Twentieth Century Limited

In the late 1920's ''streamlined'' became the term businessmen used to describe new models that were easier to produce as well as those that met with less sales resistance than older products. Illustrating this concept with streamlined objects from soup cans to the Chrysler building, Jeffrey Meikle's classic book, Twentieth Century Limited, celebrates the birth of the industrial design profession from 1925-1939. This second edition includes a new preface and improved photographic reproduction. Commercial artists who answered the call of business -- Walter Dorwin Teague, Norman Bel Geddes, Henry Dreyfuss, and Raymond Loewy the best known among them -- were pioneers who envisioned a coherent machine-age environment in which life would be clean, efficient, and harmonious. Working with new materials -- chrome, stainless steel, Bakelite plastic -- they created a streamlined expressionist style which reflected the desire of the Depression-era public for a frictionless, static society. Appliances such as Loewy's Coldspot refrigerator ''set a new standard'' (according to the advertisements), and its usefulness extended to the way it improved the middle-class consumer's taste for sleek new products. Profusely illustrated with 150 photographs, Twentieth Century Limited pays tribute to the industrial designers and the way they transformed American culture; a generation after its initial publication, this book remains the best introduction to the subject. The new edition will fascinate anyone interested in art, architecture, technology, and American culture of the 1930's.

Seventeen-year-old Henry Horstman was one of 1.4 million Germans who braved the Atlantic Ocean to immigrate into the United States during the 1880s with the hope of achieving a better life. Twentieth Century Limited details the compelling life story of Horstman, who pursued his boyhood dream in one of the most dangerous industries in America-only to lose it in the prime of his life. Douglass Horstman, the grandson of Henry Horstman, draws on memories and historical accounts as he chronicles his grandfather's fascinating lebengeschichte (life story) while also highlighting the carnage on the rails that devastated the lives of thousands of railroad workers and their families during a time when railroad corruption was rampant. As a youth in Germany, Henry was faced with the possibility of conscription into the Prussian Army but chose instead to follow the example of his uncle, a lokomotivfuhrer (engineer) in America. The author pieces together a captivating story that follows Henry from his Prussian youth to his first steps onto American soil and his fateful job on a railroad in upstate New York. At a time when thousands of trainmen were being killed or injured, Henry Horstman displayed insurmountable determination and courage, turning his journey through life and on the rails into an inspiring biography.