Home Fires: How Americans Kept Warm in the Nineteenth Century

How Things Worked

by Sean Patrick Adams

Home heating networks during the Industrial Revolution helped create the modern dependence on fossil fuel energy in America. Home Fires tells the fascinating story of how changes in home heating over the nineteenth century spurred the growth of networks that helped remake American society. Sean Patrick Adams reconstructs the ways in which the “industrial hearth” appeared in American cities, the methods that entrepreneurs in home heating markets used to convince consumers that their product designs and fuel choices were superior, and how elite, middle-class, and poor Americans responded to these overtures. Adams depicts the problem of dwindling supplies of firewood and the search for alternatives; the hazards of cutting, digging, and drilling in the name of home heating; the trouble and expense of moving materials from place to place; the rise of steam power; the growth of an industrial economy; and questions of economic efficiency, at both the individual household and the regional level. Home Fires makes it clear that debates over energy sources, energy policy, and company profit margins have been around a long time. The challenge of staying warm in the industrializing North becomes a window into the complex world of energy transitions, economic change, and emerging consumerism. Readers will understand the struggles of urban families as they sought to adapt to the ever-changing nineteenth-century industrial landscape. This perspective allows a unique view of the development of an industrial society not just from the ground up but from the hearth up.

200 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2014

Reviews

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

like mary poppins, a teaspoon of social analysis makes the history go down....author looks at 'staying warm' in 1800's usa through home heating, and industrial uses of energy. so looks at stove and fireplace design, coal mines, transportation, wood heat and deforestation, industrial mining, the unregulated capitalist (shyster?) method of cultural and economic change.
coal really took off after 1812 war, as most all the firewood had been chopped down/consumed by then.
kind of stodgily written, but really for the popular reader. from the "how things worked" series from johns hopkins
has pictures, maps, endnotes, bibliography, nice index.

ps and has perhaps some of the most unique library of congress subject headings ever?!: Dwellings|xHeating and ventilation|zUnited States|xHistory|y19th century. Heating|xSocial aspects|zUnited States|xHistory|y19th century.

[Chelsea Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book I had to read for my grad school class History of energy in the U.S., we are working is sort of a chronological order up to the present day. Our first book was sort of a brief history while this was more focused.

Adams does a great job of focusing on coal and does an excellent job of giving a very detailed but brief history of a very large subject. His focus lies within the northeast and midwest, he never mentions what is going on in the west or the south. He also ties in the human element in describing working conditions in mines, the added housework put in women going from wood energy to coal, he also hits on the environmental effects this new fuel has on not just the climate but the effects of people having to breath in this coal soot as well.

Adams does leave some things out that I will not go into but we covered in class. You have to understand this is a very brief history of how we went from burning wood for heat to using stoves and burning coal to heat our homes and cook with. He is taking a time frame from the revolution to the late 19th century after the civil war.

The only negative I had with this book was the ending. Adams goes into explaining steam power and it just didn't make sense to even bring up steam power in a book on coal. The way it is presented it comes across as an afterthought or a lead in to a second book Home Fires 2. Besides that I learned a lot about how coal came to be in the United States.