American Technological Sublime

American Technological Sublime continues the exploration of the social construction of technology that David Nye began in his award-winning book Electrifying America . Here Nye examines the continuing appeal of the technological sublime as a key to the nation’s history, using as examples the natural sites, architectural forms, and technological achievements (such as the Grand Canyon, the Erie Canal, the first transcontinental railroad, and the Brooklyn Bridge) that ordinary people have valued intensely. He then looks at the atom bomb tests and the Apollo 11 mission as examples of the increasing ambivalence of the technological sublime in the postwar world, concluding with a vision of the modern-day consumer sublime as manifested in the fantasy world of Las Vegas.