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navin_Rjohnson t1_je50n4y wrote

I’m looking for books about daily life and material culture in pre-20th century America. Anything about the boring day to day stuff that political biographies miss. How did normal people live/love/eat/sleep/hang out? Or diaries from that era. I love the journal of Nicholas cresswell for example

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CraftyRole4567 t1_je5fxbn wrote

depends on when you’re looking at— four quick recommendations :)

if you’re interested in just before the 20th century, Victorian America: Transformation ls in Everyday Life 1876-1915 is fascinating and has everything you want, while the murder of Helen Jewett is a nonfiction exploration of a famous murder case and has a lot of day-to-day information.

If you’re interested in colonial, Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale is all about the daily life of a colonial midwife, mostly her diary. I just finished Malcolm Gaskill’s Ruin of All Witches which is about the witchhunt in 1651 Springfield Massachusetts and it is absolutely packed with information about daily life, what people did, what their lives were like, what they eat, all the stuff you sound interested in!

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