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Marsha Ackermann, the author of this wonderful book, is a historian. She leads us on a wonderful historical tour of air-conditioning in America. Ackermann starts in the early `20's with a geographer, Ellsworth Huntington, who strongly believed that "people of European races (because of milder, temperate weather) are able to accomplish the most work and have the best health". His racist views, tempered by the more moderate ones of C.E.A.Winslow, a prominent public health professional, laid the groundwork for a societal shift in the acceptance of air-conditioning.The Carrier Corporation, a major manufacturer of air-conditioning units, started off by plugging the units to luxury establishments such as hotels and movie "palaces". These beckoned the public with posters that promised that it was "Kool inside".It was only as recently as the 50's (after the second world war), that air-conditioning made inroads in the home market. Advertisement appeals were made to women and later to men to a point where now the air-conditioning unit is ubiquitous in American society.I was fascinated and alarmed to see how architectural features that provide relief from heat, such as "sleeping porches, sun parlors, and large windows" have been, over the years, thrown entirely away from the home development equation. Instead what we have most often are uniform houses that are easy to build and that have no "interior partitions that block the flow of conditioned air".Even though Ackermann herself acknowledges in the end that she dislikes air-conditioning, her book is not a strident case for or against it. At times the book reads annoyingly like her thesis dissertation (with too much visual clutter from footnotes), but the endlessly fascinating topic keeps you glued.I want to put in a special word for the absolutely charming pictures (many of them are photographs from the `50's) that Ackermann generously sprinkles throughout the book. They tell a wonderful story all by themselves and supplement the text very well."Cool Comfort" expertly chronicles the history of air-conditioning in America. It is fascinating to read how sharp marketing and advertising, when the time is ripe, can turn a product from the luxury fringes to an item that is increasingly considered indispensable. In that sense, the lessons learned from this account can well be applied to almost any product society can now "never live without".