Susannah Walker. Style and Status: Selling Beauty to African American Women, 1920-1975

Susannah Walker's well-researched and well-written examinationof the African American beauty industry, from approximately1920–1975, makes an important contribution to the growingfield of African American business history. Style and Statusprovides a detailed account of the triumphs and travails ofAfrican American entrepreneurs who satisfied the hair care needsof black women. One of the major issues faced by historic and contemporary AfricanAmerican purveyors of "beauty" to black women is the questionof what (or whose) "standard"     

From Artisans to "Factories": The Interpenetration of Craft and Industry in English Cheese-Making, 1650-1950

This article traces the uneven development of English cheese-makingfrom its early commercialization to the eventual triumph ofthe "cheese factory." The narrative shows how contemporary actorsinitiated and adapted to changes in technology, distribution,consumption, and regulation. It indicates that artisanal practiceshave both borrowed from and become integrated with industriallogics and strategies, exemplifying a process that Charles F.Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin termed the "recombinablility andinterpenetration" of different forms of economic organization[World of Possibilities: Flexibility and Mass Production inWestern Industrialization (Cambridge, U.K., 1997), 2–3].International comparisons are introduced to clarify the reasonsfor England’s halting and idiosyncratic transition toindustrial-scale cheese-making.     

Price V. Fishback et al. Government and the American Economy: A New History

In Government and the American Economy: A New History, a distinguishedpanel of economic historians chronicles and evaluates how governmenthas shaped U.S. economic development and growth from the colonialperiod to the present. The volume is dedicated to Robert Higgs,whose seminal thesis on the growth of government—thatit is a crisis-induced and persistent process—is one ofthe volume's underlying themes (and the subject of Higgs’chapter titled, "The World Wars"). The other is that government     

Kent H. Hughes. Building the Next American Century: The Past and Future of American Economic Competitiveness. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2005. xxiii + 542 pp. ISBN 0-8018-8204-4, $55.00 (cloth); 0-8018-8203-6, $24.95 (paper).

It is paradoxical that the United States, a nation so recentlytriumphant in the Cold War, should be so gripped by anxietyabout its economic future. A burgeoning national debt and ayawning current account deficit, among other pressures, obligeAmericans to question how—and if—the next one hundredyears will bring another "American Century." Into this debatesteps longtime Washington insider Kent H. Hughes, who sets outwith the ambitious agenda of considering "America’s economicfuture and its economic past" while seeking to define a     

Red, White, and "Big Blue": IBM and the Business-Government Interface in the United States, 1956-2000

This article describes the evolution of IBM's effort to manageits relationships with the U.S. government from the time thatThomas Watson, Jr. became CEO. While the Watson family controlledthe firm, the family members served as the main bridges betweenIBM and the government. This personalized approach began togive way in the 1960s, as the intensity and scope of pressurefrom the firm's political environment grew beyond the capabilityof any individual to handle. During the 1970s and 1980s, IBMconstructed a managerial hierarchy, with a newly opened Washingtonoffice at its center, which could gather more detailed intelligenceand execute more sophisticated political strategies. The firm'scrisis in the early 1990s provoked a second major restructuringof the interface, as IBM became more of a Washington "specialinterest." Yet, some traces of the Watson imprint remained,even in the Gerstner era. Tracing IBM's evolution helps us tounderstand better the broader interactions between U.S. firmsand their environments in this period. These interactions entailedadaptation by firms to environmental change but also effortsby firms to exert control over external forces, including publicpolicy.     

Jeffrey M. Hornstein. A Nation of Realtors(R): A Cultural History of the Twentieth-Century American Middle Class. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005. xi + 252 pp. ISBN 0-8223-3528-X, $79.95 (cloth); 0-8223-3540-9, $22.95 (paper).

For many people who study the culture of American business,a mention of real estate will conjure up Sinclair Lewis’sfictional creation George F. Babbitt, the title character ofthe 1922 novel Babbitt. I was reminded, when reading JeffreyHornstein’s A Nation of Realtors^®, that Lewis at onepoint used a different working title: "Population 300,000."Between these two titles lay the relationship between the characterof the Realtor and the community that the Realtor, and his peers,     

A twentieth-century triangle trade: selling black beauty at home and abroad, 1945–1965

This study examines the careers of African American beauty culturists as they worked in the United States, Europe, and Africa between 1945 and 1965. Facing push back at home, African American beauty entrepreneurs frequently sought out international venues that were hospitable and receptive to black Americans in the years following World War II. By strategically using European sites that white Americans regarded as the birthplace of Western fashion and beauty, African American entrepreneurs in the fields of modeling, fashion design, and hair care were able to win accolades and advance their careers. In gaining support abroad, particularly in Europe, these beauty culturists capitalized on their international success to establish, legitimize, and promote their business ventures in the United States. After importing a positive reputation for themselves from Europe to the United States, African American beauty entrepreneurs then exported an image of themselves as the world's premier authorities on black beauty to people of color around the globe as they sold their products and marketed their expertise on the African continent itself. This essay demonstrates the important role that these black female beauty culturists played, both as businesspeople and as race leaders, in their generation's struggle to gain greater respect and opportunity for African Americans both at home and abroad. In doing so it places African American beauty culturists within the framework of transatlantic trade networks, the Black Freedom Movement, Pan-Africanism, and America's Cold War struggle.     

Richard Abel. Americanizing the Movies and "Movie-Mad" Audiences, 1910-1914

Richard Abel argues that in the period from 1910, when the motionpicture "revolution" succeeded and the American film marketwas emancipated from French domination, to 1914, when foreignfilms were nearly eliminated from the U.S. market, the Americanfilm industry was characterized by widespread experimentationand innovation, especially in the areas of promotion practices,distribution strategies, content refinement, and audience development.Six chapters of Abel's Americanizing the Movies bring to theforeground the battle of     

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     

Timothy Cuff. The Hidden Cost of Economic Development: The Biological Standard of Living in Antebellum Pennsylvania. Aldershot, U.K., and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, 2005. xvii + 277 pp. ISBN 0-7546-4119-8, $99.95 (cloth).

In recent years studies of "the body" have broadened the rangeof sources employed by social and cultural historians. SimonNewman and Walter Johnson, for example, recently focused onphysical characteristics to rebuild the lived experience ofunderrepresented historical actors such as Philadelphia’spoor or the South’s enslaved African Americans. Some economichistorians have targeted "the body" as well, but with differentquestions in mind. Econometric studies of physical characteristics     

Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. Hill. The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004. xii + 263 pp. ISBN 0-8047-4854-3, $24.95 (cloth).

Adopting the approach of the "new institutional economics,"Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. Hill argue that grassroots, cooperativelydeveloped property rules in the nineteenth-century AmericanWest led to the peaceful resolution of most conflicts. To thedegree that cooperation trumped conflict and violence, the authorsinsist, "the ‘wild, wild West’ was really the ‘notso wild, wild West’" (p. 5). Institutional entrepreneurs,they contend, emerged to establish property rights governingaccess to rangeland,     

The World Is Watching: Polaroid and South Africa

This article examines the Polaroid Corporation’s "experiment"in South Africa during the 1970s, which began after AfricanAmerican workers pressured the company to pull its operationsout of South Africa in protest of the white minority government’sapartheid policies. It argues that Polaroid’s initiatives,little studied until now, led other American companies to questiontheir presence in South Africa and inspired both student divestmentmovements at Harvard and other colleges and universities andthe efforts of Leon Sullivan, whose 1977 "Sullivan Principles"urged American companies to treat their workers in South Africaas they would treat their counterparts in the United Statesin an effort to battle racism and apartheid. Despite Polaroid’sefforts, engagement with South Africa and apartheid proved futile,which initiated a larger movement to completely disengage fromSouth Africa.     

From "Ward of the State" to "Revolutionary Without a Movement": The Political Development of William C. Norris and Control Data Corporation, 1957-1986

This article traces the political development of the ControlData Corporation (CDC) and its founder and chief executive officer,William C. Norris, from the firm’s formation in 1957 untilhis departure from its leadership in 1986. Norris was entrepreneurialin his political strategy, taking large risks to pursue whathe perceived to be large opportunities in such areas as antitrust,trade policy, and poverty alleviation. Indeed, his perceptionsof these opportunities often diverged substantially from thoseof others in the computer industry and the broader corporateand policy communities. The article links these differencesto Norris’s personal circumstances, the business situationof CDC, and the broader politicalcurrents of the times. Theexperiences of Norris and CDC suggest that business historiansneed a more expansive and flexible conception of the politicalattitudes and behavior of business leadersand of the business-governmentrelationship in the United States.     

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     

Larry G. Gerber. The Irony of State Intervention: American Industrial Relations Policy in Comparative Perspective, 1914-1939. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005. viii + 212 pp. ISBN 0-87580-347-4, $40.00.

This is a most interesting comparative study of labor relationsin the United States and Britain across the divide of WorldWar I and encompassing the whole of the interwar period. A concludingchapter provides retrospective insights derived from post-1945experience in both countries. The author’s central concernis to resolve the paradox of the long-established American commitmentto small government ("antistatism")     

"Selling America to the World"? The Rise and Fall of an International Film Distributor in its Largest Foreign Market: United Artists in Britain, 1927-1947

Few industries are as widely associated with the spread of Americanvalues, ideas, and products as the film industry. U.S. firmscertainly dominated the global market for feature films, butdid they do so simply by "selling America to the world" or wasthere more to be gained by catering to the diverse tastes ofinternational audiences? This article examines the operationsof a leading U.S. film distributor in its largest foreign market.United Artists, like other U.S. firms, was forced to offer aminimum proportion of British films for distribution in theUnited Kingdom in the 1930s and 1940s. Was this requirementa burden, or were the firm’s British films actually atthe heart of its success in the U.K. market?     

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     

俞永福 下一站——美国

<正>拥有了3亿多季度活跃用户,掌握着手机浏览器这一平台级移动互联网入口产品,UCWebCEO俞永福有了更大的梦想:向全球市场进军。美国将是UCCEO俞永福的下一个目标。他曾是年薪百万元的联想投资副总裁,在中国企业家"教父"柳传志身边工作过6年。而在出人意料地加入UC之后,他用了6年时间,把产品"卖"到了全世界。     

摆脱“美元陷阱”路径论析

经济活动严重依赖于美元致使我国对外贸易和国际储备安全受制于美国的战略黑箱,宏观调控的独立性受到掣肘,汇率政策面临二难选择。出于自身狭隘利益的考量,美国当局不可能自愿改变我行我素的行事风格,所以跳出“美元陷阱”不能奢望于美国当局的良心发现,只有唯一路径———“去美元化”———在美元之外构建一种新的国际支付手段为我所用。构建这种新的国际支付手段的应然路径是联合主要大宗矿产资源大国构建共同货币。