Cowboys and Coffin Makers: One Hundred 19th-century Jobs You Might Have Feared or Fancied

By: Laurie Coulter and Martha Newbigging

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Synopsis: An eye-opening guide to 100 career options in 19th-century America. If you could live in 19th-century America, what job would you want? Sheriff? Prospector? Westbound settlers created many such opportunities, but the country's economy also involved "careers" no one would ever choose, like slavery. Explore this unique job guide and witness the sweeping changes of the 1800s through the eyes of the workers who helped shape it. You'll discover frontier jobs like cartographer (don't mistake a buffalo herd for a forest, as one unlucky mapmaker did) and wartime jobs (doughboys, for example). Some occupations lost out to new technology (glassblowers couldn't compete with 1,800 bottles-per-hour machines). Others were created because of it (elevator drivers). Social reformers, meanwhile, sought to change the world itself. Featuring a timeline of the 1800s, this fascinating guide is sure to employ readers' senses of history and humor.