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The Wall That Changed America
How Drywall Built the Modern Home

Book Details
About this book:

The Wall That Changed America That dull thud when you knock on your wall? It's the sound of the twentieth century being built. Before drywall, finishing a home took weeks of wet, backbreaking plaster work by skilled artisans. Then came a sandwich of pulverized rock and recycled paper that could be hung in hours—igniting a suburban explosion, triggering brutal labor wars, and minting a corporate monopoly that still shapes every room you've ever lived in.

From the ancient seabeds of Montmartre to the coal-fired plants that now spin synthetic stone from smokestack scrubbers, *The Wall That Changed America* traces how a soft, water-laced mineral became the invisible skin of modern life. You'll meet the patent-hunting entrepreneurs who tamed gypsum's furious chemistry, the tapers on stilts who perfected the seamless joint, and the homeowners who discovered their dream houses were corroding from within—victims of a global supply chain that shipped toxic walls by the shipload.

By the time you reach the final chapter—on prefabricated panels, recycling loops, and the "endless wall" of the future—you'll never look at a blank white surface the same way again. This is the biography of the most overlooked technology in your home: the one that decided how fast we build, how cheap we live, and how quietly we sleep.

Table of Contents:
  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1 The Mineral of Montmartre: A Short History of Gypsum
  • Chapter 2 The Sacketts' Sandwiched Patent
  • Chapter 3 Mortar, Lath, and Labor: The Lost Art of Plaster
  • Chapter 4 From the Ashes: Early Fireproofing Battles
  • Chapter 5 The Rise of Sheetrock: Innovation in the Lab
  • Chapter 6 Chemists at the Core: Binding Paper to Stone
  • Chapter 7 Breaking the Guilds: The Plasterers' Union War
  • Chapter 8 Barracks in a Hurry: The Material of World War II
  • Chapter 9 Levittown’s Secret Ingredient
  • Chapter 10 Assembly-Line Suburbia: Nailing Down the American Dream
  • Chapter 11 The Taper’s Craft: The Alchemy of Joint Compound
  • Chapter 12 Mud, Dust, and Kneepads: Life on the Hanging Crew
  • Chapter 13 The Giant in Chicago: The USG Monopoly
  • Chapter 14 The Acoustic Compromise: Soundproofing the Thin-Walled Home
  • Chapter 15 The Fastener Revolution: From Wire Nails to the Drywall Screw
  • Chapter 16 Water, Mold, and the Limits of Paper
  • Chapter 17 The Sulfur Cloud: The Chinese Drywall Crisis
  • Chapter 18 Courtroom Chemistry: Litigating the Corrosive House
  • Chapter 19 Green Board and Beyond: Engineering the Water-Resistant Core
  • Chapter 20 Dust in the Lungs: Occupational Hazards and Safety Regimes
  • Chapter 21 The Global Supply Chain: Gypsum Mining in the Anthropocene
  • Chapter 22 Flue-Gas Desulfurization: Synthetic Rock from Coal Smoke
  • Chapter 23 The Speed of Commerce: Big-Box Logistics and Forty-Pound Sheets
  • Chapter 24 The Invisible Interior: Drywall as the Canvas of Modern Art
  • Chapter 25 The Skin of the Future: Prefabrication, Recycling, and the Endless Wall
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Author:

Christina J. Crawford

Published By:

MixCache.com Extended Catalog

Type:

Nonfiction

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