Julie Hessler. A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917-1953. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004. xvi + 366 pp. ISBN 0-691-11492-7, $39.50.

Julie Hessler’s work is the first comprehensive historyof the first thirty-five years of Soviet trade written afterthe opening of the Soviet Union’s archives following thatnation’s collapse. It will, without doubt, become a standardwork of reference. Hessler gives due credit to the Soviet historianG. A. Dikhtiar’s three-volume work on Russian and Soviettrade published in the 1960s (in Russian). Despite the book’sobvious ideological overtones, it deserves to be read alongsideHessler’s work. Hessler’s     

Sarah Elvins. Sales and Celebrations: Retailing and Regional Identity in Western New York State, 1920-1940. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2004. 222 pp. ISBN 0-8214-1549-2, $42.95 (cloth).

Elvins’s book is part of a growing body of historicalscholarship that interrogates the lived experience of consumersociety in the twentieth-century United States. Beginning whereWilliam Leach’s Land of Desire (1993) left off, Elvinsseeks to complicate "top-down" narratives of the homogenizationof American consumer culture into a national mass market. Takingher cue from Lizabeth Cohen’s early work on consumptionin Chicago, Elvins examines consumption on the local level in     

William Faricy Condee. Coal and Culture: Opera Houses in Appalachia. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005. xii + 210 pp. ISBN 0-8214-1588-3, $34.95 (cloth).

In Coal and Culture William Condee examines Appalachian small-towntheaters built between the 1860s and 1930s that appropriatedthe high-culture term ‘opera house’ for spaces presentingdiverse activities from high school graduations to travelingtheatrical troupes. The title ‘opera house,’ ratherthan ‘theater,’ conveyed an aura of culture, refinement,and acceptability in an era when theater was sometimes regardedas having questionable morals. ‘Opera house’ soundedgrand, but many structures were modest buildings whose facadesdiffered little from     

Robert C. Allen. Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003. xv + 301 pp. ISBN 0-691-00696-2, $45.00 (cloth).

In this collection of concisely argued essays, Robert C. Allenreexamines several important questions familiar to anyone interestedin Soviet history: the hypothetical development of Russia inthe absence of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution; the standing ofRussia’s and the Soviet Union’s economic and demographicdevelopment in relation to other countries; the controversysurrounding the strategy for economic development after therevolution; the reasons for Stalin’s rapid industrializationand the role of the agricultural sector in it; and     

Robin Pearson. Insuring the Industrial Revolution: Fire Insurance in Great Britain, 1700-1850. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2004. xiii + 434 pp. ISBN 0-7546-336302, $99.95 (cloth).

Robin Pearson’s Insuring the Industrial Revolution providesa richly detailed account of the British fire insurance industrythrough the mid-nineteenth century. Whereas most previous accountshave focused on single companies, Pearson’s study encompassesthe entire industry of London and provincial firms and seeksto place the industry within the larger context of British economichistory. British economic historians have long overlooked the contributionof insurance, and service industries in general, to the nation’seconomic     

Jean-Claude Daumas. Les territoires de la laine: Histoire de l'industrie lainiere en France au XIXe siecle. Villeneuve D'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2004. 419 pp. ISBN 2-85939-812-0, {euro}26.00.

Based on his doctoral dissertation, Jean-Claude Daumas’sbook on the economics of nineteenth-century wool manufactureis a sound, workmanlike, and well-organized exposition. Withmany books already detailing various sectors of the industry,from the sheep’s back to the consumer’s closet,the question arises why another synthetic study was needed.Daumas’s rationale is that while the general contoursof the industry are well known, the variegated nature of individualwool centers has been glossed over. Like the industrial     

Harold James. Family Capitalism: Wendels, Haniels, Falcks, and the Continental European Model. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. xii + 434 pp. ISBN 0-674-02181-9, $39.95 (paper).

In recent years, revising or amending Alfred D. Chandler’sthesis on the rise of large-scale business enterprises has becomean industry unto itself. A decade ago, the most significantchallenges to Chandler’s visible hand appeared to comefrom those who espoused both the contemporary and the historicalvirtues of flexible specialization. More recently, it appearsthat advocates of the family firm have begun to stake theirclaim to a part of Chandler’s sizable inheritance. However,just as the introduction of flexibility into the historicalliterature reflected a particular     

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., and Bruce Mazlish, eds. Leviathans: Multinational Corporations and the New Global History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xiii + 249 pp. ISBN 0-521-84061-9, $65.00 (cloth); ISBN 0-521-54993-0, $22.99 (paper).

The advertising extract, which is this book’s first sentence,reads "Leviathans represents a path-breaking effort to lookat multinational corporations in the round, emphasizing especiallytheir scope, history, development, culture and social implication,and governance problems" (p. i). Given the appropriately globalprestige of the editors and of several of the chapters’authors, one’s curiosity is unavoidably piqued. Whilefew readers will ultimately judge the book to be path-breaking,many will welcome its contribution to     

Tom Downey. Planting a Capitalist South: Masters, Merchants, and Manufacturers in the Southern Interior, 1790-1860. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. xiii + 262 pp. ISBN 0-8071-3107-5, $49.95.

South Carolina’s Edgefield and Barnwell districts arenot new terrain for historical investigation, having alreadyconstituted the object of fine studies. Yet, Tom Downey’sbook definitely signals the achievement of the transition towardnew ways of writing southern history. The very word "transition" becomes central to Downey’sreading of the history of Edgefield and Barnwell as he distanceshimself from the interpretive framework into which the termsof the debate on the capitalist/non-capitalist nature of the     

Michael Zakim. Ready-Made Democracy: A History of Men's Dress in the American Republic, 1760-1860. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. x + 296 pp. ISBN 0-226-97793-5, $30.00 (cloth).

Michael Zakim’s Ready-Made Democracy positions men’sclothing manufacturers at the heart of the democratic and capitalistictransformations that engulfed the United States between itsfounding and the mid-nineteenth century. He argues that thehistory of the men’s suit, embodying as it does a hostof social, economic, and political relationships, presents anunequaled opportunity to observe these changes. Zakim createsa nuanced interpretation that responds to a half century ofhistoriographical debate about the nature of the market revolutionin America.     

Arthur L. Norberg. Computers and Commerce: A Study of Technology and Management at Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company, Engineering Research Associates, and Remington Rand, 1946-1957. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005. x + 347 pp. ISBN 0-262-14090-X, $40.00 (cloth).

Arthur Norberg’s Computers and Commerce is a much-neededstudy of the technical and business history of the Eckert-MauchlyComputer Corporation (EMCC) and Engineering Research Associates(ERA). Although there have been many historical studies aboutIBM, there have been relatively few accounts describing thefirm’s primary competitors or of the early formation ofthe industry. Norberg’s study offers valuable insightsinto the latter by providing a detailed history of the technicaldecisions and financial strategies of the two entrepreneurialfirms that     

Frank P. Jozsa, Jr. Sports Capitalism: The Foreign Business of American Professional Leagues. Aldershot, Hants, U.K., and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2004. xiv + 316 pp. ISBN 0-7546-4185-6, $99.95 (cloth).

Students of international business will find this a useful andfrustrating book. It is encyclopedic in its coverage and exhaustivelyresearched. Approximately 20 percent of the book’s 316pages consists of notes, while another 10 percent is bibliography.The book is intended for nonspecialists; a glossary includesterms as diverse as economic profit, Hall of Fame, Super Bowl,and work ethic. Of these, only ‘Super Bowl’ appearsin the extremely short, five-and-a-half page index. Jozsa’srole has been to organize this material and bring     

David Reisman. Schumpeter's Market: Enterprise and Evolution. Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar, 2004. vii + 294 pp. ISBN 1-84376-164-5, $120.00.

The life and works of Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) continueto fascinate social scientists of diverse disciplines and schools.For some economists Schumpeter’s institutional and evolutionaryapproach is the only way to practice economics; but even forthe mainstream the current buzz about endogenous growth andthe knowledge economy has renewed interest in his writings,especially those on technology and entrepreneurship. Businesshistorians always have been attentive to Schumpeter’sentrepreneurs and the dynamic of creative destruction, and globalizationnow provides a     

Geoffrey Jones. Renewing Unilever: Transformation and Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-926943-2, $64.50.

A commissioned study, Renewing Unilever analyzes the historyof one of the world’s largest and, arguably, most importantmultinational enterprises in the years after 1965. Primarilya manufacturer and seller of branded, non-durable, consumergoods, Unilever produced items that could be found in aboutone-half of households globally by the early twenty-first century.Picking up where earlier histories of Unilever by Charles Wilsonended, Geoffrey Jones very ably tells the story of Unilever’srecent activities.     

Clement M. Henry and Rodney Wilson, eds. The Politics of Islamic Finance. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004. vi + 307 pp. ISBN 0-7486-1837-6, $30.00 (paper).

Clement Henry and Rodney Wilson have assembled twelve essaysabout Islamic finance—six about thematic issues and sixabout case studies of Sudan, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey, Tunisia,and Egypt—plus an introduction and conclusion. Henry and Wilson’s introductory chapter is an excellentsummary of the phenomenon of Islamic banks, including theirorigins, size, and banking practices. The banks largely datefrom the mid-1970s. Purist Islamic economists thought Islamicbanking should be based on profit sharing, in which the depositor’sfunds are     

Carl A. Zimring. Cash for Your Trash: Scrap Recycling in America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005. xi + 220 pp. ISBN 0-8135-3686-3, $39.95.

Paul Revere rode to Concord on a horse shod with shoes re-forgedfrom scrap iron. New York City’s Mayor, Michael Bloomberg,misstepped when he decided that residents would sort only thoserecyclables that actually had a market, rather than the beveragecontainers that went straight to the landfill. During the intervening226 years, Americans recycled for reasons of economy, and ontothat base we recently have grafted a goal of recycling to promoteenvironmental quality. Carl Zimring’s Cash For Your Trashlinks     

Roger Horowitz. Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. xiii + 170 pp. ISBN 0-8018-8240-0, $35.00 (cloth); ISBN 0-8018-8241-9, $19.00 (paper).

Roger Horowitz opens Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste,Technology, Transformation with the observation that Americais a meat-eating nation. Throughout his narrative, he examinesthe forces that allow so much meat—six to eight ouncesper person per day—to satiate Americans’ appetite.The central questions driving Horowitz’s analysis are(a) what is the relationship between producing and consuminga product and (b) how does the nature of the good affect thisrelationship? In     

John Franch. Robber Baron: The Life of Charles Tyson Yerkes. Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2006. vii + 374 pp. ISBN 0-252-03099-0, $45.00 (paper).

Robber Baron, John Franch’s biography of Charles TysonYerkes, provides a fascinating window into the workings of laissez-fairecapitalism. Yerkes, one of the most notorious self-made menof nineteenth-century America, embodied the drive, avarice,and unscrupulousness of his age—taking each to its limits.Robber Baron is an academic work that should appeal to a wideraudience. Yerkes’s dealings are fascinating: the samemen did business with him time after time as they tried to getthe     

Amy G. Richter. Home on the Rails: Women, the Railroad, and the Rise of Public Domesticity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. xiii + 272 pp. ISBN 0-8078-2926-9, $49.95 (cloth); ISBN 0-8078-5591-X, $19.95 (paper).

In today’s fast-paced world we sometimes forget that railroadsof the nineteenth century were the first forms of transportationto annihilate time and space. Railroads, however, played a fargreater role than transforming these physical realities. Infact, Amy G. Richter’s Home on the Rails argues that railroadsbecame the sites and symbols of a reorganized cultural spacein America. Richter, an assistant professor of history at ClarkUniversity in Worcester, Massachusetts, began her study as a