Connecticut's Ames Iron Works: Family, Community, Nature, and Innovation in an Enterprise of the Early American Republic. By Gregory Galer, Robert Gordon, and Frances Kemmish. Transactions of the Connecticut Academy: Volume 54, pp. 83-194. (New Haven: The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1998. Pp. 111. Figures, tables.) This small, well-researched, smoothly written book deserves a much wider audience than its relatively obscure publisher will probably be able to attract. This is unfortunate because the study should be of interest to students of the iron industry, to both business and labor historians, to those interested in iron technology, and local history buffs among others. A large part of the study's value derives from the skill of its three authors in combining materials from company records and an excellent collection of Ames family correspondence with their own extensive expertise in the field. Its treatment of the changes in technology at the time, though brief, is particularly good. The Ames Iron Works got underway in 1834 in the Salisbury district, located in Connecticut's northwestern-most corner. For a full century, iron masters there had been smelting local ores in charcoal-fired blast furnaces, producing castings and pig iron that subsequently was turned into wrought iron at finery forges. The Ames Works got off to a slow start, but after about a year Horatio Ames became its manager. Although he lacked experience in making iron, Ames went to work on the factory floor side by side with his skilled laborers, learning from them and from the mistakes they made as they went along. Usually disdainful of formal training, in a pinch he would consult with experts, including professors of science. He soon made the Ames Works both innovative and profitable. Ames first departed from the area's traditional practices by shifting from finery forges to puddling furnaces for turning pig iron into wrought iron. To reduce fuel expenses he successfully substituted local firewood for the more expensive but commonly used charcoal or imported mineral coal. He also replaced the older water-powered heft and trip hammers with heavier, more efficient steam-driven hammers. He was now prepared to produce the newer, larger items demanded by an expanding new market, the pre-Civil War railroad industry. The Ames Works produced high quality axles and iron tires for locomotives. It also found a market for heavy, wrought iron parts such as anchors for the new steamships that were superceding wooden sailing vessels. With good products and a booming demand, the Ames Works prospered until the onset of the Panic of 1857. The failure of railroad companies during the subsequent depression soon began ruining many of the firms that supplied them and came close to putting the Ames Works out of business. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Horatio Ames, desperate for sales orders, developed a wrought iron cannon that he vigorously promoted to the United States Army. Although he eventually obtained a few contracts and made some cannons, the government took years to pay Ames. Instead of turning to more ordinary products that were in demand by the end of the war, Ames concentrated on peddling his cannon to European powers. When that failed, the Ames Iron Works, its resources depleted, folded and passed into history. …