I love old photos of utterly ordinary moments - they tell us so much more about "real" life than any staged or high-art photo can. This book is full of those amazing, ordinary photographs, all of children throughout the past 100+ years from all over America. Loved it.

Beautiful! An excellent coffee table book for anyone interested in history or photography. Artistic and well-laid-out. I’d highly recommend this.

Todd Brewster is a veteran journalist and historian. He searched photographs that museums had (such as the Smithsonian, Metropolitan Museum of art, etc.), antique stores, flea markets and also his own family trove to let us know a visual history of American children. Covering 250 years, the children are shown living everyday life. The photographs range from babies to teenagers with a diverse assortment of youngsters: Black, White, Asian, Native American, urban and rural. The photographs are not in chronological or thematic organization. In the early 1900’s the camera became “portable” so the photographs see the lives of children in their environment. Whereas the earlier photographs were solemn daguerreotypes and staid family portraits of earlier times. I loved seeing pictures of famous people when they were young such as Stephen King at age 4 years and Lady Gaga at 4 years old too. There is a photograph of Thomas Edison at age 5 plus more. It made it a fascinating journey to see the different childhoods. The author believes that Americans “invented” childhood. Sadly, the author tells the reader that the American childhood will disappear (die) due to insidious forces such as social media and school shootings.

I prefer my books neatly stacked on shelves. Every so often, however, there is a book that is so unique it needs to be placed on a table by the sofa so that not only I, but any visitor to the house, can open its pages and get lost therein. In American Childhood, Todd Brewster gifts us with such a tomb. Part history, part philosophy, and part ‘picture book’, this work beckons us not only to recall our own childhoods but reflect on the American perception and reality of what it means to be a child in the American culture.

Among my favorite quotes are:
“…child and adult – live in a state of mutual fascination and disgust. “Children shout and play and cry and want candy; grown-0ups say Ssh! And work and scold and want steak.” The child drams of the impossible and resent the adult who puts impediments on her realizing it; the adult feels the need to maintain order (the “curse” of the grown-up!) but secretly yearns to return to her combustible youth.”
And
“Over the course of two hundred years, what have we learned about childhood? The most obvious lesson is that we have not always appreciated children for their own sake; in fact, we have rarely done so. Instead, we have abused children. We have profited from them. We have dismissed them as inconsequential. We have sexualized them and exploited them. We have prosecuted them, imprisoned them, even sentenced them to death. We have over sentimentalized them. We have preached to them. We have deported them. We have misunderstood them. We have put them in cages and subjected the to cruel experiments. All manner of cruelty has been visited upon them. And we have sought in vain to see the world through their eyes.”

This is a book that calls for conversation; conversation not just among adults, but also across generations from the youngest among us, who see their own eyes reflected in the photos, to the oldest among us who may see familiar faces pushing through the fog of memory. Is that young boy at the check out counter our next President, or someone who will go down in history as one of our most notorious criminals? Is that young girl destined to live the life prescribed to her by tradition, or will she break glass ceilings left and right? What roles do our childhoods play in forming the adult both as they the adult was becoming the person they are, and in forming the person they are still continuing to grow to be?

This is the truly exceptional book to both gift and receive as a gift!

I was honored to receive this book as an advance readers copy in exchange for my opinion. My only complaint is that I received the book as an eBook and not a print copy; I will get this book in print!

American Childhood was not what I thought it would be.

From it's own description, "A remarkable collection of over 200 stunning photographs of children—from the Civil War era to the present—that captures the ever-changing experience of childhood throughout American history."

I expected a lot more photographs of children from all eras of American life. The book started out okay with images of children and explanations of what was happening when the picture was taken. Then the book turned more into a history book than anything else. I would have much more preferred the author talk more about the actual images than all the other miscellaneous material that was included.

If you enjoy history, you will enjoy this book. If you were looking for a photography book with background information about the images, this book is not for you.

Loved the little stories with the pictures, really gave a glimpse into history with a lenses we don’t get often. Loved it!

A beautiful and wide-ranging series of photographs accompanied by a thoughtful series of connected short essays. This works equally well as a coffee-table book and history of US trends. Recommended!

This is one of those times I wish I could've read this in hardback first, but still, the pictures here are gorgeous. We see pictures of Maurice Sendak, Lucille Ball, and Christopher Walken as children, plus children in different eras playing, praying, and even working. It should be used as discussion on how children were treated through the years; also, it can be used for creative writing prompts. Thanks, NetGalley, for the book!

Stunning photography an amazing look at children unique interesting a book I will be gifting to friends.#netgalley #scribner

This book was so interesting! It included pictures of every day american children with more famous children sprinkled in (Castro's son, child actors, president's children, etc...). Looking through this book, I couldn't help but think about my grandma's childhood and my parents' childhood and how different it was from my childhood (and the next generation for that matter). America is a relatively young nation, but look how much it has changed for the american children.

I absolutely loved reading this book. I was completely drawn into the topic and could not stop reading it.

A sincere thank you for providing me an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review. I am grateful to have had the opportunity and leave my review voluntarily.

I want to buy this as a hardback and leave it on my coffee table. This is one of the best books on American childhood I have come across because it is truly diverse. His section on Laura Bridgman, a deafblind woman who learned to communicate, something the deafblind students my team teaches do over time. She was exploited and an example of the abilities of these children.
The entire book is lovely and informative and it will be a nice thing to talk about at the Sociology Honor's Society dinner tomorrow.
Thank you for the ARC!