Clothing through American history

Authors Ann Buermann Wass and Michelle Webb Fandrich provide information on fabrics, materials, and manufacturing; a discussion of levels of society, daily life, and dress; and the types of clothes worn by men, women, and children, including American Indians and enslaved people. The authors have painstakingly researched such primary sources as diaries, letters, and wills of the people of the time, in addition to secondary resources. Just a few of the topics include: The constant problems of getting fabrics, such as wool, or cotton, in the late eighteenth centuries; The types of clothes that slave men, women, and children were allowed to wear; The beginnings of patterns and the mass production of clothing in the mid nineteenth century. The volume features numerous illustrations, helpful timelines, resource guides recommending websites, videos, and print publications, and extensive glossaries. - Publisher.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.