October 29, 2012
As financial writer and historian Morris (The Tycoons) makes clear in his latest book, the perfect storm of universal white male suffrage along with the evolutionary perfection of mechanized, large-scale industry, and the strength of an active and influential middle class helped usher the United States to the forefront of economic prosperity at the dawn of the 20th century. While historians have already sewn these large themes together, Morris seeks to highlight the individuals who brought about the revolution, their mechanical inventions, innovations, and technological processesâfrom firearms to meat-packing to plowsâ that drove America out of the shadow of Great Britain's industrial dominance. Often bogged down by too much detail and some clunky, modern-day analogies (he compares newly inexpensive paper to crack cocaine), Morris nevertheless breezes the reader through America's industrial trajectory, beginning in the 1820s, toward a mass-consumption society. Arguably Morris's analysis shines brightest in the final chapter as he compares the United States' past economic growth with the current hyper-expansion of China. Only then, by examining the hurdles China faces in its ascendance to economic superpower, does Morris show how truly innovative the transformation of America was and why it will be impossible to repeat in the future. Illus.
September 1, 2012
In this historical overview, Morris (The Sages: Warren Buffett, George Soros, Paul Volcker, and the Maelstrom of Markets, 2009, etc.) asserts that American industry in its early days was far more concerned with growth and large-scale mass production than was Great Britain. "By comparison with eighteenth-century Britons, Americans were strivers on steroids," he writes. To illustrate this point, the author looks at several pioneering British and American inventors and engineers and describes key innovations in a wide range of early American industries, from clock making to furniture making. In one long chapter, Morris examines the manufacturing of guns, a topic to which he returns in another chapter. The author also briefly looks at a few major post-Civil War industrial figures, including Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, both of whom he wrote about at length in The Tycoons (2005). In a closing chapter that feels a bit tacked-on, Morris discusses how the past America-Great Britain rivalry resembles and differs from the current economic relationship between the U.S. and China. The author is at his best when he focuses on the people behind the technology--e.g., Eli Whitney, who became a "talented artisan and entrepreneur," but was, in his early career, "something of a flimflam man." While Morris' research is thorough, his prose is often long-winded. His account of naval warfare during the War of 1812, for example, hardly seems worthy of a 36-page blow-by-blow chronicle featuring multiple tables and illustrations. Other sections get bogged down in engineering minutiae; many of the highly detailed diagrams will be of interest to engineers, perhaps, but not to casual readers. An ambitious but overlong historical study.
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October 15, 2012
An unprecedented 3.9 percent average annual rate of economic growthsustained for more than a centurypropelled the U.S. to global economic leadership. Morris chronicles the remarkable story behind the remarkable number. To begin with, it is a story of American shipwrights frenetically attempting to match Great Britain in building warships during the War of 1812. Peace meant that American industrialists turned to making shoes, stoves, steam engines, and locomotives, yet they still strove to wrest world economic leadership from Britain. Readers soon realize that American capitalists who surmounted daunting technical challenges (through homegrown Yankee ingenuity and through industrial espionage) also solved a formidable social problem. Instead of building British-style Coketowns that enriched a few while immiserating the masses in the factories, America's economic pioneers spread the benefits of modern productivity throughout a mass-consumption society. Morris concludes with a provocative comparison of the nineteenth-century duel pitting the U.S. against Great Britain and today's rivalry between China and the U.S. Economic history freighted with social and political relevance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)