Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
Turn the pages with the arrows, keyboard, or a swipe.
Charles E. Merrill Co., Inc. (affiliated with American Education Press), Published 1949. Wraps, 32 pp.; 21 cm; revised printing of the 1946 first; staple bound; illustrated with black-and-white documentary photographs and a cutaway diagram throughout.
In good condition. Yellow paper covers with black-and-white illustrated drawings on both, the front showing a stylized interior view of a factory or power plant with massive pipes, pressure tanks, and control gauges, the back showing construction workers at a quarry or excavation site with a skyscraper rising behind. Mild shelf wear with light bumping and creasing to corners and edges and some surface soiling along the lower edges. Staple binding tight and square. Interior pages lightly toned but otherwise unmarked, with scattered light foxing along the inner edge of the back cover.Number 504 in the Little Wonder Books series, originally a set of ninety thirty-two-page booklets co-published by Charles E. Merrill Co. and American Education Press in the mid- to late 1940s. The series was designed for readers aged six to twelve, with each booklet treating one unit of social-studies or science material on the child's level, illustrated throughout with documentary photographs supplied by federal agencies and news services, and originally priced low for classroom and home use. The 500-series titles, distinguished by their bright yellow covers, address American geography, civics, industry, and natural resources. "Our Land of Machines" traces the United States' transition from a land of farms and home craft to an industrial society powered first by steam and then by electricity, with chapters on the steam engine and the internal combustion engine, the spread of electric power from the TVA and Boulder and Grand Coulee dams, mechanization of the farm, machines in the home and office, the rise of American manufacturing exports, and a closing forward look at the electronic tube and what would soon be called the computing age. Photographs draw on the Tennessee Valley Authority, Westinghouse, Wide World, Black Star, and Authenticated News, among others.Contents: Changing America; Now Machines Are Everywhere; From Home to Factory; Steam Goes to Work; Man Finds an Even Better Servant; A Simple Discovery; The Steam Engine's Kid Brother; On Land, Sea, and Air; Machines for the Farms of America; Machines Get Results; Machines of Home and Office; Kitchen Slaves; Office Slaves; "Made in U.S.A."; Farm Products at First; Machine-Made Products See the World; Machines Themselves Go Overseas; Machines of Tomorrow; Thirty Billion Billion Billion; More Time for Fun.