| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Anytime, Anywhere: Entrepreneurship and the Creation of a Wireless World. By Louis Galambos and Eric John Abrahamson. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. x, 310 pp. $29.00, ISBN 0-521-81616-5.)

This book exemplifies the strengths and weaknesses of commissioned corporate histories. On the one hand, Louis Galambos and Eric John Abrahamson have produced a well-written and interesting account of an important industry. On the other hand, the authors focus uncritically on the efforts of a few entrepreneurs and devote less attention to the economic, regulatory, and technological contexts within which they worked.

The authors seek to give "a personal, a corporate, and a general economic perspective on the wireless industry and a rapidly changing global economy" (p. 10). They succeed in their first two objectives, but they treat the general context as a backdrop for the activities of entrepreneurs and their corporate creations. The main subject of the book is Sam Ginn, founder of AirTouch Communications, Inc. A Bell System executive for many years, Ginn transformed himself from a "Bell-head" enmeshed in a regulated monopoly into a quick-footed entrepreneur in the competitive wireless business of the 1980s and 1990s. In early 1999 AirTouch merged with the British carrier Vodaphone, and a year later the newly merged firm joined with Bell Atlantic to form Verizon Wireless, the largest wireless operator in the United States.

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