Brief Description
Looks at the history of technology and the human body in our continued search for physical perfection.
Learn More about the Book
Between the years 1850 and 1950, Americans became the leading energy consumers on the planet, expending tremendous physical resources on energy exploration, mental resources on energy exploitation, and monetary resources on energy acquisition. A unique combination of pseudoscientific theories of health and the public s rudimentary understanding of energy created an age in which sources of industrial power seemed capable of curing the physical limitations and ill health that plagued Victorian bodies. Licensed and quack physicians alike promoted machines, electricity, and radium as invigorating cures, veritable fountains of youth that would infuse the body with energy and push out disease and death.
The Body Electric is the first book to place changing ideas about fitness and gender in dialogue with the popular culture of technology. Whether through wearing electric belts, drinking radium water, or lifting mechanized weights, many Americans came to believe that by embracing the nation's rapid march to industrialization, electrification, and radiomania, their bodies would emerge fully powered. Only by uncovering this belief s passions and products, Thomas de la Pena argues, can we fully understand our culture s twentieth-century energy enthusiasm.
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About the Author
Carolyn Thomas de la Pena is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of California at Davis.
Review Quotes
1. "Not only provides a richly detailed and suprising account of long-forgotten artifacts, but also fleshes out the longer history of some still-familiar attitudes toward health and vitality." - "Journal of Social History"
2. "Covers its subject well, provides useful context, and makes lively reading for anyone interested in the history of technology, the social context of electricity and radioactive materials, or the history of alernative medicine." - "Technology and Culture"
3. "The Body Electric is the so-far missing puzzle piece in our nineteenth-twentieth century knowledge of the social history of the human body and technology a richly illustrated study showing two centuries of technologizing the human body against fears of weakness, enervation, sexual depletion." - Cecelia Tichi, author of Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America
4. "Transforming archival research into sparkling prose, The Body Electric explains how Americans learned to use machines to seek health, sexual rejuvenation, and physical transformation. This innovative book is both an entertaining history of fads and foibles and a groundbreaking cultural critique of the continuing obsession with achieving physical perfection.a - David E. Nye, author of Electrifying America and America as Second Creation
5. "This provocative exploration of the concept of energy in American medicine deftly ranges across medical theories, exercise machines and their inventors, early human potential movements, popular fads of electricity and radiation, and the national mood at the turn of the twentieth century. The author writes with wit and sympathy about medical theories and devices that may now seem like outright quackery but that formerly appealed to the educated as well as the gullible in their elusive search for good health. Building upon on a vast and vastly entertaining literature of medical pamphlets and ephemera, Carolyn Thomas de la PeAa brings a discerning intelligence and an energetic analytic style to the cultural history of medicine, faith, science, and technology." - Jeffrey L. Meikle, University of Texas, Austin
6. (
""The Body Electric" is the so-far missing puzzle piece in our nineteenth-twentieth century knowledge of the social history of the human body and technology--a richly illustrated study showing two centuries of technologizing the human body against fears of weakness, enervation, sexual depletion.")-(Cecelia Tichi), (author of "Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America")
7. (
"Transforming archival research into sparkling prose, The Body Electric explains how Americans learned to use machines to seek health, sexual rejuvenation, and physical transformation. This innovative book is both an entertaining history of fads and foibles and a groundbreaking cultural critique of the continuing obsession with achieving physical perfection."
)-(David E. Nye), (author of "Electrifying America and America as Second Creation"
)
8. (
"This provocative exploration of the concept of energy in American medicine deftly ranges across medical theories, exercise machines and their inventors, early human potential movements, popular fads of electricity and radiation, and the national mood at the turn of the twentieth century. The author writes with wit and sympathy about medical theories and devices that may now seem like outright quackery but that formerly appealed to the educated as well as the gullible in their elusive search for good health. Building upon on a vast and vastly entertaining literature of medical pamphlets and ephemera, Carolyn Thomas de la Pena brings a discerning intelligence and an energetic analytic style to the cultural history of medicine, faith, science, and technology."
)-(Jeffrey L. Meikle), (University of Texas, Austin)
9. (
"Covers its subject well, provides useful context, and makes lively reading for anyone interested in the history of technology, the social context of electricity and radioactive materials, or the history of alternative medicine."
)-("Technology and Culture"), ()
10. (
"Not only provides a richly detailed and suprising account of long-forgotten artifacts, but also fleshes out the longer history of some still-familiar attitudes toward health and vitality."
)-("Journal of Social History"), ()
11.
"Transforming archival research into sparkling prose, The Body Electric explains how Americans learned to use machines to seek health, sexual rejuvenation, and physical transformation. This innovative book is both an entertaining history of fads and foibles and a groundbreaking cultural critique of the continuing obsession with achieving physical perfection."
-David E. Nye, author of "Electrifying America and America as Second Creation"
12.
"This provocative exploration of the concept of energy in American medicine deftly ranges across medical theories, exercise machines and their inventors, early human potential movements, popular fads of electricity and radiation, and the national mood at the turn of the twentieth century. The author writes with wit and sympathy about medical theories and devices that may now seem like outright quackery but that formerly appealed to the educated as well as the gullible in their elusive search for good health. Building upon on a vast and vastly entertaining literature of medical pamphlets and ephemera, Carolyn Thomas de la Pena brings a discerning intelligence and an energetic analytic style to the cultural history of medicine, faith, science, and technology."
-Jeffrey L. Meikle, University of Texas, Austin
13.
"Covers its subject well, provides useful context, and makes lively reading for anyone interested in the history of technology, the social context of electricity and radioactive materials, or the history of alternative medicine."
-"Technology and Culture",
14.
""The Body Electric" is the so-far missing puzzle piece in our nineteenth-twentieth century knowledge of the social history of the human body and technology--a richly illustrated study showing two centuries of technologizing the human body against fears of weakness, enervation, sexual depletion."-Cecelia Tichi, author of "Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America"
15.
"Not only provides a richly detailed and suprising account of long-forgotten artifacts, but also fleshes out the longer history of some still-familiar attitudes toward health and vitality."
-"Journal of Social History",
16.
"A powerful collection of essays challenging the advocates of curbing speech in order to promote equality. Most impressively, these writers make their case not through name-calling, but by taking them seriously, and dissecting, opposing arguments and acknowledging complexities, and by invoking informed common sense in bracing prose."-Gerald Gunther, author of "The Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge"
17.
"A thoughtful book that offers significant insights on the potential perils of imposing restraints in the traditional First Amendment rights."-A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr.,
18.
"Not only provides a richly detailed and suprising account of long-forgotten artifacts, but also fleshes out the longer history of some still-familiar attitudes toward health and vitality."
-"Journal of Social History"
19.
"Covers its subject well, provides useful context, and makes lively reading for anyone interested in the history of technology, the social context of electricity and radioactive materials, or the history of alternative medicine."
-"Technology and Culture"
20.
Transforming archival research into sparkling prose, The Body Electric explains how Americans learned to use machines to seek health, sexual rejuvenation, and physical transformation. This innovative book is both an entertaining history of fads and foibles and a groundbreaking cultural critique of the continuing obsession with achieving physical perfection.
-David E. Nye, author of "Electrifying America and America as Second Creation"
"
21.
Not only provides a richly detailed and suprising account of long-forgotten artifacts, but also fleshes out the longer history of some still-familiar attitudes toward health and vitality.
-"Journal of Social History""
22.
This provocative exploration of the concept of energy in American medicine deftly ranges across medical theories, exercise machines and their inventors, early human potential movements, popular fads of electricity and radiation, and the national mood at the turn of the twentieth century. The author writes with wit and sympathy about medical theories and devices that may now seem like outright quackery but that formerly appealed to the educated as well as the gullible in their elusive search for good health. Building upon on a vast and vastly entertaining literature of medical pamphlets and ephemera, Carolyn Thomas de la Pena brings a discerning intelligence and an energetic analytic style to the cultural history of medicine, faith, science, and technology.
-Jeffrey L. Meikle, University of Texas, Austin"
23.
Covers its subject well, provides useful context, and makes lively reading for anyone interested in the history of technology, the social context of electricity and radioactive materials, or the history of alternative medicine.
-"Technology and Culture""
24.
"The Body Electric" is the so-far missing puzzle piece in our nineteenth-twentieth century knowledge of the social history of the human body and technology a richly illustrated study showing two centuries of technologizing the human body against fears of weakness, enervation, sexual depletion. -Cecelia Tichi, author of "Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America""
25.
Transforming archival research into sparkling prose, The Body Electric explains how Americans learned to use machines to seek health, sexual rejuvenation, and physical transformation. This innovative book is both an entertaining history of fads and foibles and a groundbreaking cultural critique of the continuing obsession with achieving physical perfection.
-David E. Nye, author of Electrifying America and America as Second Creation
"
26.
Not only provides a richly detailed and suprising account of long-forgotten artifacts, but also fleshes out the longer history of some still-familiar attitudes toward health and vitality.
-Journal of Social History
"
27.
This provocative exploration of the concept of energy in American medicine deftly ranges across medical theories, exercise machines and their inventors, early human potential movements, popular fads of electricity and radiation, and the national mood at the turn of the twentieth century. The author writes with wit and sympathy about medical theories and devices that may now seem like outright quackery but that formerly appealed to the educated as well as the gullible in their elusive search for good health. Building upon on a vast and vastly entertaining literature of medical pamphlets and ephemera, Carolyn Thomas de la Pena brings a discerning intelligence and an energetic analytic style to the cultural history of medicine, faith, science, and technology.
-Jeffrey L. Meikle, University of Texas, Austin
"
28.
The Body Electric is the so-far missing puzzle piece in our nineteenth-twentieth century knowledge of the social history of the human body and technology a richly illustrated study showing two centuries of technologizing the human body against fears of weakness, enervation, sexual depletion.
-Cecelia Tichi, author of
Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America"
29.
Covers its subject well, provides useful context, and makes lively reading for anyone interested in the history of technology, the social context of electricity and radioactive materials, or the history of alternative medicine.
-Technology and Culture
"
