Inventing modern : growing up with x-rays, skyscrapers, and tailfins / John H. Lienhard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lienhard, John H., 1930-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lienhard, John H., 1930-.

Material culture--Social aspects.

History.

Material culture.

Science--Social aspects.

Technology--Social aspects.

Technological innovations--Social aspects.

United States--Civilization--20th century.

United States.

Civilization.

Technological innovations--Social aspects--United States--History--20th century.

Technological innovations.

Technology--Social aspects--United States--History--20th century.

Technology.

Science--Social aspects--United States--History--20th century.

Science.

Material culture--Social aspects--United States--History--20th century.

Lienhard, John H., 1930---Childhood and youth.

Lienhard, John H.

Physical Description:

ix, 292 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2003.

Summary:

Modern is a word much used, but hard to pin down. In "Inventing Modern, John H. Lienhard uses that word to capture the furious rush of newness in the first half of 20th-century America. An unexpected world emerges from under the more familiar "Modern. Beyond the airplanes, radios, art deco, skyscrapers, Fritz Lang's "Metropolis, Buck Rogers, the culture of the open road--Burma Shave, Kerouac, and White Castles--lie driving forces that set this account of "Modern apart. One force, says Lienhard, was a new concept of boyhood--the risk-taking, hands-on savage inventor. Driven by an admiration of recklessness, America developed its technological empire with stunning speed. Bringing the airplane to fruition in so short a time, for example, were exemplars such as Katherine Stinson, Lincoln Beachey, Amelia Earhart, and Charles Lindbergh. The rediscovery of "mystery powerfully drove "Modern as well. X-Rays, quantum mechanics, and relativity theory had followed electricity and radium. Here we read how, with reality seemingly altered, hope seemed limitless. Lienhard blends these forces with his childhood in the brave new world. The result is perceptive, engaging, and filled with surprise. Whether he talks about Alexander Calder (an engineer whose sculptures were exercises in materials science) or that wacky paean to flight, "Flying Down to Rio, unexpected detail emerges from every tike of this large mosaic. "Inventing Modem is a personal book that displays, rather than defines, an age that ended before most of us were born. It is an engineer's homage to a time before the bomb and our terrible loss of confidence--a time that might yet rise again out of its own postmodern ashes.

Contents:

1846, great-grandpa and manifest destiny

Short-lived technologies : searching for direction

"The irruption of forces totally new"

A new genus of genius

Remington to modern : finding the core on the fringe

Fires and the high-rise Phoenix

The titan city

Automobile

On the road : of highways and gasoline

The back door into the sky

Flying down to Rio

A boy's life in the new century

Inventing a better mousetrap

War

A funeral in the fifties

After modern.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-283) and index.

ISBN:

0195160320

OCLC:

51330219