Business History Review

Nineteenth-century newspapers, exchanges, and governments relied heavily for their daily information upon an alliance of four international telegraph services: Havas (Paris), Reuters (London), Wolff's (Berlin), and the Associated Press (New York). The connections of the wire services to financial and official circles bred suspicions that they offered privileged information and suppressed or inserted reports on behalf of special interests. Corporate and official records reveal the wire services' reliance upon the subsidies, information, and telegraph facilities of firms and governments. As a result, world news coverage was, if not "poisoned" at the source, at least dammed up, filtered, channeled, or watered down. (Pages 577-610)

Chicago's large, diverse automotive industry specialized in truck, bus, and taxicab assembly, as well as automotive-parts manufacture, in the first decades of the twentieth century. From having just a handful of companies before World War I, by the mid 1920s Chicago grew to include more than 600 firms that were producing a wide assortment of automotive-related products. This large, successful industry emerged out of two sets of advantages: First, Chicago's well-developed production factors—ranging from relatively advanced transportation and industrial facilities to a large labor force and an effective entrepreneurial business class—promoted industrial growth. Second, the automotive industry's production practices, elaborate division of labor, and intense set of interfirm relations encouraged metropolitan expansion. Even though the city's firms functioned both regionally and nationally, they were also deeply embedded within a local world of innovation, interaction, networks, financing, and servicing. Further adding to these advantages was Chicago's distinctive geography, which enabled a dense complex of linked, interrelated firms to flourish and contributed to the automotive industry's success before 1930. (Pages 611-638)

Patterns of residential segregation in late-nineteenth-century southern cities had great influence on the type of African American business that developed. They also affected the relative stability of business enterprise. In neighborhoods with a higher degree of segregation, African American entrepreneurs were able to develop vital businesses that survived the worsening climate of race relations around the turn of the century. (Pages 639-665)

Emmett Jay Scott was private secretary to Booker T. Washington and later became secretary treasurer of Howard University. He was involved in numerous business activities, ranging from the establishment of the National Negro Business League to the foundation of an investment clearinghouse, an insurance company, and an overseas trading firm. Scott also promoted the black township of Mound Bayou and backed African American entertainment enterprises. His business activities were largely unheralded, and the frustrations he encountered illustrate both the obstacles and the opportunities for black entrepreneurs in the first half of the twentieth century. (Pages 667-686)

The Soul's Economy: Market and Selfhood in American Thought, 1820-1920. By Jeffrey Sklansky. Reviewed by Mark Pittenger.

Street of Dreams-Boulevard of Broken Hearts: Wall Street's First Century. By Howard Wachtel. Reviewed by Janice Traflet.

Morality and the Mail in Nineteenth-Century America. By Wayne E. Fuller. Reviewed by Gaines M. Foster.

Politics and the American Press: The Rise of Objectivity, 1865-1920. By Richard L. Kaplan. Reviewed by Thorin Tritter.

From Blackjacks to Briefcases: A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States. By Robert Michael Smith. Reviewed by Richard Oestreicher.

After the Strike: A Century of Labor Struggle at Pullman. By Susan Eleanor Hirsch. Reviewed by Judith Sealander.

The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States. By Jacob S. Hacker. Reviewed by Mark J. Stern.

Before the World Series: Pride, Profits, and Baseball's First Championships. By Larry G. Bowman. Reviewed by George B. Kirsch.

The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. By Jonathan Sterne. Reviewed by David Hochfelder.

Riding the Roller Coaster: A History of the Chrysler Corporation. By Charles K. Hyde. Reviewed by K. Austin Kerr.

On the Farm Front: The Women's Land Army in World War II. By Stephanie A. Carpenter. Reviewed by Anna R. Igra.

Shopping at Giant Foods: Chinese American Supermarkets in Northern California. By Alfred Yee. Reviewed by Yong Chen.

Lyndon Johnson and Europe: In the Shadow of Vietnam. By Thomas Alan Schwartz. Reviewed by Charles E. Neu.

Hosiery and Knitwear: Four Centuries of Small-Scale Industry in Britain, c.1589-2000. By Stanley L. Chapman. Reviewed by Giorgio Riello.

Henry Maudslay and the Pioneers of the Machine Age. Edited by John Cantrell and Gillian Cookson Reviewed by Christine MacLeod.

Railways in Britain and the United States, 1830-1940. By Geoffrey Channon. Reviewed by John K. Brown.

Maritime Enterprise and Empire: Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network, 1823-1893. By J. Forbes Munro. Reviewed by Michael Miller.

The Sport of Kings: Kinship, Class and Thoroughbred Breeding in Newmarket. By Rebecca Cassidy. Reviewed by Jeffrey Hill.

A Nation of Shopkeepers: Five Centuries of British Retailing. Edited by John Benson and Laura Ugolini. Reviewed by Christine M. Clark.

The Rise of Management Consulting in Britain. By Michael Ferguson. Reviewed by David J. Jeremy.

International Financial History in the Twentieth Century: System and Anarchy. Edited by Marc Flandreau, Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich, and Harold James. Reviewed by Priscilla Roberts.

Sir Henri Deterding and Royal Dutch-Shell: Changing Control of World Oil, 1900-1940. By Paul Hendrix. Reviewed by Hugh S. Gorman.

Der Producktive Blick: Wahrnemung amerikanischer und japanischer Management- und Producktionmethoden durch deutsche Unternehmer, 1950-1985 [The Productive Gaze: Perceptions of American and Japanese Management and Production Methods by German Businessmen, 1950-1985]. By Christian Kleinschmidt. Reviewed by Mary Nolan.

Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War II. By Donald Filtzer. Reviewed by Wendy Goldman.

Banking in Modern China: Entrepreneurs, Professional Managers, and the Development of Chinese Banks, 1897-1937. By Linsun Cheng. Reviewed by Brett Sheehan.

Chinese Capitalists in Japan's New Order: The Occupied Lower Yangzi, 1937-1945. By Parks M. Coble. Reviewed by Hanchao Lu.

Red Capitalists in China: The Party, Private Entrepreneurs, and Prospects for Political Change. By Bruce J. Dickson. Reviewed by Mark W. Frazier.