Danielle Dreilinger Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Danielle Dreilinger is a published writer and journalist.

Danielle used to work as an education reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, where she would cover topics regarding education revolution subjects that were frequently contentious on a national level. She is a former Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow, receiving the distinction in 2018 and fulfilling it at the University of Michigan. She had been actively working in the journalism field for several years and has written for publications like the Boston Globe and as the correspondent for Somerville on diversity, gentrification, city life, and politics. She has also produced for the local news website for WGBH, the NPR Boston station.

She has been deemed a ‘best features writer’ on behalf of the Louisiana Press Association. She has also frequently been the recipient of various project fellowships, including from the Education Writers Association, the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, and the Institute for Citizens and Scholars. Danielle first set out in journalism working as an independent journalist covering different arts beats for many outlets, among them WBUR. There she would join up with a journalistic team that would go on to win the Online Journalism Award, the first for the station to date.

She has had her writing published in places such as USA Today, the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Hechinger Report, Nashville Scene, Ploughshares, No Depression, and more. She attended Columbia University, where she graduated with her bachelor’s degree and received it summa cum laude.

The author resides in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Danielle Dreilinger is the author of the book The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live. The book came out in 2021 from W.W. Norton.

Danielle Dreilinger wrote The Secret History of Economics. If you love books that are historical or detailed in nature, have read and loved Freakonomics, or just have a passion for economics and all things interesting on certain topics, check this book out. It may be one of the best loved books on your shelf!

This is a book that goes over the field of home economics. It covers its beginning stages from being created sometime during the 19th century and then goes on to the effects of home economics becoming popular from that point on. The field was responsible for opening the door to a lot of opportunities educationally and professionally for women and they were not necessarily positions that had been open to them before.

Home economics would go on to also include such elements as education, science, economics, and more today. You may know it as being the shortened term ‘home ec’ that was recognized as being the designated class in school for women to take that were largely in middle school and then in high school. These classes are where women would ostensibly be instructed in the fine art of cooking, so that they can not only cook for themselves but for what would be assumed to be a husband a family some day.

However, this book will show the reader that home economics is so much more than going to school and trying to get your muffins to rise, or learning how to sew your own home made pillows for the home. This book actually goes into great detail of the history of this field and the effects that it has had on so many different parts of the American way of life that we take for granted. Home ec is being re-evaluated in terms of its effect on America and its history!

Sure, for some of us, home economics will forever be that class in school. But the way that we think about that is truly a disservice to the real history of this topic, as ‘The Secret History’ explores. This was about better living, and making it come about through science. It was a field that emerged and gave women many more opportunities to make money and gave them jobs they could take as business people, chemists, engineers, and professors.

What can all of us learn from this today? Author Danielle Dreilinger is determined to find out and explain it to us. There is always something funny and fascinating and new to learn in this close up and personal look at one of the most misunderstood fields in the history of the United States. Would women have had the same chances to make money and establish their own livelihoods had this not come about?

Feminist and insightful, Danielle takes us all the way back along the history of this topic. She takes the reader everywhere from Japan to Black colleges and DIY tech people along with Betty Crocker brigades. The majority of the people that worked in this field were women and they would go on to become marketers and chemists. They became experts in the fields of exercise and health and worked to create food for astronauts, to test parachutes, to develop further the fields of child education and development.

The presence of home economics was able to go along with American culture as well as it was to bring its influence to it. The author explores the movement as well as the topics of racism that sometimes came up within it. She also covers the actions of women who were innovative and leaders that influenced the field and explores some of these individual lives of the women, whether they were on their own romantically or sharing themselves with women in relationships or even egalitarian marriages.

This book will change the way that you think about home economics! It’s a great subject that is expertly explored by an author and journalist to perfection. Important in its own right, the book encourages readers to do their part to try and make the world a better place– all while keeping their checkbooks balanced and their meals on the table, of course.

Pick up a copy of The Secret History of Home Economics by Danielle Dreilinger to find out more about home ec and its fascinating impact on history!