The American Robot
A Cultural History
- Contents
- Review Quotes
Table of Contents

Contents
Introduction: An Intimate and Distant Machine
Part 1: God and Demon, 1790–1910
Chapter 1: The Republican Automaton
Chapter 2: Humanizing the Industrial Machine
Chapter 3: Mechanizing Men
Part 2: Masters and Slaves? 1910–1945
Chapter 4: Symbolizing the Machine Age
Chapter 5: Building the Slaves of Tomorrow
Chapter 6: Conditioning the Robot’s Brain
Chapter 7: A War against the Machine Age
Part 3: Playfellow and Protector, 1945–2019
Chapter 8: Preserving American Innocence
Chapter 9: The Postindustrial Gift
Chapter 10: Cheerful Robots
Epilogue: The American Robot
Part 1: God and Demon, 1790–1910
Chapter 1: The Republican Automaton
Chapter 2: Humanizing the Industrial Machine
Chapter 3: Mechanizing Men
Part 2: Masters and Slaves? 1910–1945
Chapter 4: Symbolizing the Machine Age
Chapter 5: Building the Slaves of Tomorrow
Chapter 6: Conditioning the Robot’s Brain
Chapter 7: A War against the Machine Age
Part 3: Playfellow and Protector, 1945–2019
Chapter 8: Preserving American Innocence
Chapter 9: The Postindustrial Gift
Chapter 10: Cheerful Robots
Epilogue: The American Robot
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Notes
Index
Review Quotes
David Nye, author of American Technological Sublime
“Thoroughly researched and engagingly written, The American Robot contextualizes centuries of discussions of artificial intelligence and cyborgs. With a dual focus on who was imagined to be machine-like and what machines were depicted as being almost human, Abnet demonstrates that robot identities have always been unstable and multifaceted.”
Susan J. Matt, coauthor of Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid
“As The American Robot convincingly demonstrates, we are not the first generation to worry about the power, role, and meaning of robots. Abnet’s fascinating and engaging book traces American discussions of mechanized men, automata, and robots from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first. His book makes a compelling case that debates about robots are really ways of thinking about freedom, power, and what it means to be human.”
James W. Cook, University of Michigan
“Gracefully written and creatively researched, The American Robot not only tracks representations of robots from Frankenstein to Westworld, it also helps us to understand the manifold ways that ideas about difference, slavery, republicanism, mechanization, post-industrialism (and more) have regularly been inflected through these not quite human approximations of ourselves. An important and timely book.”
Choice
“An intriguing examination of the American robot, the subject of millennial and apocalyptic sentiments.”
Cultural Sociology
“Purposefully interdisciplinary, written in extremely accessible, lively prose, and fundamentally interesting. . . [Abnet is] particularly good at capturing how robots consolidated capitalism as a politico-economic order, in practice and ideologically, particularly
capitalist production and consumption."
capitalist production and consumption."
Backstory
"Abnet brings a fresh understanding of the complex interactions between economics, politics, and culture."
The Orange County Register
"[The] topic of his book—robots in the American culture—is increasingly becoming part of the national discussion in this pandemic era, especially as it relates to the safety of health care and other workers."
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History: American History | History of Technology
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