Search

Title:
Narratives and spaces : technology and the construction of American culture

Actions:

• Buy book

Price:
$24.95
(available to order)

Summary:
This book examines how photography, the railroad, electricity, space flight and the computer became central, yet often contradictory, parts of the way Americans construct and narrate their culture, whether as western settlers, consumers or tourists.

Title:
Palazzos of power : central station of the Phalidelphia Electric Company

Actions:

• Buy book

Price:
$41.95
(available to order)

Summary:
"If it isn't Electric, it isn't Modern." Such was the slogan of the Philadelphia Electric Company, developer of an unprecedented network of massive metropolitan power stations servicing greater Philadelphia at the turn of the twentieth century. These once-brilliant sentinels of civic utility and activity were designed to convey solidity and immensity in an age of deep public skepticism. They now stand vacant and decaying, a blight in the eyes of city planners and a beacon to urban explorers.'the first book on the buildings and machines that made possible the electrification of the United States, "Palazzos of power" offers a visual and analytical exploration of architecture, technology, place, loss, and reuse. With a foreword by David Nye, this collection of Joseph Elliott's large-format photographs reveal the urban landscape, monumental spaces, giant machinery, and intricate controls that made up the central station. Aaron Wunsch's essay provides historical context on the social and political climate.

Title:
American illuminations: urban lighting 1800-1920

Actions:

• Buy book

Price:
$42.00
(available to order)

Summary:
Illuminated fêtes and civic celebrations began in Renaissance Italy and spread through the courts of Europe. Their fireworks, torches, lamps, and special effects glorified the monarch, marked the birth of a prince, or celebrated military victory. Nineteenth-century Americans rejected such monarchial pomp and adapted spectacular lighting to their democratic, commercial culture. In American Illuminations, David Nye explains how they experimented with gas and electric light to create illuminated cityscapes far brighter and more dynamic than those of Europe, and how these illuminations became symbols of modernity and the conquest of nature.

Title:
When the lights went out, a history of blackouts in America

Actions:

• Buy book

Price:
$30.00
(available to order)

Summary:
Nye looks at America's development of its electrical grid, which made large-scale power failures possible; military blackouts before and during World War II ("The silence was the big surprise of the blackout, the darkness discounted," wrote Harold Ross in The New Yorker in 1942); New York City's contrasting 1965 and 1977 blackout experiences (the first characterized by cooperation, the second by looting and disorder); the growth in consumer demand that led to rolling blackouts made worse by energy traders' market manipulations; blackouts caused by terrorist attacks and sabotage; and, finally, the "greenout" (exemplified by the new tradition of "Earth Hour"), a voluntary reduction organized by environmental organizations. Blackouts, writes Nye, are breaks in the flow of social time that reveal much about the trajectory of American history. Each time one occurs, Americans confront their essential condition—not as isolated individuals, but as a community that increasingly binds itself together with electrical wires and signals.