Visions of Modernity

"Mary Nolan's keenly awaited book on rationalization is a timely reminder that economics is too important to be left to the economists alone...The book shows beautifully the necessary interrelationship of business history, labor history, and women's history for an understanding of this complex field of questions, and makes an unanswerable case for the mainstreaming of the concerns pioneered during the last two decades by women's history."--Geoff Eley, Department of History, University of Michigan "An excellent economic, political, social, and cultural history of how Weimar Germany "Germanized" its perceptions of Americanism both conceptually and in practice."--CHOICE "Nolan's nuanced attention to the class politics and conflicts underlying the reception of Americanism and the articulation of German rationalization prompts an important rethinking and rewriting of the dramatic story of labor and capital during the Weimar Republic. Nolan offers compelling insights...Nolan's excellent study offers rich and persuasive evidence that rationalization created new divisions within the German working class while intensifying old ones...[A] notable expansion of the still-underdeveloped field of German gender history...it is certain to become a classic for a wide audience of historians."--International Labor and Working Class History "With the wealth of information it contains on a fascinating, albeit ultimately ill-fated, attempt at modernization, the book will be a valuable resource for students of German history, culture, and politics."--Journal of Modern History "[A] fascinating read. [The book] represents an exciting approach to history writing that escapes easy categorization and that illuminates interconnections and intersections among the realms of economy, society, politics, and culture..."--Central European History