The Work Ethic in Industrial America: 1850-1920

"Rodgers's book is a study of how technology affects ideas. That is the issue to which Rodgers always returns: how did men and women react to the economy of unprecedented plenty that the 19th-century revolution in power and machines had produced' . . . This is certainly . . . one of the most refreshing and penetrating analyses of the relation of diverse levels of 19th-century culture that it has been my pleasure to read in a long time." Winner of the 1978 Frederick Jackson Turner Award