Connected : How Trains, Genes, Pineapples, Piano Keys, and a Few Disasters Transformed Americans at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century

Between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Americans underwent a dramatic transformation in self-conception: having formerly lived as individuals or members of small communities, they now found themselves living in networks, which arose out of scientific and technological innovations. There were transportation and communication networks. There was the network of the globalized marketplace, which brought into the American home exotic goods previously affordable to only a few. There was the network of standard time, which bound together all but the most rural Americans. There was the public health movement, which joined individuals to their fellow citizens by making everyone responsible for the health of everyone else. There were social networks that joined individuals to their fellows at the municipal, state, national, and global levels. Previous histories of this era focus on alienation and dislocation that new technologies caused. This book shows that American individuals in this era were more connected to their fellow citizens than ever—but by bonds that were distinctly modern. "To push back the shadow upon the dial of time" : the astonishing new facts of life and death The biological self Sex o'clock in America The neurophysiological mind; Or not The network of spatialized time The networked house and home The globalized consumer network : from pineapples to Turkey Red cigarettes to the bunny hug Race goes scientific, then transnational Religion goes worldly, ecumenical, and collective Citizen, community, state Conclusion : who you are. Between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Americans underwent a dramatic transformation: having formerly lived as individuals or members of small communities, they now found themselves living in networks--physical, social, and political--which bound them together in ways never previously imagined