| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.2

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 241 words from this article are provided below; about 504 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, 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. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• 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 American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
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 American Historical Review, 111.2 | The History Cooperative

Amy G. Richter. Home on the Rails: Women, the Railroad, and the Rise of Public Domesticity. (Gender and American Culture.) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2005. Pp. xiii, 272. Cloth $49.95, paper $19.95.
Amy G. Richter's book is a unique study of two seemingly incompatible topics: the private world of domesticity, and the public world of the railroad, that icon of "masculine power" (p. 1). Richter's thesis is that women and images of women were essential in the building of the railway system that sprung up with "suddenness and enormity" (p. 11) in the mid-nineteenth century. Furthermore, she argues that the interweaving of women and trains "recapitulates" a wider social change from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries and that gender roles helped "create a new order" (p. 58) even as the separate spheres for men and women were breaking down.	1
Richter uses magazine and newspaper images, letters, diaries, railway brochures, advertisements, etiquette and advice guides, fiction, and prose from the mid-1800s to the turn of the century to show the ways in which women shaped the railroad. All of this documentation supports the wider thesis that "women on trains ... chart[ed] the changing terrain of nineteenth-century public culture" (p. 1). The study, Richter says, involved "a recasting of railroad history and historiography—a shift away from technological innovation and economic indicators" (p. 1) toward a cultural interpretation.	. . .

There are about 504 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.