在我们童年时期，机器人只会在科幻小说或电影里出现，但现在机器人已经是我们日常生活中常见的的东西了。不论是太空时代的电子人、下西洋棋的机器人或者我们口袋里的手机，机器人长期以来代表着人类与他們的发明之间紧张又充满恐惧的关系。虽然我们都认为它们是21世纪科技的发明，但其实“机器人“早在1921年就出现过。它在美国社会以及文化里长久以来是一个充满影响力的概念。
 
作者在书中叙述了机器人在美国历史上的演化，包括在智慧史、宗教、文学、电影、电视中。他探讨了机器人以及其相关科技如何在概念上以及实际上代表了现代文化的一些最重要的问题。他提出关于机器人如何增重了社会以及经济的不平等的问题，尤其是劳动上自动化的现象。机器人的长久历史不但贡献了现代社会中机械如何开始替代人类，也让人类越来越机械化。作者认为，在分裂我们社会的恐惧最深层，你会看到有机器人的踪影。
 
关于作者：
Dustin A. Abnet是加州州立大学Fullerton分校的美国学副教授。
 
目录：
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
 
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
 
好评：
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.”
 
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."
 
Backstory
"Abnet brings a fresh understanding of the complex interactions between economics, politics, and culture."