This book combines a case study of industrial homework in the electronics industry with a world-systems approach to understanding the role of home-based work in economic development. It spans the period from the nineteenth-century origins of industrial homework to the important role played by home-based work in current strategies of economic restructuring in manufacturing and service industries. The author draws a clear distinction between industrial homework and earlier forms of domestic labor, such as the putting-out system. She also clarifies the important differences between various forms of contemporary home-based work: waged homework in industrial and service occupations, professional telecommuting, home-based self-employment. Moving from the lives of homeworkers themselves to macro-level analyses, Dangler's case study provides a vantage point from which to examine theories of world economic development, theories of labor market segmentation, and recent analyses of the importance of informal sector activities in the modern economy.

Critic, poet, editor, chronicler of the “lost generation,” and elder statesman of the Republic of Letters, Malcolm Cowley (1898–1989) was an eloquent witness to much of twentieth-century American literary and political life. These letters, the vast majority previously unpublished, provide an indelible self-portrait of Cowley and his time, and make possible a full appreciation of his long and varied career. Perhaps no other writer aided the careers of so many poets and novelists. Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Kerouac, Tillie Olsen, and John Cheever are among the many authors Cowley knew and whose work he supported. A poet himself, Cowley enjoyed the company of writers and knew how to encourage, entertain, and when necessary scold them. At the center of his epistolary life were his friendships with Kenneth Burke, Allen Tate, Conrad Aiken, and Edmund Wilson. By turns serious and thoughtful, humorous and gossipy, Cowley’s letters to these and other correspondents display his keen literary judgment and ability to navigate the world of publishing. The letters also illuminate Cowley’s reluctance to speak out against Stalin and the Moscow Trials when he was on staff at The New Republic—and the consequences of his agonized evasions. His radical past would continue to haunt him into the Cold War era, as he became caught up in the notorious “Lowell Affair” and was summoned to testify in the Alger Hiss trials. Hans Bak supplies helpful notes and a preface that assesses Cowley’s career, and Robert Cowley contributes a moving foreword about his father.

Lawns now blanket thirty million acres of the United States, but until the late nineteenth century few Americans had any desire for a front lawn, much less access to seeds for growing one. In her comprehensive history of this uniquely American obsession, Virginia Scott Jenkins traces the origin of the front lawn aesthetic, the development of the lawn-care industry, its environmental impact, and modern as well as historic alternatives to lawn mania.

Includes Barnes, Bedell, Bowne, Brown, Carpenter, Cornell, Cruger, DeZeng, Dusenbury, Ferris, Field, Ford, Griffin, Gummere, Hallock, Haviland, Hunt, Ketcham, Kimble, Lawrence, Lowerre, Mott, Nelson, Norrington, Parsons, Pixley, Roesch, Rogers, Sampson, Schieffelin, Shotwell, Smith, Street, Thompson, Titus, Underhill, Vail, Vincent, Way, Weeks, White, Wood. S0000HB - $80.00

The trading, selling, and buying of personal transport has changed little over the past one hundred years. Whether horse trading in the early twentieth century or car buying today, haggling over prices has been the common practice of buyers and sellers alike. Horse Trading in the Age of Cars offers a fascinating study of the process of buying an automobile in a historical and gendered context. Steven M. Gelber convincingly demonstrates that the combative and frequently dishonest culture of the showroom floor is a historical artifact whose origins lie in the history of horse trading. Bartering and bargaining were the norm in this predominantly male transaction, with both buyers and sellers staking their reputations and pride on their ability to negotiate the better deal. Gelber comments on this point-of-sale behavior and what it reveals about American men. Gelber's highly readable and lively prose makes clear how this unique economic ritual survived into the industrial twentieth century, in the process adding a colorful and interesting chapter to the history of the automobile.