A lively perspective on globalism as it relates to currency and systems of measurement.
Marciano, best known as an illustrator and author of popular children's books (Madeline at the White House, 2011, etc.), delves into the political ramifications of the American and French revolutions on the adoption of the metric system.
The author begins with Thomas Jefferson, who had just witnessed the approval of his proposal to replace British currency with an American national currency based upon a decimal version of the Spanish dollar. “Jefferson wanted to take the radical step of dividing the coin by tenths, hundredths, and thousandths—decimal fractions,” writes Marciano. “It was a thing no other nation in the world had ever entirely achieved, not with coins or any other measure.” Tasked by Congress to tackle the broader subject of establishing a uniform system of weights and measures, Jefferson presented one but urged that it not be accepted until it was clear what would be decided in France, where leaders were discussing similar issues. Marciano explains how many different political and cultural issues converged in the question of measurement. In America, the need for a uniform national coinage was obvious, but weights and measures were fairly uniform throughout the former colonies. Not so in France, which employed as many as “250,000 different measures.” The revolutionary demand for uniform taxation and the abolition of the special privileges of the three estates (aristocracy, clergy and king) necessitated a comprehensive overhaul of measurements. The French Revolution gave birth to the metric system as we know it today, but Jefferson's hope that America and France would lead the world in jointly adopting a new universal standard of measurement has yet to be realized. However, this is not a problem. “[W]e now live in an age where the villain has become uniformity,” writes Marciano; with the advent of the digital age, measurements are now easily convertible.
A lively perspective on globalism as it relates to currency and systems of measurement.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-60819-475-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
An absorbing study of the role of style and design in early postwar American culture. Marling (Art History and American Studies/ Univ. of Minnesota; coauthor of Iwo Jima: Monuments and the American Hero, 1991) examines the period when TV first leveled its electronic gaze at American life and a dynamic new set of visual and cultural values were born. She describes leisure pursuits like amateur painting— and its ghastly derivative, the paint-by-numbers set—that rose with the country's self-conscious new prosperity; the growth of automobile fetishism; kitchen gadgets and their meaning for ever- busier women; Elvis's nouveau-riche stylistic pretensions; and national unease over the comparative worth of less frivolous Soviet accomplishments. The book begins slowly, detailing the national obsession with Mamie Eisenhower's hair and clothing, but gathers momentum in describing Disneyland's antecedents, the psychosexual lure of chrome-laden cars, and the growing hegemony of design over function in the development of American products. Marling writes with flair, and her text engages the reader even when profound insight is lacking. Readers may disagree with her on occasion (that ``the French [fashion] salon is a woman's place, ultimately governed by her preferences and skills'' seems debatable). And sometimes the breezy tone is less appropriate—memoranda showing how Betty Crocker psychologists exploited women's fears of failure in the kitchen arouse no comment from the author. Assertions that designers provided buyers a sensation of mobility and choice, and that these aren't bad aims, on the other hand, make sense. And Marling's right in noting that critics often missed what was pleasurable—and anti-elitist—about ``populuxe'' fashions of the '50s. Though Marling chooses to remain more chronicler than critic, this archaeology of our recent visual past is as important as any recent political history of the period, and far fresher in approach. (Illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-674-04882-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
An ideal pathfinder on the Beatles' long and winding road from moptops to magi—insightful, informative, contentious, and as ambitious and surprising as its heroes. Popular music criticism is often a thankless task, falling uneasily between mindless hype and lugubrious academicism. MacDonald, former deputy editor of New Musical Express, adroitly bridges that gap, taking the factual chassis—recording session data, itineraries, etc.—laboriously assembled by Beatlemaniacs like Mark Lewisohn and bringing to bear a fan's enthusiasm, a musicologist's trained ear, and a critic's discernment to produce the most rigorous and reliable assessment of the Beatles' artistic achievement to date. Advancing chronologically through the songs, MacDonald provides an encyclopedic wealth of biographical, musical, and historical detail, yet always keeps his eyes on the prize—the uniquely rich elixir the group distilled from these disparate elements. He considers the Beatles on their own musical and cultural terms, taking his cue from contemporary influences (rhythm-and-blues, soul, and the supercharged social crucible of the '60s), rather than straining for highbrow parallels in Schoenberg or Schubert—you'll find no reference to the infamous ``Aeolian cadences'' of ``This Boy'' here. MacDonald makes no bones about his own critical convictions: He prefers the artful structures of pop, its ``energetic topicality'' that ``captures a mood or style in a condensed instant,'' to rock's ``dull grandiosity,'' a shift he attributes to a general retreat since the '60s away from depth and craftsmanship into spectacle and sensation. Accordingly, he champions the pop classicism of the Beatles' early-middle period, culminating in Revolver and Sgt. Pepper, and in his most memorably acerbic passages deplores the rockist leanings of their later work: ``Helter Skelter,'' for instance, is dismissed as ``ridiculous, McCartney shrieking weedily against a backdrop of out-of-tune thrashing.'' The ultimate Beatles Bible? Certainly a labor of love, and all the more valuable for holding the Fabs to the highest critical standards.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8050-2780-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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