American Sunshine: Diseases of Darkness and the Quest for Natural Light - Hardcover

Freund, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226262812 ISBN 13: 9780226262819

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2012

Synopsis

In the second half of the nineteenth century, American cities began to go dark. Hulking new buildings overspread blocks, pollution obscured the skies, and glass and smog screened out the health-giving rays of the sun. Doctors fed anxities about these new conditions with claims about a rising tide of the "diseases of darkness," especially rickets and tuberculosis.

In American Sunshine, Daniel Freund  tracks the obsession with sunlight from those bleak days into the twentieth century.  Before long, social reformers, medical professionals, scientists, and a growing nudist movement proffered remedies for America’s new dark age. Architects, city planners, and politicians made access to sunlight central to public housing and public health. and entrepreneurs, dairymen, and tourism boosters transformed the pursuit of sunlight and its effects into a commodity. Within this historical context, Freund sheds light on important questions about the commodification of health and nature and makes an original contribution to the histories of cities, consumerism, the environment, and medicine.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel Freund is assistant professor of social sciences at Bard High School Early College.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226262812
• ISBN 13: 9780226262819
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 216