Món Gà - Vịt tải về miễn phí cuốn sách

Mega Chintasih megachintasih — Nostalgia being a stubborn human sentiment, it's not surprising that once an era has passed beyond living memory, it acquires a rosy hue. Otto Bettmann's "The Good Old Days - They Were Terrible!" is an illustrated wake-up call for those who assume that domestic bliss, moral perfection, and gilded prosperity characterized the years between the Civil War and the dawn of the twentieth century. Granted, this was a time of great technological advancement. The telephone, motion picture camera, and automobile are but a few of the modern conveniences that made their first appearance. But daily life was hardly the stuff of a Currier & Ives print, and Bettman presses the point with repulsive anecdotes and alarming statistics. City dwellers had their health and safety threatened by uncollected garbage, industrial pollution, and slum-bred criminals. Farmers worked fourteen-hour days just to survive. Over fifty thousand homeless `tramps' wandered throughout the American countryside, their numbers exceeding the size of Wellington's army at Waterloo. Marshall Field made an estimated $600 an hour while the shop girls who toiled in his stores were lucky if they took home $3 to $5 per week. Accidents involving horse-drawn conveyances killed ten times more people than automobiles do today. Trains were just as deadly: in one year alone (1890), there were ten thousand railroad-related fatalities. Diarist George Strong complained, "We shall never travel safely til some pious, wealthy, and much beloved railway director has been hanged for murder." Grim photos and illustrations from the famous Bettman archive accompany the text. The images of opium addicted women, polluted beaches, and homeless children are all contemporary, silencing anyone who might be inclined to accuse the author of exaggerating. "The Good Old Days - They Were Terrible!" is not a critical or insightful look at the problems that plagued nineteenth century society. Visually and in content style, the book reminds me of an extra-thick edition of an old-fashioned `penny dreadful' newspaper. Shocking and titillating, but otherwise shallow. Since Bettman probably didn't intend for it to be anything more than what a previous reviewer called "an antidote for nostaligitis", this is not a cause for complaint.