TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Book Reviews 191 mission with authority and style, and Stanford University Press has produced an equally stylish and well-illustrated book. John K. Brown Dr. Brown is a historian in the Division of Technology, Culture and Communication in the School of Engineering at the University of Virginia. His history of the Baldwin Locomotive Works is forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press. The American Railroad Freight Car: From the Wood-Car Era to the Coming of Steel. Byjohn H. White,Jr. Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Pp. xi+644; illustrations, tables, notes, appendixes, index. $125.00. Jack White has wanted to know railway cars the way Thoreau wanted to know beans, and he would not be immodest in claiming greater success. This magisterial study is a worthy companion to his TheAmerican Railroad Passenger Car (1978); both are monuments of erudition on important but neglected subjects and treasures of insight for students of technology. Few technologies have been more pivotal to American economic development than railroad freight cars, yet little has been known or written about them in the past century. No one prior to White has explained the technical aspects of rolling stock more fully or lucidly or placed them more clearly in the context of broader railroad development. Although encyclopedic in detail and coverage, his narra tive is leavened with wit and grace. “Cheap transportation is the essence of railroad freight service” (p. 3). With this observation White opens a 150-page overview that breaks down the functions of freight transport to each of its basic elements from train size and crews to schedules, communications, yards, speeds, repair shops, and car assembly. This essay on the fundamentals of how railroads operate is as clear and informative an account as anything in print on the subject. After surveying the pioneer freight cars before 1870, he takes up in successive chapters the development of cars for general merchandise, food, bulk cargoes, and special shipments. These are followed by an informative discussion of the components of freight car technology (trucks, running-gear subassemblies, couplers and draft gears, and brakes). A final chapter on the early history of iron and steel cars summarizes the controversy over wood versus metal in freight cars. There are two useful appendixes, one giving biographical sketches of prominent car builders and the other a chronology of freight car development. No summary can dojustice to the scope and intelligence of this work. White admits that, “regrettably, I have not been able to devise a thesis or single overall focus for this book” (p. xi). Nevertheless, certain themes recur often enough to gain significant illumination. One of the most important is the unceasing conflict between standardization and 192 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE innovation in car design and construction. Well-managed railroads looked constantly to improve their efficiency through cars that were larger and more specialized, and possessed more advanced features. But a powerful contrary force impeded these good intentions. As rail fleets grew ever larger, so did the urge to standardize cars as a cost-effective measure for everything from parts to repair facilities to ease of interchange. In one sense this conflict pitted efficiency against cost effectiveness. Safety, too, was no simple question of technological improvements and right thinking. White shows in detail how complex the question of incorporating new safety devices like air brakes and Janney couplers became and how the workmen who were supposed to benefit from them often resisted their introduction as strenuously as the railroads that had to pay for them. Even the casual reader will marvel at the amazing diversity and ingenuity of those inventors and designers who poured forth solutions to one technical problem or another—whether it be a more perfect wheel, the ideal balance between weight and strength, or the most functional design for an all-purpose or highly specialized car. In each case, White exhumes the sprawling graveyard of lost brainstorms with surgical precision, outlining the problem, showing the range of pro posed solutions (usually with drawings), and analyzing why they failed to catch on or endure. The production values match the high quality of the scholarship. This handsome, oversized work is printed on glossy paper for...