The American Cane Mill: A History of the Machines, the Manufacturers, Sugar Cane and Sorghum

The American Cane Mill: A History of the Machines, the Manufacturers, Sugar Cane and Sorghum. By Don Howard Dean. Foreword by Bill Outlaw. (Jefferson, N.C, and London: McFarland and Company, Inc., c. 2008. Pp. [vi], 345. $75.00, ISBN 978-0-7864-3661-3.)

In The American Cane Mill: A History of the Machines, the Manufacturers, Sugar Cane and Sorghum, Don Howard Dean documents sugar mills and the Americans who made and sold them in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In Part 1, he reviews the botanical history of sugarcane and sorghum and the technological history of mills that pressed the sucrose-rich fluid from the stalks. Part 2, a catalog of American cane mill manufacturers, makes up most of the text. This section consists of alphabetically arranged business histories illustrated with sales catalog pages and patent drawings. Photographs depict artifacts in...