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"Move over Tom Frank. Hamilton shows that what buried the New Deal was not the recent rise of cultural conservatism, but a longstanding and deep rejection of government intervention in the economy. One of the best history books ever written on the origins of neoliberalism."
--Ted Steinberg, author of Down to Earth"Shane Hamilton traces how an obscure loophole in transportation law helped reshape the rural economy--and, in the process, changed the way we eat. This is an imaginative, provocative piece of work."
--Marc Levinson, author of The Box"Well-written and tightly argued, Shane Hamilton's
Trucking Country illuminates one of the twentieth century's most important transformations: the role of independent truckers, many of them former farmers, in seizing the delivery of agricultural products from railroads, revolutionizing food distribution, and, paradoxically, abetting the triumph of agribusiness."
--Pete Daniel, National Museum of American History"A startlingly original contribution. Shane Hamilton has crafted a truly fresh, unfamiliar, and enormously enlightening account of the decline of economic liberalism in postwar America. This is a brilliant book, one that should be read by anyone interested in exploring the intersection of politics, culture, and economics in modern America."
--Joseph A. McCartin, author of Labor's Great War"
Trucking Country is a highly innovative and strikingly unique piece of work. Hamilton approaches one of the most intensely studied historical topics of the current scholarly generation--the demise of New Deal liberalism--from an angle that virtually no other social, political, labor, or cultural historian has attempted. Hamilton has written a superb and persuasive book."
--Nelson Lichtenstein, author of State of the Union: A Century of American Labor
List of contents
List of Illustrations and Tables ix Acknowledgments xi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE: Food and Power in the New Deal, 1933-43 13 CHAPTER TWO: Chaos, Control, and Country Trucking, 1933-42 43 CHAPTER THREE: Food Fights in War and Peace, 1942-52 69 CHAPTER FOUR: Trucking Culture and Politics in the Agribusiness Era, 1953-61 99 CHAPTER FIVE: Beef Trusts and Asphalt Cowboys 155 CHAPTER SIX: The Milkman and the Milk Hauler 187 CHAPTER SEVEN: Agrarian Trucking Culture and Deregulatory Capitalism, 1960-80 187 CONCLUSION 233 Appendix A 239 Appendix B 243 Notes 251 Index 293
About the author
Shane Hamilton
Summary
Presents a social history of long-haul trucking that explores the contentious politics of free-market capitalism in post-World War II America. This book challenges the popular notion of "red state" conservatism as a devil's bargain between culturally conservative rural workers and economically conservative demagogues in the Republican Party.
Additional text
"Trucking Country is imaginative, thought-provoking, and persuasive. . . . [N]o scholarly work is more essential for understanding the transformation of Northwest Arkansas."---Michael Pierce, Arkansas Historical Quarterly
