Charles Sheeler was the stark poet of the machine age. Photographer of the Ford Motor Company and founder of the painting movement Precisionism, he is remembered as a promoter of - and apologist for - the industrialised capitalist ethic. This major new rethink of one of the key figures of American modernism argues that Sheeler`s true relationship to progress was in fact highly negative, his `precisionism` both skewed and imprecise. Covering the entire oeuvre from photography to painting and drawing attention to the inconsistencies, curiosities and `puzzles` embedded in Sheeler`s work, Rawlinson reveals a profound critique of the processes of rationalisation and the conditions of modernity. The book argues finally for a re-evaluation of Sheeler`s often dismissed late work which, it suggests, may only be understood through a radical shift in our understanding of the work of this prominent figure