Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time

Downing, Michael

ISBN 10: 1593761066 / ISBN 13: 9781593761066

Published by Shoemaker & Hoard, Div of Avalon Publishing Group Inc, usa, 2006

About this Item

Internally this first edition, first printing soft cover is clean bright and tight with no pen marks or inscriptions. Externally the colour wraps have edge wear, corners bumped and a couple of dents and creases. There is also a stain inside the rear cover. Please examine all seller photos.

Seller Inventory # 000755

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time
• Publisher: Shoemaker & Hoard, Div of Avalon Publishing Group Inc, usa
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1593761066
• ISBN 13: 9781593761066
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Seller catalogs:
  • First Editions

About this title

Synopsis

Michael Downing is obsessed with Daylight Saving, a loopy idea that became the most persistent political controversy in American history. Almost one hundred years ago, lawmakers across the country first debated, ridiculed, and then passionately embraced the possibility of saving an hour of daylight. To this day, no one can say for sure why we are required by law to change our clocks twice a year. Who first proposed the scheme?
Downing unravels the worldwide confusion occasioned by decades of clock manipulation. He sifts through a century of Congressional hearings and contemporary newspaper reporting to offer a portrait of public policy in the 20th century, a perennially boiling stew of unsubstantiated science, profiteering masked as piety, and mysteriously shifting time-zone boundaries. It is a true-to-life social comedy with Congress in the leading role, surrounded by a supporting cast of opportunistic ministers, movie moguls, stockbrokers, labor leaders, educators, sports fanatics, and farmers. This dizzyingly hilarious debate seems destined to continue for as long as we ask one another, “What time is it?”

From Publishers Weekly

This short, jam-packed account by Downing (Shoes Outside the Door; Breakfast with Scot) rights the often misunderstood history of daylight saving time. The idea, proposed in 1907 by British architect William Willett, who had an "epiphany" on one of his daily horseback rides through London at dawn, was first adopted in wartime Germany in 1916 to keep energy costs low. While many nations (including the U.S.) followed Germany's example through WWI, only Britain maintained the policy following the war. In America the practice was denigrated as a reminder of wartime hardship and as symptomatic of big government. It was New York City (not the nation's farmers, as many incorrectly believe) that rallied for its reinstatement. Pressured by bankers and brokers who wanted to capitalize on the hour of arbitrage daylight saving allowed with the London markets, the New York City Board of Aldermen lobbied it into law in 1920. The practice spread mostly haphazardly through the country, despite occasional efforts to enforce uniformity. While the history is awash in tedious legislative minutiae, Downing brings it to life by dramatizing politicians and various industries pitted against one another in absurd, often hilarious debates. It's a colorful story of something we all take to be fundamental, but through history has been maddening, divisive and baffling. Agent, Jonathan Matson.(Apr.)
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