Technology in Postwar America: A History

by Carroll Pursell

Overview

Carroll Pursell tells the story of the evolution of American technology since World War II. His fascinating and surprising history links pop culture icons with landmarks in technological innovation and shows how postwar politics left their mark on everything from television, automobiles, and genetically engineered crops to contraceptives, Tupperware, and the Veg-O-Matic.

Just as America's domestic and international policies became inextricably linked during the Cold War, so did the nation's public and private technologies. The spread of the suburbs fed into demands for an interstate highway system, which itself became implicated in urban renewal projects. Fear of slipping into a postwar economic depression was offset by the creation of "a consumers' republic" in which buying and using consumer goods became the ultimate act of citizenship and a symbol of an "American Way of Life."

Pursell begins with the events of World War II and the increasing belief that technological progress and the science that supported it held the key to a stronger, richer, and happier America. He looks at the effect of returning American servicemen and servicewomen and the Marshall Plan, which sought to integrate Western Europe into America's economic, business, and technological structure. He considers the accumulating "problems" associated with American technological supremacy, which, by the end of the 1960s, led to a crisis of confidence.

Pursell concludes with an analysis of how consumer technologies create a cultural understanding that makes political technologies acceptable and even seem inevitable, while those same political technologies provide both form and content for the technologies found at home and at work. By understanding this history, Pursell hopes to advance a better understanding of the postwar American self.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231123044
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	06/29/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.34(w) x 9.10(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Carroll Pursell has taught at several universities, including Case Western Reserve, from which he retired as the Adeline Barry Davee Distinguished Professor Emeritus. He is a former president of the Society for the History of Technology and the International Committee for the History of Technology. He currently serves as adjunct professor of modern history at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Arsenal of Democracy
2. The Geography of Everywhere
3. Foreign Aid and Advantage
4. The Atom and the Rocket
5. Factories and Farms
6. "It's Fun to Live in America"
7. Brain Drain and Technology Gap
8. From Technology Drunk...
9....To Technology Sober
10. A Wired Environment
11. Standing Tall Again
12. Globalization, Modernity, and the Postmodern
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Thomas P. Hughes

Since Carroll Pursell coedited Technology in Western Civilization in 1967, we have looked to him to provide highly readable books and articles about major events and issues in the history of technology. Now, in Technology in Postwar America, he ably informs general readers about recent American history in which technology prevails.

— Thomas P. Hughes, author of Human-Built World: How to Think About Technology and Culture

Ruth Cowan

Technology in Postwar America is a remarkable achievement, the first-ever effort by an eminent historian of technology to survey this critical period in the making of our (postmodern) society. Ranging chronologically from the beginning of World War II to the war in Iraq, and topically from ballistic missiles to mass produced tomatoes, Carroll Pursell shows us how dependent we have become, in our private as well as our public lives, on technology and technological systems. Pursell also helps us understand technology's boosters and its detractors, its pros as well as its cons—as we struggle to develop policies that will increase the former and decrease the latter. Written in clear and crisp prose, Technology in Postwar America is suitable for readers with broad interests as well as for students of American and global history.

— Ruth Cowan, University of Pennsylvania

Rebecca Herzig

Carroll Pursell deftly reveals the relations between technological change and histories of labor, environmentalism, militarism, consumption, and gender, drawing on novels, philosophical treatises, newspaper articles, films, government propaganda, and policy papers with equal facility.

— Rebecca Herzig, Bates College

Editorial Reviews

[An] engrossing, important book... [that] is enthusiastically recommended.

CHOICE

An excellent, contextualized history of American technology after 1941.

ISIS - David E. Nye

An excellent starting point for students and generalists who wish to gain a quick overview of the subject.

Historian - J. L. Anderson

Carroll Pursell is without question one of the most interesting historians of modern technology.

Technology and Culture - David Edgerton

Technology in Postwar America is a skillful treatment of the ways in which ideas about technology have been contested in the postwar period that will serve as an excellent starting point for students and generalists who wish to gain a quick overview of the subject.

The Historian

An excellent starting point for students and generalists who wish to gain a quick overview of the subject.

Historian - J.L. Anderson

[An] engrossing, important book... [that] is enthusiastically recommended.

Choice

An excellent starting point for students and generalists who wish to gain a quick overview of the subject.

— J. L. Anderson

Historian

An excellent, contextualized history of American technology after 1941.

— David E. Nye

ISIS

Carroll Pursell is without question one of the most interesting historians of modern technology.

— David Edgerton

Technology and Culture