In the heat of today’s quarrels over global warming, The Domestic Revolution serves as a reminder that our own era is not unique.

After a career spent studying and recreating English domestic life, from medieval times to the Victorian period, historian Goodman is uniquely qualified to uncover how a seemingly minor change in consumer choices can dramatically alter people’s lives and society as a whole. Having seen for herself the difference between running a period home fueled by wood and a coal-powered household, she makes that the springboard for an entertaining and wide-reaching investigation of how thousands of fuel-starved Londoners shifting to coal in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries set in motion a transformation of English food, homemaking, transportation networks, landscapes, and industry, all of which, in turn, shaped the modern world. Goodman uses vivid historical anecdotes and personal experience to explain how the changes unfolded, step by step.

While her explanations of subjects such as tree coppicing and coal transport may delve a bit too deep for casual readers, her lively treatment of how the shift to coal affected multiple facets of English life and her drily humorous personal anecdotes make this an interesting and enjoyable read overall. The book includes helpful illustrations to add context.

Goodman offers a detailed, abundantly illustrated picture of the ways coal changed daily life for all classes throughout Great Britain, drawing from a prodigious number of sources, including property inventories, house expenditures, town records, housekeeping manuals, and recipe books. In addition, she recounts her own experiences in facsimile houses, cooking and heating with different kinds of fuel and confronting the 'nonstop cleaning' of the filth resulting from burning coal.

... immersive.