| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 320 words from this article are provided below; about 620 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Helen Tangires. Public Markets and Civic Culture in Nineteeth-Century America. (Creating the North American Landscape.) Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2003. Pp. xx, 265. $45.00.
Helen Tangires uses the history of public markets in the United States to chart the course of the shifting meaning of civic virtue throughout the nineteenth century. In the process, she offers a social history of the food supply, the city, and reform.	1
In the wake of the American Revolution, citizens and cities proclaimed public markets to be preservers of concepts of good citizenship and egalitarianism. Well-regulated markets provided convenient places to buy and sell foodstuffs, but they also ensured that products were not monopolized, hoarded, or spoiled. According to Tangires, laws governing the market dictated "the ethics of exchange" and defined "good social and economic behavior" (p. 25), and the market house itself, whether a simple or elaborate structure, testified to the commitment of local governments to broadly held values of fairness, decency, and equal access to food products.	2
Before the Civil War, however, in cities like New York and Philadelphia, the communitarian values that constructed public market space to serve as signposts of republican virtue waned. In New York, some butchers, acting out of a sense of occupational identity and anxious to serve the needs of a city expanding geographically, abandoned the public market. For nearly two decades, those butchers and soon others also, decried the public markets as restrictive and corrupt. Within city government, the butchers found allies, who regarded public markets as expensive and contrary to individual enterprise. By the 1850s, more than 500 meat shops were spread across the city; grocery stores and fish and oyster stands appeared in neighborhoods, too. Yet New York, perhaps largely because of the forcefulness of the butcher, historian, and advocate Thomas F. De Voe, continued to support thirteen public markets.	. . .

There are about 620 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.