American Sunshine
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€55.99
A01=Daniel Freund
architecture
Author_Daniel Freund
Category=JBSD
Category=MBN
Category=NHTB
city
climate
climatotherapy
commodities
consumerism
disease
ecology
environment
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
eugenics
exhibition
factories
health
healthcare
history
industrialization
industry
medicine
natural light
nature
nonfiction
nudism
politics
pollution
poverty
public housing
reform
rickets
seasonal affective disorder
smog
sociology
sun cult
sunlight
tanning beds
tenements
tourism
travel
tuberculosis
urban
urbanization
worlds fair
Product details
- ISBN 9780226262819
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 07 May 2012
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In the second half of the nineteenth century, American cities began to go dark. As hulking new buildings overspread blocks and pollution obscured the skies, glass and smog screened out the health-giving rays of the sun, and doctors began to note a resurgence of "diseases of darkness" like rickets and tuberculosis. The new problems were met by social reformers, doctors, scientists, and a growing nudist movement, each with their own remedies for America's new dark age. In "American Sunshine", Daniel Freund tracks the American obsession with sunlight from those dark days into the twentieth century. As architects, city planners, and politicians made access to sunlight central to public housing and public health, entrepreneurs, dairymen, and tourism boosters transformed the pursuit of sunlight and its effects into a commodity. Within this historical context, Freund sheds light on important questions about the commodification of health and nature, and makes an original contribution to the history of cities, consumerism, and medicine.
Daniel Freund is assistant professor of social sciences at Bard High School Early College.
