Book Reviews 145 Marina Moskowitz. Standard ofLiving: The Measure of theMiddle Class in Modern America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Pp. 320. Essay on sources. Index. Notes. Cloth, $45.00. Most Americans have a good sense of what it means to enjoy a middle-class standard of living. If asked, most would find it easy to identify the consumer products upon which such a standard depends. But who decides which goods are necessary to maintain amiddle-class standard of living? And how do those who aspire to such a standard know what goods they must have? These are the questions that Marina Moskowitz explores in her imaginative, insightful, and lively book, Standard ofLiving: TheMeasure of the Middle Class in Modern America. Moskowitz uses four case studies to explore the process by which Americans developed a standard against which they could measure (and judge) their material well-being. She begins with Reed & Barton's efforts in the last decades of the nineteenth century to transform silver-plate flatware from a luxury into a necessity. She then moves on to Kohler's campaign to convince consumers that each home should have a room devoted exclusively to hygiene. Next she looks at the role of the Michigan-based Aladdin Company in establishing home ownership as one component of a middle-class standard of living. And finally she explores the ways in which municipal zoning, with its organization of urban areas into separate residential, commercial, and manufacturing spaces, was motivated largely by a desire to protect the middle-class standard of living, a standard that depended in part on safeguarding home values. Each one of these case studies (related in separate chapters) tells a fascinating story about the ways inwhich business and municipal leaders pursued their goals. For example, Moskowitz's discussion of the Aladdin Company draws on the rich source material housed at Central Michigan University's Clarke Historical Library to explore the activities of two Bay City entrepreneurs, William and Otto Sovereign, who sold mail-order homes. Although one might expect that convincing consumers to purchase homes through the mail would be the primary challenge facing the Sovereign brothers, it turns out that in the early twentieth century the much greater challenge was to persuade consumers to buy a home at all. A significant portion of Aladdin's marketing effort was devoted to convincing consumers that home ownership was a necessity rather than a luxury and that debt, far from being a sign of profligacy, made good business sense. Moskowitz provides readers with detailed and exceedingly well researched accounts of the marketing of consumer products during 146 Michigan Historical Review the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. Her ultimate goal, however, is far more ambitious: namely, to understand the cultural construction of the middle class. And it is in this area that her book truly excels. The term middle class, she persuasively suggests, has limited meaning as an economic category, particularly since as much as 90 percent of the American population claims to be middle class. But the category has considerable meaning if one focuses on such things as "aspirations, organization of life, and sense of commonalty to others" (p. 12). Her case studies reveal how the definition of the middle-class standard of living grew out of the interactions among manufacturers, marketers, and consumers. And in the last section of the book, a wonderful chapter inaccurately tided "Conclusion," Moskowitz explores the role of authors of fiction and academic writers in disseminating this standard. Moving easily across the fields of business history, cultural history, and social history, Moskowitz has produced a work that is required reading for anyone interested in understanding how the United States became the quintessential middle-class nation. Kathleen G. Donohue Central Michigan University David Roberts. In the Shadow of Detroit: Gordon M. McGregor, Ford of Canada, andMotoropolis. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006. Pp. 320. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Map. Tables. Cloth, $34.95. David Roberts's book is not the usual biography of a rags-to-riches industrialist. Gordon McGregor, the book's subject and Ford of Canada's "founder," did not possess the requisite genius or mythical work ethic of the typical capitalist hero. He was...