Infrastructure and Services

With rapidly expanding information sources available in libraries and on the internet, researchers delving into business history need to know what is useful and what is not. Together with the first two volumes of the Handbook of American Business History, this third volume book provides a guide to business history and to the overwhelming amount of information on the subject. In twenty-one entries on specific industries, contributors offer concise histories of infrastructure, including electricity, gas, and communications, as well as service industries, such as banking, medical insurance, mortuary, advertising, and education. Bibliographic essays, supplemented with bibliographic lists, point to the most important sources on each industry.

Written during the most rapidly changing decade in American business history, the Handbook is a consolidated business history of the United States. Volume III addresses basic industries such as mining, electricity, and natural gas trade; services such as financial, health, educational, and social-business organizations; and public administration. The histories of the industries begin with the industries' rise to importance in the United States and continue to the present. The bibliographic essays discuss the leading sources since Robert Lovett's American Economic and Business History Information Sources (1971) and Henrietta Larson's Guide to Business History (1948). This volume and the two companion volumes provide a useful resource for the researcher, teacher, and student.

David O. Whitten is professor of economics at Auburn University. He has published several books on business and economic history, including The Emergence of Giant Enterprise, 1860-1914 (Greenwood, 1983), Manufacturing: A Historiographical and Bibliographical Guide (Greenwood, 1990), Extractives, Manufacturing, and Services: A Historiographical and Bibliographical Guide (Greenwood, 1997), and (with Douglas Steeples) Democracy in Desperation: The Depression of 1893 (Greenwood, 1998).

Bessie E. Whitten is editor of Business Library Review International, with David O. Whitten, and coeditor of Manufacturing: A Historiographical and Bibliographical Guide and Extractives, Manufacturing, and Services: A Historiographical and Bibliographical Guide, both with David O. Whitten.