Author: Nicolas Rasmussen File Type: pdf Metropolitan Life Insurance Company identified obesity as the leading cause of premature death in the United States in the 1930s, but it wasnt until 1951 that the public health and medical communities finally recognized it as Americas Number One Health Problem. The reason for MetLifes interest? They wanted their policyholders to live longer and continue paying their premiums. Early postwar America responded to the obesity emergency, but by the end of the 1960s, the crisis waned and official rates of true obesity were reduced despite the fact that Americans were growing no thinner. What mid-century factors and forces established obesity as a politically meaningful and culturally resonant problem in the first place? And why did obesity fade from publicand medicalconsciousness only a decade later? Based on archival records of health leaders as well as medical and popular literature, Fat in the Fifties is the first book to reconstruct the prewar origins, emergence, and surprising disappearance of obesity as a major public health problem. Author Nicolas Rasmussen explores the postwar shifts that drew attention to obesity, as well as the varied approaches to its treatment from thyroid hormones to psychoanalysis and weight loss groups. Rasmussen argues that the US government was driven by the new Cold War and the fear of atomic annihilation to heightened anxieties about national fitness. Informed by the latest psychiatric thinkingwhich diagnosed obesity as the result of oral fixation, just like alcoholismhealth professionals promoted a form of weight loss group therapy modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous. The intervention caught on like wildfire in 1950s suburbia. But the sense of crisis passed quickly, partly due to cultural changes associated with the later 1960s and partly due to scientific research, some of it sponsored by the sugar industry, emphasizing particular dietary fats, rather than calorie intake. Through this riveting history of the rise and fall of the obesity epidemic, readers gain an understanding of how the American public health systemambitious, strong, and second-to-none at the end of the Second World Warwas constrained a decade later to focus mainly on nagging individuals to change their lifestyle choices. Fat in the Fifties is required reading for public health practitioners and researchers, physicians, historians of medicine, and anyone concerned about weight and weight loss. **

Author: James R. Cothran File Type: pdf During the Industrial Revolution people flocked to American cities. Overcrowding in these areas led to packed urban graveyards that were not only unsightly, but were also a source of public health fears. The solution was a revolutionary new type of American burial ground located in the countryside just beyond the city. This rural cemetery movement, which featured beautifully landscaped grounds and sculptural monuments, is documented by James R. Cothran and Erica Danylchak in Grave Landscapes The Nineteenth-Century Rural Cemetery Movement. The movement began in Boston, where a group of reformers that included members of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society were grappling with the citys mounting burial crisis. Inspired by the naturalistic garden style and melancholy-infused commemorative landscapes that had emerged in Europe, the group established a burial ground outside of Boston on an expansive tract of undulating, wooded land and added meandering roadways, picturesque ponds, ornamental trees and shrubs, and consoling memorials. They named it Mount Auburn and officially dedicated it as a rural cemetery. This groundbreaking endeavor set a powerful precedent that prompted the creation of similarly landscaped rural cemeteries outside of growing cities first in the Northeast, then in the Midwest and South, and later in the West. These burial landscapes became a cultural phenomenon attracting not only mourners seeking solace, but also urbanites seeking relief from the frenetic confines of the city. Rural cemeteries predated Americas public parks, and their popularity as picturesque retreats helped propel Americas public parks movement. This beautifully illustrated volume features more than 150 historic photographs, stereographs, postcards, engravings, maps, and contemporary images that illuminate the inspiration for rural cemeteries, their physical evolution, and the nature of the landscapes they inspired. Extended profiles of twenty-four rural cemeteries reveal the cursive design features of this distinctive landscape type prior to the American Civil War and its evolution afterward. Grave Landscapes details rural cemetery design characteristics to facilitate their identification and preservation and places rural cemeteries into the broader context of American landscape design to encourage appreciation of their broader influence on the design of public spaces. **Review This is quite literally everything you ever wanted or need to know about the rural cemetery movement. Whether as a student of the era, or in response to questions about plantings, symbolism, sites, or influential architects, its all here and easily accessible. The beloved master professor and his very able student have set the highest example of scholarship and practicality in this epic volume.--Jane Baber White, director emerita, Old City Cemetery Museums and Arboretum, Lynchburg, Virginia After being introduced to rural cemeteries in Blanche Lindens homage to Americas first, Mount Auburn in her 1989 book, I have been waiting for Cothan and Danylchaks Grave Landscapes. Richly illustrated with never-before seen plans and engravings, here elusive designers are revealed, legacies interpreted, and design nuances and regionalism richly explored. This is essential reading and a great capstone in Cothrans prolific career.--Charles A. Birnbaum, president and CEO, The Cultural Landscape Foundation Readers will be impressed with both the depth and thoroughness of the research, and the eloquence of the presentation. It should be read not simply by students, but by anyone involved in cemetery preservation, including genealogists, preservationists, conservators, and historians. Cothran and Danylchak offer fresh, detailed insight into the Rural Cemetery movement, explaining individual facets and linking them all together in an outstanding book. For those who knew James Cothran, this is a wonderful memorial and his student, Erica Danylchak has proven herself worthy of his tutelage.--Michael Trinkley, director, Chicora Foundation, Inc. About the Author James R Cothran (1940-2012) was a landscape architect, urban planner, and garden historian in Atlanta, Georgia, where he served as an adjunct professor of garden history and preservation at the University of Georgia and Georgia State University. A fellow in the American Society of Landscape Architects, he served on the boards of the Cherokee Garden Library at the Atlanta History Center, the Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation, the Southern Garden History Society, and Trees Atlanta. Cothran previously authored Gardens of Historic Charleston, Charleston Gardens and the Landscape Legacy of Loutrel Briggs, and the award-winning Gardens and Historic Plants of the Antebellum South, all published by the University of South Carolina Press.