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The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time
Shoemaker & Hoard
March 2006
On Sale: February 28, 2006
224 pages
ISBN: 1593761066
EAN: 9781593761066
Trade Size (reprint)
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Non-Fiction
Michael Downing is obsessed with Daylight Saving, a loopy
idea that became the most persistent political controversy
in American history. Almost one hundred years ago, lawmakers
across the country first debated, ridiculed, and then
passionately embraced the possibility of saving an hour of
daylight. To this day, no one can say for sure why we are
required by law to change our clocks twice a year, or who
first proposed the scheme. Downing unravels the worldwide confusion occasioned by
decades of clock manipulation. He sifts through a century of
Congressional hearings and contemporary newspaper reporting
to offer a portrait of public policy in the twentieth
century, a perennially boiling stew of unsubstantiated
science, profiteering masked as piety, and mysteriously
shifting time-zone boundaries. It is a true-to-life social
comedy with Congress in the leading role, surrounded by a
supporting cast of opportunistic ministers, movie moguls,
stockbrokers, labor leaders, educators, sports fanatics, and
farmers. This dizzyingly hilarious debate seems destined to
continue for as long as we ask one another, “What time is it?”
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