Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.1 | The History Cooperative

U.S. Department of Transportation: A Reference History. By Donald R. Whitnah. (Westport: Greenwood, 1998. xvi, 228 pp. $75.00, isbn 0-313-28340-0.)

This volume very much reflects Donald R. Whitnah's views on transportation policy in the United States, building from his previously published study of the development of air transportation from 1926 to 1976 and his edited reference volume on government agencies (1983). It is held together by the author's strongly negative opinions about policy decisions that have deregulated transportation in the United States over the past two decades. 1

The book opens with a short chapter on events leading to the formation of the Department of Transportation (DOT) from the 1930s to the 1960s. The next chapter jumps to the deregulatory debates of the 1970s. Succeeding chapters examine components of the Transportation Department, including the Federal Railroad Administration, the Federal Highway Administration, the Coast Guard, and elements of the Interstate Commerce Commission. A quirky chapter on the development of the airport at the University of Illinois is the transition to the final chapters on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), a topic Whitnah has written about extensively. The closing chapters focus on aviation safety, which Whitnah believes was compromised by tensions between the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA; he also argues that deregulation did nothing to resolve those difficulties. The book ends with biographical sketches of the primary administrators of the DOT and its agencies. . . .

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