[Themaintainers] New Book - A modern history of spare parts

[PHILIP SCRANTON]

Dear All,
    Please see below for information about my new book - Spare Parts: A
Global History of a Modern Problem, 1940-1980, released earlier than
planned from the Johns Hopkins University Press. Apologies for the high
price; it's really worth it, though.
  Cheers, Phil Scranton

[image: image.png]


Spare Parts: A Global History of a Modern Problem, 1940–1980

Philip Scranton

TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / History Available 11/10/2026

$64.95 • Paperback • 9781421455440 -  432 pages • 6 x 9” • 24 b&w illus.

Also available as an ebook

When machines break, entire systems are exposed. Spare Parts tells the
global history of replacement components and shows how their absence—or
abundance—has shaped warfare, industry, and everyday life in the twentieth
century. Philip Scranton traces the production, distribution, and use of
spare parts across capitalist, socialist, and postcolonial economies from
World War II through the Cold War.

During WWII, parts proved as decisive as fuel or ammunition, determining
whether tanks moved, aircraft flew, and factories functioned. In its
aftermath, parts shortages became a chronic problem in centrally planned
economies, while market societies faced different dilemmas created by rapid
technological change, obsolescence, and corporate strategy. Focusing on
vehicles, agricultural machinery, and radio and television technologies,
Scranton reveals how repair practices differed across political systems. In
socialist states, chronic shortages encouraged improvisation, scavenging,
and informal exchange. In capitalist economies, parts became tools of
profit, control, and planned abandonment, often pushing consumers toward
replacement rather than repair. Scranton also follows spare parts beyond
the superpowers, examining how postcolonial nations navigated inherited
infrastructures and how parts functioned as instruments of geopolitical
leverage.

Charting the decline of repair culture in the late twentieth century, as
durable vehicles and disposable electronics reshaped expectations about
maintenance and longevity, Spare Parts reframes a familiar frustration as a
central feature of modern history and offers new insight into technology,
power, and the hidden systems that keep the world running.

“Spare parts make the modern world go round—yet we have so far lacked a
history of them. Well, here it finally is! Scranton’s book is a wild and
wonderful ride, full of delightful twists and turns.” —Lee Vinsel, Virginia
Tech

Philip Scranton is an emeritus Board of Governors professor of history at
Rutgers University. He is the author of Endless Novelty: Specialty
Production and American Industrialization, 1865-1925, and a coauthor of
Reimagining Business History.





-- 
Philip Scranton, Emeritus Board of Governors Professor, History of Industry
& Technology, Rutgers University
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