John A. Heitmann's Books

Stealing Cars

Technology and Society from the Model T to the Gran Torino

By: John A. Heitmann,Rebecca H. Morales

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Stealing Cars

Technology and Society from the Model T to the Gran Torino

By: John A. Heitmann,Rebecca H. Morales

The technology-thwarting car thief has become as advanced as the cars themselves. As early as 1910 Americans recognized that cars were easy to steal and, once stolen, hard to find, especially since cars looked much alike. Model styles and colors eventually changed, but so did the means of making a stolen car disappear. Though changing license plates and serial numbers remain basic procedure, thieves have created highly sophisticated networks to disassemble stolen vehicles, distribute the parts, and/or ship the altered cars out of the country. Stealing cars has become as technologically advanced as the cars themselves. John A. Heitmann and Rebecca H. Morales’s study of automobile theft and culture examines a wide range of related topics that includes motives and methods, technological deterrents, place and space, institutional responses, international borders, and cultural reflections. Only recently have scholars begun to move their focus away from the creators and manufacturers of the automobile to its users. Stealing Cars illustrates the power of this approach, as it aims at developing a better understanding of the place of the automobile in the broad texture of American life. There are many who are fascinated by aspects of automobile history, but many more readers enjoy the topic of crime—motives, methods, escaping capture, and of course solving the crime and bringing criminals to justice. Stealing Cars brings together expertise from the history of technology and cultural history as well as city planning and transborder studies to produce a compelling and detailed work that raises questions concerning American priorities and values. Drawing on sources that include interviews, government documents, patents, sociological and psychological studies, magazines, monographs, scholarly periodicals, film, fiction, and digital gaming, Heitmann and Morales tell a story that highlights both human creativity and some of the paradoxes of American life.

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Page Count

229

Publisher

JHU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1421412985

ISBN 13

9781421412986

Scaling Up

Science, Engineering, and the American Chemical Industry

By: John A. Heitmann,David J. Rhees

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Scaling Up

Science, Engineering, and the American Chemical Industry

By: John A. Heitmann,David J. Rhees

Focusing on petroleum refining and penicillin production. this book is a tribute to the engineers who transformed laboratory reactions into large production facilities. It accompanies CHF's travelling exhibit by the same name.

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Chemical Heritage Foundation

Published Date

ISBN 10

0941901017

ISBN 13

9780941901017

Reconstruction in the Cane Fields

From Slavery to Free Labor in Louisiana's Sugar Parishes, 1862--1880

By: John C. Rodrigue

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Reconstruction in the Cane Fields

From Slavery to Free Labor in Louisiana's Sugar Parishes, 1862--1880

By: John C. Rodrigue

In Reconstruction in the Cane Fields, John C. Rodrigue examines emancipation and the difficult transition from slavery to free labor in one enclave of the South -- the cane sugar region of southern Louisiana. In contrast to the various forms of sharecropping and tenancy that replaced slavery in the cotton South, wage labor dominated the sugar industry. Rodrigue demonstrates that the special geographical and environmental requirements of sugar production in Louisiana shaped the new labor arrangements. Ultimately, he argues, the particular demands of Louisiana sugar production accorded freedmen formidable bargaining power in the contest with planters over free labor. Rodrigue addresses many issues pivotal to all post-emancipation societies: How would labor be reorganized following slavery's demise? Who would wield decision-making power on the plantation? How were former slaves to secure the fruits of their own labor? He finds that while freedmen's working and living conditions in the postbellum sugar industry resembled the prewar status quo, they did not reflect a continuation of the powerlessness of slavery. Instead, freedmen converted their skills and knowledge of sugar production, their awareness of how easily they could disrupt the sugar plantation routine, and their political empowerment during Radical Reconstruction into leverage that they used in disputes with planters over wages, hours, and labor conditions. Thus, sugar planters, far from being omnipotent overlords who dictated terms to workers, were forced to adjust to an emerging labor market as well as to black political power. The labor arrangements particular to postbellum sugar plantations not only propelled the freedmen's political mobilization during Radical Reconstruction, Rodrigue shows, but also helped to sustain black political power -- at least for a few years -- beyond Reconstruction's demise in 1877. By showing that freedmen, under the proper circumstances, were willing to consent to wage labor and to work routines that strongly resembled those of slavery, Reconstruction in the Cane Fields offers a profound interpretation of how former slaves defined freedom in slavery's immediate aftermath. It will prove essential reading for all students of southern, African American, agricultural, and labor history.

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Page Count

255

Publisher

LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807152625

ISBN 13

9780807152621

Book's by John A. Heitmann

Stealing Cars

Stealing Cars

Scaling Up

Scaling Up

Reconstruction in the Cane Fields

Reconstruction in the Cane Fields

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