Im Dutzend billiger / Aus Kindern werden Leute
Memoirs of the Gilbreth family with twelve children, headed by father Frank, a brilliant engineer, and mother Lillian. The first part brings childhood under their father's experiments; the second life after his death.
A humorous memoir of the American Gilbreth family of the early 20th century, co-written by two children, Frank Jr. and Ernestine. Father Frank B. Gilbreth was a prominent industrialist who treated his home with his twelve children as an experimental laboratory: throwing bath balls to practice reaction time, filming children on film, introducing organizational methods to dentistry, and teaching Morse code on the beach. Mother Lillian, a psychologist, was an equal partner in the family ventures.
The first novel, Cheaper by the Dozen, follows the family's childhood in Montclair, New Jersey, from the 1910s until the father's sudden death in 1924. It is filled with anecdotes about how the father applied the principles of scientific management to everyday life, and the mother maintained balance and a sense of humor.
The second novel, Belles on Their Toes, continues after her father's death, as Lillian takes over the family and tries to continue her husband's scientific mission, confronting prejudice against women in academia and the business world, and raising her children through adolescence and adulthood. Together, the two volumes form a touching and humorous portrait of a family in which love, pedagogy, and eccentricity are inseparable.
One copy is available
- Slight damage to the dust jacket
