Description
About the Author
Claude S. Fischer is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of To Dwell among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City (1982) and The Urban Experience (1984).
Reviews
"A warning to those who see technology as having clear and far-reaching consequences in American life: Don't use the telephone as an obvious example. From a user-centered view of technological dispersion, the author argues convincingly that the telephone reinforced social and cultural patterns rather than changed them. . . . Well researched, with an excellent bibliography and fascinating endnotes, Fischer's study is likely to be a required purchase for comprehensive collections in sociology, business, and the history of technology. It is accessible, however, to a wider audience because of its readability." * Library Journal *
"Delightful. . . . A thought-provoking, often entertaining book that makes it impossible to take the telephone for granted." * Milwaukee Journal *
"Although it is impossible to reconstruct with complete accuracy how technologies were used and perceived decades ago, America Calling gives us a convincing picture of how a particular technology became part of everyday life." * Technology and Culture *
". . . this innovative study advances our understanding of the social role of technology and is a significant contribution to the debate over the modernization process." * Journal of American History *
"Professor Fischer's inquisitiveness is refreshing. Many of the methods in this path-breaking book (carefully documented in the text and in seven statistical appendices) are applicable to other social histories of technology; much more could be said about the facility with which he handles his subject's complexities, or about the useful contrasts he draws between the telephone and other space-transcending technologies." * Journal of Economic History *
". . . a significant contribution to the historical and sociological understanding of technology and modernity." * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *
"[An] insightful and thorough study. . ." * Business History Review *
"The book is a treat. Fischer should be the industrywide standard; fortunately, it's a very high standard that he has set." * Contemporary Sociology *
"[American Calling] is to be highly recommended for its pioneering approach to the social history of a technology and for its many revisionist conclusions about over-worked concepts like modernity and the decline of community." * Journal of Social History *
"Fischer's discussion of historiographic methods, insights into communication technology, and the use of positivistic and post-positivistic research can be an excellent model for technology education researchers. . . . America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 is an excellent work of historical research that can offer important STS insights for technology education." * Journal of Industrial Teacher Education *
Book Information
ISBN 9780520086470
Author Claude S. Fischer
Format Paperback
Page Count 424
Imprint University of California Press
Publisher University of California Press
Weight(grams) 590g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 30mm