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Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > Industrial history
The fifth volume of A History of the Book in America addresses the economic, social, and cultural shifts affecting print culture from World War II to the present. During this period factors such as the expansion of government, the growth of higher education, the climate of the Cold War, globalization, and the development of multimedia and digital technologies influenced the patterns of consolidation and diversification established earlier. The thirty-three contributors to the volume explore the evolution of the publishing industry and the business of bookselling. The histories of government publishing, law and policy, the periodical press, literary criticism, and reading--in settings such as schools, libraries, book clubs, self-help programs, and collectors' societies--receive imaginative scrutiny as well. The Enduring Book demonstrates that the corporate consolidations of the last half-century have left space for the independent publisher, that multiplicity continues to define American print culture, and that even in the digital age, the book endures. Contributors: David Abrahamson, Northwestern University James L. Baughman, University of Wisconsin-Madison Kenneth Cmiel (d. 2006) James Danky, University of Wisconsin-Madison Robert DeMaria Jr., Vassar College Donald A. Downs, University of Wisconsin-Madison Robert W. Frase (d. 2003) Paul C. Gutjahr, Indiana University David D. Hall, Harvard Divinity School John B. Hench, American Antiquarian Society Patrick Henry, New York City College of Technology Dan Lacy (d. 2001) Marshall Leaffer, Indiana University Bruce Lewenstein, Cornell University Elizabeth Long, Rice University Beth Luey, Arizona State University Tom McCarthy, Beirut, Lebanon Laura J. Miller, Brandeis University Priscilla Coit Murphy, Chapel Hill, N.C. David Paul Nord, Indiana University Carol Polsgrove, Indiana University David Reinking, Clemson University Jane Rhodes, Macalester College John V. Richardson Jr., University of California, Los Angeles Joan Shelley Rubin, University of Rochester Michael Schudson, University of California, San Diego, and Columbia University Linda Scott, University of Oxford Dan Simon, Seven Stories Press Ilan Stavans, Amherst College Harvey M. Teres, Syracuse University John B. Thompson, University of Cambridge Trysh Travis, University of Florida Jonathan Zimmerman, New York University
The largest enterprise in the capitalist world between 1920 and 1945, the Deutsche Reichsbahn (German National Railway) was at the center of events in a period of great turmoil in Germany. In this, the second volume of his comprehensive history of the Reichsbahn, Alfred Mierzejewski offers the first complete account of the national railway under Hitler's regime. Mierzejewski uses sources that include Nazi Party membership records and Reichsbahn internal memoranda to explore the railway's operations, finances, and political and social roles from 1933 to 1945. He examines the Reichsbahn's role in German rearmament, its own lack of preparations for war, and its participation in Germany's military operations. He shows that despite successfully resisting Nazi efforts to politicize its internal functions, the Reichsbahn cooperated with the government's anti-Semitic policies. Indeed, the railway played a crucial role in the Holocaust by supporting the construction and operation of the Nazi death camps and by transporting Jews and other victims to them.
A unique history of Cuba, captured in the life and times of the
famous rum dynasty
In this collective biography spanning four generations, Howard
Covington explores how one prestigious family shaped the
development of Piedmont North Carolina, particularly the city of
Durham. Covington examines the lives and legacies of George
Washington Watts; his son-in-law, John Sprunt Hill; and Hill's son,
George Watts Hill, and grandson, George Watts Hill Jr., analyzing
the personalities, beliefs, relationships, and life forces that
propelled these four men to become leading figures of their
generations.
On Christmas Eve 1801, Cornish mining engineer Richard Trevithick tested the first steam locomotive on the road. Though it was short-lived, exploding four days later, this was the beginning of the railway age in Britain.By the end of the 18th century, there was a considerable number of railways across Britain with well established steam engines. This informative guide tells the story of these railways, beginning with the pioneers of locomotive engines and the navvies who built the railways themselves.A must for anyone interested in the history of the railways, industrial Britain and travel, this informative guide explores the lives of those on the railway. Train guards, station staff and passengers are all touched on, as well as underground railways and tragic rail disasters. Colour photographs and illustrations bring the golden age of rail in Britain to life.Includes a list of places to visit which specialize in railways, as well as a glossary of the key terms in the book.
Based on a first-hand account of a worker involved in campaigning for better rights and conditions for himself and his co-workers, this book reveals how one individual working in the mining industry in the UK in the second half of the 20th century managed to effect real change. His words and actions are truly inspirational and serve as a timely reminder of how far we've come, as well as how influential one person can really be - whatever his current economic or political standing. Peppered with primary source documents, photographs and contributions from members of the original author's family, the book makes interesting reading for anyone who cares about justice, equality and dignity. Most importantly, it puts our current economic and political challenges in perspective... Do we really have so much to complain about? Dangerously, or fortunately perhaps (since it's clear we all stand to benefit), this book is likely to spur any would-be campaigner to take up arms and fight.
In 1988 several white managers of the Shoney's restaurant chain
protested against the company's discriminatory hiring practices,
including an order to blacken the "O" in "Shoney's" on minorities'
job applications so that the marked forms could be discarded. When
the managers refused to comply, they lost their jobs but not their
resolve--they sued the company. Their case grew into the largest
racial job discrimination class action lawsuit of its time.
Shoney's eventually offered to settle out of court, and the nearly
21,000 claimants divided a $132.5 million settlement, bringing to
an abrupt end a landmark case that changed corporate attitudes
nationwide.
Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Western Europe? Was it a sudden acceleration of the European economy, or should we look at specific institutions arising in Western Europe since the Middle Ages? This book puts these big questions of European economic history in a global perspective, deals with the institutions that developed in Europe, and measures their relative efficiency over time and compared with other parts of Eurasia. It traces the growth of human capital in the centuries between 1000 and 1800, in comparison with China, Japan and India. It also demonstrates how important the European Marriage Pattern was for understanding Europe s past. The result is a new synthesis of the origins of the Industrial Revolution. Originally published in hardcover.
Clanging: Belfast in its industrial pomp must have been noisy: shipyards manipulating sheets of metal, the constant riveting being only one source of racket; the endless clatter from linen mills, the screeching of trams on unyielding rails, sirens and hooters marking time at the factories. There were steam trains and steam engines in addition to horses' hooves beating on the streets. The rumbustious, often riotous, eternally spirited Belfast people packed into the terraced houses as well as the alleys would have added their din, especially around the drinking dens. The noise is gone, one aspect of the urban past that cannot be recreated. However, the industrial city has left other remembrances, from many buildings which still grace the post-industrial city, to the humdrum details of citizens' lives revealed in newspapers, to more formal sources such as the corporation's minute books, the deliberations of the Linen Merchants' Association and the sometimes shocking revelations in parliamentary reports. Utilising where possible contemporary materials, this book details Belfast's development from the eighteenth century market town, where only hindsight can discover the seeds of industrial greatness, to the titanic city - in every respect - of the period prior to Great War, whose horrors were to usher in such changes. Belfast was a success: its unparalleled growth, its might in textiles, shipbuilding and other industries. However, the book cannot, does not, shy away from the darkness that imbued the clanging city, from the health problems of mill workers to the poverty behind the well-lit main streets a 'charnel house breaking in upon the gaiety and glitter of a bridal' as one description inelegantly had it. Then there were, of course, the 'intestine broils', the sectarian conflicts that blighted Belfast in the nineteenth century, as they were to do in the twentieth.
Puerto Rico, Hawai'i, and California share the experiences of conquest and annexation to the United States in the nineteenth century and mass organizational struggles by rural workers in the twentieth. Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW offers a comparative examination of those struggles, which were the era's longest and most protracted campaigns by agricultural workers, supported by organized labour, to establish a collective presence and realize the fruits of democracy. Dionicio Nodin Valdes examines critical links between the earlier conquests and the later organizing campaigns while he corrects a number of popular misconceptions about agriculture, farm-workers, and organized labour. He shows that agricultural workers have engaged in continuous efforts to gain a place in the institutional life of the nation, that unions succeeded before the United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez, and that the labour movement played a major role in those efforts. He also offers a window into understanding crucial limitations of institutional democracy in the United States, and demonstrates that the widespread lack of participation in the nation's institutions by agricultural workers has not been due to a lack of volition, but rather to employers' continuous efforts to prevent worker empowerment. Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW demonstrates how employers benefitted not only from power and wealth, but also from imperialism in both its domestic and international manifestations. It also demonstrates how workers at times successfully overcame growers' advantages, although they were ultimately unable to sustain movements and gain a permanent institutional presence in Puerto Rico and California.
Founded in 1957, the Southern California suburb prophetically named City of Industry today represents, in the words of Victor Valle, ""The gritty crossroads of the global trade revolution that is transforming Southern California factories into warehouses, and adjacent working class communities into economic and environmental sacrifice zones choking on cheap goods and carcinogenic diesel exhaust."""City of Industry" is a stunning expose on the construction of corporate capitalist spaces. Valle investigated an untapped archive of Industry's built landscape, media coverage, and public records, including sealed FBI reports, to uncover a cascading series of scandals. A kaleidoscopic view of the corruption that resulted when local land owners, media barons, and railroads converged to build the city, this suspenseful narrative explores how new governmental technologies and engineering feats propelled the rationality of privatization using their property-owning servants as tools. Valle's tale of corporate greed begins with the city's founder James M. Stafford and ends with present day corporate heir, Edward Roski Jr., the nation's biggest industrial developeruco-owner of the L.A. Staples Arena and possible future owner of California's next NFL franchise. Not to be forgotten in Valle's captivating story are Latino working class communities living within Los Angeles's distribution corridors, who suffer wealth disparities and exposure to air pollution as a result of diesel-burning trucks, trains, and container ships that bring global trade to their very doorsteps. They are among the many victims of City of Industry.
On the banks of the Pacific Northwest's greatest river lies the Hanford nuclear reservation, an industrial site that appears to be at odds with the surrounding vineyards and desert. The 586-square mile compound on the Columbia in eastern Washington is known both for its origins as part of the Manhattan Project, which made the first atomic bombs, and for the monumental effort now under way to clean up forty-five years' of waste from manufacturing plutonium for the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Hanford routinely makes the news, as scientists, litigants, administrators, and politicians argue over its past and its future. It is easy to think about Hanford as an expression of federal power, a place apart from humanity and nature, but that view is a distortion of its history. "Atomic Frontier Days" looks through a wider lens, telling a complex story of production, community-building, politics, and environmental sensibilities. In brilliantly structured parallel stories, the authors bridge the divisions that accompany Hanford's headlines and offer perspective on today's controversies. Influenced as much by regional culture, economics, and politics as by war, diplomacy, and environmentalism, the story of Hanford and the Tri-Cities of Richland, Pasco, and Kennewick illuminates the history of the modern American West. John M. Findlay is professor of history at the University of Washington. His focus is social and urban history. Bruce Hevly is associate professor of history at the University of Washington. His focus is history of science and technology. ""Atomic Frontier Days" captures one of the most interesting and controversial places in the American West in all its surprising particularity. Technologically sophisticated, shrewd, at once analytically unflinching and generous, it belongs on the short list of books necessary to understand the West and its complicated relation to the nation." -Richard White, author of "The Organic Machine" "This richly detailed study takes us beyond big government programs and corporate contracts to show people coping with the intricate dance of science and technology, warfare and welfare, the mess of making bombs and the business of cleaning up." -Virginia Scharff, Center for the Southwest, University of New Mexico
Enclosing Water is an environmental history of the Industrial Revolution, as inscribed on the Liri valley in Italy's Central Apennines. Amid forces of revolution and empire, and Enlightenment discourses of 'improvement' and political economy, the Liri's natural wealth - water-power - generated sweeping changes in its landscape and working and living environments. This book tells the story of how defining water as property - both materially and discursively - led to the emergence of an industrial riverscape, and of a concomitant new ecological consciousness; to heightened environmental risks and awareness of those risks. A dramatic century in the Liri's socio-environmental history, with its cast of new industrial bourgeoisie, engineers and civil servants, illuminates how material developments and ideological currents completely reshaped the relationship between society and nature at the periphery of 19th century Europe. By integrating Political Economy into the narrative of European environmental history, this pioneering book offers a critical new view of discourses of water disorder and environmental politics in the Mediterranean region.
The charivari is a loud, late-night surprise house-visiting custom from members of a community, usually to a newlywed couple, accompanied by a qu?te (a request for a treat or money in exchange for the noisy performance) and/or pranks. Up to the first decades of the twentieth century, charivaris were for the most part enacted to express disapproval of the relationship that was their focus, such as those between individuals of different ages, races, or religions. While later charivaris maintained the same rituals, their meaning changed to a welcoming of the marriage. Make the Night Hideous explores this mysterious transformation using four detailed case studies from different time periods and locations across English Canada, as well as first-person accounts of more recent charivari participants. Pauline Greenhill's unique and fascinating work explores the malleability of a tradition, its continuing value, and its contestation in a variety of discourses.
"The Subterrranean Forest" studies the historical transition from the agrarian solar energy regime to the use of fossil energy, which has fuelled the industrial transformation of the last 200 years. The author argues that the analysis of historical energy systems provides an explanation for the basic patterns of different social formations. It is the availability of free energy that defines the framework within which socio-metabolic processes can take place. This thesis explains why the industrial revolution started in Britain, where coal was readily available and firewood already depleted or difficult to transport, whereas Germany, with its huge forests next to rivers, was much later. This landmark text was originally published in German in 1982 and was thoroughly revised and updated for the White Horse Press in 2001.
Trains have a nostalgic connotation for most Americans, but John Stilgoe argues that we should be looking to rail lines as the path to our future, not just our past. Train Time picks up where his acclaimed work Metropolitan Corridor left off, carrying Stilgoe's ideas about the spatial consequences of railways up to the present moment. With containers bringing the production of a global economy to our ports, the price of oil skyrocketing, and congestion and sprawl forcing many Americans to live far from work, trains offer an obvious alternative to a culture dependent on cars and long-haul trucking. Arguing that the train is returning, "an economic and cultural tsunami about to transform the United States," Stilgoe posits a future for railways as powerful shapers of American life. For anyone looking for prescient analysis and compelling history of the American landscape and economy in general and railroad and transit history in particular, Train Time is an engaging look at the future of our railroads and of transportation and land development. For those familiar with John Stilgoe's talent for seeing things that elude the rest of us, and delivering those observations in pithy asides about real estate, corporate culture, and other aspects of American life, this book will not disappoint.
Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) was one of the great pioneers of electrical science. His ideas led to huge advances in communications and now form much of the bedrock of electrical engineering - every textbook and every college course bears his stamp. Despite having little formal education he created the mathematical tools that were to prove essential to the proper understanding and use of electricity. At first his ideas were thought to be outrageous and he had to battle long and hard against ignorance, prejudice and vested interests to get them accepted. Yet they are now so much a part of everyday electrical science that they are simply taken for granted and our great debt to him is rarely acknowledged. Caring nothing for social or mathematical conventions, he lived a fiercely independent life, much of the time close to poverty. His writings reveal a personality like no other and are laced with wickedly irreverent humour; he is by far the funniest author of scientific papers. Basil Mahon combines a compelling account of Heaviside's life with a powerful insight into his scientific thinking and the reasons for its enduring influence.
In this corporate history of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company,
Nannie M. Tilley recounts the story of Richard Joshua Reynolds and
the vast R. J. Reynolds tobacco complex with precision and drama.
"A damning new history . . .Jeffreys brings a rare combination of forensic acumen and narrative flair." --"Chicago Tribune" At its peak in the 1930s, the German chemical conglomerate IG Farben was one of the most powerful corporations in the world. To this day, companies formerly part of the Farben cartel--the aspirin maker Bayer, the graphics supplier Agfa, the plastics giant BASF--continue to play key roles in the global market. IG Farben itself, however, is remembered mostly for its infamous connections to the Nazi Party and its complicity in the atrocities of the Holocaust. After the war, Farben's leaders were tried for crimes that included mass murder and exploitation of slave labor. In "Hell's Cartel," Diarmuid Jeffreys presents the first comprehensive account of IG Farben's rise and fall, tracing the enterprise from its nineteenth-century origins, when the discovery of synthetic dyes gave rise to a vibrant new industry, through the upheavals of the Great War era, and on to the company's fateful role in World War II. Named one of the best books of the year by "Business Week," "Hell's Cartel" sheds new light on the codependence of industry and the Third Reich, and offers a timely warning against the dangerous merger of politics and the pursuit of profit.
The industrialization of Canada's Subarctic relied upon the region's large northwestern lakes: Winnipeg, Athabasca, Great Slave, and Great Bear. Between 1921 and 1960, these lakes comprised a seam in the Canadian interior where industrial economies took root, transgressing political geographies and superseding the historically dominant fur trade. The Industrial Transformation of Subarctic Canada reveals the history of human impact upon the North. It provides a baseline, grounded in historical and scientific evidence, for measuring environmental change in the Subarctic. Liza Piper examines the sustainability of industrial economies, the value of resource exploitation in volatile ecosystems, and the human consequences of northern environmental change. She also addresses northern communities' historical resistance to external resource development and their fight for survival in the face of intensifying environmental and economic pressures.--Liza Piper is an assistant professor of history at the University of Alberta.-
The culmination of a century-long dream to link the Great Lakes interior industrial hubs to the Atlantic Ocean, the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project stands as one of the largest and most important public works' initiatives of the twentieth century. Seen as vital to North American commerce and strategic in advancing America's position on the world stage, the billion dollar seaway and power dam were also a phenomenal feat of engineering involving an unprecedented level of cooperation between Canadian and American agencies and the unrelenting efforts of workers on both sides of the border. Dubbed the greatest construction show on earth, the largest waterway and hydro dam project ever jointly built by two nations consisted of seven locks, the widening of various canals, the taming of rapids, and the erection of the 3216-foot long, 195.5-foot high Robert Moses - Robert H. Saunders Power Dam. In this book, Claire Puccia Parham reveals the human side of the project in the words of its engineers, laborers, and carpenters. Drawing on firsthand accounts, she provides a vivid portrait of the lives of the men who built the seaway and the women who accompanied them. On the fiftieth anniversary of the dedication of the power dam and waterway, this book is a fitting tribute to the hard work and dedication of the project's 22,000 workers.
Located in the heart of England's Lake District, Thirlmere, with its placid sheen, surrounding evergreens, and apparent lack of pollution or development, seems to epitomize the unadulterated bucolic ideal. But under its calm surface lurks the enduring legacy of a nineteenth-century conflict that pitted industrial progress against natural conservation - and helped launch the environmental movement as we know it. Purchased by the city of Manchester in the 1870s, Thirlmere was dammed and converted into a reservoir, its water piped one hundred miles south to the burgeoning industrial center and its workforce. This feat of civil engineering - and of natural resource diversion - inspired one of the first environmental struggles of modern times. "The Dawn of Green" recreates the battle for Thirlmere and the clashes between conservationists who wished to preserve the lake and developers eager to meet the needs of industry and a growing urban population. Bringing to vivid life the colorful and strong-minded characters who populated both sides of the debate, noted historian Harriet Ritvo revisits notions of the natural promulgated by Romantic poets, recreationists, resource managers, and industrial developers to establish Thirlmere as the template for subsequent - and continuing - environmental struggles. A century after Thirlmere, the demand for water and the control of water rights are among the most pressing political, humanitarian, and environmental concerns of our time. By investigating Victorian ideas about industry, development, and technology, Ritvo shows how the lessons learned in the Lake District can inform and guide modern environmental and conservation campaigns.
From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, farmers in the Corn Belt transformed their region into a new, industrial powerhouse of large-scale production, mechanization, specialization, and efficiency. Many farm experts and implement manufacturers had urged farmers in this direction for decades, but it was the persistent labor shortage and cost-price squeeze following WWII that prompted farmers to pave the way to industrializing agriculture. Anderson examines the changes in Iowa, a representative state of the Corn Belt, in order to explore why farmers adopted particular technologies and how, over time, they integrated new tools and techniques. In addition to the impressive field machinery, grain storage facilities, and automated feeding systems were the less visible, but no less potent, chemical technologies-antibiotics and growth hormones administered to livestock, as well as insecticide, herbicide, and fertilizer applied to crops. Much of this new technology created unintended consequences: pesticides encouraged the proliferation of resistant strains of plants and insects while also polluting the environment and threatening wildlife, and the use of feed additives triggered concern about the health effects to consumers. In Industrializing the Corn Belt, J. L. Anderson explains that the cost of equipment and chemicals made unprecedented demands on farm capital, and in order to maximize production, farmers planted more acres with fewer but more profitable crops or specialized in raising large herds of a single livestock species. The industrialization of agriculture gave rural Americans a lifestyle resembling that of their urban and suburban counterparts. Yet the rural population continued to dwindle as farms required less human labor, and many small farmers, unable or unwilling to compete, chose to sell out. Based on farm records, cooperative extension reports, USDA publications, oral interviews, trade literature, and agricultural periodicals, Industrializing the Corn Belt offers a fresh look at an important period of revolutionary change in agriculture through the eyes of those who grew the crops, raised the livestock, implemented new technology, and ultimately made the decisions that transformed the nature of the family farm and the Midwestern landscape. |
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