Out of Steam: Dieselization and American Railroads, 1920–1960 examines how and why American railroads embraced the diesel locomotive and abandoned steam. Highly regulated railroads were facing difficult business conditions from 1920 to 1960 that resulted in extensive cost cutting. Steam and diesel locomotives were capable machines but were designed, constructed, and maintained in vastly different ways. Railroads generally dieselized to control costs, especially labor costs, but different railroads adopted different strategies for doing so. Some were prompted to try diesels by government legislation in the 1920s while others were excited by streamlined diesels in the 1930s. Still others were attracted to the potential differences in performance that diesels offered in the 1940s. Dieselization had long-term and far-reaching impacts on railroads, rail labor, and communities served by railroads. Despite complete dieselization by 1960, the American railroad industry would continue to decline for the next twenty years. A technological fix like the diesel could not solve other complex problems facing the industry.
Reviews:
This is an excellent, comprehensive work….Out of Steam is a valuable reference work on the steam to diesel transition period, and students of motive power will want to own it.
"The Wife of Bath in Afterlife is a must-read not only for all serious-minded Chaucerian scholars but also for avid readers who earnestly endeavor to enhance their knowledge about theWife of Bath and to broaden their capacity for learning.”
-- Christina Pinkston, Norfolk State University
Review of Fiddled out of Reason, by John William Knapp
"a valuable contribution to our understanding of the hymn as a literary and cultural phenomenon."
-- Joshua Swidzinski, University of Portland
The Final Days of Edgar Allan Poe, by David F. Gaylin, has been "recommended for all readers" by Choice Reviews and was listed in their Community College Top 75 titles.
"This engaging collection redresses the balance of Poe studies to consider his work from the perspective of women, those in his works and those reading them. . . . [It] offers a welcome emphasis on the irrepressibility of women in his work who ‘die but do not stay dead’"
Very much in the spirit of Robertson's many impacts on our field, this collection opens a range of fascinating apertures into the medieval literary world that promise to be useful, both to fellow scholars and in a variety of literature classrooms.
New Directions in Medieval Mystical and Devotional Literature not only makes a fitting tribute to a beloved scholar and teacher; it constitutes a significant contribution to the field in its own right. The essays in this beautifully presented book will be essential reading for anyone interested in late-medieval vernacular theology and its reception, both in England and beyond.
--Nicholas Watson, professor of English, Harvard University
Dolan and Labbe’s wide-ranging yet cohesive collection of essays offers a comprehensive and convincing breadth that succeeds in its mission of placing Charlotte Smith. Beyond Smithian scholarship, the volume comes at a prescient time.
--Heather Heckman-McKenna University of Missouri-Columbia
