Books in Brief: Nuts and Bolts of the Past

Nuts and Bolts of the Past: A History of American Technology, 1776-1860, by David Freeman Hawke (Harper & Row, 308 pp., $18.95)

This is about as good as a short popular history of American technology could possibly be. It has wit, erudition, a guiding thesis, and, appropriately, the practical shaping skill that characterized the artisans and inventors who are its subject. Hawke’s thesis is that educated people during America’s early years looked down on artisans, with the result that, as Hawke puts it, “The people who declared America to be an independent nation have been honored, but those who did much to make that independence a reality have generally been overlooked.” This point is made cogently and well: Tocqueville in all his travels through this country apparently never stepped inside a machine shop; though Cincinnati grew wealthy from pork-packing, there is far more information available about early musical performances in that city than about its innovative method of assembly-line butchery. But Hawke is always genial. He explains how and why “the heavy, awkward axe brought from England . . . evolved into a nicely balanced, lighter axe that took a deeper bite with less effort,” and his technique is so polished that his own axe-grinding is easy and inoffensive. Is there a vast amount of material to cover? Short chapters organize it all into well-labeled compartments. Is his work a compendium of the work of other scholars? He quotes from their most amusing passages, and his bibliography is a feast. A certain straining after cleverness in chapter openings is the book’s chief failing; but even here, Hawke’s light touch saves him from major calamity. It cannot often happen that one is tempted to call friends up and read to them from a work on colonial and antebellum American technology. With Hawke, it happens all the time. JAMES M. RAWLEY

JR

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James M. Rawley

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Alexis de Tocqueville

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Nuts and Bolts of the Past: A History of American Technology, 1776-1860, by David Freeman Hawke (Harper & Row, 308 pp., $18.95)

This is about as good as a short popular history of American technology could possibly be. It has wit, erudition, a guiding thesis, and, appropriately, the practical shaping skill that characterized the artisans and inventors who are its subject. Hawke’s thesis is that educated people during America’s early years looked down on artisans, with the result that, as Hawke puts it, “The people who declared America to be an independent nation have been honored, but those who did much to make that independence a reality have generally been overlooked.” This point is made cogently and well: Tocqueville in all his travels through this country apparently never stepped inside a machine shop; though Cincinnati grew wealthy from pork-packing, there is far more information available about early musical performances in that city than about its innovative method of assembly-line butchery. But Hawke is always genial. He explains how and why “the heavy, awkward axe brought from England . . . evolved into a nicely balanced, lighter axe that took a deeper bite with less effort,” and his technique is so polished that his own axe-grinding is easy and inoffensive. Is there a vast amount of material to cover? Short chapters organize it all into well-labeled compartments. Is his work a compendium of the work of other scholars? He quotes from their most amusing passages, and his bibliography is a feast. A certain straining after cleverness in chapter openings is the book’s chief failing; but even here, Hawke’s light touch saves him from major calamity. It cannot often happen that one is tempted to call friends up and read to them from a work on colonial and antebellum American technology. With Hawke, it happens all the time. JAMES M. RAWLEY