[Commlist] New book: Danger Sound Klaxon!

New book

*/Danger Sound Klaxon! The Horn That Changed History/*

*Matthew F. Jordan*

/Danger Sound Klaxon!/reveals the untold story of the Klaxon automobile 
horn, one of the first great electrical consumer technologies of the 
twentieth century. Although its metallic shriek at first shocked 
pedestrians, savvy advertising strategies convinced consumers across the 
United States and western Europe to adopt the shrill Klaxon horn as the 
safest signaling technology available in the 1910s. The widespread use 
of Klaxons in the trenches of World War I, however, transformed how 
veterans heard this car horn, and its traumatic association with gas 
attacks ultimately doomed this once ubiquitous consumer technology.

By charting the meteoric rise and eventual fall of the Klaxon, Matthew 
Jordan highlights how perceptions of sound-producing technologies are 
guided by, manipulated, and transformed through advertising strategies, 
public debate, consumer reactions, and governmental regulations. Jordan 
demonstrates in this fascinating history how consumers are led toward 
technological solutions for problems themselves created by technology.

Book info:https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5866/ 
<https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5866/>

Watch the book trailer (sound 
on!):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyDSPFvq8ds 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyDSPFvq8ds>

*Reviews*

A highly original study that shows how what we hear is framed by complex 
cultural and symbolic registers. It cuts across many different subject 
areas encompassing cultural studies, communications theory, the social 
history of technology, urban history, the history of auto-mobility, and 
the history of advertising to make a significant contribution to its 
cross-disciplinary field.

*- Rudy J. Koshar, University of Wisconsin, author of German Travel 
Cultures*

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A welcomed and original contribution to the growing field of sound 
studies,/Danger Sound Klaxon!/shows convincingly that our modern sound 
perception is learned and highly culturally encoded. Jordan writes in an 
engaging, clear and readable style.

*-Stefan Krebs, Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History 
(C2DH), co-author of Sound and Safe: A History of Listening Behind the 
Wheel*

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