| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 96.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 232 words from this article are provided below; about 378 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, 96.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Paving the Way: New York Road Building and the American State, 1880–1956. By Michael R. Fein. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008. x, 316 pp. $39.95, ISBN 978-0-7006-1562-9.)

Michael R. Fein's well-written and well-researched book makes an important contribution to the recent renaissance in transportation and mobility history. Like Sally H. Clarke, who stirred renewed appreciation for industrial management in Trust and Power (2007), and Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr, who remind us in The Horse in the City (2007) that urban horsepower existed long before internal combustion engines, Fein warns scholars not to succumb to a deterministic, auto-centered narrative when explaining the rise of American mass transit. While he does not discount the liberating social and cultural effects of universal auto use, Fein argues that it was a fundamental political transformation and new "policy regimes" that fully integrated the automobile into American life and literally built the road to those freedoms. While the question of whether public works policy and the second transportation revolution actually are "crucially overlooked" today is debatable, Fein is persuasive that road building shifted the relationship between public power, industry interests, federal authority, and, especially, technical experts (p. 3). It is a testament to his approach that founding works of modernization and democratic theory—from Max Weber to Federalist no. 10—are reanimated through this case study of road building in New York State.

. . .

There are about 378 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.