In 1850 the Industrial Revolution came to an end. In 1851 the Great Exhibition illustrated to the whole world the supremacy of industrial England. For the next twenty years Britain reigned supreme. From around 1870 Britain began to decline. Britain is now a second rate power with strong memories of its former supremacy. The above five sentences summarise a common view of the sequencing of Britain’s rise and relative fall, a stereotype that is challenged and modified in the essays of The Golden Age. By concentrating on central aspects of social and industrial change authors expose the underpinnings of supremacy, its unsung underside, its tarnished gold. Major themes cover industrial and technological change, social institutions and gender relations in a period during which industry and industrialism were equally celebrated and nurtured. Against this background it is difficult to argue for any sudden decline of energy, assets or institution, nor for any significant move from an industrial society to one in which a hearty manufacturing was replaced by commerce and land, sensibility and artifice.

The struggles and achievements of forty-six notable women artists of the early modern period, as documented by their contemporaries, are uniquely brought together in this anthology. The life stories presented here are foundational texts for the history of art, but since most are found only in rare volumes and few have been translated into English, until now they have been generally inaccessible to many scholars. Originally published in biographical compendia such as Vasari's Lives of the Artists, the writings included here document not only the lives of relatively well known women artists such as Artemisia Gentileschi and Sofonisba Anguissola, but also those who have languished in obscurity, like Anna Waser and Li Yin. Each life story is preceded by a brief introduction to the artist as well as to her biographer, and the texts themselves are annotated to provide necessary clarification. Beyond their documentary value, these stories provide fascinating insight as to how men commonly characterized women artists as exceptions to their sex, and attempted to explain their presence in the male-dominated realm of art. The introductory chapter to the book explores this intriguing gender dynamic and elucidates some of the strategies and historical context that factored into the composition of these lives. The volume includes an appended index to women artists' life stories in biographical compendia of the period

Despite the tremendous number of studies produced annually in the field of Dutch art over the last 30 years or so, and the strong contemporary market for works by Dutch masters of the period as well as the public's ongoing fascination with some of its most beloved painters, until now there has been no comprehensive study assessing the state of research in the field. As the first study of its kind, this book is a useful resource for scholars and advanced students of seventeenth-century Dutch art, and also serves as a springboard for further research. Its 19 chapters, divided into three sections and written by a team of internationally renowned art historians, address a wide variety of topics, ranging from those that might be considered "traditional" to others that have only drawn scholarly attention comparatively recently.

In The Postwar Yankees: Baseball's Golden Age Revisited, David G. Surdam deconstructs this idyllic period to show that while the Yankees piled on pennants and World Series titles through the 1950s, Major League Baseball attendance consistently declined and gate-revenue disparity widened through the mid-1950s. Contrary to popular belief, the era was already experiencing many problems that fans of today's game bemoan, including a competitive imbalance and callous owners who ran the league like a cartel. Fans also found aging, decrepit stadiums ill-equipped for the burgeoning automobile culture.

The information age has become a reality, and has brought with it many implications for public administration. New ICT's offer new opportunities for government and governing, but at the same time they pose challenges in some key areas of public administration, like trust, or the idea of checks and balances. This book is an examination of the developments and effects of ICT in public administration over the last 10 to 15 years. It represents a re-visiting of the 1998 IOS Press publication ‘Public Administration in an Information Age: A Handbook’. As a point of departure, the authors of this new book have chosen the speed of the succession of theoretical approaches, represented by the 'phase of theories' which has appeared since 1998. This approach, which reflects that of the 1998 handbook, avoids the impression of technological determinism and provides an opportunity to focus on the phases of theory and technological developments. The book is divided into five sections. The first section examines key issues, and the second focuses on aspects of democracy. In the third section, the focus shifts towards structural conditions; the conditions that public administration has to meet in order to maintain its effectiveness and its legitimacy in the information age. Section four addresses some objects of implementation, like IT-inspired redesign, HRM and the phenomenon of Street Level Bureaucrats. Finally, the last section offers some concluding thoughts.

The Labour Party, Housing and Urban Transformation explores how the urban transformation of Britain between 1945 and 1970 was understood politically by the Labour Party. Placing the Labour Party at the centre of the discussion, the book covers the most extensive period of state-led urban change in British history, from the end of the Second World War to the decline of high modernism in the late 1960s. Taking a particular focus on housing to explore the implementation of modernist ideas to drive a far-ranging process of urban transformation in Britain, it challenges conventional understandings of Labour's urban legacy and puts political ideas at the heart of twentieth-century change. Utilising a breadth and range of material, including two distinct sets of archival sources, published secondary material, national legislation and Housing Acts, and various case studies, Child moves seamlessly between the national picture and its local impacts. It also draws from sources which had a crucial influence on political thinking throughout the mid-twentieth century to understand how urban transformation represented for Labour a political vision of the future. A timely contribution both to urban history and to the history of post-war Britain, it challenges existing interpretations of modernism, connects urban change to the political ideas that drove it, and allows us to comprehend the state of urban Britain today.

During an election speech in 1957 the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, famously remarked that 'most of our people have never had it so good'. Although taken out of context, this phrase soon came to epitomize the sense of increased affluence and social progress that was prevalent in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s. Yet, despite the recognition that Britain had moved away from an era of rationing and scarcity, to a new age of choice and plenty, there was simultaneously a parallel feeling that the nation was in decline and being economically outstripped by its international competitors. Whilst the study of Britain's postwar history is a well-trodden path, and the paradox of absolute growth versus relative decline much debated, it is here approached in a fresh and rewarding way. Rather than highlighting economic and industrial 'decline', this volume emphasizes the tremendous impact of rising affluence and consumerism on British society. It explores various expressions of affluence: new consumer goods; shifting social and cultural values; changes in popular expectations of policy; shifting popular political behaviour; changing attitudes of politicians towards the electorate; and the representation of affluence in popular culture and advertising. By focusing on the widespread cultural consequences of increasing levels of consumerism, emphasizing growth over decline and recognizing the rising standards of living enjoyed by most Britons, a new and intriguing window is opened on the complexities of this 'golden age'. Contrasting growing consumer expectations and demands against the anxieties of politicians and economists, this book offers all students of the period a new perspective from which to view post-imperial Britain and to question many conventional historical assumptions.