American Sunshine

Diseases of Darkness and the Quest for Natural Light

By: Daniel Freund

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Hardcover | 7 May 2012 | Edition Number 1

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In the second half of the nineteenth century, American cities began to go dark. Hulking new buildings overspread blocks, pollution obscured the skies, and glass and smog screened out the health-giving rays of the sun. Doctors fed anxities about these new conditions with claims about a rising tide of the "diseases of darkness," especially rickets and tuberculosis.

In American Sunshine, Daniel Freund tracks the obsession with sunlight from those bleak days into the twentieth century. Before long, social reformers, medical professionals, scientists, and a growing nudist movement proffered remedies for America's new dark age. Architects, city planners, and politicians made access to sunlight central to public housing and public health. and entrepreneurs, dairymen, and tourism boosters transformed the pursuit of sunlight and its effects into a commodity. Within this historical context, Freund sheds light on important questions about the commodification of health and nature and makes an original contribution to the histories of cities, consumerism, the environment, and medicine.

Industry Reviews

"An erudite and often witty study of how natural light became a precious resource in an urbanizing and industrializing America: something to be measured and commodified; something so crucial to health that its loss to towering apartments, narrow streets, and smoky skies had to be mitigated by an impressive array of artificial means, from cod-liver oil and vitamin-fortified milk, to sunlamps and special window glass." (Christian Warren, Brooklyn College, City University of New York)"

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Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction: Toward a History of Natural Light	p. 1
The Darkening City 1850-1920	p. 7
The Dawn of Scientific Sunlight	p. 37
Sun Cures	p. 65
Popular Enthusiasms: Eugenists, Nudists, Builders, Modem Mothers, and the Sun Cult	p. 97
Climate Tourism and Its Alternative	p. 135
Epilogue: Sunlight into the Twenty-First Century	p. 165
Notes	p. 173
Index	p. 211
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

American Sunshine

Diseases of Darkness and the Quest for Natural Light

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

More in History

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Manchester must dance

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Outside the Wire

On the front line with the SAS in Australia's war in Afghanistan

Talking Classics

The Shock of the Old

The Shortest History of Scotland

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And Other Palestinian Stories

Divide & Rule

Royal Women and their Battles

Stuff the British Stole

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A Love Story From the Depths of War

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The History of the Ancient World

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