American Life During the Industrial Age: A Social and Cultural History in Essays and Documents [Paperback]

Introduction? 1. Wages? 2. Scarcity and Abundance? 3. Immigration? 4. Race and Racism? 5. Work? 6. Unions and Strikes? 7. Electricity? 8. Clock Time, Speed, and Simultaneity? 9.?Contaminants ?10. Diseases and Cures

This volume explores the Industrial Age (18601914), bringing together published and archival primary sources with introductory essays that contextualize a period of extraordinary social, cultural, and economic transformation.

Here is an Industrial Age full of surprises and unexpected resonances with our present moment in time. McCrossen provides fascinating glimpses of an era whose complexities and possibilities we've scarcely grasped. The attention to technology, the environment, and the rhythms of everyday life exceeds any other volume I have seen. Sure to be a game-changer in the classroom.

Seth Rockman, Brown University, USA

This sparkling collection shows students what history isand what it can be. With keen historical sensibility and abiding empathy, Alexis McCrossen brilliantly captures the hopes and fears of Americans from all walks of life as they grappled with new technologies and new ways of working, thinking, buying, traveling, communicating, organizing, and marking time.? She assembles a marvelous and diverse array of documents and artifacts and her crisply written chapter introductions place these sources in historical context while giving readers space to interpret them. The result is a stunning portrait of a pivotal era.

Wendy Gamber, Indiana University, USA, President Society of Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Alexis McCrossen's?essays and collection of documents help students and teachers make connections across the worlds of science, technology, business, culture, and the environment. What emerges is a fascinating picture of a dynamic nation crippled by civil wlÐ