In this book, Maxine Berg explores the invention, making, and buying of new, semi-luxury, and fashionable consumer goods during the eighteenth century. It follows these goods, from china tea ware to all sorts of metal ornaments such as candlesticks, cutlery, buckles, and buttons, as they were made and shopped for, then displayed in the private domestic settings of Britain's urban middling classes. It tells the stories and analyses the developments that led from a global trade in Eastern luxuries beginning in the sixteenth century to the new global trade in British-made consumer goods by the end of the eighteenth century. These new products, regarded as luxuries by the rapidly growing urban and middling-class people of the eighteenth century, played an important part in helping to proclaim personal identities,and guide social interaction. Customers enjoyed shopping for them; they took pleasure in their beauty, ingenuity or convenience. All manner of new products appeared in shop windows; sophisticated mixed-media advertising seduced customers and created new wants. This unparalleled 'product revolution' provoked philosophers and pundits to proclaim a 'new luxury', one that reached out to the middling and trading classes, unlike the elite and corrupt luxury of old. Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth Century Britain is cultural history at its best, built on a fresh empirical base drawn directly from customs accounts, advertising material, company papers, and contemporary correspondence. Maxine Berg traces how this new consumer society of the eighteenth century and the products first traded, then invented to satisfy it, stimulated industrialization itself. Global markets for the consumer goods of private and domestic life inspired the industrial revolution and British products 'won the world'.
This new edition of The Age of Manufactures provides an exciting alternative overview of the eighteenth-century British economy. Statistical summaries and a thorough revision of the whole text have enhanced this important book.
The role of slavery in driving Britain's economic development is often debated, but seldom given a central place. In their remarkable new book, Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson ‘follow the money’ to document in revealing detail the role of slavery in the making of Britain’s industrial revolution. Slavery was not just a source of wealth for a narrow circle of slave owners who built grand country houses and filled them with luxuries. The forces set in motion by the slave and plantation trades seeped into almost every aspect of the economy and society. In textile mills, iron and copper smelting, steam power, and financial institutions, slavery played a crucial part. Things we might think far removed from the taint of slavery, such as eighteenth-century fashions for indigo-patterned cloth, sweet tea, snuff boxes, mahogany furniture, ceramics and silverware, were intimately connected. Even London’s role as a centre for global finance was partly determined by the slave trade as insurance, financial trading and mortgage markets were developed in the City to promote distant and risky investments in enslaved people. The result is a bold and unflinching account of how Britain became a global superpower, and how the legacy of slavery persists. Acknowledging Britain’s role in slavery is not just about toppling statues and renaming streets. We urgently need to come to terms with slavery’s inextricable links with Western capitalism, and the ways in which many of us continue to benefit from slavery to this day.
Dr Berg argues that technical change was one of the foremost theoretical concerns of Ricardo and his successors, and the foundation for their distinctly optimistic view of the future. She shows how the Machinery Question fostered the social conditions in which the status of Political Economy as a discipline was established, and concludes that by the 1840s the divisions over machinery were firmly embedded in the great rival creeds of the future, liberalism and socialism.
The celebrated authors present an in-depth overview of the molecular structures and mechanisms that underlie the utilization of genetic information by complex organisms. They emphasize the experimental aspects of molecular genetics, offering a complete introduction to both principles and methods. "Excellent, suitably detailed and superbly written." Philip Leder, Harvard Medical School
This fascinating overview of the neglected 18th-century British economy offers a fresh perspective of 'the other Industrial Revolution.' Dr. Berg traverses the years between the pre-industrial and industrial periods, dissects the phenomena of industrial development now packaged by historians as 'protoindustrialization, ' and uncovers the early origins of new technologies, new and widely variable industrial structures, and patterns of work. Moving beyond the traditional singular focus on the factory system and the cotton industry, Dr. Berg analyzes instead the ubiquity and success of workshop, artisan and domestic systems of manufacture within the entire range of textile and metal industries
Those of us who read a daily newspaper or scan a weekly magazine have grown accustomed to being told that the science of genetics influences countless aspects of our existence, from human development, health, and disease to the ecological balance of our planet. We accept this, and yet most of us have only the faintest idea of what a gene really is or how it functions. This book, then, is a primer on modern genetics, and its aim is to teach any interested general reader all he or she needs to know about how genes work - and about how a detailed knowledge of their workings can be applied to some of the most pressing problems of our time. Written by two world-renowned researchers in molecular biology and illustrated with uncommon clarity and precision, Dealing with Genes will satisfy the interest of general readers, including those who have little formal background in biology. It will also serve admirably as an authoritative text for students taking nonmajors courses in biology, genetics, molecular biology, biotechnology, and related disciplines.
This new edition of The Age of Manufactures provides an exciting alternative overview of the eigtheenth-century British economy. Recent macro-economic history has discounted many of the achievements of the Industrial Revolution, but Maxine Berg digs beneath the macroeconomic estimates to dissect the characteristics and processes of industry in the eighteenth century. A male industrial revolution has been presented as the general experience, but new industries, notably in textiles and metal products, were primarily employers of women. This book gives these industries and their workforce due prominence. Technologies, work processes, labour forces and markets shifted in a variety of directions and forms to create a sector of dynamic new initiatives alongside stable and declining crafts. The key to the Industrial Revolution must lie in the sources of technological creativity and the structures of industrial communities. The rise of the factory system was one resu
George Beadle was a towering scientific figure whose work from the 1930s to 1960 marked the transition from classical genetics to the molecular era. Among other distinctions, he made the pivotal, Nobel Prize–winning discovery with Edward Tatum that the role of genes is to specify proteins. From 1946 to 1960 he led the Caltech Biology Division, rebuilding it to a powerhouse in molecular biology, and afterwards became a successful President of the University of Chicago. This is the first biography of a giant of genetics, written by two of the field's most distinguished contributors, Paul Berg and Maxine Singer.
Dr Berg argues that technical change was one of the foremost theoretical concerns of Ricardo and his successors, and the foundation for their distinctly optimistic view of the future. She shows how the Machinery Question fostered the social conditions in which the status of Political Economy as a discipline was established, and concludes that by the 1840s the divisions over machinery were firmly embedded in the great rival creeds of the future, liberalism and socialism.
The authors of the Thomas Say monograph The Cicadas of North America North of Mexico return with a revised and expanded edition of their bestselling work, presented in full color. The new edition includes 172 species and 22 subspecies of cicadas found in continental North America north of Mexico, representing 18 genera from eight tribes in three subfamilies within the family Cicadidae. The higher taxonomy is updated from the first edition, based on more recently proposed taxa. Information on the distribution of each species is now provided.
Fearing an imminent Nazi invasion, the British government interned 28,000 men and women of enemy nationality living in Britain in the spring of 1940. Most were Jewish refugees who, having fled Nazi persecution, were appalled to find themselves imprisoned as potential Nazi spies. Using oral histories, unpublished letters and memoirs, artifacts and newspapers from the camps, and government documents, We Built Up Our Lives tells the compelling story of sixty-three of these internees. It is a seldom-told part of the history of World War II and the Holocaust and a classic tale of human courage and resilience. We Built Up Our Lives describes the survival mechanisms relied upon by the Jewish refugees. Although the internees, imprisoned in Britain, the Isle of Man, Canada, and Australia, were adequately housed and fed and rarely mistreated, they were cut off from family, friends, school, and work--everything that had given meaning to their lives. Resisting boredom, anger, and despair, the internees made the best of a bad situation by creating education, culture, and community within the camps. Before and after as well as during the internment--in Nazi Germany and in Britain--educational resources and social networks were essential to the refugees' efforts to build up their lives. Equally important were personal qualities of courage, ingenuity, assertiveness, and resilience.
Those of us who read a daily newspaper or scan a weekly magazine have grown accustomed to being told that the science of genetics influences countless aspects of our existence, from human development, health, and disease to the ecological balance of our planet. We accept this, and yet most of us have only the faintest idea of what a gene really is or how it functions. This book, then, is a primer on modern genetics, and its aim is to teach any interested general reader all he or she needs to know about how genes work - and about how a detailed knowledge of their workings can be applied to some of the most pressing problems of our time. Written by two world-renowned researchers in molecular biology and illustrated with uncommon clarity and precision, Dealing with Genes will satisfy the interest of general readers, including those who have little formal background in biology. It will also serve admirably as an authoritative text for students taking nonmajors courses in biology, genetics, molecular biology, biotechnology, and related disciplines.
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