Books

Book Review: The Secret History of Home Economics

Nonfiction BookTube and bloggers worldwide are participating in the History Challenge 2021 from August 16 – 31.  Participants are being asked to read at least one nonfiction history book during this period. Historical fiction books are also acceptable.  It’s a great way to challenge your reading habits and learn something new!

Here are some optional prompts to help you choose your book:

  • Read a biography, memoir, or autobiography
  • Read a book that takes place on a different continent
  • Read a book about a school topic you studied
  • Read a book by a BIPOC author
  • Read about a favorite time period
  • Read a book by a woman author
  • Read a book about your favorite leisure or hobby
  • Read a microhistory book
  • Read about a social movement
  • Read a book in translation

If you have been following this blog long enough, it’s not hard for me to read a history book!  I choose The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live by Danielle Dreilinger.  The author is a former WGBH and Boston Globe reporter who now lives in New Orleans, an education reporter for the Times-Picayune. This is a fascinating read about a field that has made major contributions to bettering society.  I didn’t know a lot of things before reading the book, such as Ellen Swallow Richards, the first woman to attend MIT, laid the groundwork for home economics by introducing how science can improve the home, specifically around sanitation and nutrition.  Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) also played a role in the field’s development.  Margeret Murray Washington, the third wife of Booker T. Washington, saw home economics as a way to uplift Black communities.

I also appreciated the author’s frankness about the racism that was pervasive in the field.  The American Home Economics Association, found in 1908, only became racially integrated in the mid-1970s.  Despite the racism, many home economists of color persisted, like Fabiola Cabeza de Baca, a Latina nutritionist who taught homemaking to indigenous communities in New Mexico and advocated for Hispanic civil rights.  She is my personal hero because she invented the fried U-shaped taco!  Flemmie Kittrell was the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in nutrition, who was instrumental in her research for improving nutrition for Black children and families in developing countries.  I also didn’t know that home economics played a key role in developing the national school lunch program, the Head Start program, and space food for astronauts.  Did you know that the idea for the Amazon Echo was originally developed by a home economist back in the 1960s?

So what happened to home economics?  Up until the 1970s, most US K-12 schools and colleges and universities offered home economics programs.  Unfortunately, the field fell victim to its own hype.  These programs were specifically designed for women and told them that they didn’t need careers if they were homemakers.  Eventually, women realized they didn’t need to go to college since they weren’t pursuing careers.  Home economics also suffered from the backlash of the civil rights and women’s liberation movements of the 1960s, where women of all races were embarrassed to say that they studied the field publicly.  Because of all this, home economics is not really taught in many American schools anymore.

By the 1980s and 1990s, home economics programs were being phased out of schools.  I remember taking a home economics class in elementary school. The only thing I learned was how to bake chocolate chip cookies by safely using the oven and cleaning pans and utensils.  Looking back at that time, I wish schools would invest more in home economics.  Now more than ever, we need home economics.  This pandemic has forced all of us to be at home more and think about our everyday routines.

The author makes a lot of great suggestions to bring back home economics, like making it mandatory for both boys and girls to learn it in schools, embracing these life skills on the same level as career preparation, include more STEM perspectives in home economics, and diversify the profession with more people of color and men.

This is definitely a great read!

Book Review: When Women Invented Television

What I love most about reading nonfiction is that I always learn something new. Before reading When Women Invented Television: The Untold Story of the Female Powerhouses Who Pioneered the Way We Watch Today by pop culture author Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, I didn’t know who Gertrude Berg was and her impact on TV sitcoms.  I had heard briefly about Irma Philips’s reign in soap operas.   I knew that Hazel Scott was a famous pianist, but I didn’t know that she not only had a TV music show but was also the first Black woman to host a primetime show.  We all know Betty White for her dry humor and her roles on The Golden Girls and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but I didn’t know she was a pioneering talk show host back in the 1950s.

The book follows these legendary women who break the glass TV entertainment ceiling while also navigating racism, sexism, and Cold War politics.  This is a highly entertaining and informative read!

Book Review: Sensational

I have been reading a lot of books lately that highlight the forgotten histories of people who are only now getting recognized.  The latest book I read was Sensational: The Hidden History of America’s Girl Stunt Reporters by Kim Todd, which focuses on pioneering women journalists at the turn of the 20th century.  When I was in journalism school, I only learned about Nelly Bly.  Even though Bly broke down barriers for women in media, because she was doing her work during the height of the “yellow journalism” era, she is not always seen as a “serious” journalist.

But history has been kinder to these reporters’ legacy and this book successfully highlights the women who helped launch a new kind of investigative journalism.  Their “stunt reporting” led to societal reform in the workplace and gender equality.  The book talks about Bly’s investigation into patient rights at an asylum, Ida B. Wells’s anti-lynching and women’s suffrage campaigns, and the “Girl Reporter” who exposed doctors and midwives who performed illegal abortions.  I also appreciated the profile of Victoria Earle Matthews, a black reporter turned community activist who founded a settlement home to help Black girls from the South find their footing in New York City.

In many journalism circles today, this type of reporting is still frowned upon, but some of the best journalism lately has come from female journalists doing just this type of work, Whether it is Gloria Steinem’s investigation into the Playboy club, Barbara Ehrenreich’s book on low-wage workers, Joan Didion’s encounter with a pre-school-age child who was given LSD by her parents, and even Nicole Hannah-Jones’s 1619 Project, today’s women journalists stand on the shoulders of the pioneers featured in this book.

Book Review: Confident Women

Again, Book TV is the place to be if you want to see the latest nonfiction books.

Author and journalist Tori Telfer specializes in writing about female criminality.  She wrote a Jezebel column called “Lady Killers,” which looked at history’s most famous female serial killers.  The column was eventually turned into a bestselling book with the same name.  Telfer also hosts a podcast called “Criminal Broads.”

Her latest book is called Confident Women: Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion.  This book mostly focuses on non-violent scam artists and fraudsters.  Famous con artists included are Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, the legendary French thief who was partially responsible for starting the French Revolution and bringing down Marie Antoniette.

The book also focuses on the “Spiritualists,” the many women in history who produced scammy tricks for listening to the dead through conjure and “ectoplasm.”  Jude Devereau, the famous novelist who lost millions of dollars to astrologist Joyce Michael, is also included in the book.  Telfer also delves into the world of “Tragediennes,” women who took advantage of history’s most horrific events like 9/11 and the Pulse Nightclub shooting to gain money and attention.

Telfer concludes that all these women were successful in their respective frauds because they were perceived as likable.  That likability supports their confidence to commit their crimes.

“If you like her – and you will like her – then her work will be so much easier,” Telfer says.  “It’ll all be over quickly.  You’ll hardly feel a thing.”

If you are looking for a fun, accessible read about nonviolent true crime, check out this book!

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