HOME | BESTSELLERS | NEW RELEASES | PRICE WATCH | FICTION | BIOGRAPHIES | E-BOOKS |
+ PRICE WATCH
* Amazon pricing is not included in price watch
When the Lights Went Out Book
Winning entry, General Trade Cover/Jacket Category, in the 2010 New England Book Show sponsored by Bookbuilders of Boston. Where were you when the lights went out? At home during a thunderstorm? Preparing for an air attack during World War II? During the Great Northeastern Blackout of 1965? In New York City during a similar but more frightening blackout in 1977? In California when rolling blackouts hit in 2000? In 2003, when a cascading power failure left fifty million people without electricity? We often remember vividly our time in the dark. In When the Lights Went Out, David Nye views power outages in America from 1935 to the present not simply as technical failures but variously as military tactic, social disruption, crisis in the networked city, outcome of political and economic decisions, sudden encounter with sublimity, and memories enshrined in photographs. Our electrically lit-up life is so natural to us that when the lights go off, the darkness seems abnormal. Nye looks at America's development of its electrical grid, which made large-scale power failures possible; military blackouts before and during World War II ("The silence was the big surprise of the blackout, the darkness discounted," wrote Harold Ross in The New Yorker in 1942); New York City's contrasting 1965 and 1977 blackout experiences (the first characterized by cooperation, the second by looting and disorder); the growth in consumer demand that led to rolling blackouts made worse by energy traders' market manipulations; blackouts caused by terrorist attacks and sabotage; and, finally, the "greenout" (exemplified by the new tradition of "Earth Hour"), a voluntary reduction organized by environmental organizations. Blackouts, writes Nye, are breaks in the flow of social time that reveal much about the trajectory of American history. Each time one occurs, Americans confront their essential conditionĂ¢??not as isolated individuals, but as a community that increasingly binds itself together with electrical wires and signals.Read More
from£10.78 | RRP: * Excludes Voucher Code Discount Also available Used from £10.03
- 0262013746
- 9780262013741
- D Nye
- 26 March 2010
- MIT Press
- Hardcover (Book)
- 304
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. If you click through any of the links below and make a purchase we may earn a small commission (at no extra cost to you). Click here to learn more.
Would you like your name to appear with the review?
We will post your book review within a day or so as long as it meets our guidelines and terms and conditions. All reviews submitted become the licensed property of www.find-book.co.uk as written in our terms and conditions. None of your personal details will be passed on to any other third party.
All form fields are required.