Reading List

Day 2, Monday: The Transition From Home to Factory Production

  • Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. New York: Basic Books, 1983. Pp. 3 - 78.
  • Mintz, Steven. Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Pp. 133 – 153.

Day 3, Tuesday: The Mechanization of Agriculture

  • Aley, Ginette and J. L. Anderson. Union Heartland:  The Midwestern Home Front During the Civil War. Carbondale:  Southern Illinois University Press.  In this book read:

Douglas Hurt, "The Agricultural Power of the Midwest during the Civil War," pp. 69-97.
Ginette Aley, "Inescapable Realities: Rural Midwestern Women and Families during the Civil War," 125-47.
L. Anderson, "The Vacant Chair on the Farm:  Soldier Husbands, Farm Wives, and the Iowa Home Front, 1861-65," 148-68.

  • Hurt, R. Douglas. American Agriculture: A Brief History. Revised Edition. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2002. Pp. 78-220.
  • Riney-Kehrberg, Pamela.  Childhood on the Farm:  Work, Play and Coming of Age in the Midwest. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005.

Day 4, Wednesday: The Impact of Steam Power on Transportation

  • Gordon, Sarah H. Passage to Union: How the Railroads Transformed American Life, 1829-1929. Chicago: Ivan Dee, 1997. Pp. 13-263.
  • Nelson, Scott Reynolds. Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Day 5, Thursday: The Increasing Significance of Science and Systematic Invention

  • Carlson, W. Bernard. "Inventor of dreams." Scientific American 292.3 (2005). Pp. 78-85.
  • Hintz, Eric S. "Independent Inventors in an Era of Burgeoning Research & Development." Business and Economic History On-line: Papers Presented at the BHC Annual Meeting. Vol. 5. Business History Conference, 2007.
  • Israel, Paul B. "Inventing industrial research: Thomas Edison and the Menlo Park laboratory." Endeavour 26.2 (2002). Pp. 48-54.

Day 6, Friday: The Development and Impact of the Assembly Line

  • Babson, Steve. Working Detroit: The Making of a Union Town. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986. Pp. 2-110.
  • Hooker, Clarence. Life in the Shadows of the Crystal Palace, 1910-1927: Ford Workers in the Model T Era. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1997.
  • Hounshell, David. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984. Pp. 217 – 301.
  • Nye, David E. America's Assembly Line, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013.

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