Customer Reviews

Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum America (Studies in Early American Economy and Society from the Library Company of Philadelphia)

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Adams compares the histories of coal and attendant railroad industries of antebellum Pennsylvania and Virginia (and eventually West Virginia) along with one chapter for post-war events. I had to read this book as part of a larger project on which I am working and harbored little hope that it would be interesting reading. Gamely I began to read, expecting to plow through the usual molasses-thick academic writing that provides a surefire cure for insomnia. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised. His book is academic, but his writing is lively and straight-forward, the words of a man who knows his stuff and relates it in an interesting fashion. He gives us a good peek into the workings the antebellum political and industrial business and political world. It does bog down a bit when he gets into relating long lists of statistics in the narrative that would have been better served in charts, but it does not happen often and does not detract significantly from the book. Well recommended even if you're not fascinated by coal production, especially for Civil War scholars studying the breakup of Virginia.