Description
Book SynopsisBy comparing the simple skills employed by firefighters-climbing ladders and manipulating hoses-with the mundane technologies-maps and accounting charts-of insurers, the author demonstrates that the daily routines of both groups were instrumental in making intense urban and industrial expansion a less precarious endeavor.
Trade ReviewFor the true story of the heroic firefighter's role in urban America, turn to Tebeau's investigative account. University of Chicago Magazine Tebeau develops an interwoven story of gender, class, culture, and technology: contrasting the heroics of working-class firefighters with the rational order of middle-class fire underwriters... An engaging narrative and a fascinating story make this book a rare pleasure-both an academic monograph and a good read. -- Dalit Baranoff EH.Net Emblazed against a historic backdrop of 150 years, Eating Smoke chronicles the parallel development of US firefighting forces and the fire insurance industry. Choice In his ambitious and detailed new book, Eating Smoke, Tebeau sets out to explain the role of two largely undocumented actors-firemen and insurance men-in analyzing, managing, and attacking urban fire... Tebeau's study vigorously opens the way for scholars looking to make sense of the city in the midst of an era of uncertainty and risk. -- Scott Gabriel Knowles Enterprise and Society A rich and highly informative work that deftly uses the 'problem' of urban fire to cast light on a wide array of turn-of-the-century transformations. American Historical Review For business historians its fascination may well lie in its combination of an active physical workforce who were banded together methodically in local pump houses and were tamed by a managerial and bureaucratic set of rules and procedures that were monitored by, if not subjected to, the guidelines of insurers. -- Margaret Walsh Business History In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the destructive power of fire posed a major obstacle to the development of urban America... Eating Smoke is a richly detailed chronicle of the two types of effort to confront and contain this vulnerability: firefighting and fire insurance. -- Carol Chetkovich Journal of Interdisciplinary History Tebeau's ambitious, informative, and absorbing book explains, among many other fascinating things, why little boys want to become firemen and not fire-insurance brokers. -- Carl Smith Business History Review
Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Problem of Fire
Part I: Smoke
1. Workshops of Democracy: The Invention of Volunteer Firefighting
2. The Business of Safety: The American Fire Insurance Industry, 1800–1850
Part II: Fire
3. Statistics, Maps, and Morals: Making Fire Risk Objective, 1850–1875
4. Muscle and Steam: Establishing Municipal Fire Departments, 1850–1875
Part III: Water
5. Disciplining the City: Everyday Practice and Mapping Risk, 1875–1900
6. Becoming Heroes: A Standard for Urban Fire Safety, 1875-1900
Part IV: Paper
7. Consuming Safety: Fire Prevention and Fire Risk in the Twentieth Century
8. Eating Smoke: Rational Heroes in the Twentieth Century
Conclusion: Fighting Fire in Postwar America
Appendix 1: Firefighting by the Numbers
Appendix 2: Firefighting Careers
Abbreviations
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index
