histories artificial capitalists prosthetics

books:

Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics
Katherine Ott, David Serlin, ...

NYU Press, 2002

From the wooden teeth of George Washington to the Bly prosthesis, popular in the 1860s and boasting easy uniform motions of the limb, to today's lifelike approximations, prosthetic devices reveal the extent to which the evolution and design of technologies of the body are intertwined with both the practical and subjective needs of human beings. The peculiar history of prosthetic devices sheds light on the relationship between technological ...

A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States

62 reviews
Stephen Mihm

Harvard University Press, 2009

An Economic World I Didn't Realize Existed
We take currency for granted. It's pieces of paper and chunks of metal and we engage in a collective act of faith when we all join in believing it's worth $5.00 or 5 cents or whatever it says on it. We take on faith that those pieces of paper and chunks of metal are backed by our government. But in the United States it was not always that way. In the 18th and 19th century, banks around the ...