| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Mark Tebeau. Eating Smoke: Fire in Urban America, 1800–1950. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2003. Pp. xi, 425. $49.95.

In this history of the transformation of firefighting and fire prevention, Mark Tebeau has juxtaposed a detailed history of the evolution of the fire insurance business with an account of the changing organization of fire departments and the work of firefighting itself. His account of how those who dealt with the business of fire insurance came to understand and manage risk is told in tandem with the story of how municipalities developed an increasingly professionalized corps of firefighters. Both narratives trace the shift from more nineteenth-century, laissez-faire customs to a new era of Progressive efficiency and rationalization. In Tebeau's parallel accounts, local volunteer firefighting brigades become urban fire departments with the centralized provision of equipment and a citywide command structure. And, at the same time, Tebeau describes how the relatively haphazard underwriting of nineteenth-century fire insurers grew into national corporations and professional organizations that collected and utilized far superior information to make decisions about risk—and actively promoted policies and practices designed to serve the end of fire prevention.

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