Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States

In her latest book, history professor Laura Edwards traces law, commerce, and industry through textiles, the prominent people involved in their production, and the social and cultural mores of the period. Only the Clothes on Her Back (Oxford University Press) offers a new understanding of society through the lens of an under-studied area of American history, brimming with a rich analysis of deep archival research of the period, and mapping the nature of power and influence in a way never posited before.