Description
The nineteenth century was the golden age of the horse. In urban America, the indispensable horse provided the power for not only vehicles that moved freight, transported passengers, and fought fires but also equipment in breweries, mills, foundries, and machine shops.
Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr, prominent scholars of urban life, here explore the critical role that the horse played in the growing nineteenth-century metropolis. Using such diverse sources as veterinary manuals, stable periodicals, teamster magazines, city newspapers, and agricultural yearbooks, they examine how the horses were housed and fed and how workers bred, trained, marketed, and employed their four-legged assets. Not omitting the problems of waste removal and corpse disposal, they touch on the municipal challenges of maintaining a safe and productive living environment for both horses and people and the rise of organizations like the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
In addition to providing an insightful account of life and work in nineteenth-century urban America, The Horse in the City brings us to a richer understanding of how the animal fared in this unnatural and presumably uncomfortable setting.
Reviews
"In recent decades, such ethnic groups as Italians, African-Americans and Chinese have rightfully demanded recognition for their share in building America in the days of the Industrial Revolution. Horses clearly did as much but had no one to speak in their behalf. Now they do."—History Wire"A fascinating account of the role of horses in shaping the economy and society of American cities during the nineteenth century that contributes greatly to the fields of urban history, environmental history, and the history of human-animal relationships."—Susan D. Jones, author of Valuing Animals "In this careful and richly textured book, Clay McShane and Joel Tarr have shown us how these beasts of burden helped create the modern metropolis and then disappeared from the city streets."—Kenneth T. Jackson, Columbia University "This innovative and fascinating book goes to the heart of new research that connects the human and animal worlds as never before. In presenting the horse as a ‘living machine,’ McShane and Tarr help us rethink how cities were built and how they functioned in the past."—Martin V. Melosi, University of Houston, author of The Sanitary City and Effluent America "Overall, McShane and Tarr have written an outstanding and highly creative book. It should interest historians of cities, the environment, economics and animals."—Journal of Economic History "Presents a rich and complex picture of nineteenth-century urban life. McShane and Tarr have given us a book that is simultaneously an urban social history, a social history of a technology, and an environmental history."—Technology and Culture
Author Information
Clay McShane is a professor of history at Northeastern University. Joel A. Tarr is the Richard S. Caliguiri University Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
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