Lifted

Theres a great deal to admire in Bernards integration of evidence of various sorts, from building regulations and operator manuals to high literature, into a shrewd and versatile account of the transformative effect of the elevators irresistible rise on the social psychology of life in the modern metropolis from the 1870's to the 1930's. . . . For Bernard, the elevator is a Benjaminian street brought indoors and rotated on its axis: during the few seconds of ascent or descent, the perpetual & anaesthetising of attention allegedly required of the city-dweller becomes an acute anxiety. * London Review of Books *
For most of us, the innocuous topic of the elevator is hardly the stuff of cutting-edge historical theory. But in this translation by Dollenmayer (German language & literature, Worcester Polytechnic Inst.), Bernard's groundbreaking 2011 German treatise on the revolutionary transformation of a mundane engineering marvel compels readers to reimagine what they think they know about the modern urban landscape. From Elisha Graves Otis's 1854 demonstration at the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in New York City to the modern day, Bernard (editor,Süddeutsche Zeitung) scans the literature, philosophy, and history related to the technological innovation and presents a lucid, engaging analysis of just how Otis's elevator has gone from its original 'luster of strangeness' to the 'dull and inconspicuous.' In the process, Bernard reminds us of Georges Canguilhem's dictum that the 'history of science is not a retrospective history of progress nor the depiction of outmoded stages leading to today's truth.' VERDICT Bernard's fascinating work on technological innovation, while at times a bit esoteric, will find a ready audience among readers with a passion for innovative philosophical and cultural histories. Fans of Wolfgang Schivelbusch'sThe Railway Journeymay especially find it appealing. * Library Journal,Brian Odom, Birmingham, AL Library *
[M]any readers will indeed get a lift fromLifted. It is a very special book thoroughly researched and clearly written, and about a subject of great historical interest to a diverse group of academic scholars as well as lay readers. * Journal of American Culture *
Those seeking an intellectually entertaining series of discourses will be delighted. * Historian *
The elevator, which today seems so boring, was once a vehicle of change of compelling power. Whoever reads this book will view the worlds elevators with different eyes. * Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung *
Bernards passion for research is as impressive as the ease with which heelevator-likemoves between the disciplines of literature, art history, sociology, and psychology. * Der Spiegel *
A well-informed and engaging cultural history. . . . Whats more, Bernard manages to dissect processes that have shaped the transition from the 19th century to the 20th, illustrating the elusive phenomenon of 'modernity. After reading this study, it becomes at least temporarily impossible to use a lift without a brief contemplation of what it may particularly signify in the here and now. -- Ulrike Zitzlsperger * Times Higher Education *
In a new book, 'Lifted,' German journalist and cultural studies professor Andreas Bernard zeroes in on this experience, tracing mankinds relationship to the elevator back to its origins and finding that it has never been a totally comfortable one. 'After 150 years, we are still not used to it,' Bernard said. 'We still have not exactly learned to cope with this . . . mixture of intimacy and anonymity.' That mixture, according to Bernard, sets the elevator ride apart from just about every other situation we find ourselves in as we go about our lives. -- Leon Neyfakh * The Boston Globe *
The elevator did more than make New York the city of skyscrapers, it changed the way we live, as German newspaper editor Andreas Bernard explains in Lifted. -- Stephen Lynch * New York Post *
The Elevator was a common name for evangelical magazines in the 19th century, and as Andreas Bernard shows in Lifted: A Cultural History of the Elevator, early elevator cabs bore a striking resemblance to Roman Catholic confessionals. . . . [I]n the automatic era, Hollywood has frequently turned stuck elevators into sites of secular confession and self-contemplation. . . . As Bernard points out, stuck elevators are not so frequent in the real world. Similarly, real elevators are less often sites of absolution than Hollywood elevators and more often places where people let slip information that probably shouldn't be openly shared. -- Daniel Levinson Wilk * Aljazeera America *
A hugely atmospheric portrait of central European tenements and apartment buildings . . . it crackles with imaginative energy and is full of bright and memorable scenes. It is an excellent architectural history, a magical and valuable example of the work that can be produced within the discipline. -- Will Wiles * Icon Magazine *
By rendering it as an actor rather than a mere subject in the unfolding dramas of nineteenth- and twentieth-century modernity,Bernard ​reveals the elevator as a central semiotic figure of urban fantasy through his cultural savvy and attention to the details of technology.Liftedwill garner a great deal of attention from historians of technology, modern architecture, and urban culture. -- David Serlin,University of California, San Diego
We live, in short, in the world that elevators made, andLiftedis a sharp-eyed, readable exploration of its making. -- A. Bowdoin Van Riper * Popmatters.com *
Lifted is a spaciously researched and thought-out popular history. It can be read with pleasure by anyone who has wondered how residential buildings got to be so tall. Andreas Bernard doesnt provide any tips about elevator etiquette. But his imaginative book contains just about everything else most people might want to know about elevators and the ways they have shaped the contemporary city. -- John Bentley Mays * The Globe and Mail *
He treats the elevator as an individual technological and cultural phenomenon, whereas previously the innovation has been mainly a supporting character in histories of technology and architecture. * Choice *
This scholarly work celebrates the emergence of an invention we all take for granted. * Cincinnati Magazine *
Andreas Bernard ambitiously explores the relationship between an important technological innovation and its effect upon the imaginative capacities of the residents of European and American cities. . . . Bernards most insightful chapter identifies the elevator as the important trigger for producing fears of claustrophobia and of social mixing. He shows how modern films and novels frequently employed the elevator as a critical space for organizing narratives of city life. It was the standard vehicle for conveying the discomfort associated with social mixing in so confined an urban space. . . . Readers will recognize the effectiveness of the argument by the renewed self-consciousness they experience riding elevators after reading the book. * American Historical Review *
The book consists of a series of interesting historical cultural speculations and observations about the elevator. Readers seeking an intellectually entertaining series of discourses will be delighted. * The Historian *
Bernard writes from a refreshingly European (and specifically German) perspective even if North America, and in particular, Manhattan, emerges as a key locus . . . amusingly obsessive, impressively erudite. * Times Literary Supplement *