During the Civil War era, when the U.S. explosives industry was already dominated by a handful of firms, the leading manufacturers of black powder tried repeatedly—with mixed success—to fix prices in commercial and military markets. Their surviving correspondence reveals some of the dynamics of oligopolistic collusion and competition. In commercial markets, price-fixing by leading explosives makers was undermined not only by competition from small powder manufacturers but also by rivalry among their own selling agents. The same agency problems that made price-fixing more difficult, however, may have actually made it easier for manufacturers to sustain the social foundations of cooperation by allowing them to blame the failures of their agreements on forces outside their control. Maintaining cooperative relations over the long run proved useful to manufacturers in wartime military markets, in which price agreements were easier to sustain. But during the Civil War, the leading powder producers found that even successful collusion in the military supply business did not guarantee high profits, because government bureaus could prove to be demanding consumers. (Pages 207–234)

An economic enterprise faces two, related, problems: effectively managing its activities and communicating to outsiders that it is, in fact, well run. The credit cooperative movement that grew up in Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century had to wrestle with both. These cooperatives thrived, in part, because they adopted strategies first to obtain and then to harness the information they needed about the communities in which they were located, giving them an advantage over other lenders. Particularly effective was the tactic of using local people as managers, which helped to cement their ties with the community. Yet because few, if any, locals had banking experience and most were not even familiar with basic accounting methods, the managers created internal management problems, intensifying outside suspicion of the cooperatives as banking enterprises. The methods the cooperatives developed to overcome these problems drew on a combination of local initiative and regional assistance that was typical of the movement as a whole. The movement's ability to train its own talent suggests that it had a broader impact than has been captured by statistics on its membership or financial assets. (Pages 235-264)

In the years before World War II, New Zealand department stores became increasingly influenced by American ideas about salesmanship. This involved a shift away from British precepts about retailing, which discouraged initiative by salespeople and emphasized service. Stores that adopted American ideas were trying to become more competitive and began to appeal to working- and middle-class consumers. They imported the concept of "suggestion selling" and the idea of pushing complementary goods. New Zealand merchants modified American methods by relying on the use of manuals and bulletins to train salespeople and, unlike American stores, did not introduce commission payment schemes. (Pages 265-290)

River of Enterprise: The Commercial Origins of Regional Identity in the Ohio Valley, 1790-1850. By Kim M. Gruenwald. Reviewed by John L. Brooke.

Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade. By Barton H. Barbour. Reviewed by Clark C. Spence.

Looking for Work, Searching for Workers: American Labor Markets during Industrialization. By Joshua L. Rosenbloom. Reviewed by Ken Fones-Wolf.

Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of Corporate Capitalism. By Charles Perrow. Reviewed by Neil Fligstein.

Keeping Up with the Joneses: Envy in American Consumer Society, 1890-1930. By Susan J. Matt. Reviewed by Gary Cross.

The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933. By Emily Thompson. Reviewed by Gail Cooper.

Uncle Sam's Locomotives: The USRA and the Nation's Railroads. By Eugene L. Huddleston. Reviewed by Vagel C. Keller Jr.

John Nolen and Mariemont: Building a New Town in Ohio. By Millard F. Rogers Jr. Reviewed by John Hancock.

Rainbow’s End: The Crash of 1929. By Maury Klein. Reviewed by Robert S. McElvaine.

The General Textile Strike of 1934: From Maine to Alabama. By John A. Salmond. Reviewed by Nelson Lichtenstein.

Days of Discontent: American Women and Right-Wing Politics, 1933–1945. By June Melby Benowitz. Reviewed by Lisa McGirr.

Selling Hollywood to the World: U.S. and European Struggles for Mastery of the Global Film Industry, 1920–1950. By John Trumpbour. Reviewed by Eric Schaefer.

Disaster in Dearborn: The Story of the Edsel. By Thomas E. Bonsall. Reviewed by Tom Dicke

Making and Selling Cars: Innovation and Change in the U.S. Automotive Industry. By James M. Rubenstein. Reviewed by Timothy R. Whisler.

Career Movies: American Business and the Success Mystique. By Jack Boozer. Reviewed by Robert Brent Toplin.

In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America. By Alice Kessler-Harris. Reviewed by Miriam Cohen.

A Perilous Progress: Economists and Public Purpose in Twentieth-Century America. By Michael A. Bernstein. Reviewed by Bradley W. Bateman.

Globalization and Its Discontents. By Joseph E. Stiglitz. Reviewed by Randall D. Germain.

The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression. By Harold James. Reviewed by Geoffrey E. Wood.

Monetary Regimes of the Twentieth Century. By Andrew Britton. Reviewed by Ranald Michie.

Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. Edited by Peter Hall and David Soskice. Reviewed by Stephan Haggard.

The Development of Modern Business. By Gordon Boyce and Simon Ville. Reviewed by Mansel G. Blackford.

Technological Innovation as an Evolutionary Process. Edited by John Ziman. Reviewed by Ruth Schwartz Cowan.

Consumerism in World History: The Global Transformation of Desire. By Peter N. Stearns. Reviewed by Lawrence B. Glickman.

Hollywood North: The Feature Film Industry in British Columbia. By Mike Gasher. Reviewed by John Trumpbour.

The Transformation of Edinburgh: Land, Property and Trust in the Nineteenth Century. By Richard Rodger. Reviewed by Mark Freeman.

Villes et districts industriels en Europe occidentale, XVIIe–XXe siècles [Cities and Industrial Districts in Western Europe from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries]. Edited by Jean-François Eck and Michel Lescure. Reviewed by W. Brian Newsome.

La dactylographe et l’expéditionnaire. Histoire des employés de bureau, 1890–1930 [The Typist and the Dispatcher: A History of Office Workers, 1890–1930]. By Delphine Gardey. Reviewed by James F. McMillan.

Der Handel im Kurfürstentum/Königrich Hannover (1780–1850): Gegenstand und Methode [Commerce in the Royal Electorate of Hanover (1780–1850): Subject and Methods]. Edited by Karl Heinrich Kaufhold and Markus A. Denzel. Reviewed by Robert Lee.

Deutsche Investitionen in Spanien 1870–1920 [German Investment in Spain, 1870–1920]. By Javier Loscertales.Reviewed by Harm Schröter.

Poems in Steel: National Socialism and the Politics of Inventing from Weimar to Bonn. By Kees Gispen.Reviewed by Jeffrey Fear.

Management Consulting: Emergence and Dynamics of a Knowledge Industry. Edited by Matthias Kipping and Lars Engwall. Reviewed by Priscilla Roberts.

A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire. By Sevket Pamuk. Reviewed by Rodney Wilson