Overview

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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9781421411064

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Reviews

A fascinating book. -- Linda Pelaccio Heritage Radio

A fascinating book. -- Linda Pelaccio Heritage Radio Refrigeration Nation is a valuable, well-researched study, but it also suggests the need for more work on a subject that at first seems mundane and taken for granted but, upon greater inspection, is really quite fascinating and compelling. -- Kathy Merlock Jackson Journal of American Culture

Author Information

Jonathan Rees is a professor of history at Colorado State University, Pueblo. He is author of Representation and Rebellion: The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1914-1942 and Managing the Mills: Labor Policy in the American Steel Industry during the Nonunion Era.

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