Susan Strasser is the author of Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash and Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Nation. A professor of history at the University of Delaware, she lives near Washington, D.C.

Finally back in print, with a new Preface by the author, this lively, authoritative, and pathbreaking study considers the history of material advances and domestic service, the "women's separate sphere," and the respective influences of advertising, home economics, and women's entry into the workforce. Never Done begins by describing the household chores of nineteenth-century America: cooking at fireplaces and on cast-iron stoves, laundry done with boilers and flatirons, endless water-hauling and fire-tending, and so on. Strasser goes on to explain and explore how industrialization transformed the nature of women's work. Easing some tasks and eliminating others, new commercial processes inexorably altered women's daily lives and relationships—with each other and with those they served.

"Lively and provocative . . . A wonderful book. For bringing housework into the light of historical scholarship, Strasser deserves to have her name become a household word."—Jacqueline Jones, author of American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor

"A work of genius . . . marvelous to read."—Carolyn See, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Remarkable, rich and acute . . . Retrieves the taken-for-granted minutiae of the everyday life of ordinary people."—The New Yorker

"Rich in detail . . . I have not stopped thinking about this book since I finished reading it."—Nina King, Newsday