Risk: Negotiating Safety in American Society

How have Americans confronted, managed, and even enjoyed the risks of daily life? Winner of the Ralph Gomory Prize of the Business History Conference “Risk” is a capacious term used to describe the uncertainties that arise from physical, financial, political, and social activities. Practically everything we do carries some level of risk—threats to our bodies, property, and animals. How do we determine when the risk is too high? In considering this question, Arwen P. Mohun offers a thought-provoking study of danger and how people have managed it from pre-industrial and industrial America up until today. Mohun outlines a vernacular risk culture in early America, one based on ordinary experience and common sense. The rise of factories and machinery eventually led to shocking accidents, which, she explains, risk-management experts and the “gospel of safety” sought to counter. Finally, she examines the simultaneous blossoming of risk-taking as fun and the aggressive regulations that follow from the consumer-products-safety movement. Risk and society, a rapidly growing area of historical research, interests sociologists, psychologists, and other social scientists. Americans have learned to tame risk in both the workplace and the home. Yet many of us still like amusement park rides that scare the devil out of us; they dare us to take risks.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Risks from Nature 1. Fire Is Everybody's Problem 2. The Uncertainties of Disease 3. Doing Something about the Weather 4. Animal Risk for a Modern Age Part II: Industrializing Risk 5. Railroads, or Why Risk in a System Is Different 6. The Professionalization of Safety 7. The Safety-First Movement Part III: Risk in a Consumer Society 8. Negotiating Automobile Risk 9. What's a Gun Good For? 10. Risk as Entertainment: Amusement Parks 11. Consumer Product Safety Conclusion Notes Essay on Sources Index

About the Author :
Arwen P. Mohun is a professor of history at the University of Delaware. She is author of Steam Laundries: Gender, Technology, and Work in the United States and Great Britain, 1880–1940 and coeditor of Gender and Technology: A Reader, both published by Johns Hopkins.

Review :
A thought-provoking study of danger and how people have managed it in American from preindustrial and industrial times up until today. —Steven Goddard, History Wire - Where the Past Comes Alive Risk is a fascinating exploration of culture, history, and mankind's tenuous grasp on saving itself from accidents. —Midwest Book Review Writing in a lucid style, Mohun gives an impressive overview of the American transition from vernacular to expert-centered or state-driven risk regimes. —Claas Kirchhelle, British Journal for the History of Science Mohun’s claims are persuasively argued, well documented, rooted in the everyday experiences of knowledgeable historical contemporaries, and animated by the broad political, social, and cultural changes that define modernization. —David Blanke, American Historical Review Mohun's comprehensive approach registers a major contribution that takes safety history a big step forward. —Donald W. Rogers, Journal of American History