A nineteenth-century entrepreneur’s bold, innovative marketing helped transform flower gardens into one of America’s favorite hobbies.“There is much that is hard and productive of sorrow in this sin-plagued world of ours; and, had we no flowers, I believe existence would be hard to be borne.” So states a customer’s 1881 letter—one of thousands James Vick regularly received. Vick’s business, selling flower seeds through the mail, wasn’t unique, but it was wildly suc...

Named one of “the year’s best gardening books” by The Spectator (UK, Nov. 2014)The 1890s saw a revolution in advertising. Cheap paper, faster printing, rural mail delivery, railroad shipping, and chromolithography combined to pave the way for the first modern, mass-produced catalogs. The most prominent of these, reaching American households by the thousands, were seed and nursery catalogs with beautiful pictures of middle-class homes surrounded by sprawlin...

This volume provides a critical look at public relations practice, utilizing case studies from public relations, advertising, and marketing to illustrate the deconstruction and analysis of public relations campaigns. Author Thomas J. Mickey uses a cultural studies approach and demonstrates how it can be used as a critical theory for public relations practice, offering real-world examples to support his argument.Through the interpretive act of deconstruction, this book serves to cha...

For readers of H is for Hawk and The Frozen Thames, The Ghost Orchard is award-winning author Helen Humphreys’ fascinating journey into the secret history of an iconic food. Delving deep into the storied past of the apple in North America, Humphreys explores the intricate link between agriculture, settlement, and human relationships. With her signature insight and exquisite prose, she brings light to such varied topics as how the apple first came across the Atlan...

Most of us recognize that organizations are everywhere. You meet them on every street corner in the form of families and shops, study in them, work for them, buy from them, pay taxes to them. But have you given much thought to where they came from, what they are today, and what they might become in the future? How and why do they have so much influence over us, and what influences them? How do they contribute to and detract from the meaningfulness of lives, and how might we improve them so...

Henry Petroski traces the origins of the pencil back to ancient Greece and Rome, writes factually and charmingly about its development over the centuries and around the world, and shows what the pencil can teach us about engineering and technology today.

While animals have played a central part in human society over the years, when it comes to the social sciences they have largely been neglected. However, interest in HumanAnimal Studies (HAS) has grown exponentially in recent years, giving rise to university and college courses around the world specifically on this compelling and vital subject. Considering topics ranging from the humananimal bond, meat eating, and animals in entertainment, this book presents key concepts in simple and easy-to...

An investigation into why so few African American and Latino high school students are studying computer science reveals the dynamics of inequality in American schools.The number of African Americans and Latino/as receiving undergraduate and advanced degrees in computer science is disproportionately low, according to recent surveys. And relatively few African American and Latino/a high school students receive the kind of institutional encouragement, educational oppo...

This history of woodworking hand tools from the 17th to the 20th century is one of a very gradual evolution of tools through generations of craftsmen. As a result, the sources of changes in design are almost impossible to ascertain.Published sources, moreover, have been concerned primarily with the object shaped by the tool rather than the tool itself. The resulting scarcity of information is somewhat compensated for by collections in museums and restorations. In this paper, the au...

Dworkin and Wachs analyze 10 years of health and fitness magazines to uncover how bodies are made in popular cultureAre you ripped? Do you need to work on your abs? Do you know your ideal body weight? Your body fat index? Increasingly, Americans are being sold on a fitness ideal—not just thin but toned, not just muscular but cut—that is harder and harder to reach. In Body Panic, Shari L. Dworkin and Faye Linda Wachs ask why. How did these particula...

The Shakers produced many incredible furniture objects that we continue to venerate today. For the woodworker the fascination is often rooted in the essential simplicity of the work. Interest in Shaker design is as strong today as it was when the first edition of this book was published in 1977, possibly stronger. This ongoing interest is the direct result of the inherent beauty of Shaker design-beauty that stems not only from form, but from superb workmanship, a commitment to utility and ...

Why are African Americans so underrepresented when it comes to interest in nature, outdoor recreation, and environmentalism? In this thought-provoking study, Carolyn Finney looks beyond the discourse of the environmental justice movement to examine how the natural environment has been understood, commodified, and represented by both white and black Americans. Bridging the fields of environmental history, cultural studies, critical race studies, and geography, Finney argues that the legacie...