front cover of American Plastic
American Plastic
A Cultural History
Meikle, Jeffrey L
Rutgers University Press, 1995

Winner of the 1996 Dexter Prize from the Society for the History of Technology and a 1996 Choice Outstanding Academic Book

“A splendid history of plastic.  The book is authoritative, thorough, interdisciplinary, and intriguing. . . [Meikle] traces the course of plastics from 19th–century celluloid and the fist wholly synthetic bakelite, in 1907, through the proliferation of compounds (vinyls, acrylics, polystyrene, nylon, etc.) and recent ecological concerns. . . .Interested readers of whatever predisposition will likely enjoy this comprehensive and thoughtful treatise.”—Publishers Weekly

“A landmark account. . . . He combines a first–rate technological history with a most impressive cultural analysis of how plastics evolved from a material surrounded by utopian expectations to a material epitomizing inferiority and eventually to a part of everyday life. . . . One of the most significant works ever written in the history of American technology and culture.”

Nature

“[A] truly outstanding work . . . here is a work of intellectual strength written with great literary style. . . . This significant work is likely to be widely cited in academic circles, defining the field for a generation of readers. Don’t let it pass you by! An extraordinary contribution, for all levels of readers.”—Choice

“This is real interdisciplinary work, roaming in focus, adaptive in method.”—Journal of American History

“This scholarly and comprehensive work . . . is nontechnical and emphasizes the social and cultural impact of plastics. . . . Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in understanding contemporary society.”—Library Journal

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front cover of Postcard America
Postcard America
Curt Teich and the Imaging of a Nation, 1931-1950
By Jeffrey L. Meikle
University of Texas Press, 2016

Extensively illustrated with representative images, this unique book illuminates the cultural significance of the highly colorized “linen” postcards that depicted a glowing America in the 1930s and 1940s and that fascinate collectors today.

From the Great Depression through the early postwar years, any postcard sent in America was more than likely a “linen” card. Colorized in vivid, often exaggerated hues and printed on card stock embossed with a linen-like texture, linen postcards celebrated the American scene with views of majestic landscapes, modern cityscapes, roadside attractions, and other notable features. These colorful images portrayed the United States as shimmering with promise, quite unlike the black-and-white worlds of documentary photography or Life magazine. Linen postcards were enormously popular, with close to a billion printed and sold.

Postcard America offers the first comprehensive study of these cards and their cultural significance. Drawing on the production files of Curt Teich & Co. of Chicago, the originator of linen postcards, Jeffrey L. Meikle reveals how photographic views were transformed into colorized postcard images, often by means of manipulation—adding and deleting details or collaging bits and pieces from several photos. He presents two extensive portfolios of postcards—landscapes and cityscapes—that comprise a representative iconography of linen postcard views. For each image, Meikle explains the postcard’s subject, describes aspects of its production, and places it in social and cultural contexts. In the concluding chapter, he shifts from historical interpretation to a contemporary viewpoint, considering nostalgia as a motive for collectors and others who are fascinated today by these striking images.

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front cover of Twentieth Century Limited
Twentieth Century Limited
Industrial Design In America 1925-1939
Jeffrey L. Meikle
Temple University Press, 2001
In the late 1920's "streamlined" became the term businessmen used to describe new models that were easier to produce as well as those that met with less sales resistance than older products. Illustrating this concept with streamlined objects from soup cans to the Chrysler building, Jeffrey Meikle's classic book, Twentieth Century Limited, celebrates the birth of the industrial design profession from 1925-1939. This second edition includes a new preface and improved photographic reproduction.

Commercial artists who answered the call of business -- Walter Dorwin Teague, Norman Bel Geddes, Henry Dreyfuss, and Raymond Loewy the best known among them -- were pioneers who envisioned a coherent machine-age environment in which life would be clean, efficient, and harmonious. Working with new materials -- chrome, stainless steel, Bakelite plastic -- they created a streamlined expressionist style which reflected the desire of the Depression-era public for a frictionless, static society.

Appliances such as Loewy's Coldspot refrigerator "set a new standard" (according to the advertisements), and its usefulness extended to the way it improved the middle-class consumer's taste for sleek new products.

Profusely illustrated with 150 photographs, Twentieth Century Limited pays tribute to the industrial designers and the way they transformed American culture; a generation after its initial publication, this book remains the best introduction to the subject. The new edition will fascinate anyone interested in art, architecture, technology, and American culture of the 1930's.
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