JoAnne Yates. Structuring the Information Age: Life Insurance and Technology in the Twentieth Century. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press, 2005. x + 351 pp. ISBN 0-8018-8086-6, $49.95.

Structuring the Information Age delineates the incorporationof the computer into the life insurance bureaucracy and howlife insurance affected the rise of computers. The life insuranceindustry is an excellent choice for a study of how informationtechnology ‘revolutions’ actually are incrementallyappropriated by enterprises and society. Insurance as a financialintermediary depends on information for its existence. Changesin information manipulation fundamentally affect managementpractice. Moreover, it was a large market for producers of businessmachines. The industry     

Tuija Mikkonen. Corporate Architecture in Finland in the 1940s and 1950s: Factory Building as Architecture, Investment and Image. Helsinki, Finland: Bookstore Tiedekirja, 2005. 269 pp. ISBN 951-41-0982-1, {euro}30.00.

As Alfred Chandler has shown in his writings, particularly thethree monographs Strategy and Structure (1962), The VisibleHand (1977), and Scale and Scope (1990), the development oflarge industrial corporations has been an important featureof society from the nineteenth century onwards. These organizationsbecame not only significant employers but also important providersof goods to consumers and to other industrial firms. Furthermore,their development has had considerable consequences for thelandscape in     

Dwijendra Tripathi. The Oxford History of Indian Business

Dwijendra Tripathi has provided an invaluable service to scholarsand practitioners in business management, history, and socialsciences with his book, The Oxford History of Indian Business.Tripathi is considered to be the founder of the field of businesshistory (with an emphasis on all facets of this history includingpolitics, economics, and society) in India. His tenureship atthe Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad led to the adoptionof an academic and research program in business     

"Business Responsibilities in a Divided World": The Cold War Roots of the Corporate Social Responsibility Movement

Both business executives and management scholars have, in recentyears, focused a great deal of attention on the theme of corporatesocial responsibility (CSR). Calls for business leaders to expendresources on behalf of "social good" tend to downplay, if notignore, what is fundamentally an ideological question: justwhat is a "good" society and who defines "goodness"? The ideologicalunderpinnings of social responsibility and its relationshipto the "good" society can be explored through an historicalperspective. The roots of the CSR movement trace back to theearly years of the Cold War. Led by Donald K David, Dean ofthe Harvard Business School and supported by other academicsand executives given voice on the pages of the Harvard BusinessReview, advocates urged expanded business social responsibilityas a means of aligning business interests with the defense offree-market capitalism against what was depicted as the clear-and-presentdanger of Soviet Communism. Today's enthusiastic calls for businessto "do well by doing good" could benefit from a similar criticalanalysis not just of the goals of CSR but also the ideologicalassumptions, often unacknowledged, that underlie those goals.     

Justin Kaplan. When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and and Hotels in a Gilded Age

Justin Kaplan's When the Astors Owned New York is a probingaccount of how and why the two cousins—William WaldorfAstor and John Jacob Astor IV—spent much of their livesdecorating Manhattan's skyline with grand hotels. Kaplan, aPulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Mark Twain, draws on personalpapers, contemporary press accounts, and various literary worksto locate the Astors in Gilded Age New York high society. TheAstors built hotels not simply to make money, Kaplan contends,but also     

Alan Lawson. A Commonwealth of Hope: The New Deal Response to Crisis

The title of Alan Lawson's new book, A Commonwealth of Hope:The New Deal Response to Crisis, arises from his view that thetremendous intellectual and social ferment of the late nineteenthand early twentieth centuries had a far more formative influenceon the architects of the 1930s New Deal than has been acknowledged.During the earlier era the term "commonwealth" was used to describe"the ideal American society by those with a hopeful vision ofAmerica's governing prospects" (xi). The bounty produced by     

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     

Geoffrey Jones. Multinationals and Global Capitalism: From the Nineteenth Century to the Twenty-First Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. xi + 340 pp. ISBN 0-19-927209-3, $144.50 (cloth); ISBN 0-19-927210-7, $44.50 (paper).

Geoffrey Jones introduces Multinationals and Global Capitalismin the preface as a radically revised edition of his The Evolutionof International Business: An Introduction (Routledge, 1996),which has hitherto remained the only history of the developmentand impact of multinationals worldwide. He indicates, quiterightly, that in the meantime globalization has been recognizedas a controversial and widely debated phenomenon. Indeed, itis indicative of the sweeping changes that have reshaped ourperceptions of the world economy that, at its publication lessthan a decade ago, Evolution was innocent of the very term ‘globalization’;     

Hermann-J. Rupieper, Friederike Sattler and Georg Wagner-Kyora, eds. Die mitteldeutsche Chemieindustrie und ihre Arbeiter im 20. Jahrhundert

This collection of fifteen articles is based on the proceedingsof a November 2003 conference held by the Martin-Luther Universitätin Mitteldeutschland, or Central Germany. Most people tend toforget that the area of Mitteldeutschland in the former easternGermany (German Democratic Republic or GDR), that is the areaaround Halle, Dessau, Leipzig, and Jena, was traditionally oneof the centers of German intellectual and economic life. MartinLuther posted his 95 Theses at a Wittenberg church. It was hometo such firms as the original     

Robert E. Wright. The First Wall Street: Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, & The Birth of American Finance

The First Wall Street is Robert Wright's latest installmentin his campaign to highlight financial institutions as the drivingforce in the economic and political history of the Early Republic.Wright reminds us that prior to Wall Street's ascendance inthe 1830s, Chestnut Street in Philadelphia was the nation'sfinancial center and the birthplace of some of America's mostimportant financial innovations. Wright argues that despite its physical disadvantages as a port,Philadelphia thrived because its climate of     

Peter H. Spitz, ed. The Chemical Industry at the Millennium: Maturity, Restructuring, and Globalization. Philadelphia, Pa.: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 2003. x + 387 pp. ISBN 0-941901-34-3, $45.00 (cloth).

Peter Spitz’s new book is a continuation of his earlierwork, Petrochemicals: The Rise of an Industry (1988), whichdetailed the development of the modern chemical industry beginningin the 1930s. The Chemical Industry at the Millennium picksup the story at the end of the 1970s and examines the momentouschanges that have taken place in the last twenty-five years.Subtitled Maturity, Restructuring, and Globalization, this isan excellent collection of essays by industry     

Daniel W. Hamilton. The Limits of Sovereignty: Property Confiscation in the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War

The Limits of Sovereignty is a concise, well written, and wellargued account of the shifting relationship between state powerand individual property rights during a defining moment in UShistory. Through its examination of government confiscationin the north and south, the book provides historians with insightinto the legal factors contributing to economic and businessdevelopments during the Civil War and Reconstruction. DanielHamilton argues that the various confiscation acts of the CivilWar,     

Jack Goody. Capitalism and Modernity: The Great Debate. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2004. vii + 200 pp. ISBN 0-7456-3190-8, $56.95 (cloth); 0-7456-3191-6, $21.95 (paper).

When and why did the West gain its current economic advantageover the rest of the world? This topic is the source of an animateddebate within the academy today. Jack Goody, a noted socialanthropologist, analyzes these questions and offers his ownviews in his new book, Capitalism and Modernity: The Great Debate. The participants in this debate often have been divided intotwo broad camps. On the one side, which I will call here theEuropeanists, are those who     

Leslie Berlin. The Man behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. xi + 402 pp. ISBN 0-19-516343-5, $30.00.

The last few years have seen a number of books on the rise ofSilicon Valley. Martin Kenney’s Understanding SiliconValley (2000), Ross Bassett’s To the Digital Age (2002),Frederick Terman at Stanford by C. Stewart Gillmor (2004), andmy own book on Making Silicon Valley (2006) are notable examples.Another addition to this literature is The Man behind the Microchip:Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley by     

Dimitry Anastakis. Auto Pact: Creating a Borderless North American Auto Industry, 1960-1971

For Canadians, the Canada-US Automotive Products Trade Agreement,or Auto Pact, is considered an icon of successful industrialpolicy. How did it evolve? Who were the players? What were theirmotivations? What was its impact? These are the central questionsfor which Dimitry Anastakis seeks answers in Auto Pact: Creatinga Borderless North American Automotive Industry. This book stems from Anastakis's 2001 PhD thesis, Auto Pact:Business and Diplomacy in the Creation of a Borderless NorthAmerican     

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     

Hubert Kiesewetter. Industrielle Revolution in Deutschland: Regionen als Wachstumsmotoren

The volume is an updated version of Kiesewetter's 1989 bookwith nearly the same title (Industrielle Revolution in Deutschland1814–1914), published with Suhrkamp. Although Kiesewettertakes new literature into account, there is little change withinthe text since the 1989 edition. Two tables have been added.Kiesewetter maintains that the industrial revolution was nota national but a regional event, which only through aggregationby statisticians was suggested to be national. Geographers undervaluedthis insight because they are trained to understand every itemin its relation to space. But, it is quite new to many historianswho     

John Storey, ed. The Management of Innovation. 2 vols. Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2004. xxxi + 734 pp. (vol. 1); ix + 570 pp. (vol. 2). ISBN 1-84376-429-6, $495.00 (cloth).

Edited by John Storey of Open University Business School inthe United Kingdom, The Management of Innovation (MoI) consistsof fifty-three of the most important social science works onorganizational and technological innovation. Predominantly journalarticles with some book chapters, the contents of the twin volumesare organized into nine sections that, as Storey says in hisintroduction, shift from overviews and general issues to morenarrowly focused topics. In the former category are three sections:Theoretical Perspectives and Overviews; National Systems, Diffusionand Historic Trajectories; and Business Strategy, Entrepreneurshipand Innovation. In the latter category are the remaining sixsections: Technology Strategy and New Product Development; Barriersand Enablers; Managing Innovation through     

H. Roger Grant. "Follow the Flag": A History of the Wabash Railroad Company. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004. xii + 291 pp. ISBN 0-87580-328-8, $49.95 (cloth).

"Follow the Flag" reaffirms Roger Grant’s status as oneof the preeminent historians of transportation in the UnitedStates. The book reflects the predilection of many railroadhistorians to focus on a specific firm, rather than addresslarger thematic issues. Far more than being "just another railroad,"however, the Wabash reflected changes in its political, economic,and social milieu, while also playing a leading role in shapingthe very environment that surrounded it. The Wabash rose from the ashes of an 1830s Illinois internal     

Steve J. Wurtzler. Electric Sounds: Technological Change and the Rise of Corporate Mass Media

In the 1920s, a series of striking innovations in sound reproductionmade the American parlor—and movie house—noisierplaces. Improvements in audio recording fostered a new demandfor the phonograph. Millions of Americans began buying theirfirst radios, even as the infant industry struggled to establishits economic base and define its cultural mission. By the late1920s, the motion picture industry was producing talking features. In Electric Sounds, Steve J. Wurtzler