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  • The Age of Smoke: Environmental Policy in Germany and the United States, 1880–1970
  • David Stradling (bio)
The Age of Smoke: Environmental Policy in Germany and the United States, 1880–1970. By Frank Uekoetter. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009. Pp. viii+350. $65/$26.95.

The Age of Smoke is the English translation of Frank Uekoetter's 2003 monograph, Von der Rauchplage zur okologischen Revolution: Eine Geschichte der Luftverschmutzung in Deutschland und den USA 1880–1970. It reads remarkably well, in part because of the good work of Thomas Dunlap, who translated large parts of the book, and in part because Uekoetter writes fluently in English, as evidenced in a new introduction and conclusion. Although the footnotes are truncated here, this translation readily reveals the remarkable amount of research Uekoetter undertook on two continents in preparing this book.

Uekoetter's work is most remarkable in its scope, however. Not only does he attempt to compare the air pollution policies of two nations, but he does so over the course of nearly a century, during which both the United States and Germany changed dramatically. So too did the air pollution problem itself, evolving from one dominated by particulates from coal smoke to a more complex problem involving diverse chemicals from industrial smokestacks and automobile tailpipes. Simply in undertaking this large and difficult task, Uekoetter's work is an accomplishment.

Uekoetter draws a number of conclusions, some surprising, some not. He describes two different "national styles of regulation." Germans were more reliant on bureaucrats who exercised moderate control over industry, while Americans were more likely to rely on democratic reform activism and an antagonistic relationship with industry. But Uekoetter goes further, [End Page 254] reminding us that we should not essentialize national styles and that there were many possible regulatory paths for each nation. Although he does not emphasize the results of various approaches to regulation—most likely because objective data on air quality are rare in this period—he clearly favors the cooperative approach taken by Germany. Indeed, Uekoetter laments the American tendency to ignore the possibilities of cooperation and confront industry with lawsuits and other adversarial tactics. He concludes that "the most precious resource in environmental policy is probably neither money nor expertise: it is trust" (p. 266). For Uekoetter, the lesson of this comparison is that Americans should be more trusting of big business. This is a surprising conclusion, of course, because it ignores almost everything we've learned about American industry's relationship to the environment during the decades Uekoetter studies.

Although the book includes some significant discussion of technology, such as the electrification of railroads and the development of electrostatic precipitation, Uekoetter may underplay technology's role. He paraphrases the Franklin Institute's 1897 declaration "that it was possible to combat the smoke nuisance and that it was worthwhile doing so," a determination that Uekoetter concludes took "any technological objections to the fight against smoke . . . off the table" (p. 25). This may explain why he pays so little attention to the role of policy in forcing technological development or adoption. There is little discussion of the movement of technology across national boundaries, or of the international engineering community.

Of course, Uekoetter is mostly interested in policy formation and implementation, and so his lack of attention to technology might be excused. Still, the revised introduction is a disappointment. Instead of addressing the work of some half-dozen scholars who have published substantial works on air pollution history in the last decade, Uekoetter takes on an ideologically driven book published by the Cato Institute which unsurprisingly and unconvincingly argues that federal involvement in air pollution regulation wasn't necessary. More problematic, the introduction fails to explore the comparative project itself. There is no mention of Daniel T. Rodgers's seminal Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (1998), which says so much about the international nature of reform movements over most of the period in question, nor is there mention of Harold L. Platt's monumental Shock Cities: The Environmental Transformation and Reform of Manchester and Chicago (2005), which addresses air pollution at length. And so, Uekoetter misses the opportunity to discuss the real value...

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