| Drawn from diaries, letters and personal reminiscences, No Idle Hands tells an intimate and sometimes hair-raising story of hand knitting in America from Colonial times onward. Women knit through the hardships of covered wagon travel across the West. They knit to save their husbands and sons from freezing to death on battlefields. Shell-shocked men knit to save their sanity in hospitals during both world wars. No Idle Hands documents the importance knitting has had in American life.
About the author: Anne L. Macdonald is the retired head of the History Department at the National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C. In 1994 she published Feminine Ingenuity: Women and Invention in America.
About the narrator: Kymberly Dakin won the 2006 Audie Award for her narration of Alice Munro’s Runaway.
What people are saying about No Idle Hands:
“Fascinating…What is remarkable about this book is that a history of knitting can function so well as a survey of the changes in women’s roles over time.” The New York Times Book Review
“Written with wit and humor…fills a large niche in American social history. Knitting was more than ‘women’s work’ or hobby; it played an important cultural and economic role throughout America’s past…A good book for lovers of history and knitting alike.” Pulitzer Prize-winning author James M. McPherson
ISBN 978-0-9796073-3-2
Abridged, 4 CDs, 4 hours
5 1/8" wide x 5 5/8" high x 1" deep
An audio book from Knitting Out Loud. |
