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The following is a sample of an interpretive book review as it appeared in the August, 1996 issue of the Western Historical Quarterly. For instructional use only. Nothing herein may be quoted for publication without permission. Though the length of this review is significantly less than that required for student papers, it contains most of the elements of a good interpretive book review.
Mark H. Rose. Cities of Heat and Light: Domesticating Gas and
Electricity in Urban America. University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1995. 229 pp. + xviii. Index.
In this interesting and important study, Mark Rose takes
Denver and Kansas City as examples of urban utility development
and shows that the market for gas and electricity had to be
created much as for any other new product. He chose these
western cities for a number of reasons, the most important of
which were their booming economies and their reliance upon
Eastern sources of innovation and capital. Compared to Boston,
Philadelphia, or New York, the political economies of Denver and
Kansas City were "not simply permeable, they were porous" (p. 4).
And, far from being isolated in the backwaters of the mainstream,
urban westerners were as influenced and indeed dazzled by the
"theater of science" as any urbanite in the East.
The earliest gas and electric developments in Denver and
Kansas City were initiated by boosters who had promoted the
building of railroads, stockyards, and other municipal
facilities. Beginning in the 1890s, local businessmen and civic
leaders encouraged and welcomed outside interests when locally-
capitalized gas and electric companies could no longer keep pace
with rapid growth. In the early decades of the twentieth century
utility company agents mounted sustained campaigns to convince
consumers to abandon coal or oil and switch to expensive but
cleaner and more convenient gas and electricity. Educators and
public health officials contributed to public demand by teaching
the health and safety virtues of even heating, good ventilation,
and frequently laundered clothing. As a result of the activities
of these "agents of diffusion" domestic use of gas and
electricity became nearly universal.
Cities of Light and Heat is a book rich in detail,
interpretive insights, and historiographical relevance. Perhaps
the most interesting of Rose's themes concerns the role of gender
in the economics of gas and electricity. Selling the new
utilities meant persuading housewives that their domestic burdens
would be lightened by the new technology. It also meant
pressuring husbands into paying higher energy costs by "stressing
the obligation of men to shape a healthful environment for
members of their family, especially women" (p.118). This
gendered element would eventually lead to what Rose calls the
"feminized search for environmental perfection" (Chapter Seven).
Rose ties his themes closely to those of Alfred Chandler,
Kenneth Jackson, Ruth Schwartz Cowan, and others who have
explored the culture and political economy of middle-class urban
America. By making technology the focus of his own scholarship,
Rose has addressed issues little studied in the context of the
American West, especially in the twentieth century West. His
earlier book, Interstate: Express Highway Politics (1979, 1990),
was itself a contribution to Western history, though, like Cities
of Light and Heat, it dealt with a topic of national
significance.
Nevertheless, one must question whether or not Denver and
Kansas City should be taken as fully representative of urban
development in the United States as a whole. Rose compares these
two throughout Cities of Light and Heat, but I wonder if a more
revealing comparison might not have been made between Denver and
Philadelphia, or perhaps between Kansas City and Boston. Another
fruitful mode of comparison might also have been to look closely
at the differences between city-based systems and large regional
systems such as California's Pacific Gas and Electric Company or
Consolidated Edison. However, rather than hold Rose personally
responsible for these proposed comparisons (a historian and a
book can do only so much), Cities of Light and Heat should be
used as a point of departure for other studies. It is certainly
an excellent book with which to begin.
Rose himself has facilitated additional studies by providing
the reader with a thorough discussion of the scholarship of
technology and society in his epilogue and in his bibliographic
essay. He has likewise indulged in the historian's appetite for
exhaustive citation (properly printed by the Pennsylvania State
University Press at the bottom of each page), another help for
further study. If I had any comment on the mechanics of the book
it would be that Rose's commitment to a chronological
organization resulted in a bit of repetition, as themes (such as
the role of education and training) were repeated with
significant backtracking.
But this was only a faint annoyance. Cities of Light and
Heat has made a significant contribution to urban, Western, and
technology history.
Todd F. Carney
Southern Oregon University
[770 words]