| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Charles David Jacobson. Ties that Bind: Economic and Political Dilemmas of Urban Utility Networks, 1800–1990. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press. 2000. Pp. xi, 282. $35.00.

Rather than analyze either waterworks or electrical utilities or cable television separately, Charles David Jacobson devotes sixty pages to each in a comparative analysis. While future investigators may quibble about his choice of Boston, Seattle, and San Francisco as sites for in-depth analysis, he does refer to other cities as well, so that most of his generalizations seem plausible. The result of this strategy is a 209-page synthesis, adequately documented, that provides an overview of the economic and political dilemmas involved in creating urban utility networks. It is suggestive for other systems as well, notably gas and the Internet. Jacobson reminds us that such systems were not "natural" growths of a free market economy but political and social constructions, with shifting franchising and contractual relations. . . .

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