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Refrigeration Nation: A History of Ice, Appliances, and Enterprise in America
How we keep food cold while the house stays warm.
Only when the power goes off and food spoils do we truly appreciate how much we rely on refrigerators and freezers. In Refrigeration Nation, Jonathan Rees explores the innovative methods and gadgets that Americans have invented to keep perishable food cold--from cutting river and lake ice and shipping it to consumers for use in their iceboxes to the development of electrically powered equipment that ushered in a new age of convenience and health.
As much a history of successful business practices as a history of technology, this book illustrates how refrigeration has changed the everyday lives of Americans and why it remains so important today. Beginning with the natural ice industry in 1806, Rees considers a variety of factors that drove the industry, including the point and product of consumption, issues of transportation, and technological advances. Rees also shows that how we obtain and preserve perishable food is related to our changing relationship with the natural world.
1115442936
Refrigeration Nation: A History of Ice, Appliances, and Enterprise in America
How we keep food cold while the house stays warm.
Only when the power goes off and food spoils do we truly appreciate how much we rely on refrigerators and freezers. In Refrigeration Nation, Jonathan Rees explores the innovative methods and gadgets that Americans have invented to keep perishable food cold--from cutting river and lake ice and shipping it to consumers for use in their iceboxes to the development of electrically powered equipment that ushered in a new age of convenience and health.
As much a history of successful business practices as a history of technology, this book illustrates how refrigeration has changed the everyday lives of Americans and why it remains so important today. Beginning with the natural ice industry in 1806, Rees considers a variety of factors that drove the industry, including the point and product of consumption, issues of transportation, and technological advances. Rees also shows that how we obtain and preserve perishable food is related to our changing relationship with the natural world.
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Refrigeration Nation: A History of Ice, Appliances, and Enterprise in America
Only when the power goes off and food spoils do we truly appreciate how much we rely on refrigerators and freezers. In Refrigeration Nation, Jonathan Rees explores the innovative methods and gadgets that Americans have invented to keep perishable food cold--from cutting river and lake ice and shipping it to consumers for use in their iceboxes to the development of electrically powered equipment that ushered in a new age of convenience and health.
As much a history of successful business practices as a history of technology, this book illustrates how refrigeration has changed the everyday lives of Americans and why it remains so important today. Beginning with the natural ice industry in 1806, Rees considers a variety of factors that drove the industry, including the point and product of consumption, issues of transportation, and technological advances. Rees also shows that how we obtain and preserve perishable food is related to our changing relationship with the natural world.
Jonathan Rees is a professor of history at Colorado State University-Pueblo. He is the author of Industrialization and the Transformation of American Life: A Brief Introduction and Refrigerator.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Inventing the Cold Chain2. The Long Wait for Mechanical Refrigeration3. The Decline of the Natural Ice Industry4. Refrigerated Transport Near and Far5. The Pleasures and Perils of Cold Storage6. "Who Ever Heard of an American without an Icebox?"7. The Early Days of Electric Household Refrigeration8. The Completion of the Modern Cold ChainConclusionNotesEssay on SourcesIndex
What People are Saying About This
Mansel G. Blackford
Rees has written a solid, comprehensive account of the technological creation of cold chains in the United States. I wish this book had been available for me to read when I was doing my own research.
From the Publisher
Rees has written a solid, comprehensive account of the technological creation of cold chains in the United States. I wish this book had been available for me to read when I was doing my own research.—Mansel G. Blackford, author of Making Seafood Sustainable: American Experiences in Global Perspective
Americans consider their refrigerators and freezers as ordinary features of life, but that wasn’t always the case. In this fascinating and very well-written book, by America’s leading authority on the subject Jonathan Rees, readers learn just what it means to have their frozen dinners and drinks “on the rocks.”—Bruce Kraig, Professor Emeritus of History, Roosevelt University, Chicago
Bruce Kraig
Americans consider their refrigerators and freezers as ordinary features of life, but that wasn’t always the case. In this fascinating and very well-written book, by America’s leading authority on the subject Jonathan Rees, readers learn just what it means to have their frozen dinners and drinks “on the rocks.”
