Keepers of the Flame: The Role of Fire in American Culture, 1775–1925 by Margaret H. Hazen, Robert M. Hazen

Abstract

194 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE explaining entire systems or useful objects that cannot be easily grasped. How valid are the thesis and method? One cannot but feel a lurking skepticism, if only because Petroski’s infinity of change is as inconceivable as the finiteness of Plato’s ideal table and chair. But if nothing else, Petroski reminds us not only to pay attention to the commonplace things of our culture but to look critically at how they perform their functions, and how the perception of that performance affects changes in forms. One shortcoming of this book for serious students is the bizarre style of documentation (which appears to be a trade-book fad): only direct quotations are documented, leaving many paraphrased pas­ sages untraceable. The bibliography is valuable; as any work on popular culture, it blends popular catalogs and magazine features with scholarly sources. Notably missing to my mind is George Kubler’s The Shape of Time (New Haven, Conn., 1962), where the alliterative principles of formal change are made much more complex by injecting rate of change into the formula, for in cultural history, it is sometimes as curious to explain why things do not change, as why they do. Fred E. H. Schroeder Dr. Schroeder teaches in the Department of Interdisciplinary Programs at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Keepers ofthe Flame: The Role ofFire in American Culture, 1775—1925. By Margaret H. Hazen and Robert M. Hazen. Princeton, N.J.: Prince­ ton University Press, 1992. Pp. x + 281; illustrations, notes, index. $29.95. There is space on my shelves, between Michael Faraday’s Chemical History of a Candle (London, 1933) and Walter Hough’s Fire as an Agent in Human Culture (Washington, D.C., 1926), for another book on fire in our culture. That by Robert and Margaret Hazen is limited to the role of fire in America from the beginnings of the United States until the majority of its cities had been electrified. It excludes the use of fire as a weapon, forest fires, and fire’s role in religious practices. The Hazens’ underlying thesis is the need for almost everyone to produce a flame and keep it going. Their tale is told in seven chapters on good servant, bad master, fighting back, keeping the homes fires burning, fire tending and maintenance, understand­ ing fire, and perpetuating the flame. A prologue sets out what the early settlers found when they came to America, and the epilogue reviews the modern period. Each has a battery of references. Each has a wealth of anecdote. There are interesting accounts of important fires and the reactions to them, the often desperate efforts technology and culture Book Reviews 195 to prevent and contain fires, and how the use of fire enabled people to live in hostile conditions. Unfortunately, those anecdotes take the place of analysis. The argument disappears in a tangle of tales. Important questions are not asked. Why has the death rate from fires in the United States been so much higher than in the United Kingdom for so long? When did Americans experience the change in expectations about the hazards of fire that occurred in London, around 1700, that Keith Thomas delineates in Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971)? The book is a chronicle, not a history. The part of the most technical chapter (6) that purports to expound the scientific basis of our understanding of fire raises two questions: for whom was it written and what does it achieve? I could not find a convincing answer to the first question. Occasionally, in the earlier chapters, the text needs to be expanded: on page 194 the authors refer to a previous mention of charcoal making in chapter 3, a more appropriate place for its explanation. If the reader has reached this far unaided, it is redundant. The answer to the second question is that the chapter lacks all coherence: historical notes, not always accurate or helpful, mix uneasily with a more formal exposition. The authors assert that Newton’s methods of attacking scientific problems were ineffective in attacking those of light and heat. But his general approach did, in the end, sweep away the notions of their...