On the Edge: A History of Poor Black Children and Their American Dreams by CarlHusemoller NightingaleReview by: Arnold R. HirschThe American Historical Review, Vol. 100, No. 1 (Feb., 1995), p. 259Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2168165 .

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United States 259

His love of vast, adventurous projects, which the authors acknowledge, explains more of the firm's activities than strategic planning. The talented exec- utives at Texas Eastern seem to be largely occupied by realizing Brown's vision of the company, of the indus- try, and of Houston.

It is also likely that Brown's central role in the economic and political life of Houston made him more than ordinarily responsive to currents in the business community. Thus, he took Texas Eastern into intra-industrial diversification just when other cash-rich petroleum companies were doing so in his community and elsewhere. He was also caught up in the local mania to make Houston the city of the twenty-first century, with his plan for Houston Center.

The history of Texas Eastern is, therefore, more the story of George Brown's entrepreneurial activity than it is of strategic planning. Castaneda and Pratt pro- vide an interesting sketch of a firm that did not begin to make a real transition from entrepreneurial to managerial control until it hired Dennis R. Hendrix, who had executive experience with Panhandle East- ern, CSX, and other corporations that were manage- rial and "strategic." In three years, he divested Texas Eastern of unprofitable subsidiaries with increasing reconcentration on gas transmission. In the process, he made it a tempting target for the acquisition that occurred in 1989. Although this is not what the authors set out to describe, it is ample justification for their efforts. If they can be faulted, it is for trying to fit Texas Eastern into the conceptual world of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., although their history shows that it was a significant exception to his theories.

ROGER M. OLIEN University of Texas, Permian Basin

CARL HUSEMOLLER NIGHTINGALE. On the Edge: A History of Poor Black Children and TheirAmerican Dreams. New York: Basic Books. 1993. Pp. xv, 254. $24.00.

Resurrecting an ethnographic and participant-ob- server approach, Carl Husemoller Nightingale joins the debate on the contemporary inner city, race, and poverty with this exploration of modern Philadelphia. The book outlines the "historical tragedy" that befell urban blacks after World War II, a tragedy reflected in hundreds of case records provided by four social welfare agencies active in the 1950s and 1960s and the author's own observations (beginning in the summer of 1987) of four extended families.

The social changes Nightingale describes are "his- torically unprecedented and exceptional" and in- clude not only the "virtual disappearance of marriage as an institution among poor black people" (p. 16) but also the stressful transformation of relations between adult men and women and, especially, those between fathers and their children. A surge of fatal violence compounded and, in part, grew out of these changes.

Although commentators across the political spec- trum would find little to argue with in this capsule commentary, including the assertion of historical discontinuity, Nightingale strikes out in new direc- tions. It is the burden of his analysis to demonstrate that the young people he has studied, far from being alienated from American society, are instead the "most American of children" (p. 165). Explicitly taking on conservative "underclass" theorists, the author rejects notions of "cultural alienation" and asserts that American patterns of child-rearing and longstanding traditions of violence and racism have combined with the corporate-driven marketing of an abundant material culture and new forms of mass communication to produce a secularized culture of aggression in poverty-crushed inner cities. The com- bination of economic and social exclusion with cul- tural inclusion has produced a deadly mix at the point at which American hope and reality collide. Although presenting a grim portrait, the author ends on a hopeful note, suggesting that concerted efforts at employment and the propagation of an ethnically diverse "national culture of commitment and com- munity" (p. 191) offer a way out of our present dilemma.

The evidence with regard to a few of the facets of Nightingale's argument-such as historical child- rearing practices and the impact of television, movies, other forms of popular culture, and consumerism- may be thin and somewhat speculative. And some might suggest that a revisitation of the H. Rap Brown thesis ("Violence is as American as cherry pie") as well as the author's prescriptions do little to light a new path.

Such criticisms, however, should not detract from the numerous contributions made by this book. First, Nightingale's welcome insistence on the organic unity of American society injects a note of realism into a debate that has too often segregated the races analytically as neatly as it has been done geographi- cally. Second, Nightingale's reassertion of the impor- tance of race and de facto segregation should compel a reexamination of the psycho-social dimensions of a problem hardly resolved byJim Crow's demise. Third, the author's nuanced and subtle treatment of poor black families undermines structurally determined and monocausal interpretations of its transformation while successfully escorting readers through an often arcane literature. Finally, his isolation of a cyclical dynamic that focuses not on poverty but on the perpetuation of a racism that feeds off the historically conditioned self-portraits of young blacks is an insight at once brutal and unnerving.

ARNOLD R. HIRSCH University of New Orleans

CHARLES T. BANNER-HALEY. The Fruits of Integration: Black Middle-Class Ideology and Culture, 1960-1990. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 1994. Pp. xxvi, 232. Cloth $40.00, paper $16.95.

AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW FEBRUARY 1995

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