By Martin V. Melosi (NHC Fellow, 1982–83) The use of energy has been central to the development of industrial America. Possessing abundant energy sources throughout its history, America always has had the luxury of choice in energy matters, and only in the last decade found it necessary to attempt to create an energy policy. While … Continued
By Nell Irvin Painter (NHC Fellow, 1978–79) Standing at Armageddon is a comprehensive and lively historical account of America's shift from a rural and agrarian society to an urban and industrial society. Nell Irvin Painter will be featured in the PBS multipart series The Progressive Era with Bill Moyers, which coincides with the release of the updated edition … Continued
By K. Theodore Hoppen (NHC Fellow, 1985–86) This, the third volume to appear in the New Oxford History of England, covers the period from the repeal of the Corn Laws to the dramatic failure of Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill. In his magisterial study of the mid-Victorian generation, Theodore Hoppen identifies three defining themes. The … Continued
Environmentally, “suburbs” are marriages of city and countryside. Only in the twentieth century did such places acquire such geographic and cultural centrality in Americans’ lives, to become where most of us live, shop, and work. Not surprisingly, they also had seminal impacts on our modern notions of “nature” and “environment.” If the overlaps between America’s … Continued
With an argument that was as much a critique of industrialism as it was a defense of slavery, Southern spokesmen contended that chattel slavery, as it was practiced in the American South, was more humane than the system of “wage slavery” that prevailed in the industrial North and Great Britain.