient travel. It is a refreshing look at this historical period because it doesn't re-hash the standard political and military events which give us a "nationalistic" image of the past. Instead, this book offers what life was like for the common person who was so often disengaged from those concerns because of the base need of simply surviving each day.

Reviewer: Kindle Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Very interesting.
Review: Very well written and interesting. It was kind of slow going at first with a lot of statistics but was very interesting afterward. A lot of research went into the book and it was well worth the read.

Reviewer: Andrew F. Saxe
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Excellent Summary of Everyday Life
Review: 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.

Reviewer: Lyn
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Really Enjoyed it
Review: Very detailed information about the life back then. Each category was short and to the point, which I liked. A good read.

Reviewer: Tyn
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Purchased as an overview look at life in early America because of family history research.

Reviewer: たなさん
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: 西部劇映画にハマって、簡単な『西部開拓時代』の入門書的なものをいくつか読んだけれども、「もっと具体的に当時の人々が食べていたもの、使っていたものを知りたいな〜」と思っていた。この本は開拓期の人々の日常ー食べるもの・住んでいた家・家事労働や結婚・出産、それに性生活から悪臭にまみれていた町の様子などーが描かれている。読み進むうちに、ぼんやりとしかイメージできなかった開拓時代の生活が色鮮やかに浮かんでくる。文章も読みやすく、西部劇程度の知識しかない者にとっては大変ありがたい一冊。