BiblioVault - Books about Twentieth Century

Naked to the Bone

Medical Imaging in the Twentieth Century

Kevles, Bettyann Holtzman

Rutgers University Press, 1996

X-rays, fluoroscopy, ultrasound, CT, MRI, and PET scans--medical imaging has become a familiar part of modern health care today. A century ago, however, the idea of looking inside the living body seemed absurd. Wilhelm Roentgen's X-ray image of his wife's shadowy hand--with her wedding band "floating" around a white bone--convinced doctors to rush the new tool into use for diagnosis and treatment.

By the 1920s, the technology was a commonplace wonder: army recruits had routinely lined up for chest X-rays during World War I, and children delighted in seeing the bones of their feet in the green glow of shoestore fluoroscopes. By the late 1960s, the computer and television were linked to produce medical images that were as startling as Roentgen's original X-rays. Computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MR) made it possible to picture soft tissues invisible to ordinary X-rays. Ultrasound allowed expectant parents to see their unborn children. Positron emission tomography (PET) enabled neuroscientists to map the brain.

In this lively history of medical imaging, the first to cover the full scope of the field from X-rays to MR-assistant surgery, Bettyann Kevles explores the consequences of these developments for medicine and society. Through lucid prose, vivid anecdotes, and more than seventy striking illustrations, she shows how medical imaging has transformed the practice of medicine--from pediatrics to dentistry, neurosurgery to geriatrics, gynecology to oncology.

Despite their formidable power to reveal the inner secrets of the body, no form of medical imaging can claim to be the product of a technological imperative. As Kevles points out, few of these costly inventions made it easily to the marketplace, and all are vulnerable to the changing economics of the health-care system. In the early years of X-rays, many doctors, technicians, and patients died from overexposure to the invisible radiation. Although we may still find delayed repercussions from these newer technologies, a different kind of danger may lie in our conviction that an early diagnosis is equivalent to a cure.

Beyond medicine, Kevles describes how X-rays and the newer technologies have become part of the texture of modern life and culture. They helped undermine Victorian sexual sensibilities, gave courts new forensic tools, provided plots for novels and movies, and offered artists from Picasso to Warhol new ways to depict the human form.

Naked to the Bone offers readers an unparalled picture of a key technology of the twentieth century.

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The National Question

Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and Self-Determination in the Twentieth Century

edited by Berch Berberoglu

Temple University Press, 1995

The class forces that have come to play a central role in directing movements in different socio-political, temporal, and geographic settings are explored in case studies of * the political history of nationalist movements in Palestine, Kurdistan, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Puerto Rico, the Basque Country, and Quebec * the role of the state in ethnic conflicts in India, China, the former Soviet Union, and the former Yugoslavia *the role of women and issues of gender and class in Africa, the Middle East, and Central America.

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Native Pathways

American Indian Culture and Economic Development in the Twentieth Century

Brian Hosmer

University Press of Colorado, 2004

How has American Indians' participation in the broader market - as managers of casinos, negotiators of oil leases, or commercial fishermen - challenged the U.S. paradigm of economic development? Have American Indians paid a cultural price for the chance at a paycheck? How have gender and race shaped their experiences in the marketplace? Contributors to Native Pathways ponder these and other questions, highlighting how indigenous peoples have simultaneously adopted capitalist strategies and altered them to suit their own distinct cultural beliefs and practices. Including contributions from historians, anthropologists, and sociologists, Native Pathways offers fresh viewpoints on economic change and cultural identity in twentieth-century Native American communities. Foreword by Donald L. Fixico.

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Native Sons

West African Veterans and France in the Twentieth Century

Gregory Mann

Duke University Press, 2006

For much of the twentieth century, France recruited colonial subjects from sub-Saharan Africa to serve in its military, sending West African soldiers to fight its battles in Europe, Southeast Asia, and North Africa. In this exemplary contribution to the “new imperial history,” Gregory Mann argues that this shared military experience between France and Africa was fundamental not only to their colonial relationship but also to the reconfiguration of that relationship in the postcolonial era. Mann explains that in the early twenty-first century, among Africans in France and Africa, and particularly in Mali—where Mann conducted his research—the belief that France has not adequately recognized and compensated the African veterans of its wars is widely held and frequently invoked. It continues to animate the political relationship between France and Africa, especially debates about African immigration to France.

Focusing on the period between World War I and 1968, Mann draws on archival research and extensive interviews with surviving Malian veterans of French wars to explore the experiences of the African soldiers. He describes the effects their long absences and infrequent homecomings had on these men and their communities, he considers the veterans’ status within contemporary Malian society, and he examines their efforts to claim recognition and pensions from France. Mann contends that Mali is as much a postslavery society as it is a postcolonial one, and that specific ideas about reciprocity, mutual obligation, and uneven exchange that had developed during the era of slavery remain influential today, informing Malians’ conviction that France owes them a “blood debt” for the military service of African soldiers in French wars.

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Nature and Ideology

Nature and Garden Design in the Twentieth Century

Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn

Harvard University Press, 1997

This volume explores the broad range of ideas about nature reflected in twentieth-century concepts of natural gardens and their ideological implications. A possible definition—nature is ideology—suggests that nature can be seen as a systematic scheme of ideas held by particular social, political, and cultural groups, and that our definition of nature is a human intellectual construct. Historical and contemporary concepts of natural garden design provide evidence of these different concepts of nature. The desire to produce a natural garden design has fascinated many professional and amateur garden designers, and the essays in this volume investigate their use of earlier ideas of natural gardens and their relationship to the rich model that nature offers. The work of early twentieth-century natural garden advocates helped shape much of twentieth-century landscape architecture in both the United States and Europe, and the ideologies underlying the concepts of natural gardens show how political, economic, and social developments influenced design programs and decisions.

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Nature's Northwest

The North Pacific Slope in the Twentieth Century

William G. Robbins and Katrine Barber

University of Arizona Press, 2011

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the greater Northwest was ablaze with change and seemingly obsessed with progress. The promotional literature of the time praising railroads, population increases, and the growing sophistication of urban living, however, ignored the reality of poverty and ethnic and gender discrimination. During the course of the next century, even with dramatic changes in the region, one constant remained— inequality.

With an emphasis on the region’s political economy, its environmental history, and its cultural and social heritage, this lively and colorful history of the Pacific Northwest—defined here as Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and southern British Columbia—places the narrative of this dynamic region within a national and international context.

Embracing both Canadian and American stories in looking at the larger region, renowned historians William Robbins and Katrine Barber offer us a fascinating regional history through the lens of both the environment and society. Understanding the physical landscape of the greater Pacific Northwest—and the watersheds of the Columbia, Fraser, Snake, and Klamath rivers—sets the stage for understanding the development of the area. Examining how this landscape spawned sawmills, fish canneries, railroads, logging camps, agriculture, and shared immigrant and ethnic traditions reveals an intricate portrait of the twentieth-century Northwest.

Impressive in its synthesis of myriad historical facts, this first-rate regional history will be of interest to historians studying the region from a variety of perspectives and an informative read for anyone fascinated by the story of a landscape rich in diversity, natural resources, and Native culture.

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New South Indians

Tribal Economics and the Eastern Band of Cherokee in the Twentieth Century

Christopher Arris Oakley

University of Tennessee Press, 2018

The Eastern Band’s economic decisions of the 1900s did not occur in a vacuum. In fact, these decisions reflected regional changes and the broader development of the post-Civil War American South. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians formally incorporated under North Carolina law in the 1880s, and their economic policies evolved as the country experienced Jim Crow segregation, the Great Depression, World War II, and the civil rights movement. During the twentieth century, members of the Eastern Band embraced an economic strategy partially based on tourism. In the late 1900s, they pursued policies that facilitated the rise of casino gaming.

Divided into five chapters, Christopher Arris Oakley’s New South Indians traces the economic development of the Eastern Band throughout the twentieth century to better contextualize the Cherokee Tribal Council’s 1990s decision to incorporate gaming into the nation’s economic strategy. In building his contextual framework, Oakley discusses the interdependent relationships forged by Cherokee Tribal Council members with various public and private entities in order to protect their land, manage their resources, and advance the well-being of their nation’s economy and community.

New South Indians also situates the story within the history of the American South. Thus, the saga of the Eastern Band’s struggle for economic autonomy and financial stability throughout the stormy twentieth century can be seen as an integral part of the historical account of western North Carolina.

A multifaceted glimpse into a vital aspect of contemporary southern history, New South Indians is sure to appeal to a wide variety of readers, from those captivated by Native American culture and the history of the modern South to those interested in economic history.

CHRISTOPHER ARRIS OAKLEY is an associate professor in the Department of History at East Carolina University. He is the author of Keeping the Circle: American Indian Identity in Eastern North Carolina, 1885–2004, and he is coauthor, with Theda Perdue, of Native Carolinians: The Indians of North Carolina.

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