| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 130.4

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the Pennsylvania Magazine of History online. About 163 words from this article are provided below; about 342 words remain.

If you are an individual member of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 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 Historical Society of Pennsylvania, you can:: • join here.
• 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 Pennsylvania Magazine of History.
Instititutions can:: • Join the Society or subscribe to the journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 130.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

Home on the Rails: Women, the Railroad, and the Rise of Public Domesticity. By Amy G. Richter. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. xiii, 275p. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $19.95.)

There is a significant body of scholarship on the commercialization of women's images and class aspirations in the United States during the decades around the turn of the twentieth century. In Home on the Rails, Amy Richter embraces the premises of these works but adds something important to the literature. Research on railroad history is dominated by institutional works and by cultural histories in which train travel is emblematic of either modernity or the commodification of the American land. Many studies of the public role of women in this era have focused on their participation in the world of mass consumption, via shopping and the display of "style." Richter has identified a space—the upscale, nineteenth-century railroad parlor car—where all of these phenomena came together.

. . .

There are about 342 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.