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Burke Davis, The Southern Railway: Road of the Innovators (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1985, £19.95). Pp. viii, 309. ISBN 0 8078 1636 1.

The Southern Railway was founded in 1894, and by 1900 it had integrated sixty-eight railroads into one system. The Southern gave up its independence in a merger in 1982. According to Burke Davis, between 1894 and 1982 The Southern Railway and the South developed together. Davis analyzes innovation in The Southern as it resulted from the leadership of its nine presidents whose strength and dedication reflected characteristics of men of the South. Their business was conducted honestly and pragmatically. The handshake of president Harry A. DeButts was as good as gold to a subordinate. "Many promises have been made by others on the railroad," the subordinate intones, "but if you'll shake hands on it, I'll do as you say." Another compelling example of their leadership is portrayed as president Bill Brosnan dictated to an assistant, "get me a lawyer. The best. I want brains." The repartee of business leaders makes good reading but bad history, because a handful of men are seen to direct the making of a railroad. Corporate finances are simply numbers which presidents manipulated. The labour of up to 50,000 men and women is only a problem which the company's leaders skilfully negotiated; federal regulatory agencies merely provided a forum for hard bargaining. The problem with this approach to history is best exemplified in the last chapter where the climactic event of the work, the merger of The Southern and the Norfolk and Western in 1982, can only be explained as "one of the major contributions of [President] Hall's career." Despite these shortcomings, the work will certainly capture the attention of railroad enthusiasts with its descriptions of railroad hardware and folklore as it tries to persuade the reader of the dynamic innovativeness of the men who made the Southern and implicitly the South. The historian can even gain from Southern Railway a basic account of a railroad's development as a business between 1894 and 1982, although, with its lack of footnotes, the work will not direct him to further study. Of greater academic interest is the way that Davis perpetuates a familiar idea about how men become successful and how successful men become history and, because Southern Railway is first and foremost a popular history, there is no doubt that this idea will attract a wide readership and even meet with some acceptance.