TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 521 despite its sporadic and contradictory points of rupture. Perhaps it is the absence of theoretical tools that would allow a more sophisti cated deconstruction of the visible terms of the dispute. As a descrip tive study of the rhetoric of newspaper efforts to contain and control the disruptive potential of a new technology, Media At War succeeds in revealing the complexity of the relationship. Its focus on intellec tual property disputes adds a rarely emphasized aspect to the history, most relevant to current negotiations over electronic media. Now the other sides of the story need to be told. Michele Hilmes Dr. Hilmes is associate professor of communication arts at the University of Wis consin—Madison and the author of Hollywood and Broadcasting: From Radio to Cable (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1990) and Radio Voices: American Broadcast ing, 1922-1952 (forthcoming). Commuter Airlines of the United States. By R. E. G. Davies and I. E. Quastler. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. Pp. xxiv+480; illustrations, maps, tables, appendices, bibliography, index. $56.00 (cloth). This new volume fulfills what readers have come to expect from the many works on airline history authored (with I. E. Quastler in this case) by R. E. G. Davies of the National Air and Space Museum. It features the usual easy, engaging prose, orderly narrative and orga nization, numerous well-chosen and well-placed illustrations, and encyclopedic detail conscientiously gathered and presented. Also as usual, CommuterAirlines ofthe United States provides raw material upon which historians and analysts can build and test interpretations, while attempting little of this itself. The analysis offered here is both superficial and paradoxical. Davies and Quastler write in glowing terms about the independent entrepreneurship of those who en tered this risky business. A populist disdain for regulatory agencies and big business “trunk” airlines animates them. They lament the demise of free-enterprise commuter independents when “the com puter-powered oligopoly took control” (p. xix) in the 1980s. Yet the authors conclude that the industry was barely viable until the “ma jors” absorbed and stabilized it (p. 270). Davies and Quastler dwell at length on the origins of the name “commuter” for airlines that provided scheduled small-capacity and short-range air transport, rather than service for daily commuters as the name implies. They also belabor a portrayal of the industry’s pioneers in some fleeting air operations during the interwar years. Commuter airlines emerged only in the late 1940s and became sig nificant only in the 1960s. The industry’s formation was less a prod uct of demand than ofsupply as eager, “air minded” entrepreneurs usually exaggerated the opportunities. They faced low start-up costs, 528 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE highly mobile fixed capital (aircraft) and, after 1949, freedom from economic regulation when the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) ex empted aircraft of less than 12,500 pounds takeoff weight. The in dustry boomed in the mid-1960s, partly because manufacturers introduced larger, more efficient, turbo-prop commuter craft. Na tionally, the industry exploded from fifteen companies in 1964 to 288 in 1968. But it suffered very high turnover due to overcapacity, poor management, poor access to major airports, resistance from airline unions and the “bus lobby,” and marginal listings in the Offi cial Airline Guide, which travel agents used to plot their customers’ itineraries. The market also suffered from an enduring popular wari ness of propeller aircraft. Even during 1973-78, when rising gasoline prices helped double the number of commuter passengers, unprofitability and rapid turn over plagued the business. Still, it became steadily more concen trated as the CAB endorsed closer links between certain commut ers—Air Wisconsin, Allegheny, Golden West, etc.—and the majors. Mergers,joint ticketing, andjoint fares soon helped transform com muters into “regionals.” Federal subsidies for oudying routes sur vived airline industry deregulation in 1978, while loan guarantees offset the escalating costs of commuter craft. The CAB lifted the 12,500 pound limit, and commuters benefited from the introduc tion of area navigation, which helped relieve competition for air space above key airports, and of “new generation” engines and air craft, like the Beech 1900, the DASH...