| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 241 words from this article are provided below; about 360 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, 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.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• 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 Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
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 Journal of American History, 93.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Structuring the Information Age: Life Insurance and Technology in the Twentieth Century. By JoAnne Yates. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. xii, 351 pp. $49.95, ISBN 0-8018-8086-6.)
In the 1980s two seminal historical works on the hard-to-define topic of information were published. In 1986 James R. Beniger gave us The Control Revolution. Three years later JoAnne Yates published Control through Communication. Beniger, a sociologist, took a sweeping view of information flows and goal attainment, with a focus on the United States. Yates, on a career path that led her to become the Distinguished Professor of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School, narrowed her work to the role of information systems and information technologies in two major American industries during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her effort was informed by Alfred D. Chandler Jr.'s views on the role of new management techniques in the success of the American corporation.	1
Beniger continued his work but focused on practical, contemporary problems, such as information networks and drug cultures. Yates, while busy with management theory and its application, soon began a ten-year effort to move her historical work into the twentieth century. In her new project, the focus is on the service or white-collar sector during the first half of the twentieth century. The theoretical lenses she uses are theories of technological change and the more general "structuration" approach of Anthony Giddens.	. . .

There are about 360 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.