Customer Reviews

Inventing Ourselves Out of Jobs?: America's Debate over Technological Unemployment, 1929--1981 (Studies in Industry and Society)

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Amy Sue Bix attempts to take a complex issue in American economic, business and technological history to show how it developed in this country. Overall the book repeats itself again and again on many issues. It focuses on the musicians put out of work by the talkies and the dual telephone system which replaced the operators. The arguments presented are well articulated but you feel as though you are getting the same information again and again. Although the book says it goes up through the 1980's the majority really focuses on the depression and the start of the war. This was a time period in which fear was rampant that jobs were being taken away by machines everyday. The cartoons are amusing but the process just seems to be repeating itself. The final chapter gets to the main point of the book and brings the reader up to speed from the 1950's to the 1990's and how technological progress affects jobs. Overall this book will only serve to show how unions have taken this issue and ran too far with it. There is little information that really handles this complex problem. This book is a start to a very complex topic but a lot more work needs to be done.