Archie Bunker's America

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Barbara Sicherman

In a compelling approach structured as theme and variations, the author offers insightful profiles of a number of accomplished women born in Americas Gilded Age who lost and found themselves in books, and worked out a new life purpose around them. Some women, like Edith and Alice Hamilton, M. Carey Thomas, and Jane Addams, grew up in households filled with books, while less privileged women found alternative routes to expressive literacy. Jewish immigrants Hilda Satt Polacheck, Rose Cohen, and Mary Antin acquired new identities in the English-language books they found in settlement houses and libraries, while African Americans like Ida B. Wells relied mainly on institutions of their own creation, even as they sought to develop a literature of their own. It is the author's contribution to show that however the skill of reading was acquired, under the right circumstances, adolescent reading was truly transformative in constructing female identity, stirring imaginations, and fostering ambition. With Little Women's Jo March often serving as a youthful model of independence, girls and young women created communities of learning, imagination, and emotional connection around literary activities in ways that helped them imagine, and later attain, public identities. Reading themselves into quest plots and into male as well as female roles, these young women went on to create an unparalleled record of achievement as intellectuals, educators, and social reformers. This study reveals the centrality of the eras culture of reading and sheds new light on these women's Progressive-Era careers.

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Janet Abbate

In Inventing the Internet, Janet Abbate focuses on the social and cultural factors that influenced the Internet's design and use. She unfolds an often twisting tale of collaboration and conflict among a remarkable variety of players, including government and military agencies, computer scientists in academia and industry, graduate students, telecommunications companies, standards organizations, and network users.

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Guillermo Giucci

"From its invention in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, the automobile crisscrossed the world, completely took over the cities, and became a feature of daily life. Considered basic to the American lifestyle, the car reflected individualism, pragmatism, comfort, and above all, modernity. In Latin America, it served as a symbol of distinction, similar to jewelry or fine clothing. In The Cultural Life of the Automobile, Guillermo Giucci focuses on the automobile as an instrument of social change through its 'kinetic modernity' and as an embodiment of the tremendous social impact of technology on cultural life. Material culture--how certain objects generate a wide array of cultural responses--has been the focus of much scholarly discussion in recent years. The automobile wrought major changes and inspired images in language, literature, and popular culture. Focusing primarily on Latin America but also covering the United States, Europe, Asia, and Africa, Giucci examines how the automobile was variously adapted by different cultures and how its use shaped and changed social and economic relationships within them. At the same time, he shows how the 'automobilization' of society became an essential support for the development of modern individualism, and the automobile its clearest material manifestation."--Page 4 of cover.

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Ellen Stern and Emily Gwathmey

"The telephone rings. It jingles our psyches, jangles our nerves. We are seduced and soothed, rattled and betrayed by it. Wherever it is--on the desk or street corner, the high seas or highway, in our bathrooms or briefcases--it has, for a machine, an allure like no other. Once Upon a Telephone is a visual history of this indispensable and inescapable apparatus--with an emphasis on the days before 800s, 900s, voice mail, and FAX. Lavishly illustrated in full color with a wealth of twentieth-century ephemera--everything from movie stills to matchbooks--and including excerpts from a variety of literary sources, Once Upon a Telephone is a spirited tribute to operators, directories, phone booths, and, of course, the appliance itself. The evolution of telephony irreversibly altered conventions of modern romance and constructions of power; Once Upon a Telephone is the only work in existence to chronicle these changes in such a comprehensive and entertaining fashion."--Jacket.