Design in the USA

From the Cadillac to the Apple Mac, the skyscraper to the Tiffany lampshade, the world in which we live has been profoundly influenced for over a century by the work of American designers. Meikle explores the fascinating history of American design, from the industrialization of the nineteenth century and the mass production of the machine age to the information-based society of the present, examining how design, consumerism, and culture connect.

Jeffrey L. Meikle is Professor of American Studies and Art History at the University of Texas, Austin, and the author of American Plastic: A Cultural History, which won the Dexter Prize of the Society for the History of Technology in 1996. He was Bicentennial Fulbright Professor of American Studies at the University of Helsinki for the year 2003-4.

Introduction
1: Emergence of the American System, 1790-1860
2: Art and Industry in the Gilded Age, 1860-1918
3: Designing the Machine Age, 1918-1940
4: High Design versus Popular Styling, 1940-1965
5: Toward the Millennium: Moving Beyond Modernism
Further Reading
Museums
Web Sites
Timeline