Victor J. Tremblay and Carol Horton Tremblay. The U.S. Brewing Industry: Data and Economic Analysis. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005. xiv + 379 pp. ISBN 0-262-20151-8, $40.00 (cloth).

The brewing industry does not appear to have attracted the sameresponse from business historians in the United States thatit has in countries such as Britain, where there have been severalauthoritative monographs. This book is therefore welcome. Writtenby the leading economists of American brewing, Victor J. Tremblayand Carol Horton Tremblay, it provides a comprehensive and analyticaloverview of the industry in the modern period. After setting out the general demand and cost     

Douglas A. Farnie and David J. Jeremy, eds. The Fibre That Changed the World: The Cotton Industry in International Perspective, 1600-1990s. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2004. xxxiv + 614 pp. ISBN 0-19-925566-0, $185.00 (cloth).

This volume sets a new yardstick for future research on thecotton industry, from early modern times to the present. Theeditors have brought an international perspective to a researcharea too long dominated by national or regional studies. Therehave been excellent comparative studies in the past, but thisvolume is distinguished by its unwavering commitment to studythe volume and means of exchanges and technology transfer acrossborders and oceans. With the exception of     

Andre Millard, ed. The Electric Guitar: A History of an American Icon. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. x + 215 pp. ISBN 0-8018-7862-4, $45.00 (cloth).

In 1996 the Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Center for the Studyof Invention and Innovation sponsored a symposium, "Electrified,Amplified, and Deified: The Electric Guitar, Its Makers, andIts Players." This book distills and amplifies the scholarshipin that encounter between researchers, innovators, and practitioners.The editor takes up where speakers left off and contributesthe introduction, conclusion, and five of nine chapters. Millardmakes a case for the electric guitar as a totem of modern Americanculture. Intended for the general     

Walter A. Friedman. Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. 356 pp. ISBN 0-674-01298-4, $27.95.

Given the centrality of selling to the emergence of the modernbusiness corporation, it is surprising that there has been nofull-length study of the subject before. Walter A. Friedman’spathbreaking Birth of a Salesman is a truly welcome attemptto fill this void. While he begins with earlier developmentsin selling techniques, Friedman’s real focus is on theemergence of "modern" selling, when the selling process becamesystematically organized and managed. Friedman maintains thatthis came about in the United States, not in Europe,     

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     

Richard Dale. The First Crash: Lessons from the South Sea Bubble. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004. vi + 192 pp. ISBN 0-691-11971-6, $29.95.

In The First Crash: Lessons from the South Sea Bubble RichardDale offers an easy-to-read history of the South Sea Bubbleof 1720. Though many others have written on the subject, Dalepens this contribution to argue that the South Sea Bubble wasdriven by irrational investors. Because the South Sea Bubblewas the first modern financial bubble, Dale seeks to establishthat irrational behavior began forming bubbles three     

Hartmut Berghoff. Moderne Unternehmensgeschichte: Eine themen- und theorieorientierte Einfuhrung. Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schoningh, 2004. 380 pp. ISBN 3-8252-2483-X, {euro}17.90.

This book by the German economic historian Hartmut Berghoffintends to introduce German students, and to some degree managersand entrepreneurs, to the theory and themes of "modern businesshistory." Business history has been thriving in Germany forabout fifteen years. Given the hagiographic tradition of Germanbusiness history, there has been a marked change in that period.Commissioned studies of German business in the Third Reich,for example, proved to     

Brett Williams. Debt for Sale: A Social History of the Credit Trap. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. 154 pp. ISBN 0-8122-3817-6, $24.95 (cloth).

This volume covers a social history of modern consumer credit,specifically, credit card debt, pawnshops, and storefronts thatoffer check-cashing services and paycheck loans. Consumer creditis largely a product of the past half century. Diners Club issuedits first credit cards in 1951, and Carte Blanche, AmericanExpress, and other entities soon followed suit. In the 1970sthe advent of computers and the deregulation of banking resultedin an explosion in the use of credit cards. Initially, credit     

Firm size,efficiency and employment: A review article

Summary S-J's book contains much careful and interesting discussion of small-firm employment data and related issues, and will be read by all workers in the field. However it also contains too much detailed quantification and international comparison of doubtful relevance, at least for most economists, and misses much background material of direct importance for evaluating the role of small firms. As a result, the authors seriously under-estimate the contribution of small business to both employment and efficiency of modern economies, as well as the importance of policy to correct the traditional and still pervasive bias towards large organizations.     

Elisabeth Koll. From Cotton Mill to Business Empire: The Emergence of Regional Enterprises in Modern China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. xvi + 422 pp. ISBN 0-674-01394-8, $49.50 (cloth).

Elisabeth Köll has written more than a book about ZhangJian (1853–1926), a pioneer of modern business in China.This is an important study of enterprise organization, managementpractice, and the means by which Zhang’s Dasheng enterprisegroup changed the political economy of provincial Nantong, aYangzi River city near Shanghai. The author is focused firstlyon control and accountability in the management of the enterpriseand secondly on the institutional transfer—"the interpretation,adaptation and application" (p. 4)—of Western corporatestructures, such as the limited liability firm, to the Chinesebusiness     

Robert P. Bremner. Chairman of the Fed: William McChesney Martin, Jr., and the Creation of the Modern Federal Reserve System. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. vi + 357 pp. ISBN 0-300-10508-8, $38.00.

Two men headed the Federal Reserve System for 40 percent ofits history. One was Alan Greenspan, who served from 1987 to2006. The other was William McChesney Martin, Jr., who chairedthe U.S. central bank from 1951 to 1970. Although there areother contenders, both Martin and Greenspan have their backersfor designation as America’s greatest central banker.Hence, as the Greenspan era at the Fed ends, it is more thanappropriate that Robert Bremner’s excellent biographyof Martin appears. Because it contains insights into     

Edith Sparks. Capital Intentions: Female Proprietors in San Francisco, 1850-1920

The history of business is an ever expanding topic. Numerousbooks on the role of women in modern American business and onwhy women continue to lag behind men in both earning power andbusiness leadership are available. But, few such studies haveplaced the issue of women in business in a historical context.Edith Spark's Capital Intentions: Female Proprietors in SanFrancisco, 1850–1920 is thus both welcome and overdue.Sparks, an assistant professor of history at the University     

Mark Aldrich. Death Rode the Rails: American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1828-1965. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. xvi + 446 pp. ISBN 0-8018-8236-2, $59.95 (paper).

This is an excellent narrative of the evolution of public andindustry focus on industrial safety. It is subtitled "accidentsand safety" because accidents played a very public role of focusingattention on particular problems (e.g., brakes, bridge design,rail failures, and explosions of hazardous materials). By lookingat accidents and safety, Aldrich develops four key themes thathe weaves throughout the narrative. Aldrich’s economicanalysis, much of which is contained in the notes and in thirtypages of     

Morris L. Bian. The Making of the State Enterprise System in Modern China: The Dynamics of Institutional Change. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. xi + 331 pp. ISBN 0-674-01717-X, $45.00 (cloth).

Although it has been generally recognized that industrial andeconomic expansion in China can be traced from the early yearsof the nineteenth century, the conventional view is that thedevelopment of the modern state enterprise system dates fromthe setting up of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.According to most commentators, the Chinese almost universallyadopted Stalinist industrial and economic systems in the earlyyears of the postrevolutionary period without much by way of     

Developing the Brand: The Case of Alcohol, 1800-1880

Historians generally agree that modern brands arose from thevertically integrated corporations of the late nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries and were used as competitive weaponsbetween like firms. Looking at the alcoholic beverage tradeand drawing on trade press, court reports, newspaper advertising,business records, and accounts of consumer behavior, I suggestthat, on the contrary, supply chains made up of small firmsplayed both an earlier and a significant part in the genesisof modern brands. In these chains, firms used branding not onlyto fight direct competitors but also to discipline and subordinateother links in the chain over whom they had no direct controland with whom they had to cooperate.     

Steve Fraser. Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. xxiii + 721 pp. ISBN 0-06-662048-1, $29.95 (cloth).

Steve Fraser has undertaken the daunting task of a culturalhistory of Wall Street. The result is a book that is at onceintriguing and exasperating, insightful and overstated, comprehensiveand flawed. The research is broad and imaginative but not deepin key areas and marred by small but silly errors. The writingis often lucid and sprightly but also strains too hard to beclever. Fraser organizes his narrative around four broad eras. Duringthe first one, the "Financial Frontier,"     

David P. Billington and David P. Billington, Jr. Power, Speed, and Form: Engineers and the Making of the Twentieth Century

This is an enjoyable book. Historians of technology will findit especially appealing, but this book deserves—and willno doubt find—a wide audience. The Billingtons, a father-sonteam of engineer and historian, have written an engaging andcomprehensible account of modern engineering. They examine eighttechnologies fundamental to the modern world: electric power,the telephone, oil refining, the automobile,     

Advertising Management: Its Role in Marketing. Sachs,William S. Tulsa,Oklahoma: PennWell Books, 1983

Abstract

The advertising literature contains some evidence that offensive advertising is multidimensional in nature, but little is known about the character of these dimensions. In an exploratory study of TV advertising, two different dimensions of “offensive” were identified. These dimensions were labeled Offensive Products and Offensive Execution. This distinction is important both for the study of the construct as well as for advertisers who are faced with decisions on advertising execution. The Offensive Products dimension contains those products related to consumer problems which social norms dictate should not be discussed in public. The Offensive Execution dimension, the dimension over which the advertiser has more control, consists of those ads which are perceived to be offensive by the nature of the execution or themes and/or topics of the ad and not the product itself.     

Marketing Gum, Making Meanings: Wrigley in North America, 1890-1930

This essay is a business and cultural history of Wrigley marketingin North America from the 1890s until the early 1930s. Wrigleyrelied on wholesalers at a time when consumer goods makers wereexpanding their sales forces. A prolific advertiser, Wrigleyprovided favorable terms to retailers carrying chewing gum,countering the view that advertising, by enabling direct communicationbetween manufacturer and consumer, diminished retailer cloutin the chain of distribution. Wrigley advertising constructedmeanings on multiple levels, discussed here with the theoreticaltools of liminality and semiotics. The text of Wrigley ads championedrelief for two modern conditions: indigestion and stress. Theimagery, mainly that of the liminal "Spearman," evoked notionsof unworldly escape and infantile nostalgia. The ads were richlypolysemic. Accordingly, Wrigley's widespread popularity andmarket dominance by 1930 should be assessed in terms of bothmarketing function and representational process.     

Franco Amatori and Geoffrey Jones, eds. Business History around the World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xv + 425 pp. ISBN 0-521-82107-X, $65.00.

This important cluster of perspectives on practice and prospectin business history derives from a fall 1998 colloquium heldat Bocconi University in Milan, sponsored jointly by the Institutefor Economic History, the Italian Association of Business Historians(ASSI), Reading University, and Johns Hopkins University. Thecollection echoes its support team’s transnational diversity,presenting an opening set of conceptualizing essays, elevenconcise national/regional overviews, and four closing chaptersthat identify themes for comparative business history. Botha snapshot of the discipline’s preoccupations in the late1990s and a handbook of historiography and work then in progress,Business History around the World is a volume every referencelibrary should own. For practicing historians and graduate students,in my view, parts one and