Subject: History / United States / 20th Century

Subject: History / United States / 20th Century

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Fordism and the City

|9780822967958|How an Industry Shaped Urbanization in America|In the early twentieth century, the Ford Motor Company built an industrial empire with massive factory complexes and associated infrastructures. Henry Ford’s 1915 plan to decentralize industrial manufacturing relied on moving key technical processes closer to sites of resource extraction while distributing elements of production. In Fordism and the City, Jay Cephas analyzes key infrastructures—from factories and mills to roads, rail lines, and canals—to trace the impact of automated, assembly-line production on the urban and rural landscapes of Michigan. The overwhelming scale of the Ford Motor Company’s plant in Dearborn, the idyllic setting of…

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Fordism and the City

|9780822948810|How an Industry Shaped Urbanization in America|In the early twentieth century, the Ford Motor Company built an industrial empire with massive factory complexes and associated infrastructures. Henry Ford’s 1915 plan to decentralize industrial manufacturing relied on moving key technical processes closer to sites of resource extraction while distributing elements of production. In Fordism and the City, Jay Cephas analyzes key infrastructures—from factories and mills to roads, rail lines, and canals—to trace the impact of automated, assembly-line production on the urban and rural landscapes of Michigan. The overwhelming scale of the Ford Motor Company’s plant in Dearborn, the idyllic setting of…

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Pittsburgh Rising

|9780822967323|From Frontier Town to Steel City, 1750-1920|Over 170 years, Pittsburgh rose from remote outpost to industrial powerhouse. With the formation of the United States, the frontier town located at the confluence of three rivers grew into the linchpin for trade and migration between established eastern cities and the growing settlements of the Ohio Valley. Resources, geography, innovation, and personalities led to successful glass, iron, and eventually steel operations. As Pittsburgh blossomed into one of the largest cities in the country and became a center of industry, it generated great wealth for industrial and banking leaders. But immigrants and African American…

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Black Urban History at the Crossroads

|9780822948162|Race and Place in the American City|Drawing on significant recent scholarship on African American urban life over three centuries, Black Urban History at the Crossroads bridges disparate chronological, regional, topical, and thematic perspectives on the Black urban experience beginning with the Atlantic slave trade. Across ten cutting-edge chapters, leading scholars explore the many ways that urban Black people across the United States built their own communities; crafted their own strategies for self-determination; and shaped the larger economy, culture, and politics of the urban environment and of their cities, regions, and nation. This volume not only highlights long-running changes over time…

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The People’s Spaceship

|9780822947660|NASA, the Shuttle Era, and Public Engagement after Apollo|When the Apollo 11 astronauts returned from humanity’s first voyage to the moon in 1969, NASA officials advocated for more ambitious missions. But with the civil rights movement, environmental concerns, the Vietnam War, and other social crises taking up much of the public’s attention, they lacked the support to make those ambitions a reality. Instead, the space agency had to think more modestly and pragmatically, crafting a program that could leverage the excitement of Apollo while promising relevance for average Americans. The resulting initiative, the space shuttle, would become the centerpiece of…

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