Meyer's analysis is clearly formulated, carefully argued, and in its terms comprehensive.
(Thomas J. Misa
Journal of American History 2004)
Claiming that his analysis moves chronologically forward beginning with 1790 rather than starting with assumptions borne from an understanding of industrialization as it existed in 1860, Meyer provides the reader with some powerful insights.
(John Heitmann
History: Reviews of New Books 2003)
Meyer... makes a useful contribution by reviewing how industrialization started in the agrarian United States.
(B. Zorina Khan
EH.Net 2003)
The idea that regions need not specialize in either farming or manufacturing is an idea familiar to economic historians, but this book offer an interesting and insightful analysis of the American East from 1780 to 1860.
(
Choice 2004)
Over the years numerous scholars have tried to explain the origins and nature of the industrialisation process in the United States. For a variety of reasons, the versatile and prolific geographer David R. Meyer is dissatisfied with conventional explanations, and in his stimulating new study, The Roots of American Industrialization, he attempts to set the record straight.
(Peter A. Coclanis
Business History 2004)
A well-researched description of American industrialization before 1860.
(Joshua L. Rosenbloom
Economic History Review 2004)
A very fine book and a major contribution to the history of American economic development... Unpretentious but richly rewarding... Delivers on its promises and leaves the reader with much material to chew on.
(Richard Walker
Geographical Review 2004)
Impressive study... has much to offer to historians of antebellum America.
(Sean Patrick Adams
Enterprise and Society 2005)
David Meyer cleverly combines the disciplines of economics, geography, history, sociology, and urban studies. His story of economic growth and development, technological change, and urbanization does for the East Coast manufacturing district what Nature's Metropolis does for Chicago. The Roots of American Industrialization is an insightful look at the East Coast in the antebellum period, when its cities grew internally and met the external challenge of the Midwest, when its industrial plants had yet to reach full flower, before there was any hint of rust.
(Louis P. Cain, Northwestern University )
Meyer has provided a major synthesis of scholarship in historical geography and economic history, which convincingly pushes the roots of industrial transformation of America back to the initial decades of the nineteenth century, locates them squarely in the East without the necessity of interregional trade complementarity, and finds the key in eastern agricultural prosperity. From the synthesis of such a broad array of literature emerges a new interpretation of the industrial transformation of the national economy and its spatial manifestation.
(Edward K. Muller, University of Pittsburgh )
In this important and provocative study, David Meyer challenges the conventional story of economic change in the antebellum East. In a new explanation of regional economic growth, Meyer argues that the origins of industrialization and the development of the Manufacturing Belt are to be found in the intricate relationships existing between increasing agricultural productivity, growing real incomes, capital investment, technological innovation, social and business networks, and urbanization. A fascinating account of early American regional growth, The Roots of American Industrialization is essential reading for scholars from a range of disciplines, including geography, history, economics, sociology, regional studies, and urban studies.
(Robert Lewis, University of Toronto )
