America as second creation : technology and narratives of new beginnings / David E. Nye.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nye, David E., 1946-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Frontier and pioneer life--United States.

Frontier and pioneer life.

Frontier and pioneer life--United States--Historiography.

Technology--Social aspects--United States--History.

Technology.

Technology--Social aspects--United States--Historiography.

Land settlement--United States--History.

Land settlement.

Land settlement--United States--Historiography.

National characteristics, American.

United States--Discovery and exploration.

United States.

United States--Colonization.

United States--Historical geography.

Frontier and pioneer life--History--Social aspects--United States.

Technology--Historiography--Social aspects--United States.

Technology--United States--History.

Land settlement--Historiography--United States.

Land settlement--United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 371 p. ) ill., maps ;

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. ; London : MIT Press, c2003.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"After 1776, the former American colonies began to reimagine themselves as a unified, self-created community. Technologies had an important role in the resulting national narratives, and a few technologies assumed particular prominence. Among these were the axe, the mill, the canal, the railroad, and the irrigation dam. In this book David Nye explores the stories that clustered around these technologies. In doing so, he rediscovers an American story of origins, with America conceived as a second creation built in harmony with God's first creation." "Nye draws on popular literature, speeches, advertisements, paintings, and many other media to create a history of American foundation stories. He shows how these stories were revised periodically, as social and economic conditions changed, without over erasing the earlier stories entirely. The image of the isolated frontier family carving a homestead out of the wilderness with an axe persists to this day, alongside later images and narratives. In the book's conclusion, Nye considers the relation between these earlier stories and such later American developments as the conservation movement, narratives of environmental recovery, and the idealization of wilderness."--Jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: In the American beginning

Narrating the assimilation of nature

Surveying the ground

Axe, clearing, cabin

The nurturing forest

The mill, or "natural power"

Pollution and class conflict

"Let us conquer space"

"The route of superior desolation"

"Conquered rivers are better servants than wild clouds"

Water monopoly: federal irrigation and factories in the field

Progress, or entropy?

Conclusion: Second creation, conservation, and wilderness.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [345]-364) and index.

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

ISBN:

0-262-26394-7

0-262-28080-9

0-585-48111-3