[Book Review] American Lucifers: The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750-1865, by Jeremy Zallen

David Schley*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalReview article

    Abstract

    Extract

    The history of artificial light is often told as a story of progress: candles giving way to gaslights, gas yielding to electric lightbulbs, each innovation improving on the safety and convenience of its predecessor. Yet this narrative obscures what Jeremy Zallen calls a “dark history” of “struggles among the makers and owners” of light (p. 3). American Lucifers, a labor and environmental history of artificial light in the century before the Civil War, addresses electrification in an epilogue, but it centers on a less heralded set of illuminants, from spermaceti to kerosene, and the work regimes they engendered. The production and consumption of light bound far-flung ecologies together and tied incipient industrial modernities to systems of unfree labor. Zallen's wide-ranging research and vivid prose reveal the exploitation latent in every strike of a match.

    Each chapter in American Lucifers examines a commodity used for lighting: whale oil, hog lard,...
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)823-824
    Number of pages2
    JournalJournal of American History
    Volume108
    Issue number4
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Mar 2022

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of '[Book Review] American Lucifers: The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750-1865, by Jeremy Zallen'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this