Book Review: Going Places: Transportation Redefines the Twentieth-Century West

What was unique about the West in twentieth- century transportation history? Carlos Schwantes does not make the claim, but the bulk of what he writes suggests that aviation\u27s triumph as the preferred mode of passenger travel owes a great deal to the circumstances of geography in the American West. Getting there faster was the business traveler\u27s need. Railroads could provide this in the East, but not in the West, where distances simply were too great. In one of the most interesting sections of Going Places, Schwantes shows how the government\u27s manipulation of air mail contracts not only helped define the outlines of intercity commerce in the West, but also created the network structure of the nation\u27s leading airline companies