The Franklin Stove: An Unintended American Revolution
Shipping calculated at checkout
Before the gas range, before the electric oven, there was the Franklin stove: the first great American effort to improve domestic life through applied science. Joyce E. Chaplin, a professor of early American history at Harvard, treats it as the opening move in a long arc of technological change that would accelerate through the 19th century and hasn't stopped since.
Chaplin writes for general readers, providing broad and specific context about Franklin and his times. Culinary history buffs should know that Franklin designed the stove primarily to improve heating, not cooking; the kitchen angle is real but modest.
What she is really after is Franklin himself, and the portrait is unexpectedly intimate. She follows him as he promotes the stove across England and France, traces his evolving opposition to slavery, and documents his growing conviction that women were capable of understanding science, a position far from obvious in his time.
A departure from our usual subject matter, and well worth the detour.
Published on March 11, 2026
