American Life During the Industrial Age

This volume explores the Industrial Age (1860–1914), bringing together published and archival primary sources with introductory essays that contextualize a period of extraordinary social, cultural, and economic transformation.

The Industrial Age’s developments, which included electricity, internal-combustion engines, moving assembly lines, and clock time, posed as much risk and opportunity as do today’s innovations. Today artificial intelligence, terrorism, climate change, and the threat of pandemics like Covid-19 threaten our safety and sense of well-being, just as machine production, the labor movement, toxic chemicals and waste, and epidemics like tuberculosis and cholera posed significant challenges in the Industrial Age. This modern and innovative collection features tried and tested topics, such as immigration and labor, along with underexplored ones, such as electricity, abundance, and contaminants. Each chapter includes a historiographical essay exploring the rich historical and sociological scholarship on the period in the United States, while framing the documents and illustrations included in the chapter.

American Life During the Industrial Age is an ideal companion to undergraduate and graduate courses in United States history, American studies, the history of technology, and the history of culture and society.