Format:
Online-Ressource (xiv, 258 p)
,
ill
Edition:
Online-Ausg. 2007 Electronic reproduction; Available via World Wide Web
ISBN:
0195111281
,
0195094204
Content:
Americans in the early nineteenth century were, as one foreign traveler bluntly put it, "filthy, bordering on the beastly," perfectly at home in dirty, bug-infested, malodorous surroundings. Yet gradually all this changed, and today, Americans are known worldwide for their obsession with cleanliness: for their sophisticated plumbing, daily bathing, shiny hair and teeth, and spotless clothes. InChasing Dirt, Suellen Hoy examines with grace and wit history of this remarkable transformation from "dreadfully dirty" to "cleaner than clean," ranging from the pre-Civil War era to the 1950s, when America's obsession with cleanliness reached its peak.Hoy offers a fascinating narrative, filled with vivid portraits of the men, and especially the women, who helped America come clean. Indeed, we see how cleanliness gradually shifted from a way to prevent disease to a way to assimilate, to become American. And as the book enters the modern era, we learn how advertising for soaps, mouthwashes, toothpastes, and deodorants in mass-ciculation magazines showed working men and women how to cleanse themselves and become part of the increasingly sweatless, odorless, and successful middle class.Chasing Dirt adds a new dimension to our understanding of our national culture, and along the way, it provides colorful and often amusing insight into what makes Americans the way we are today.
Content:
Intro -- CONTENTS -- INTRODUCTION: Cleanliness First -- CHAPTER ONE: Dreadfully Dirty -- John Wesley, Benjamin Franklin, and Reality -- The Filthy Farmstead -- Towns and Cities, Dirty-and Dangerous -- The Domestic Woman, Agent of Cleanliness -- Preceptress of Reform: Catharine Beecher -- Cleanliness, Health, and Virtue: Graham and Alcott -- Cleanliness as Public Policy: Griscom and Shattuck -- Sanitary Reform on the Eve of War -- CHAPTER TWO: A Wider War -- Florence Nightingale's Good Example -- The First Women Volunteers -- Creating the Sanitary Commission -- Olmsted Starts Inspecting -- A Woman's War -- The South and the Freedpeople -- Bringing Cleanliness Home from the War -- CHAPTER THREE: City Cleansing -- The Sanitary Lessons of the War -- Epidemics and the Urgency of Water and Sewers -- George Waring and the Sewering of America -- Women as Municipal Housekeepers -- Ada Sweet and a Cleaner Chicago -- Waring Cleans Up New York City -- Caroline Bartlett Crane Tests the Waring Model in Kalamazoo -- Public and Private Cleanliness in the Progressive Era -- CHAPTER FOUR: The American Way -- Becoming American -- Booker T. Washington-Toothbrushes and More -- To Ellis Island and America -- Good Neighbors, Good Teachers: The Settlement Workers -- From Miasmas to Microbes -- Metropolitan's Health Messengers -- Americanizing the Immigrant Home -- African-Americans, Cleanliness, and the Great Migration -- CHAPTER FIVE: Persuading the Masses -- Education and Business Team Up -- From Settlement House to School -- Philanthropy Changes the South -- Soap and Water for Modern Health Crusaders -- Americanizing the Workplace -- The Business of Cleanliness -- CHAPTER SIX: Whiter Than White-and a Glimmer of Green -- Cleanliness Peaks -- Housewives as Targets -- Bathrooms in the Country -- The War Changed Everything -- Looking for a "Cleaner Clean.
Note:
Includes bibliographical references (p. [183]-243) and index
,
Electronic reproduction; Available via World Wide Web
Additional Edition:
9780195111286
Additional Edition:
Erscheint auch als Druck-Ausgabe 9780195111286
Language:
English
URL:
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kxp/detail.action?docID=3052065
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