What do you think?
Rate this book
America as Second Creation: Technology and Narratives of New Beginnings
After 1776, the former American colonies began to reimagine themselves as a unified, self-created community. Technologies had an important role in the resulting national narratives, and a few technologies assumed particular prominence. Among these were the axe, the mill, the canal, the railroad, and the irrigation dam. In this book David Nye explores the stories that clustered around these technologies. In doing so, he rediscovers an American story of origins, with America conceived as a second creation built in harmony with God's first creation.
While mainstream Americans constructed technological foundation stories to explain their place in the New World, however, marginalized groups told other stories of destruction and loss. Native Americans protested the loss of their forests, fishermen resisted the construction of dams, and early environmentalists feared the exhaustion of resources. A water mill could be viewed as the kernel of a new community or as a new way to exploit labor. If passengers comprehended railways as part of a larger narrative about American expansion and progress, many farmers attacked railroad land grants. To explore these contradictions, Nye devotes alternating chapters to narratives of second creation and to narratives of those who rejected it.
Nye draws on popular literature, speeches, advertisements, paintings, and many other media to create a history of American foundation stories. He shows how these stories were revised periodically, as social and economic conditions changed, without ever erasing the earlier stories entirely. The image of the isolated frontier family carving a homestead out of the wilderness with an axe persists to this day, alongside later images and narratives. In the book's conclusion, Nye considers the relation between these earlier stories and such later American developments as the conservation movement, narratives of environmental recovery, and the idealization of wilderness.
While mainstream Americans constructed technological foundation stories to explain their place in the New World, however, marginalized groups told other stories of destruction and loss. Native Americans protested the loss of their forests, fishermen resisted the construction of dams, and early environmentalists feared the exhaustion of resources. A water mill could be viewed as the kernel of a new community or as a new way to exploit labor. If passengers comprehended railways as part of a larger narrative about American expansion and progress, many farmers attacked railroad land grants. To explore these contradictions, Nye devotes alternating chapters to narratives of second creation and to narratives of those who rejected it.
Nye draws on popular literature, speeches, advertisements, paintings, and many other media to create a history of American foundation stories. He shows how these stories were revised periodically, as social and economic conditions changed, without ever erasing the earlier stories entirely. The image of the isolated frontier family carving a homestead out of the wilderness with an axe persists to this day, alongside later images and narratives. In the book's conclusion, Nye considers the relation between these earlier stories and such later American developments as the conservation movement, narratives of environmental recovery, and the idealization of wilderness.
- GenresHistory
371 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
3 people are currently reading
34 people want to read
About the author
David E. Nye
31 books7 followersDavid E. Nye is Professor of American History at the University of Southern Denmark. The winner of the 2005 Leonardo da Vinci Medal of the Society for the History of Technology, he is the author of Image Worlds: Corporate Identities at General Electric, 1890-1930 (1985), Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880-1940 (1990), American Technological Sublime (1994), Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies (1997), America as Second Creation: Technology and Narratives of New Beginnings (2003), and Technology Matters: Questions to Live With (2006) published by the MIT Press.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Read
October 18, 2022The culmination of a career's work in American Studies. Nye's sources are equally divided between art and social science. He is one of few scholars to take that approach--and to do it seamlessly.
November 1, 2011
This book attempts to make an argument that America is a "second creation" but in the course of the book does not really define what he means by this. It is an interesting recount of American technological history and was fairly well done. The book is written by a scholar in Denmark and the European perspective was the most fascinating part. The book examines the role of environmental history in addition to technology. It argues that mills, grid patterns, dams and resources, as well as an esoteric idea of human entropy. This attempt at science is very weak and does not make a favorable impression. Ruth Cowan's book provides a better example of how technology developed although this is still a good start. It is worth a read but can be trying in its theoretical stance at times.
Read
November 21, 2009Has Ben sold this?
June 20, 2011
Interesting premise but drags in many places. Several good chapters. An academic environmental history.
January 23, 2015
Excellent overview of the power and predominance of a variety of the most influential American narratives, especially the technological narrative- includibg it's origin and it's present influence.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews