The Body Electric: How Strange Machines Built The Modern American - Couverture souple

Pena, Carolyn Thomas De La

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 081471983X ISBN 13 : 9780814719831

Editeur : New York University Press, 2005

Synopsis

Between the years 1850 and 1950, Americans became the leading energy consumers on the planet, expending tremendous physical resources on energy exploration, mental resources on energy exploitation, and monetary resources on energy acquisition. A unique combination of pseudoscientific theories of health and the public's rudimentary understanding of energy created an age in which sources of industrial power seemed capable of curing the physical limitations and ill health that plagued Victorian bodies. Licensed and "quack" physicians alike promoted machines, electricity, and radium as invigorating cures, veritable "fountains of youth" that would infuse the body with energy and push out disease and death.
The Body Electric is the first book to place changing ideas about fitness and gender in dialogue with the popular culture of technology. Whether through wearing electric belts, drinking radium water, or lifting mechanized weights, many Americans came to believe that by embracing the nation's rapid march to industrialization, electrification, and "radiomania," their bodies would emerge fully powered. Only by uncovering this belief's passions and products, Thomas de la Peña argues, can we fully understand our culture's twentieth-century energy enthusiasm.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Carolyn Thomas de la Peña is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of California at Davis.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: New York University Press
• Date d'édition: 2005
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 081471983X
• ISBN 13: 9780814719831
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 329
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible