Book Review

This book was sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (FRBB), "to provide the intellectual foundation for a New England economic history museum." I spent one summer at the National Museum of American History in an office that offered a view of the eager crowds of visitors. I can imagine a similar (albeit smaller) crowd at the FRBB's economic history museum. Such visitors will buy Engines of Enterprise for many reasons: it is an elegant volume with numerous photographs, uncluttered charts, and well-presented tables; the literary style is lucid and engaging; the authors avoid economistic jargon. As such, the roster of readers who would find this a useful book is likely to extend beyond the museum's clientele, especially in the case of history students who are looking for a nontechnical introduction to current research in this area.

1

The organization of the essays is a testament to Peter Temin's editorial skills since the different papers form an effective narrative whose coherence is underlined in his introduction. He argues in Heraclitean fashion that nothing in New England history has been constant except change. Indeed, the pace of change in the nineteenth century may have exceeded the vaunted changes of today's information economy. The psychic dislocation of the small subsistence farmer in adjusting to an industrialized world may have been greater than ours in coping with advances from analog to digital technology.

. . .