Carroll Pursell tells the story of the evolution of American technology since World War II. His fascinating and surprising history links pop culture icons with landmarks in technological innovation and shows how postwar politics left their mark on everything from television, automobiles, and genetically engineered crops to contraceptives, Tupperware, and the Veg-O-Matic.

Just as America's domestic and international policies became inextricably linked during the Cold War, so did the nation's public and private technologies. The spread of the suburbs fed into demands for an interstate...

American Technology brings together ten fascinating and important stories of the ways in which Americans, from colonial times to the present, have embraced, rejected, interacted with, and understood the technologies with which they have lived and worked. Topics include the colonial home, the shop floor, the doctor's office, and the telephone exchange, as well as New England mill-sites, nuclear power, and the Internet. Each scholarly account is accompanied by primary documents and a list of further readings.

A Companion to American Technology is a groundbreaking collection of original essays that analyze the hard-to-define phenomenon of "technology" in America.

• 22 original essays by expert scholars cover the most important features of American technology, including developments in automobiles, television, and computing
• Analyzes the ways in which technologies are organized, such as in the engineering profession, government, medicine and agriculture
• Includes discussions of how technologies interact with race, gender, class, and other organizing structures in...