Cooper demonstrates how the lure of the open air, from rooftop schoolrooms to open-air theaters to the front porch, challenged air conditioning. Americans were slow to give up the social rituals of hot-weather living - the cold drink, the cool clothes, the summer vacation - for the comforts of either the window air conditioner or the central system.

Air-Conditioning in Modern American Architecture, 1890–1970, documents how architects made environmental technologies into resources that helped shape their spatial and formal aesthetic. In doing so, it sheds important new light on the ways in which mechanical engineering has been assimilated into the culture of architecture as one facet of its broader modernist project. Tracing the development and architectural integration of air-conditioning from its origins in the late nineteenth century to the advent of the environmental movement in the early 1970s, Joseph M. Siry shows how the incorporation of mechanical systems into modernism’s discourse of functionality profoundly shaped the work of some of the movement’s leading architects, such as Dankmar Adler, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Gordon Bunshaft, and Louis Kahn. For them, the modernist ideal of functionality was incompletely realized if it did not wholly assimilate heating, cooling, ventilating, and artificial lighting. Bridging the history of technology and the history of architecture, Siry discusses air-conditioning’s technical and social history and provides case studies of buildings by the master architects who brought this technology into the conceptual and formal project of modernism. A monumental work by a renowned expert in American modernist architecture, this book asks us to see canonical modernist buildings through a mechanical engineering–oriented lens. It will be especially valuable to scholars and students of architecture, modernism, the history of technology, and American history.

“[A] history of air conditioning, chronicling the numerous gimmicks, failed attempts, con jobs, and eventual successes . . . a surprisingly interesting journey.” —San Francisco Book Review The air conditioner is often hailed as one of the modern world’s greatest inventions—yet nearly as often blamed for global disaster. It has changed everything from architecture to people’s food habits; saved countless lives, and caused countless deaths. First appearing in 1902, when Willis Carrier, an engineer barely out of college, developed the “Apparatus for Treating Air,” everyone assumed it would instantly change the world. But the story of air conditioning and its rise to ubiquity is far from simple. In Cool, Salvatore Basile tracks two fascinating stories: the struggle to perfect an effective cooling device, and the effort to convince people that they actually needed such a thing. With a cast of characters ranging from Leonardo da Vinci to Richard Nixon and Felix the Cat, Cool showcases the myriad reactions to air conditioning as it was developed and introduced to the world. Here is a unique perspective on a common convenience: how we came to rely on it today, and how it might change radically tomorrow.

The year 2002 marked the 100th anniversary of the first installation of air-conditioning. During the past century, it has become a staple of American life; 83% of US homes are now air-conditioned. In this engaging social history, Marsha Ackermann explores how the idea of “cooling” became firmly embedded in the social perceptions and expectations of Americans, transforming our definition of comfort and the way we live, work, and play.

This “ambitious [and] delightful” (The New York Times) work of literary nonfiction interweaves the science and history of the powerful refrigerant (and dangerous greenhouse gas) Freon with a haunting meditation on how to live meaningfully and morally in a rapidly heating world. In After Cooling, Eric Dean Wilson braids together air-conditioning history, climate science, road trips, and philosophy to tell the story of the birth, life, and afterlife of Freon, the refrigerant that ripped a hole larger than the continental United States in the ozone layer. As he traces the refrigerant’s life span from its invention in the 1920s—when it was hailed as a miracle of scientific progress—to efforts in the 1980s to ban the chemical (and the resulting political backlash), Wilson finds himself on a journey through the American heartland, trailing a man who buys up old tanks of Freon stockpiled in attics and basements to destroy what remains of the chemical before it can do further harm. Wilson is at heart an essayist, looking far and wide to tease out what particular forces in American culture—in capitalism, in systemic racism, in our values—combined to lead us into the Freon crisis and then out. “Meticulously researched and engagingly written” (Amitav Ghosh), this “knockout debut” (New York Journal of Books) offers a rare glimpse of environmental hope, suggesting that maybe the vast and terrifying problem of global warming is not beyond our grasp to face.

Losing Our Cool exposes the surprising ways in which air conditioning changes human experience: giving a boost to global warming that it is designed to help humans endure; enabling an otherwise impossible commuter economy; and altering human migration patterns. Stan Cox argues that by reintroducing traditional cooling methods and putting newer technologies into practice - and by moving beyond industrial definitions of comfort - people can keep themselves comfortable and keep the planet comfortable too.

From the acclaimed Rick Moody, a darkly comic portrait of a man who comes to life in the most unexpected of ways: through his online reviews. Reginald Edward Morse is one of the top reviewers on RateYourLodging.com, where his many reviews reveal more than just details of hotels around the globe -- they tell his life story. The puzzle of Reginald's life comes together through reviews that comment upon his motivational speaking career, the dissolution of his marriage, the separation from his beloved daughter, and his devotion to an amour known only as "K." But when Reginald disappears, we are left with the fragments of a life -- or at least the life he has carefully constructed -- which writer Rick Moody must make sense of. An inventive blurring of the lines between the real and the fabricated, Hotels of North America demonstrates Moody's masterly ability to push the bounds of the novel.