Transportation in Iowa

626 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE for use with motion pictures, is especially interesting. There are copious notes and an appendix giving statistical and organizational information on various piano companies. Karen Linn Dr. Linn received her doctorate in ethnomusicology from Brown University and is currently working at the National Museum of American History. Her book, That HalfBarbaric Twang: The Banjo in American Popular Culture, was published this year by the University of Illinois Press. Transportation in Iowa: A Historical Summary. By William H. Thompson. Ames: Iowa Department of Transportation, 1989. Pp. xiv + 315; illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $25.00. The Iowa Department of Transportation, requiring a history of itself and of Iowa transportation more generally, commissioned William H. Thompson to do the job. The task saved Thompson, an emeritus professor of transportation and logistics in the business school at Iowa State University, from “a dull and boring retirement.” Thompson did a thoroughjob, ranging more widely over transport history than most authors would even consider doing. The book encompasses the administrative history of the department and the predecessor state highway department, highway finance, navigability of the rivers, the expansion and contraction of the railroad network, urban transit, the interurbans, trucks and buses, and the impact on the state of various federal policies. Probably inevitably, it is a rather bland treatment, without any serious criticism of the policies followed. His citations in his treatment of policy are mainly from the Transpor­ tationJournaland other institutional sources, rather than analytical works such as those ofJohn Meyer, Theodore Keeler, or Anne Friedlaender. Because the book ranges over such an extensive intellectual area, most readers will learn quite a bit from it. How many readers will bring to it familiarity with projects for navigation on the Des Moines River, hard-surfacing of the state highway system, the impact of the Transportation Act of 1958 on Iowa, or the decline of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific? It is probably not reasonable to expect a commissioned work of this sort to be a major book in its field, but, as an encyclopedia of the state’s transport experience, it must be rated a success. The department might have done a more professional job of editing to avoid some minor errors. The Sioux City Cable Railway of 1889 is said to date from 1899, and the Hepburn Act of 1906 is assigned to 1910. Presumably, however, other sources would be used by people seeking information on those subjects. George W. Hilton Mr. Hilton is professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. His latest book is American Narrow Gauge Railroads (Stanford, Calif., 1990)

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