 The body electric: how strange machines built the modern American.
Author: de la Pena, Carolyn Thomas Published: 2003 A survey of changing ideas about fitness and gender, in dialogue with the popular culture of technology. Whether through such fads as wearing electric belts, drinking radium water, or lifting mechanised weights, many Americans came to believe that by embracing the nation's rapid march to industrialisation, electrification, and 'radiomania', their bodies would emerge fully powered. Only by uncovering this belief's passions and products, the author argues, can we fully understand our culture's twentieth-century energy enthusiasm. |
