Voices From The Back Stairs: Interpreting Servants' Lives At Historic House Museums Book

Voices from the Back Stairs was an easy read once you got going and I particularly enjoyed her discussions of both the history of servants in the United States and her case studies. But perhaps my favorite part of the book was the way she explained how necessary this type of interpretation is to what we do, and I now have a stack of quotes and resources to take to colleagues who may be less than enthusiastic about changes we need to be making. Perhaps the only change I would make would be to shorten the section on the servant problem. I feel Ms. Pustz did a great job of outlining what the problem was, and how it relates to problems that can arise in trying to interpret servant's lives, but the explanation of how to build a tour or program around the servant problem seemed to drag on for me. This is a book I would recommend to others in my field, even if it was less of a history and more of a best practices guide. I do not however think that the average reader outside of the public history field would be as interested in this work.