The Picture Cook Book would have saved me loads of trouble as I learned to cook. Everything a new cook needed to know could be found in these pages, starting with the basics of measuring.
Betty Crocker was a fictional creation used to sell products and educate homemakers, but she became a friend in need to millions of her fans who wrote her revelatory letters. Her advice aided women through depressions and war rationing. And she promoted General Mills products, such as Bisquick, which was always in my mom's kitchen.
- The Old Farmer's Almanac
- Webster's Speller and Dictionary
- Benjamin Franklkn's Autobiogrpahy
- The McGuffrey Reader
- A Handbook to American Womanhood by Catherine Beecher
- Etiquette in Society, in Buisness, and at Home by Emily Post
- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnagie
- Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book
- Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) ny Dr. Reuben
- 1980s Self Help Books
by Jess McHugh
PENGUIN GROUP Dutton
Pub Date June 1, 2021
ISBN 9781524746636
hardcover $28.00 (USD)
from the publisher
Surprising and delightfully engrossing, Americanon explores the true history of thirteen of the nation’s most popular books. Overlooked for centuries, our simple dictionaries, spellers, almanacs, and how-to manuals are the unexamined touchstones for American cultures and customs. These books sold tens of millions of copies and set out specific archetypes for the ideal American, from the self-made entrepreneur to the humble farmer.
Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Webster's Dictionary, Emily Post’s Etiquette: Americanon looks at how these ubiquitous books have updated and reemphasized potent American ideals—about meritocracy, patriotism, or individualism—at crucial moments in history. Old favorites like the Old Farmer’s Almanac and Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book are seen in this new way—not just as popular books but as foundational texts that shaped our understanding of the American story.
Taken together, these books help us understand how their authors, most of them part of a powerful minority, attempted to construct meaning for the majority. Their beliefs and quirks—as well as personal interests, prejudices, and often strange personalities—informed the values and habits of millions of Americans, woven into our cultural DNA over generations of reading and dog-earing. Yet their influence remains uninvestigated. Until now.
What better way to understand a people than to look at the books they consumed most, the ones they returned to repeatedly, with questions about everything from spelling to social mobility to sex? This fresh and engaging book is American history as you’ve never encountered it before.
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