"A deft and elegantly written survey of the evolution of the nation's economy through the nineteenth century." -- Michael A. Bernstein, University of California, San Diego

These essays in American working-class and social history, in the words of their author "all share a common theme -- a concern to explain the beliefs and behavior of American working people in the several decades that saw this nation transformed into a powerful industrial capitalist society." The subjects range widely-from the Lowell, Massachusetts, mill girls to the patterns of violence in scattered railroad strikes prior to 1877 to the neglected role black coal miners played in the formative years of the UMW to the difficulties encountered by capitalists in imposing decisions upon workers. In his discussions of each of these, Gutman offers penetrating new interpretations of the signficance of class and race, religion and ideology in the American labor movement.

In the late nineteenth century, the United States underwent an extremely rapid industrial expansion that moved the nation into the front ranks of the world economy. At the same time, the nation maintained democratic institutions as the primary means of allocating political offices and power. The combination of robust democratic institutions and rapid industrialization is rare and this book explains how development and democracy coexisted in the United States during industrialization. Most literature focuses on either electoral politics or purely economic analyses of industrialization. This book synthesizes politics and economics by stressing the Republican party's role as a developmental agent in national politics, the primacy of the three great developmental policies (the gold standard, the protective tariff, and the national market) in state and local politics, and the impact of uneven regional development on the construction of national political coalitions in Congress and presidential elections.

Taking the risk it will scare students off, Elwell (sociology, Murray State U.) nevertheless begins with a chapter on social theory, and only tries to make it succinct and clear enough to get through. He then uses the theory to analyze industrial systems, particularly the advanced systems of the US. His topics include structures of authority, economic rationalization, the erosion of commitment, and factual regularities. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Although many observers have assumed that pluralism prevailed in American political life from the start, inherited ideals of civic virtue and moral unity proved stubbornly persistent and influential. The tension between these conceptions of public life was especially evident in the young nation's burgeoning cities. Exploiting a wide range of sources, including novels, cartoons, memoirs, and journalistic accounts, James J. Connolly traces efforts to reconcile democracy and diversity in the industrializing cities of the United States from the antebellum period through the Progressive Era. The necessity of redesigning civic institutions and practices to suit city life triggered enduring disagreements centered on what came to be called machine politics. Featuring plebian leadership, a sharp masculinity, party discipline, and frank acknowledgment of social differences, this new political formula first arose in eastern cities during the mid-nineteenth century and became a subject of national discussion after the Civil War. During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, business leaders, workers, and women proposed alternative understandings of how urban democracy might work. Some tried to create venues for deliberation that built common ground among citizens of all classes, faiths, ethnicities, and political persuasions. But accommodating such differences proved difficult, and a vision of politics as the businesslike management of a contentious modern society took precedence. As Connolly makes clear, machine politics offered at best a quasi-democratic way to organize urban public life. Where unity proved elusive, machine politics provided a viable, if imperfect, alternative.

Few observers of Mexico and Brazil in the 1930s, or South Korea and Taiwan in the mid-1950s, would have predicted that these nations would become economic "miracles" several decades later. These newly industrializing countries (NICs) challenge much of our conventional wisdom about economic development and raise important questions about international competitiveness and export success in manufacturing industries. In this volume economists, sociologists, and political scientists seek to explain the growth of the NICs in Latin America and East Asia and to reformulate contemporary development theory through an in-depth analysis of these two dynamic regions. Gary Gereffi and Colin I. Bradford, Jr., provide an overview of national development trajectories in Latin America and East Asia, while Barbara Stallings, Gereffi, Robert R. Kaufman, Tun-jen Cheng, and Frederic C. Deyo discuss the role of foreign capital, governments, and domestic coalitions in shaping development outcomes. Gustav Ranis, Robert Wade, Chi Schive, and Ren Villarreal look at the impact of economic policies on industrial performance, and Fernando Fajnzylber, Ronald Dore, and Christopher Ellison with Gereffi examine new agendas for comparative development research. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Throughout the 19th century, the shipbuilding industry in America was both art and craft, one based on tradition, instinct, hand tools, and handmade ship models. Even as mechanization was introduced, the trade supported a system of apprenticeship, master builders, and family dynasties, and aesthetics remained the basis for design. Spanning the transition from wood to iron shipbuilding in America, Thiesen's history tells how practical and nontheoretical methods of shipbuilding began to be discarded by the 1880s in favor of technical and scientific methods. Perceiving that British warships were superior to its own, the United States Navy set out to adopt British design principles and methods. American shipbuilders wanted only to build better warships, but embracing British practices exposed them to new methods and technologies that aided in the transformation of American shipbuilding into an engineering-based industry. American shipbuilders soon improvised ways to turn U.S. shipyards into state-of-the-art facilities and, by the early 20th century, they forged ahead of the British in construction and production methods. The history of shipbuilding in America is a story of culture dictating technology. Thiesen describes the trans-Atlantic exchange of technical information that took place during this era and the role of the U.S. Navy in that transfer. He also profiles the lives of individual shipbuilders. Their stories will inspire enthusiasts of ships, shipbuilding, and shipbuilding technology, as well as historians and students of maritime history and the history of technology.

Women in the United States, 1830-1945 investigates women's economic, social, political and cultural history, encompassing all ethnic and racial groups and religions. It provides a general introduction to the history of women in industrializing America. Both a history of women and a history of the United States, its chronology is shaped by economic stages and political events. Although there were vast changes in all aspects of women's lives, gender (the social roles imputed to the sexes) continued to define women's (and men's) lives as much in 1945 as it had in 1830.

Broad in scope, The Gilded Age brings together sixteen original essays that offer lively syntheses of modern scholarship while making their own interpretive arguments. These engaging pieces allow students to consider the various societal, cultural and political factors that make studying the Gilded Age crucial to our understanding of America today.