Book cover of The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century

Book 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…

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1 author picked The Horse in the City as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

People don’t often think of horses as urban dwellers, but until the 1930s, American urban life depended on the thousands of horses who were residents, workers, commuters, and consumers. A banker in Boston encountered more horses than a cowboy in Colorado. Tarr and McShane describe urban horses as “living machines” used for mass transit, individual transportation, delivery, construction, manufacturing, and city services. The authors present a wealth of fascinating information and ideas about this relatively unknown aspect of history. The topical organization about how human urbanites obtained, used, supplied, doctored, managed, and maintained equine urbanites makes it easy for readers…

From Ann's list on horses in history.

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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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