Drawing on the latest research on the atomic bomb and its history, the contributors to this provocative collection of eighteen essays set out to answer two key questions: First, how did the atomic bomb, a product of unprecedented technological innovation, rapid industrial-scale manufacturing, and unparalleled military deployment shape U.S. foreign policy, the communities of workers who produced it, and society as a whole? And second, how has American society's perception that the the bomb is a means of military deterrence in the Cold War era evolve under the influence of mass media, scientists, public intellectuals, and even the entertainment industry? In answering these questions, The Atomi...
Profit — getting more out of something than you put into it — is the original genius of homo sapiens, who learned how to unleash the energy stored in wood, exploit the land, and refashion ecosystems. As civilization developed, we found more and more ways of extracting surplus value from the earth, often deploying brutally effective methods to discipline people to do the work needed. Historian Mark Stoll explains how capitalism supercharged this process and traces its many environmental consequences. The financial innovations of medieval Italy created trade networks that, with the European discovery of the Americas, made possible vast profits and sweeping cultural changes, to the detrimen...
In this illuminating and comprehensive account, Talbot C. Imlay chronicles the life of Clarence Streit and his Atlantic federal union movement in the Unites States during and following the Second World War. The first book to detail Streit's life, work and significance, it reveals the importance of public political cultures in shaping US foreign relations. In 1939, Streit published Union Now which proposed a federation of the North Atlantic democracies modelled on the US Constitution. The buzz created led Streit to leave his position at The New York Times and devote himself to promoting the union. Over the next quarter of a century, Streit worked to promote a new public political culture, employing a variety of strategies to gain visibility and political legitimacy for his project and for federalist frameworks. In doing so, Streit helped shape wartime debates on the nature of the post-war international order and of transatlantic relations.
Maud Lavin approaches design from the broader field of visual culture criticism, asking challenging questions about about who really has a voice in the culture and what unseen influences affect the look of things designers produce. Our culture is dominated by the visual. Yet most writing on design reflects a narrow preoccupation with products, biographies, and design influences. Maud Lavin approaches design from the broader field of visual culture criticism, asking challenging questions about about who really has a voice in the culture and what unseen influences affect the look of things designers produce. Lavin shows how design fits into larger questions of power, democracy, and communicati...
Franklin D. Roosevelt once described the South as "the nation's number one economic problem." These twelve original, interdisciplinary essays on southern indigence between the World Wars share a conviction that poverty is not just a dilemma of the marketplace but also a cultural and political construction. Although previous studies have examined the web of coercive social relations in which sharecroppers, wage laborers, and other poor southerners were held in place, this volume opens up a new perspective. These essays show that professed forces of change and modernization in the South--writers, photographers, activists, social scientists, and policymakers--often subtly upheld the structures ...
The little-known story of Wall Street’s effort to court individual investors during the Cold War in order to build a bulwark against communism. Immediately after the frightening Great Crash of 1929, many Americans swore they would never—or never again—become involved in the stock market. Yet hordes of Americans eventually did come to embrace equity investing, to an extent actually far greater than the level of popular involvement in the market during the Roaring Twenties. A Nation of Small Shareholders explores how marketers at the New York Stock Exchange during the mid-twentieth century deliberately cultivated new individual shareholders. Janice M. Traflet examines the energy with whi...
Illustrated with over fifty photos, Civilizing Rituals merges contemporary debates with lively discussion and explores central issues involved in the making and displaying of art as industry and how it is presented to the community. Carol Duncan looks at how nations, institutions and private individuals present art , and how art museums are shaped by cultural, social and political determinants. Civilizing Rituals is ideal reading for students of art history and museum studies, and professionals in the field will also find much of interest here.
For the twenty three years prior to its banning on June 21 1994, Tempo magazine was Indonesia's most important news weekly, and its editor in chief one of Indonesias's leading poets and intellectuals. This book tells the story of the paper, its staff and many supporters, and of its relations with political movements.
Nye uses energy as a touchstone to examine the lives of ordinary people engaged in normal activities. How did the United States become the world's largest consumer of energy? David Nye shows that this is less a question about the development of technology than it is a question about the development of culture. In Consuming Power, Nye uses energy as a touchstone to examine the lives of ordinary people engaged in normal activities. He looks at how these activities changed as new energy systems were constructed, from colonial times to recent years. He also shows how, as Americans incorporated new machines and processes into their lives, they became ensnared in power systems that were not easily...