Inventing America: A History of the United States

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I am developing a course in the History of Technology in America for my local community college, and find this book an invaluable resource. There is a hard-back one-volume edition as well as a soft-cover two-volume edition available. The authors hail from Harvard, Yale and MIT, with backgrounds in history, politics and technology. This is an American history with a difference. While the student and instructor will find the basic chronological outline of American history that is familiar, the development of themes here often draws in much more explicitly than the normal text the issues of technological innovation, scientific discovery, manufacturing and business development as engines for growth and progress in the course of American history. The authors state in their introduction that Americans 'have long considered this penchant for innovation a distinguishing feature of their culture and history.' Technology in terms discussed here is hardly confined to the modern age. For example, very early in the text the authors state that the development of maize/corn 'was perhaps the most important plant-breeding achievement of all time' - the creation of a stable staple food crop that was adaptable and resilient spurred the growth of civilisation in dramatic ways. Technology includes that related to architecture (from the earliest buildings in the Native American cultures to modern skyscrapers, bridges and underground complexes), agriculture (the aforementioned maize development being but the earliest of these examples), transportation technologies (from canals to railroads to automobiles and aircraft), medical technologies (from early hygiene and vaccine developments to modern pharmaceutical and genetic innovations), information technology (telegraph and telephone to digital and internet), and much more. History is naturally selective, and any history text is going to have to walk the fine line between being thorough in development and being comprehensive in scope. The whole work weighs in at well over 1100 pages (inclusive of index and appendices), which is a lot of material for a two-semester course that will include supplemental readings. As an overview of American history, it hits the high points well and develops many sidelines of interest. My own particular teaching responsibilities for this will be to students who are primarily interested in technical education - this method of developing American history has more appeal for this audience, given its more direct applicability to their courses of study. In the two volume edition, the first volume covers the pre-Columbian scene in the Americas through to the era of Reconstruction following the Civil War; the second volume goes through the presidency of the current George W. Bush, and includes issues of 9-11 and the issues of ongoing wars against terrorists. There are CD-ROM supplements that come with the books, which include many helpful elements for the students, as well as som

Inventing America is exactly as expected. It expands coverage of the impact of technology in a general American history textbook. We are treated to as many as three pages of technology summaries in some cases. The treatment of manufacturing technology and transportation is especially well done. How did a collection of primitive, largely agricultural British colonies acquire technical skills for the machine age? We learn that in an effort to simplify battlefield requirements for parts and ammunition, the government caused gun manufacturers to adopt similar designs. These efforts were led by Springfield Armory and Harpers Ferry Armory and eventually resulted in interchangeable parts. The US Military Academy at West Point founded in 1802, began engineering training under Superintendent Sylvanus Thayer's tenure in 1817; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, founded in 1824, was "the only serious rival" until after the Civil War. Army Engineers on loan to numerous private companies surveyed many of the railroad routes. We get an overview of the manufacture of steam engines for steamboats in Newark, NJ and Philadelphia, and a survey treatment of the Lowell, MA textile complex. In agricultural technology, the usual John Deere and McCormick Reaper stories are expanded to include the story of hog butchering in Cincinnati, a forerunner of the modern assembly line. The development of the steam powered rotary press in 1835, made possible high speed printing which gave us daily newspapers, dime novels, and widespread distribution of political tracts.Numerous areas can be named where additional technology coverage would be of interest. Public health is a particularly interesting area because life expectancy in the US nearly doubled in the last century. The text gives us the usual coverage of smallpox and yellow fever, but there is little mention of Asian cholera, which caused numerous, frightening epidemics in the 19th Century. Similarly, the fact that more soldiers died of disease than wounds in the Civil War gets only brief mention. The development of public sewer systems and water supplies is noted briefly, but no mention is made of the technology impact of developing pump technology. There is no mention of firefighting technology. These technologies made urbanization possible. Without them, life in cities was hazardous.The development of the electric power receives some coverage. The well known AC/DC conflict between Edison and Tesla gets reduced to "...after direct current (which had a limited ability to travel distances) was replaced by alternating current..." Samuel Insull's development of electric utilities gets half a paragraph. There is no mention of the Niagra Falls hydro power project. Ball Corporation's leadership in the use of electric motors as power sources in manufacturing is described. Coal, steel, and railroads are usually considered necessary elements of the Industrial Revolution. We learn nothing of the coa