Since the first world's fair in London in 1851, at the dawn of the era of industrialization, international expositions served as ideal platforms for rival nations to showcase their advancements in design, architecture, science and technology, industry, and politics. Before the outbreak of World War II, countries competing for leadership on the world stage waged a different kind of war—with cultural achievements and propaganda—appealing to their own national strengths and versions of modern...

“I do not consider myself to be Robert Millikan’s biographer. This book is not a full record of Millikan’s life or even of his scientific career. It is an essay, very selective, on themes that are illustrated and illuminated by Millikan’s life in American science. It is, as well, a portrait of the development of a scientist...Robert Millikan was among the most famous of American scientists; to the public of the 1920s, Millikan represented science. The first American-born physicist ...

How Paris, London, Chicago, Berlin, and Tokyo created modernity through science and technology by means of urban planning, international expositions, and museums.At the close of the nineteenth century, industrialization and urbanization marked the end of the traditional understanding of society as rooted in agriculture. Urban Modernity examines the construction of an urban-centered, industrial-based culture—an entirely new social reality based on science a...

A lively and informative short volume that shows that France is not a faded glory but rather a place that has defined and shaped the key issues of our contemporary world, such as democracy and universal human rights, the emergence of a culture of consumerist spectacle, the tensions between nationalism and contemporary multiculturalism, and the role of religion in the modern state.

No other place on earth is as full both of promise and of dread as the city; it is at once alienating and exciting. These concentrations of people have not, however, come about as the result of vast immutable, impersonal forces, but because of human choices. The worsening or betterment of urban life will also be the result of choices. Our choices.That cities display and represent the personal desires of their inhabitants is central to Joseph Rykwert’s argument in T...

The typical town springs up around a natural resource—a river, an ocean, an exceptionally deep harbor—or in proximity to a larger, already thriving town. Not so with “new towns,” which are created by decree rather than out of necessity and are often intended to break from the tendencies of past development. New towns aren’t a new thing—ancient Phoenicians named their colonies Qart Hadasht, or New City—but these utopian developments saw a resurgence in the twentieth century.

Despite its ancient Roman origins, concrete is considered the ultimate modern material, used everywhere in construction today: the equivalent of three tonnes of concrete per person on the planet is produced each year. Used in our pavements, roads, tunnels and walls, concrete surrounds us wherever we go and polarizes opinion, provoking intense loathing in some and fervent passion in others.Concrete and Culture breaks new ground by charting concrete's effects on culture sinc...

Architecture and Capitalism tells a story of the relationship between the economy and architectural design. Eleven historians each discuss in brand new essays the time period they know best, looking at cultural and economic issues, which in light of current economic crises you will find have dealt with diverse but surprisingly familiar economic issues. Told through case studies, the narrative begins in the mid-nineteenth century and ends with 2011, with introductions by Editor Peg...

The history of post Second World War reconstruction has recently become an important field of research around the world; Alternative Visions of Post-War Reconstruction is a provocative work that questions the orthodoxies of twentieth century design history.This book provides a key critical statement on mid-twentieth century urban design and city planning, focused principally upon the period between the start of the Second World War to the mid-sixties. The various figures a...

The twentieth century witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number of capital cities worldwide – in 1900 there were only about forty, but by 2000 there were more than two hundred. And this, surely, is reason enough for a book devoted to the planning and development of capital cities in the twentieth century.However, the focus here is not only on recently created capitals. Indeed, the case studies which make up the core of the book show that, while very different, the developme...

Expanding Nationalisms at World’s Fairs: Identity, Diversity, and Exchange, 1851–1915 introduces the subject of international exhibitions to art and design historians and awider audience as a resource for understanding the broad and varied political meaningsof design during a period of rapid industrialization, developing nationalism, imperialism,expanding trade and the emergence of a consumer society. Its chapters, written byboth established and emerging scholars, are global in sc...

After critiquing―and infuriating―the art world with The Painted Word, the award-winning author Tom Wolfe shares his less-than-favorable thoughts about modern architecture in From Bauhaus to Our House.In this examination of the strange saga of twentieth-century architecture, Wolfe takes such European architects as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Bauhaus art school founder Walter Gropius to task for their glass-and-steel-box buildings th...