| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Capital Intentions: Female Proprietors in San Francisco, 1850–1920. By Edith Sparks. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. xviii, 329 pp. Cloth, $59.95, ISBN 978-0-8078-3061-1. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-0-8078-5775-5.)

Edith Sparks highlights the "commercial intentionality" of businesswomen in San Francisco (p. 20). Female proprietors transformed their social comparative advantage into economic comparative advantage as milliners, dressmakers, and owners of beauty shops, restaurants, and petty retail establishments. The book comprises "a study in ephemera," because such activities tended to be transient and difficult to trace (p. 5). Still, Sparks rightly argues, it is myopic to focus primarily on wealthy entrepreneurs and owners of big businesses, since we miss valuable insights into the extensive array of undistinguished women who engaged in small-scale commercial activities.

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