Tom Rider's Reviews

Prior to the Civil War, the U.S. did not have a national currency. Instead our paper money was issued by shaky, unregulated state banks. Other corporations chartered by state governments could also issue paper money: canal companies, railroads, and insurance companies, for example. By 1860 10,000 different entities were issuing paper notes. Each issuer pledged [...]

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This year is the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, issued by the Lincoln Administration in the midst of the Civil War. Florida is unique in the history of slavery in the American south. Larry Rivers suggests that Spanish control of Florida, which lasted until 1821- with a British interlude from 1763 to [...]

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There is a rhetoric that has framed public discussion of health care from the 1970s to the present. That forty-year-long debate has been about ‘crises,’ Robert Hackey argues, which has been counter-productive to reform, discouraging our willingness to address the system’s weaknesses.
Hackey gives Richard Nixon the ‘honors’ for being the first president to talk about [...]

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In 1807 three commissioners were appointed to create a grid of roads for Manhattan Island that would map out the island above the existing city. Finishing their task in 1811, they proposed twelve avenues which would run north and south in straight lines and intersect at right angles with 155 streets, a grid stretching almost [...]

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In Birth of a Salesman, Walter Friedman traces the evolution of the traveling salesman from the early nineteenth century to the present. The profession has had various names including: drummer, peddler, canvasser, traveling salesman, sales representative, and recently sales executive. Not all that well regarded, Friedman gives the profession its due. It is not only [...]

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H.W. Brands is a professor of history at the University of Texas. With a theme of triumphant capitalism, American Colossus is a general history of the period from the end of the Civil War to the twentieth century. There has always been much interest in the rise of the moguls, powerful industrialists and railroad magnates. [...]

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Mark Mazower has received much praise for his Dark Continent. He argues that European fascism in the interwar period is a continuation of the authoritarian regimes of the nineteenth century and not alien to European traditions. Thus National Socialism cannot be explained solely by the party and its leader’s insanity. Moreover post-war European political economy [...]

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The General Electric Theater was a popular television drama from 1953 to 1962. Its host was the fading actor, Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s comments on politics were part of the hour-long show. They often had a conservative pro-business flavor. The show was cancelled in 1962, but by then Reagan was an established conservative political commentator and [...]

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Shlomo Sand’s new book The Invention of the Land of Israel should be as controversial as his previous book, The Invention of the Jewish People. This Tel Aviv University history professor has been accused of writing bad history and even anti-Semitism. He writes in Hebrew; Geremy Forman has created a lively and passionate English translation.
It [...]

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Sean McMeekin has rewritten a large part of the story involving the origins of the Great War. The assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne at Sarajevo in the summer of 1914 was, he agrees, the proximate cause. In the background to that assassination was a complex set of diplomatic agreements and the various [...]

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