| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Troubled Waters: Steamboat Disasters, River Improvements, and American Public Policy, 1821–1860. By Paul F. Paskoff. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. xx, 324 pp. $48.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-3268-5.)
Steamboats on the western rivers continue to bear freight of enduring relevance to antebellum American history. Through its appropriations to improve rivers and harbors, did the federal government exert a significant role in western economic development? Did sectional strife and party failure in Congress increasingly stymie such efforts by the 1850s? If not, were the enacted policies politically fair, economically rational, and ultimately effective in promoting commerce and safeguarding human life?	1
Using quantitative methods, Paul F. Paskoff answers those questions in a book rooted in the literatures on antebellum political economy, economic history, and (to a lesser degree) technological history. Chapter 1 describes the role of the western rivers (the Ohio, Missouri, Mississippi, and their tributaries) in antebellum commerce and the considerable threats to steamboat passengers and freight posed by the technological hazard of nascent steam power and the natural hazards in the rivers. Chief among the latter were snags—submerged tree trucks that punctured hulls, particularly during night voyages.	. . .

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