Frank converted most of the barn into a photography laboratory run by Mr. Coggin, an English photographer who referred to the children as “blighters and beggars […] ’orse thieves, bloody barsteds, and worse” (136). After Mr. Coggin departed following the tonsillectomy incident, other photographers came and went, but Frank preferred taking family pictures himself.

Frank favored indoor photography with massive amounts of flash powder, creating explosions that charred the ceilings and terrified the younger children. The older children were shell-shocked but fatalistic. Frank emerged from under the black cloth to scold crying children, then set off blinding flashes that shook the room and filled it with choking smoke. For outdoor pictures, he used a delayed-action release to run and get into frame, but the unreliable mechanism often clicked too soon or made everyone wait tensely with frozen smiles. Often, Frank smacked any children not posing properly, so the delayed photograph would capture him mid-wallop.

When newspaper photographers visited, Frank demonstrated how quickly the children could gather, type, send Morse code, and speak foreign languages. The children enjoyed seeing Frank ordered around by professional photographers who told him to stand still and look pleasant.

For a Remington publicity campaign, Frank photographed the children typing on white typewriters. Later, working for an automatic pencil company, he staged an elaborate funeral for wooden pencils at a Nantucket sand dune, complete with coffin, grave, and formal burial ceremony. Tom Grieves oiled his laundry wringer before they buried it for a similar publicity stunt for a washing machine company, knowing Frank would make them dig the wringer up and tell Tom to keep using it.

Newspaper articles about the family embarrassed the children at school, especially when teachers read excerpts aloud. A reporter attributed inaccurate statements to Lillian, including a claim about being more proud of her children than of her “my two dozen honorary degrees and my membership in the Czechoslovak Academy of Science” (143). A newsreel photographer tricked the family into eating dinner outside, then projected the footage at ten times normal speed with the family laundry in the background, making them look like they ran to set the table and bolted down their food in the pursuit of maximum efficiency. The children were humiliated when they saw it at the Dreamland Theater, but Frank took them for sodas afterward to soften the embarrassment.

Frank enforced table manners by rapping his knuckles on the heads of any children taking too-large bites and thumping any elbows left on the table. Lillian objected to corporal punishment on sensitive body parts but focused on where rather than whether to punish. The entire family, except Lillian, participated in skull-rapping and elbow-thumping, with catching Frank’s elbow considered the ultimate achievement.

Frank and Lillian taught the children that it was their responsibility to make guests comfortable. When six-year-old Lillian sat next to elderly author George Iles, who told a sad story about being ancient and poor with no children to love him, she threw her arms around him and insisted he did have loving children—the Gilbreths. Iles brought her special boxes of candy on every subsequent visit.

At dinner with guest Mr. Russell Allen, baby Jack burped loudly and pointed accusingly at Allen, repeating Frank’s own phrase about not wanting an “organ recital” (151). At first, Frank, mortified, banished Jack from the table, but when the mood at dinner grew increasingly uncomfortable, Frank brought Jack back from the kitchen, had him apologize, and admitted Jack had learned the phrase from him.

Aunt Anne, Frank’s older sister, gave the children piano and then stringed instrument lessons for six years, despite their lack of talent. During one of her recitals, she told the audience the children had only recently switched from piano to excuse their poor performance. When Lillian and Frank traveled, Aunt Anne stayed with the family in their place. She asserted authority by using the forbidden front stairs and sitting in Frank’s chair. The children at first resented her blunt criticism and changes to routines. At dinner, Bill hid under the table and thumped Aunt Anne’s legs. When she finally caught him by the hair and yanked him out, his pants fell down. She became so upset she choked on her pie. Tom Grieves rushed in and saved her by slapping her on the back. She exploded in anger, threatening to lambaste everyone. Shocked, the children behaved well during her stay from them on. When Frank and Lillian returned, she reported that the children kept in beautiful order.

At one point, a psychologist visited to give the children intelligence tests, planning to publish a paper about Frank’s teaching methods. After she asked embarrassing personal questions in private interviews, the children discovered Lillian’s batch of intelligence tests with answers and memorized them. They scored impossibly high on the next set of tests. When the psychologist gave a word-association test, the children provided disturbing responses they had rehearsed, delighting the psychologist who “panted in excitement as she scribbled in her pad” (161) with visions of her published research. But then, Lill accidentally said her word-association answer before hearing the question. The psychologist accused them of cheating and stormed out, advising Frank to thrash them all. Frank listened to their account of her inappropriate questions and sided with them, threatening to sue if she published anything.

On Friday nights, Frank and Lillian attended lectures or movies alone. On Saturday nights, Lillian stayed home with the babies while Frank took the older children to the movies. Although Frank usually announced they would only stay for one show, he always yielded to their pleas to stay for the second feature. Once, the children tested him by filing out after the first show, and he begged them to stay, revealing how much he enjoyed the outings.

The movie that affected Frank most was a 12-reel melodrama about a widow who works herself to exhaustion for ungrateful children who ultimately send her to the poor house. Frank wept openly, wringing out his handkerchief, and made the children promise to take care of Lillian if anything should happen to him. For months afterward, he joked grimly about trudging up that hill to the poor house when the children asked for allowance advances.

Frank especially enjoyed the family skits performed in the parlor several times a year. In one skit, the children imitated Frank leading a factory tour, with Frank Jr. padding his stomach to play his father, Ernestine dressing up to play Lillian, Anne playing a factory superintendent, and the younger children playing themselves. Another skit showed Frank on an auditorium platform giving a long-winded speech to an audience that tiptoed out while he droned on. In yet another, Ernestine, playing Lillian, was asked a series of silly invasive questions by the other children playing journalists.

After the skits, Frank sometimes performed a one-man “minstrel show” (169) as the offensive Black caricatures Mr. Jones and Mr. Bones, telling old jokes that featured exaggerated Southern Black speech and racist stereotypes. When he declared it was past bedtime, the children begged to go out for ice cream sodas. Frank protested about the expense but always took everyone, grumbling about heading over the hill to the poor house.

As the Jazz Age of the 1920s dawned, Frank became convinced that teen girls were “riding, with rouged lips and rolled stockings, straight for a jazzy and probably illicit rendezvous with the greasy-haired devil” (172). He forbade his daughters to wear silk stockings, modern underwear instead of longjohns, short skirts, makeup, high heels, or bobbed hair, threatening to send them to a convent. Anne and Ernestine complained they were the only girls at Montclair High School wearing long skirts, sensible shoes, and cootie garage hairstyles.

Anne bobbed her own hair with scissors, emerging with a ragged cut. After Lillian cried and Frank roared at her, Anne ran from the table sobbing that nobody could understand her. Lillian and Frank each realized the other did not actually object to bobbed hair, and they sheepishly reconciled. That weekend, Lillian took all the girls to the barber for proper bobs.

Anne used money from her cafeteria job to buy silk stockings, short dresses, and teddies. She then openly displayed her purchases for the family and announced that if they did not allow her to wear them in the house, she would change into them on the way to school. Frank was scandalized by the scanty underwear and transparent clocked stockings. However, he reluctantly permitted the clothes but refused to allow makeup, perfume, or high heels. Lillian supported him, noting that his work on eliminating fatigue would be undermined by the girls wearing fatiguing shoes.

Frank became suspicious whenever the girls looked particularly pretty, accusing them of using makeup. He made Ernestine spit on his handkerchief so he could test her naturally flushed cheeks for rouge. When Ernestine wore perfume, Frank made her wash it off, saying “it stinks up good fresh air” (182).

The children bought stacks of jazz records and played them constantly on the family phonographs, singing and dancing to songs like “Stumbling” and “Limehouse Blues.” Frank mockingly sang nonsense syllables and complained they should memorize the Quran instead.

When Anne was invited to her first dance by cheerleader Joe Scales, Frank insisted on chaperoning. Anne reluctantly agreed, knowing she must gradually break down his resistance. On the night of the dance, Joe arrived in a stripped-down Model T with writing on it and an ear-splitting exhaust whistle. He wore a striped blazer, faddish Oxford bag pants, and a porkpie hat. Frank hid behind curtains, criticizing Joe’s appearance to Lillian, and deciding to put up side curtains on their Pierce-Arrow so the blazer would not show. When their car, Foolish Carriage, failed to start, Frank permitted Anne and Joe to go alone, reasoning that Joe was too small to pose a threat to Anne. He warned Anne to be home by midnight or he would come looking for her.

Frank insisted on chaperoning the girls’ dates, which the girls found unbearable. When Frank could not chaperone, he sent Frank or Bill as proxies, which the girls also found unbearable. Frank and Bill disliked the assignment, but Frank insisted they serve as third wheels who could run for help if necessary.

At dances, which Frank also chaperoned, he initially worked on papers but gradually became popular with the high-school crowd, who brought him refreshments and chatted with him. Anne predicted that once Frank got to know the boys and saw they were decent, he would quit chaperoning, which he soon did—but more because the teens saw him as “the meddlesome but harmless old duffer, a kind of big-hearted, well-meaning, asinine, mental eunuch” (191).

Libby Holton, a pretty, mature girl from Mississippi who wore makeup and perfume, visited for lunch. Despite Frank’s usual objections, he was charmed by her and acted gallantly throughout the meal. When Anne asked Frank to teach her and Libby to drive, he agreed immediately, surprising everyone.

Frank, Bill, and Lillian resented the older girls’ suitors for drawing their older sisters away from family activities. They fought against the invasion by tormenting the boys who called. The four youngest boys—Fred, Dan, Jack, and Bob—inadvertently helped by constantly running in and out during visits, sitting in laps, and needing to be buttoned and unbuttoned, which drove Anne nearly hysterical.

Frank and Bill conducted embarrassing fashion inspections when suitors arrived, measuring pant cuffs, examining sock colors, and checking clothing labels from Larkey’s Boys Store. When one of Martha’s suitors called on the phone, Frank answered with exaggerated excitement about a boy calling for the very freckled one. The younger children discovered an inscribed photograph from a bashful suitor and set the message to music, singing it in three-part harmony from a closet when he visited until Ernestine chased them with a walking stick.

One of Ernestine’s admirers drove a motorcycle noisily past the house multiple times each night hoping to see her. One evening, with Frank out of town, he parked the motorcycle and climbed a cherry tree outside her bedroom window. Ernestine spotted him and alerted Anne, who organized a mock burning at the stake. The children piled newspapers around the tree trunk while Anne swung a torch. The terrified boy pleaded for mercy as Anne threatened to roast him alive. When Lillian opened her window, Anne explained they’d trapped a skunk. Lillian told them to let the skunk go and come inside. The would-be Peeping Tom slinked down from the tree, thoroughly frightened.

The children did not realize Frank had had a bad heart for years. Dr. Burton now told him he was dying, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps within a year if he stopped working and stayed in bed. Frank refused to take precautions, insisting he was too busy with his work. However, he did write to brain specialist Myrtelle Canavan to arrange for the donation of his brain to Harvard after his death, leaving a letter of instruction for Lillian. He accepted invitations to speak at conferences in England and Czechoslovakia in eight months.

On June 14, 1924, three days before his scheduled sailing, Frank walked to Lackawanna Station to catch a train to New York. He telephoned Lillian from a pay booth to discuss a motion-study idea for Lever Brothers. Mid-conversation, Frank stopped talking and Lillian heard a thud. The line went silent, until the operator stepped in to report that the caller had hung up.

Jane, the youngest, was two years old. Anne was a sophomore at Smith College. Neighbors fanned out in automobiles to round up the scattered children, saying only that there had been an accident. When each child arrived home and saw the cars parked on the lawn, they knew someone had died. Jack, sobbing on the terrace, told them their Daddy was dead.

They dressed Frank in his army uniform. In the coffin, Frank didn’t look like himself; instead, “he seemed stern and almost forbidding. There was no repose there and no trace left of the laugh wrinkles at the corners of his eyes” (205). Following the instructions in his letter, Lillian sent Frank’s brain to Harvard. After cremation, she chartered a boat and scattered his ashes in the Atlantic.

Lillian changed after Frank’s death. Before marriage, her parents had made all her decisions; during marriage, Frank made them. Now, suddenly, she was no longer afraid of anything because the worst had happened. She never wept again.

Two days after Frank’s death, Lillian called a Family Council. She explained the family’s financial precarity. The Mollers wanted Lillian and the children to move to California. Anne offered to leave college and get a job; Ernestine said she didn’t care about college either. But Lillian, knowing how much Frank wanted all the kids to get a college education, presented an alternative: She could continue Frank’s work and keep the family together if they could manage the house themselves. They would have to let the cook go but could keep Tom Grieves. They would sell the car and live simply. The kids immediately agreed.

Lillian announced she would sail the next day on the ship Frank had planned to take and give his speeches in London and Prague. The children stepped up to run the household. Anne planned supper, Ernestine and Martha helped Lillian pack, and Frank and Bill went to sell the car. Lillian joked that Foolish Carriage never started for anyone but Frank anyway.

Someone once asked Frank what he’d wanted to use all his saved time for. He replied “For work, if you love that best […] For education, for beauty, for art, for pleasure. […] For mumblety-peg, if that's where your heart lies” (207).