Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America

摘要

Jennifer Anderson's Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America helps us better appreciate the place of mahogany in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Atlantic, especially Anglo-American, history. Following in the rich tradition of commodity histories, Anderson's examination of mahogany also offers us new insights into society, politics, and culture as we see these topics framed by the beautiful wood at the center of her study. But, unlike chocolate, coffee, and so many other subjects of earlier commodity histories, mahogany's very nature prevented it from becoming a "highly regimented, quality-controlled, mass-produced agricultural product" (p.8).