Why read Building a Housewife's Paradise?

Book cover of Building a Housewife's Paradise: Gender, Politics, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century

Book description

Supermarkets are a mundane feature in the landscape, but as Tracey Deutsch reveals, they represent a major transformation in the ways that Americans feed themselves. In her examination of the history of food distribution in the United States, Deutsch demonstrates the important roles that gender, business, class, and the state…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Building a Housewife's Paradise as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Xaq Frohlich

Author

Consumers in America today take for granted what it means to go to a supermarket and pick from shelves upon shelves of products. But this is, from a historical perspective, a weird way to shop for food.

Deutsch’s book is an excellent study of the “self-service revolution” in food retailing. She also breaks down all the gender, race, and class dimensions to it in a way that will make the reader rethink the “ease” and straightforwardness of supermarket shopping.

The most powerful aspect of this book was how it challenged me to think about all the work that goes into…

From Xaq's list on explain the origins of our industrial food system.