whiskerology:
A surprising history of human hair in nineteenth-century America, where length, texture, color, and coiffure became powerful indicators of race, gender, and national belonging.
Included in The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2025!
Available to order online from Harvard University Press, Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.
Also available at many local bookstores, including Bay Area favorites like Pegasus Books in Berkeley and Oakland, East Bay Booksellers in Oakland, Mrs. Dalloway’s in Berkeley, Orinda Books in Orinda, and Copperfield’s Books across the North Bay.
“[Y]ou will find much to ponder and enjoy in the historian Sarah Gold McBride’s “Whiskerology: The Culture of Hair in Nineteenth-Century America” (Harvard). Despite its whimsical title, “Whiskerology” is a serious academic book with many points to make about race and gender and their entanglement with coiffure in the United States. But Gold McBride doesn’t shy from delightful anecdotes for those who like to magpie through history’s weirdnesses alongside its grave themes.”
press
DECEMBER 17, 2025
Whiskerology featured in the New Yorker’s list of Best Books of 2025 (“Also Recommended”).
DECEMBER 1, 2025
Whiskerology featured in the UC Berkeley News roundup of “Gifts for Every Reader.”
OCTOBER 24, 2025
Whiskerology was nominated (though sadly, did not win!) the Bookseller Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year.
AUGUST 1, 2025
Margaret Talbot’s New Yorker review of Whiskerology was featured in “5 Book Reviews You Need To Read This Week,” by LitHub’s Books Marks.
JULY 28, 2025
Whiskerology was reviewed in the New Yorker by Margaret Talbot.
JULY 28, 2025
Research from Whiskerology was featured in a segment on NPR-WAMU’s radio program 1A: “What do beards tell us about people, politics, and how we see each other?”
JULY 28, 2025
A Q&A about Whiskerology for Harvard University Press’s “Behind the Book” feature.
JULY 24, 2025
Whiskerology was reviewed in The Spectator (UK) by Ian Sansom.
JULY 24, 2025
A public event held for Whiskerology at the Eliot Bay Books in Seattle, Washington was broadcast on C-SPAN.
JULY 20, 2025
An interview about Whiskerology with Anne Helen Petersen for the Culture Study newsletter.
JULY 9, 2025
The Public Domain Review published “Splitting Hairs: Chinese Immigrants, the Queue, and the Boundaries of Political Citizenship,” an excerpt of Whiskerology’s first chapter.
JUNE 29, 2025
An episode about Whiskerology on the New Books Network podcast, hosted by Dr. Miranda Melcher
JUNE 23, 2025
Whiskerology’s cover (designed by Pablo Declan) was featured in Spine Magazine’s round-up of university press books published in June.
JUNE 9, 2025
Literary Hub published “Bad Curls, Bad Character: The Charged Meaning of Hair in 19th-Century America,” an excerpt of Whiskerology’s introduction.
APRIL 24, 2025
An interview about Whiskerology with David Marr on Late Night Live (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
“So many smart, dedicated people can and have written good books, but it’s a special bonus skill to make those books not just fun, but addictive — even thrilling. That’s how I felt reading Whiskerology.”
UPCOMING EVENTS
march 18, 2025 | townsend center for the humanities, berkeley, ca
A talk about Whiskerology in conversation with Dr. David Henkin, Margaret Byrne Professor of History at UC Berkeley, hosted by the Townsend Center for the Humanities at UC Berkeley.
Registration is requested. More information on the Townsend Center’s website.
“Gold McBride combs through a bristling, tangled mess of data, facts and theories about gender, race, national identity and their relationship to — yep, you guessed — hair [...] Her argument is both utterly straightforward and distinctly weird and wonderful, in that slightly perverse academic fashion which combines statements of the obvious […] with strange and fascinating examples that support her thesis.”
Past Events
June 12, 2025, Warwick’s, La Jolla, CA
At my first bookstore event, I was in conversation with Rebecca Jo Plant, professor of History at UC San Diego. See photos from the event on my Instagram page and on Warwick’s page!
JuLY 18, 2025, REDDIT AMA
I answered fantastic questions about nineteenth-century American hair on the subreddit r/AskHistorians. Check out the thread at this link!
JuLY 18, 2025, Elliott Bay book company, seattle, wa
At this bookstore event, I was in conversation with Aubrey Williams, digital history librarian at University of Washington.
JuLY 29, 2025, american antiquarian society, worcester, Ma
Watch the recording of this virtual talk on the Society’s YouTube page!
JuLY 30, 2025, faction brewing company, alameda, ca
Thanks to Profs and Pints Alameda for hosting my talk “A History of American Hair” at a local brewery!
SEPTEMBER 18, 2025, BANCROFT LIBRARY, BERKELEY, CA
I spoke about some of the archival sources that feature in Whiskerology as part of the Bancroft Library’s Roundtables talk series.
october 3, 2025, university of california, berkeley
Watch the recording of the lecture I gave as part of UC Berkeley’s Alumni and Parents Weekend at Homecoming on the university’s website!
PRAISE FOR WHISKEROLOGY
“Whiskerology is a delightful, meticulously researched deep dive into the history of hair in nineteenth-century America. Exploring the intersection of body and identity in US history, Sarah Gold McBride untangles and redefines our understanding of our tresses, locks, and curls. Through vivid storytelling, she unveils how hair has long shaped and reflected cultural anxieties about race, ethnicity, and gender. The result is a fascinating account of how something as intimate and ubiquitous as hair became a public marker of power and belonging.”
“An illuminating history of an unruly ‘appendage.’ Once considered mere dead matter, hair was reconceptualized in the nineteenth century—when its hue and texture, volume and silhouette came to signal supposedly unalterable aspects of identity. Gold McBride deftly showcases the ways in which hair has been used to define, defend, and contest the boundaries of race and gender.”
“Gold McBride’s fascinating study invites us to take human hair seriously. Nineteenth-century Americans, we learn, saw hair as a body part that expressed truths about one’s identity and character. Some even saw racial ancestry in the structure of each individual hair. I will never look at hair the same way again!”
“In this innovative and surprising history, Gold McBride reveals wigs, moustaches, and hair dye to be about much more than fashion. Many nineteenth-century Americans fixated on hair as evidence of an individual’s place in supposedly natural hierarchies, even as they feared that people were disguising themselves through widespread ‘hair fraud.’ Whiskerology shows that you can’t understand the history of gender, race, or class without thinking about hair.”