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Modernizing Main Street: Architecture and Consumer Culture in the New Deal. By Gabrielle Esperdy.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. x + 307 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. Cloth, $35.00. ISBN: 0-226-21800-7

Orleans, survived the open-shop drive of the post-World War I era, enabling dockworkers to retain "at least some of their former power," including maintenance of "control over work rotation and hiring through the union hiring hall," even as the port lost considerable ground to other Gulf Coast rivals (p. 210). To his credit, Farrington strikes a judicious balance in his interpretation of race and labor relations on Galveston's waterfront, largely avoiding the excessive moralism that characterizes various studies in the field. Attentive to changes in shipping technologies and the different approaches of coastwise and deep-sea shippers as well as smaller contractors, he links the material conditions of longshore employment to the range of options available to dockworkers. While the complexity of his story and his reluctance to draw moralistic conclusions might limit the book's appeal to those in the field seeking clear-cut lessons, Farrington's empirical findings add significantly to our understanding of the black union tradition and the contours of biracial unionism in the South.