praise
Rebecca van Stokkum, AAG Review of Books
“Echoing Edwards and Emerson, Wuebben’s humanistic approach addresses both deterministic (i.e., implicit path dependence) and creative elements (i.e., human agency expressed in poetics) connected to the empire of wire stretching across the American landscape."
Isabel Sobral Campos, Configurations
“… a carefully researched, lyrically developed account of the settlement of North American land and an informed prediction of what its future might need: to embrace power structures through the lens of what they construct and shape, and the art objects that they become.…”
D. Mitch, Choice
“…Wuebben is provocative and pragmatic about balancing aesthetic interests with the practical realities of an infrastructural item that has become an essential, pervasive part of modern life…”
Julie A. Cohn, author of The Grid: Biography of an American Technology
“…Wuebben invites the reader to gaze at the transmission lines crisscrossing our landscape and imagine not only the technology behind the infrastructure but also the politics and poetics of electrifying our country. With historical detail and carefully constructed analysis, Wuebben offers an engaging narrative that fills important gaps in our understanding of the power grid and its physical and cultural ramifications for the twenty-first century…”
James C. Williams, author of Energy and the Making of Modern California
“… Wuebben’s Power-Lined makes a valuable contribution to understanding the crucial place of technology in the relationship between people and the natural world. As he reveals in this measured study of electric power lines, the relationship between people and nature is always dynamic, interactive, complex, and messy
Jennifer L. Lieberman, author of Power Lines: Electricity in American Life and Letters
“…In this eloquent and engaging new book, Daniel Wuebben sheds light on a ubiquitous yet often-overlooked aspect of electrical development: the power lines themselves. This capacious book incorporates the history of technology, literature and cinema studies, and art history in chronicling the history of our wired world, from the stringing of telegraph cables through the development of a smart grid. The result of his impressive attention to detail is a book that will enlighten any reader who is interested in technology, literature, and culture…”
Chapters
Preface: Playing Powerlines
Recounts my childhood fascination with wiry overhead webs and their cantenary swoop, the power lines game offers an entry to thinking about the role of electric infrastructure in our surroundings.
Introduction: Power-lined landscapes
Electrification requires wires, yet the threads pulsing with the lifeblood of civilization have been pushed to the margins, buried underground, or kept out of sight and out of mind.
1. Wires in the Garden, 1844–1882
Morse was a trained painter and art teacher first and shifted towards invention in part because of his failtures as an artist. Is the magnetic telegraph. This and other overlaps between "Electricity" and "Landscape" in American art and culture form the foundations of my investigation.
2. New York’s Frontier Lines and Telegraph Forests, 1882–1916
3. California’s Wood Poles, Steel Towers, and Modernist Pylons, 1907–1972
4. Public Perceptions and Power Line Battles, 1935–2013
Conclusion: The Future of the Power-Lined Landscape
