Now in a thoroughly updated new edition, this successful textbook surveys the history of technology in America from the 1600s to the 21st century. Alan I Marcus and Howard P. Segal explore the effect society, culture, politics and economics have had upon technological advances, and place the evolution of American technology within the broader context of the development of systems such as transportation and communications. This unique book connects phenomena such as colonial printing presses with the American Revolution; early photographs with the creation of an allegedly unique American character; and high-tech advances in biotechnology with a growing desire for individual autonomy. This is an ideal resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of the history of technology, the history of science, and American history.

In Land of Milk and Money, Alan I Marcus examines the establishment of the dairy industry in the United States South during the 1920s. Looking specifically at the internal history of the Borden Company-the world's largest dairy firm-as well as small-town efforts to lure industry and manufacturing south, Marcus suggests that the rise of the modern dairy business resulted from debates and redefinitions that occurred in both the northern industrial sector and southern towns. Condensed milk production in Starkville, Mississippi, the location of Borden's and the South's first condensery, so exceeded expectations that it emerged as a touchstone for success. Starkville's vigorous self-promotion acted as a public relations campaign that inspired towns in Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas to entice northern milk concerns looking to relocate. Local officials throughout the South urged farmers, including Black sharecroppers and tenants, to add dairying to their operations to make their locales more attractive to northern interests. Many did so only after small-town commercial elites convinced them of dairying's potential profitability. Land of Milk and Money focuses on small-town businessmen rather than scientists and the federal government, two groups that pushed for agricultural diversification in the South for nearly four decades with little to no success. As many towns in rural America faced extinction due to migration, northern manufacturers' creation of regional facilities proved a potent means to boost profits and remain relevant during uncertain economic times. While scholars have long emphasized northern efforts to decentralize production during this period, Marcus's study examines the ramifications of those efforts for the South through the singular success of the southern dairy business. The presence of local dairying operations afforded small towns a measure of independence and stability, allowing them to diversify their economies and better weather the economic turmoil of the Great Depression.

Addresses the relationships between what modern-day experts say to each other and to their constituencies Technical Knowledge in American Culture addresses the relationships between what modern-day experts say to each other and to their constituencies and whether what they say and do relates to the larger culture, society, and era. These essays challenge the social impact model by looking at science, technology, and medicine not as social activities but as intellectual activities.

Now in a thoroughly updated new edition, this successful textbook surveys the history of technology in America from the 1600s to the 21st century. Alan I Marcus and Howard P. Segal explore the effect society, culture, politics and economics have had upon technological advances, and place the evolution of American technology within the broader context of the development of systems such as transportation and communications. This unique book connects phenomena such as colonial printing presses with the American Revolution; early photographs with the creation of an allegedly unique American character; and high-tech advances in biotechnology with a growing desire for individual autonomy. This is an ideal resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of the history of technology, the history of science, and American history.

Americans have benefited from substantial improvements in health since the end of World War II. They live longer and grow taller; they have the safest and cheapest food supply on the planet; they have seen virtually all childhood diseases brought under control. Yet concerns about health remain widespread today. Cancer seems to be everywhere; autoimmune, nervous, and environmental diseases have reached pandemic proportions; medical malpractice suits have proliferated.

How can we have received so many benefits while still being as worried as ever about our health and the health care system established to ensure and extend those benefits? The historical perspective provided by the essays in this volume helps answer this question by identifying two points of significant change in health care policy. Beginning in the 1950s there emerged a subtle yet critical reconceptualization as the individual rather than the group came to figure prominently as the central policy-making unit. Then in the late 1960s a palpable sense of limits rendered the individualism of the previous decade into a Malthusian formulation: the greater the access or benefits that any one person received, the less others could get. Besides tracing these patterns in health care development, the essays also show how traditional notions of expertise have been affected by the changes. Contributors are Amy Sue Bix, Hamilton Cravens, Gerald N. Grob, Alan I Marcus, Diane Paul, David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, and James Harvey Young.