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About this book
Before skyscrapers and streetlights glowed at all hours, American cities fell into inky blackness with each setting of the sun. But over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, new technologies began to light up streets, sidewalks, buildings, and public spaces. Peter C. Baldwin's evocative book depicts the changing experience of the urban night over this period, visiting a host of actors—scavengers, newsboys, and mashers alike—in the nocturnal city.
Baldwin examines work, crime, transportation, and leisure as he moves through the gaslight era, exploring the spread of modern police forces and the emergence of late-night entertainment, to the era of electricity, when social campaigns sought to remove women and children from public areas at night. While many people celebrated the transition from darkness to light as the arrival of twenty-four hours of daytime, Baldwin shows that certain social patterns remained, including the danger of street crime and the skewed gender profile of night work. Sweeping us from concert halls and brothels to streetcars and industrial forges, In the Watches of the Night is an illuminating study of a vital era in American urban history.
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Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access In the Watches of the Night by Peter C. Baldwin in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & North American History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Publisher
University of Chicago PressYear
2011Print ISBN
9780226269542, 9780226036021eBook ISBN
9780226036038Table of contents
- Cover
- Copyright
- Title Page
- Series page
- Content
- 1. Making Night Hideous
- 2. Lighting the Heart of Darkness
- 3. Quitting Time
- 4. Recreations and Dissipations
- 5. After Midnight
- 6. Nightmen
- 7. Incessance
- 8. Mashers, Owl Cars, and Night Hawks
- 9. Night Life in the Electric City
- 10. Regulated Night
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Notes
- Index