Showing posts sorted by relevance for query black. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query black. Sort by date Show all posts
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Sunday, February 25, 2018
Saturday, February 18, 2017
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Interesting Stuff: Black History Month
African-American Engineers and Inventors Poster Series
African-American Writers: A Celebration
Black Engineers’ Contributions to the World
Black History Canada
Black History Month and Comics: Two Great Tastes that Go Together
Celebrate Black History
Missouri’s African American History
The Role of the Negro in Missouri History 1719-1970
Static Ongoing Series
Superhero Diversity
W. E. B. Du Bois: Online Resources
African-American Writers: A Celebration
Black Engineers’ Contributions to the World
Black History Canada
Black History Month and Comics: Two Great Tastes that Go Together
Celebrate Black History
Missouri’s African American History
The Role of the Negro in Missouri History 1719-1970
Static Ongoing Series
Superhero Diversity
W. E. B. Du Bois: Online Resources
Sunday, October 28, 2018
Making the American Body by Jonathan Black
In Making the American Body, journalist Jonathan Black explores the history of health and fitness from aerobics to Zumba. Promotion of
physical fitness goes back to the founding of the United States; Black notes that Benjamin Franklin praised the use of dumbbells.
Franklin was known to be a fan of swimming, too. It began to gain some momentum
in the middle 1800s when German immigrants brought the gymnasium (they called it
a Turnverein) to the U.S.
I was draw to the book
because it has a touch of Missouriana in the person of Bernarr Macfadden, self-proclaimed “Father of Physical Culture.” Macfadden had a classic story of
the early bodybuilder. He was a sick, weak kid from the Ozarks who was transformed into a paragon of
masculine pulchritude by his commitment to weight training, healthy eating and clean living. Unlike some of his contemporaries,
Macfadden believed clean living included an active sex life and he campaigned against prudery. His magazines, headed by Physical Culture, featured photographs of nearly naked men and
women in swimsuits.
Fitness promotion is a
small world, and many of its leading figures are connected. Macfadden organized
a contest (probably fixed) that crowned Charles Atlas the “World’s Most Beautiful Man.”
Atlas’ ads in pulp magazines and comic books are probably some of the most
well-known ever, especially the bully of the beach ad. The story of this ad,
told in comics form, is based on a real event in Atlas’ life when he was shamed
by a muscular life guard for his scrawny form and weakness while on a date at
the beach.
Macfadden and many
others were inspired by Prussian strongman Sandow. They saw him at the Chicago Columbian Exposition, where his show was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr.
California became a focus of health and fitness
trend that would spread across the country. Santa Monica’s Muscle Beach was a place for weight
lifters and gymnasts to have fun and show off. Steve Reeves, known for playing Hercules in several films, was a product of Muscle Beach. Jack LaLanne, another wimpy kid transformed,
opened gyms, brought workouts to television, and encouraged women to exercise and
do strength training.
Other trends gained
popularity, especially fitness focused on cardiovascular health. This brought
into popular culture Dr. Kenneth Cooper, a physician to astronauts whose 1968 book Aerobics
launched an industry. That industry provided a career for Richard Simmons and a second career for Jane Fonda, who was the first to emphasize
exercise as a way for women to lose weight (though this was an unspoken appeal
long before the 1970s). Bodybuilding made a comeback,
though, especially fueled by the popularity of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I’m not especially
interested in the health and fitness industry, but I found this book to be very
interesting. It provides a historical context for many of the health and
fitness trends that are still part of American culture.
If you’re interested in
this book, you may also be interested in
Black, Jonathan. Making the American Body: The Remarkable
Saga of the Men and Women Whose Feats, Feuds, and Passions Shaped Fitness
History. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2013.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Life is So Good by George Dawson & Richard Glaubman
Dawson, George, and Richard Glaubman. Life is So Good. New York: Penguin, 2000.
George Dawson was in his nineties when he learned to read. He was a centenarian when he and coauthor Richard Glaubman wrote his biography, Life is So Good. I think Dawson’s life was good, and not just because it has been so long.
Even a good life is sometimes hard. Most of Dawson’s life was hard. Black and poor were not auspicious beginnings for a boy in Texas at the beginning of the 20th Century. In the opening chapter, Dawson tells of how, as a boy, he witnessed the lynching of a young black man falsely accused of raping a young white woman. Dawson was ready to become bitter and withdraw from all contact with white people, but his father would not allow him to even consider it.
Dawson presents his parents and wise and pragmatic, making things better for themselves bit by bit. He picks it up and does the same thing in his own life, especially once he settled down to start his own family.
He had some wandering to do first. His early life of travel and adventure makes for interesting reading. He road trains all over North America, sometimes as a ticketholder and sometimes joining the hobos. He was able to find work wherever he went, mainly because there was no job so hard or unpleasant he was unwilling to try it.
Traveling opened his eyes, especially to race relations in the U.S. Growing up in the South, he thought the discrimination and oppression he was accustomed to be the way things were. In Mexico and Canada, even in parts of the U.S., he was treated like anyone else, regardless of color. Mexican villagers welcomed him like family and delighted in the novelty of someone so tall. Canadian lumbermen were curious about his home and happily directed him to the snow he had never seen before—it almost killed him. In his early days, he found it strange to be in places where no one cared which train car he was in or the restaurant at which he ate.
Things changed a lot in Dawson’s more than 100 years of life, though racism hasn’t disappeared. (I grew up in a town that was 99 percent white and I’m barely 40 years old. In the same county were villages that were almost entirely black.) Even in the face of difficulties, Dawson persisted and bit by bit made life better for himself and his family. When retirement came it wasn’t time to rest from his labors, it was time to pick up the education he had been denied as a boy because he had to work.
Dawson’s life story is worth reading simply because he is a witness to history who tells his story in an interesting and accessible manner. It’s worth reading because, without trying, it has a message too: don’t worry. Dawson recommends that people not worry if they want a good life. I think it’s very good advice. Arguably, though, he was working too hard most of his life to have time for worries, even though he had cause for them.
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George Dawson was in his nineties when he learned to read. He was a centenarian when he and coauthor Richard Glaubman wrote his biography, Life is So Good. I think Dawson’s life was good, and not just because it has been so long.
Even a good life is sometimes hard. Most of Dawson’s life was hard. Black and poor were not auspicious beginnings for a boy in Texas at the beginning of the 20th Century. In the opening chapter, Dawson tells of how, as a boy, he witnessed the lynching of a young black man falsely accused of raping a young white woman. Dawson was ready to become bitter and withdraw from all contact with white people, but his father would not allow him to even consider it.
Dawson presents his parents and wise and pragmatic, making things better for themselves bit by bit. He picks it up and does the same thing in his own life, especially once he settled down to start his own family.
He had some wandering to do first. His early life of travel and adventure makes for interesting reading. He road trains all over North America, sometimes as a ticketholder and sometimes joining the hobos. He was able to find work wherever he went, mainly because there was no job so hard or unpleasant he was unwilling to try it.
Traveling opened his eyes, especially to race relations in the U.S. Growing up in the South, he thought the discrimination and oppression he was accustomed to be the way things were. In Mexico and Canada, even in parts of the U.S., he was treated like anyone else, regardless of color. Mexican villagers welcomed him like family and delighted in the novelty of someone so tall. Canadian lumbermen were curious about his home and happily directed him to the snow he had never seen before—it almost killed him. In his early days, he found it strange to be in places where no one cared which train car he was in or the restaurant at which he ate.
Things changed a lot in Dawson’s more than 100 years of life, though racism hasn’t disappeared. (I grew up in a town that was 99 percent white and I’m barely 40 years old. In the same county were villages that were almost entirely black.) Even in the face of difficulties, Dawson persisted and bit by bit made life better for himself and his family. When retirement came it wasn’t time to rest from his labors, it was time to pick up the education he had been denied as a boy because he had to work.
Dawson’s life story is worth reading simply because he is a witness to history who tells his story in an interesting and accessible manner. It’s worth reading because, without trying, it has a message too: don’t worry. Dawson recommends that people not worry if they want a good life. I think it’s very good advice. Arguably, though, he was working too hard most of his life to have time for worries, even though he had cause for them.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Holiday Inn (Film)
Holiday Inn. Writ. Claude Binyon and Elmer Rice. Dir. Mark Sandrich. With Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Paramount, 1942.
Holiday Inn is one of my favorite movies. It has great music by Irving Berlin. It has performance by Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire; they only appeared together in one other movie. It’s a good romantic comedy, too. The film works in each of these areas.
Berlin originally conceived it as a showcase for his music, with a song for every holiday. He wrote the song “White Christmas” for the film and it went on to become one of the most popular songs ever. All the songs are solid and some are nearly as good as “White Christmas.” I think the song for Washington’s Birthday is the weakest, especially in comparison to the great tune for Lincoln’s Birthday, but in light of where it fits in the movie I feel like cutting it a little slack. I’m especially fond of “You’re Easy to Dance With.”
Crosby and Astaire provide good acting performance, but audiences rightly expect them to sing and dance and they deliver. Two of Astaire’s dance numbers are worth particular mention; the first is supposedly drunk and the other involves firecrackers. These two dances themselves are enough to make the movie worth seeing.
It’s a fair romantic comedy. There is a lot of chemistry between Crosby and Astaire, who deliver clever lines with snap. There is also good chemistry between them and their leading ladies, Virginia Dale and Marjorie Reynolds. The basic plot is boy meets girl, they fall in love, girl is ambivalent about ambitions, conniving friend takes advantage and sweeps away girl, repeat.
The film is an interesting look into race relations at the start of World War II. The film only has three black characters, a female house servant (played by Louise Beavers) and her two children. As if the role of cook-maid isn’t stereotypical enough, she is even called Mamie. The film plainly shows how things would have been done at the time, but seems to have slight moments of reticence about it. Here is an example.
On Lincoln’s Birthday, the white server-performers at Holiday Inn have darkened skin. The actual black people stay in the kitchen, out of sight of the guests. The song for the holiday focuses on Lincoln’s role in ending slavery. The original plan is to play it straight, but at the last minute Crosby’s character decides to change it to a blackface number to hide the identity of a starlet, his love interest, from his rivals. Even in a celebration of the end of slavery, the segregation is so complete that the white guests come no closer to interacting with black people than the make-up darkened skin of white performers.
Even so, the film isn’t about race. It’s a fun love story. It has great music and singing. It has wonderful dance numbers. It’s worth seeing, especially around Christmas or New Year’s Eve.
Holiday Inn is one of my favorite movies. It has great music by Irving Berlin. It has performance by Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire; they only appeared together in one other movie. It’s a good romantic comedy, too. The film works in each of these areas.
Berlin originally conceived it as a showcase for his music, with a song for every holiday. He wrote the song “White Christmas” for the film and it went on to become one of the most popular songs ever. All the songs are solid and some are nearly as good as “White Christmas.” I think the song for Washington’s Birthday is the weakest, especially in comparison to the great tune for Lincoln’s Birthday, but in light of where it fits in the movie I feel like cutting it a little slack. I’m especially fond of “You’re Easy to Dance With.”
Crosby and Astaire provide good acting performance, but audiences rightly expect them to sing and dance and they deliver. Two of Astaire’s dance numbers are worth particular mention; the first is supposedly drunk and the other involves firecrackers. These two dances themselves are enough to make the movie worth seeing.
It’s a fair romantic comedy. There is a lot of chemistry between Crosby and Astaire, who deliver clever lines with snap. There is also good chemistry between them and their leading ladies, Virginia Dale and Marjorie Reynolds. The basic plot is boy meets girl, they fall in love, girl is ambivalent about ambitions, conniving friend takes advantage and sweeps away girl, repeat.
The film is an interesting look into race relations at the start of World War II. The film only has three black characters, a female house servant (played by Louise Beavers) and her two children. As if the role of cook-maid isn’t stereotypical enough, she is even called Mamie. The film plainly shows how things would have been done at the time, but seems to have slight moments of reticence about it. Here is an example.
On Lincoln’s Birthday, the white server-performers at Holiday Inn have darkened skin. The actual black people stay in the kitchen, out of sight of the guests. The song for the holiday focuses on Lincoln’s role in ending slavery. The original plan is to play it straight, but at the last minute Crosby’s character decides to change it to a blackface number to hide the identity of a starlet, his love interest, from his rivals. Even in a celebration of the end of slavery, the segregation is so complete that the white guests come no closer to interacting with black people than the make-up darkened skin of white performers.
Even so, the film isn’t about race. It’s a fun love story. It has great music and singing. It has wonderful dance numbers. It’s worth seeing, especially around Christmas or New Year’s Eve.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Books That Made a Difference to Me
I’m not a regular reader of O: The Oprah Magazine, but when I come across one, I turn to the “reading room” segment. In each issue, they have a celebrity, author or other notable person comment on a few books that they find notable. I enjoy reading and I’m curious about what other people enjoy reading, even if I don’t share their tastes. What follows are books that made a difference to me roughly in the style of the O feature.
The Holy Bible
As a believer in Christ, this book is a touchstone for me. The Bible is one of the ways God reveals himself, and it is the most explicit, specific, definitive and accessible special revelation. Jesus compared the word of God to a mirror, and said those who didn’t do it were like someone walking away from a mirror and forgetting what they looked like. Within its pages, the metaphor of a sword is applied to God’s word. One the great uses of this sword is to, in indelicate terms, cut through the crap.
Simple Pictures are Best
By Nancy Willard
Illustrations by Tomie De Paola
This is a children’s book and I first read it as a boy. It has so influenced me that I sometimes use the phrase “simple pictures are best” in conversation. The moral of this parable is to keep it simple, don’t create unnecessary complications. I’m not immune to mission creep and function overload. However, this book helped me develop an early appreciation for focus, setting priorities and enjoying those things that do one thing very well.
Spider-Man Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
I could carry on for some time about all that is great about Spider-Man. The essence of it is this: the core of Peter Parker and his story is ethics. Behind the mask, he is just a man and he is just as concerned with his family, friends and job as with battling supervillains. Like us, Peter faces the costly rewards of doing what is right and the painful price of choosing what is wrong in a complex world he doesn’t fully understand. What makes him a hero isn’t his power, it is his character.
War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race By Edwin Black
The atrocities of the Nazis were justified, in their minds, as a science-based policy for managing society. The science was eugenics; it originated in American. I was amazed that not only did it start here, but also one of its largest proponents and popularizers worked in my home state, Missouri. Black thoroughly traces eugenics from it roots in an America, both as a science and a policy, to its leap to other nations, its ultimate expression as policy in Nazi Germany and its aftermath, which continues to linger in science and politics. Today, calls for science-based policy are often in the news, but it is important that both policy and science be informed by ethics. (Edwin Black also wrote IBM and the Holocaust.)
The Road to Serfdom
By F. A. Hayek
Hayek devoted this book “to socialists of all parties.” His particular audience was the British intelligentsia (Hayek was an economics professor at the University of London and familiar with German intellectual life from his years in his native Austria). His message was a warning: socialism leads to totalitarianism. Socialism was a popular movement in the time Hayek wrote this book (first published in 1944). Even the United States looked to the communist, fascist and national socialist governments of the world as models to emulate (until we entered World War II and many of these governments became our enemies). Today, socialist ideas and policies are widely espoused, though few would put the socialist label on them, and their proponents seem to imagine, some may be convinced and some may pretend, that a planned society can still be a free one. Hayek demonstrates that socialist government and individual freedom cannot coexist for long.
The Holy Bible
As a believer in Christ, this book is a touchstone for me. The Bible is one of the ways God reveals himself, and it is the most explicit, specific, definitive and accessible special revelation. Jesus compared the word of God to a mirror, and said those who didn’t do it were like someone walking away from a mirror and forgetting what they looked like. Within its pages, the metaphor of a sword is applied to God’s word. One the great uses of this sword is to, in indelicate terms, cut through the crap.
Simple Pictures are Best
By Nancy Willard
Illustrations by Tomie De Paola
This is a children’s book and I first read it as a boy. It has so influenced me that I sometimes use the phrase “simple pictures are best” in conversation. The moral of this parable is to keep it simple, don’t create unnecessary complications. I’m not immune to mission creep and function overload. However, this book helped me develop an early appreciation for focus, setting priorities and enjoying those things that do one thing very well.
Spider-Man Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
I could carry on for some time about all that is great about Spider-Man. The essence of it is this: the core of Peter Parker and his story is ethics. Behind the mask, he is just a man and he is just as concerned with his family, friends and job as with battling supervillains. Like us, Peter faces the costly rewards of doing what is right and the painful price of choosing what is wrong in a complex world he doesn’t fully understand. What makes him a hero isn’t his power, it is his character.
War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race By Edwin Black
The atrocities of the Nazis were justified, in their minds, as a science-based policy for managing society. The science was eugenics; it originated in American. I was amazed that not only did it start here, but also one of its largest proponents and popularizers worked in my home state, Missouri. Black thoroughly traces eugenics from it roots in an America, both as a science and a policy, to its leap to other nations, its ultimate expression as policy in Nazi Germany and its aftermath, which continues to linger in science and politics. Today, calls for science-based policy are often in the news, but it is important that both policy and science be informed by ethics. (Edwin Black also wrote IBM and the Holocaust.)
The Road to Serfdom
By F. A. Hayek
Hayek devoted this book “to socialists of all parties.” His particular audience was the British intelligentsia (Hayek was an economics professor at the University of London and familiar with German intellectual life from his years in his native Austria). His message was a warning: socialism leads to totalitarianism. Socialism was a popular movement in the time Hayek wrote this book (first published in 1944). Even the United States looked to the communist, fascist and national socialist governments of the world as models to emulate (until we entered World War II and many of these governments became our enemies). Today, socialist ideas and policies are widely espoused, though few would put the socialist label on them, and their proponents seem to imagine, some may be convinced and some may pretend, that a planned society can still be a free one. Hayek demonstrates that socialist government and individual freedom cannot coexist for long.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Any business run by people who love..will have black figures...in its ledgers
I
promise you that any business run by people who love their employees and love
the people they serve, and who treat them with loving-kindness, will have black
figures, not red ones, in its ledgers.
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Hedy's Folly by Richard Rhodes
Hedwig
Kiesler was a headstrong Austrian girl
with visions of becoming a Hollywood
star. She was so determined that she dropped out of school to star working at a
Berlin film
studio, and by 16 she was acting professionally. She eventually achieved
Hollywood stardom as Hedy Lamarr.
Lamarr had another, lesser known life, as an inventor. She, along with
avant-garde composer
George
Antheil, invented a technology that makes much of modern communication
possible. Richard
Rhodes focuses on this part of Lamarr’s life in Hedy’s Folly.
The woman known for her beauty was interested in technology
from youth. She enjoyed walking with her father, a banker, who explained how
things worked. Her first marriage
was to munitions manufacturer Fritz Mandl.
Though she was mostly a trophy to be shown off to his friends, she paid close
attention as he and the people he entertained discussed weapons and other technology.
When she moved to Hollywood, she sat up a little shop in her home and took up
inventing as a hobby.
When Lamarr learned of the sinking by U-boats that were intended to
carry children from Britain to safer
locations in Canada,
she put her head to the idea of improved torpedoes to combat the underwater
threat. The torpedo would be remote controlled. To avoid attempts to jam the
signal, the torpedo receiver and controller transmitter would can radio
frequencies rapidly in a synchronized manner.
She enlisted the assistance of Antheil, who had experience trying to
control and synchronize multiple player pianos, to work out a practical
implementation of the concept.
The idea was received well by the National
Inventors Council, apparently even receiving the endorsement of automotive engineer
Charles
Kettering. The Navy
did not think the idea was practical, but it did by the patent that was awarded
to the Hollywood pair in 1941. Eventually,
the frequency-hopping
technology invented by Lamarr was developed by the U.S. military for many
communication applications.
Spread
spectrum, a somewhat broader category of radio
communication of which frequency-hopping was the original type, was unveiled
from the military secrecy in 1976 with the
publication of a textbook on the subject by Robert C.
Dixon. The Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) moved fairly
quickly to make room in the radio spectrum for applications of spread spectrum.
These were mostly junk frequencies that had been set aside for
non-communication uses. Because it broadcast on multiple frequencies, spread
spectrum is less likely to be disrupted by interference by other transmissions,
like a microwave (Lamarr invented frequency hopping to avoid jamming). Another
important aspect of the FCC rule was that these frequencies could be used
without a license.
This technology is widely used today. Wi-fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and RFID
all use spread spectrum communication. It is the basis of the wireless
communication between computers that has shaped the way we live, work, and
behave in coffeehouses.
Lamarr and Antheil didn’t receive much recognition for their
groundbreaking invention until after it started making its way into American
households and pockets. In 1997, Lamarr (and
posthumously Antheil) received the Electronic
Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award when she was 82 years old. By then she
had retired to a very private life in Florida, where
she live until January 2000.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Sunday, August 28, 2016
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
HeLa is
an immortal human cell line. It is immortal in the sense that the cells will
live and grow in culture indefinitely. Since it was first cultured in 1951, the cell line
has been an important part of medical
research.
It was used to develop vaccines for polio and HPV (Human Papilloma Virus). It
has been used to study cancer, HIV
(Human Immunodeficiency Virus), other diseases and drugs to treat them. HeLa
cells have made medical science
as we know it possible.
These cells came from a real person. Her name was Henrietta
Lacks. She was a poor,
black woman who went to Johns Hopkins
Hospital for treatment of what turned out to be cancer. The cells were taken
from a tumor by a doctor who was treating her.
Cancer took the life of Henrietta Lacks, but her immortality in the
form of the cell line has caused a lot of pain and distress for her
descendants. Rebecca
Skloot tells the story of Henrietta, her family,
the HeLa cells and their legacy in The
Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
It is a bit unusual in a book of biography
or scientific history
to write in the first person, but is the approach taken by Skloot. In order to
emphasize the humanity of Henrietta, she tells a personal story of her research
and the relationship she develops with the Lacks family, especially Henrietta’s
daughter, Deborah.
This is important. It’s easy to get swept up in all the incredible
results that have been produced from developing and testing with the HeLa cell
line. It is harder to look at the individual lives on people, especially when
those people are treated with little respect by the scientists and physicians
who are benefiting from the cells taken from her mother.
These men saw little if anything wrong in what they did by taking the cells
and growing them. They were doing what was legal
at the time (and still legal) and in keeping with the ethical
standards of the time. There is still much debate over the ethics of using
human tissues in research. Though there are standards related to samples taken
from humans, the only legally binding ones relate to federally-funded research.
Issues of informed consent, ownership, and commercialization are still being
worked out. If you’re a corpse, the law is fairly clear. If you’re a
participant in a research study, legal and ethical standards assure some level
of informed consent. If tissues are taken from a living patient for purposes of
diagnosis or treatment, what can happen to those tissues is up for grabs.
I think this is a book worth reading. HeLa is an interesting scientific
story. The ethical issues related to research using human tissues deserves more
attention that it gets. I think the most important thing to remember is that
the things we do affect human beings. Science, law and philosophy
can become so abstract they are nearly pointless if we lose sight of how the
things we say and do, individually and as a society, affect the lives of real
people.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested it
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Mr. America by Mark Adams
Benarr
Macfadden was named Bernard McFadden by his parents; he chose the modified
name to suit himself. He was born into severe poverty in the Missouri Ozarks shortly after the Civil War. He would become a self-made millionaire famous for his physique, his stunts
and his opinions. Mark Adams recounts his story in Mr. America.
Macfadden became
fascinated with health and bodybuilding as a youth in St. Louis, where is visited a gym with his uncle. He had been sick much of his childhood, which is not surprising given the poverty,
malnutrition and undeveloped medicine of the time. With hard work and a
knack for self-promotion, he was eventually able to afford to join the gym (it
cost $15 for an initial membership, close to $400 today).
Macfadden pursued a lot
of jobs as a kid and young adult, spending very little time in school. In bodybuilding and training he
found his way into a career. Particularly, he started to follow a
career path that had been blazed by another strongman, Eugen Sandow. Mcfadden saw Sandow’s performances,
organized by Franz Ziegfeld, Jr., at the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. He began doing a version of Sandow’s
act and even took it to his distant mentor’s adopted homeland, England.
When he returned from
his year in England, he brought back another idea borrowed from Sandow. He
began publishing a magazine titled Physical
Culture. The
magazine was an outlet for him to sell exercise equipment and promote his ideas about
fitness, diet, sex, nudity, marriage and other topics related to health
and happiness. It was the foundation of what grew
into a publishing empire in which Macfadden helped to pioneer true confession (long before Jerry Spring and Oprah Winfrey), celebrity culture and tabloid journalism. He is promotion of health
information set the path for American health experts that followed with a
mix of quackery and sound notions that turned out to be ahead of their time.
I’d be glad to go on
about Macfadden, his accomplishment and his sometimes strange life. Instead, I
should just suggest you read Mr. America.
Actually, I had been
looking forward to reading Mr. America.
I’ve seen Adam’s book referenced by other who have discussed Macfadden in the
context of fitness, health culture and popular publishing. Macfadden led and
interesting life suitable for a novel. Adam’s biography doesn’t quite read
like a novel, but it is entertaining and approachable, and I recommend it to
those interested in Macfadden or in the popular culture of the early 20th Century.
If you’re interested in
this book, you may also be interested in
Thursday, April 19, 2012
The Big Roads by Earl Swift
Swift,
Earl. The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and
Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways. Boston:
Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.
The American interstate
system is often thought to be a product of the Eisenhower
administration. It’s named for him. However, the nearly 47,000 miles of
interstate were conceived largely before Eisenhower’s presidency. Even as he observed the Army’s
62-day, cross-country convoy of 1919,
engineers
were laying the political
and technical
foundations of national highways. Earl Swift tells this longer history
of the interstates in The Big Roads.
When Americans began calling
for better roads,
the typical road was mud. The loudest
calls for better roads at the beginning of the 20th Century were cyclists,
especially the colorful Carl
Fisher. Fisher’s most famous work is
the Indianapolis
Speedway, where a popular 500-mile
race continues to be run. His
promotion of the Lincoln
Highway, the first coast-to-coast highway (at least on paper), provided an
important antecedent to the interstates.
The Lincoln Highway
Association operated on a system that informed later highway development. Rather than build a huge new highway, it
selected existing roads for improvement, joining them together in a
highway. New roads were built only if
necessary. The association, a private
organization that raised private funds for road improvement and route
promotion, was a model for later systems in another way. The Lincoln
Highway
Thomas
MacDonald, an Iowa
highway engineer, was using a similar model as he worked for that state. He worked with city and county road
departments to coordinate improvements leading to a statewide system of decent
roads. When he became director of the Office
of Public Roads, he brought this model to the federal highway program,
institutionalizing it in the Federal
Aid system that began in 1916.
Of course, the U.S.
MacDonald and his engineers
began working the concept. His office
produced a report, authored primarily by Hubert
Sinclair Fairbanks, that laid out most of the current interstate system in 1938. Fairbanks
The plans for an interstate
system languished during World
War II and the years immediately following.
Eisenhower comes into the picture at this time because he strongly
supported funding for the interstate system.
Highway engineers saw
themselves as providing a good and giving the people what they wanted. Along the way, as Fairbanks
Swift gives particular
attention to two interstate opponents.
Critic Lewis
Mumford provided the intellectual and philosophical foundation for the
Freeway Revolt. Joe
Wiles, a black
professional and veteran, organized opposition to Interstate 70 in Baltimore
which resulted in changes to the plan and help unite the white and black
communities in that city. The federal
and state governments began to take seriously the possibility that interstates
could have a negative impact on the communities near them
The intestate system,
finally completed in the 1990s, is the largest public works project in
history. Now that it is built, it needs
to be maintained. It will be expensive:
$225 billion a year for the next 50 years to keep it in good shape. That is more than twice what we’re
spending. In addition, improved fuel
efficiency and reduced driving prompted by the economic downturn has reduced
gas tax revenues for the Highway
Trust Fund. In the near future, we
may need to find new ways to pay for maintaining our transportation marvel.
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