Description: Kline, avoiding the trap of technological determinism, explores the changing relationships among the Country Life professionals, government agencies, sales people, and others who promoted these technologies and the farm families who largely succeeded in adapting them to rural culture.
Brief description: Ronald R. Kline is the Bovay Professor in History and Ethics of Engineering at Cornell University. He is the author of Steinmetz: Engineer and Socialist and Consumers in the Country: Technology and Social Change in Rural America.
Review Quotes: Kline's work is strong in a number of areas . . . The study is a well written and well researched compilation . . . and should be standard reading for those interested in the transformation of rural America in the twentieth century.
--Allen Shepherd, Nebraska History