Review of \u3ci\u3eWichita: The Early Years, 1865-1880\u3c/i\u3e By H. Craig Miner

City histories written in the late nineteenth century by amateurs were panegyrics to local men of property and standing. City biography was very much just that-a collective biography of the men who made the city what it was. As the discipline of urban history has matured, the view that tied each community\u27s development to the unique personalities of its leaders has given way to an interest in the process of urbanization and the examination of cities as case studies, important primarily because of what they say about the larger urban experience. Craig Miner\u27s Wichita is a throwback to the old city biography, not only in its delight in the particular but also in its thesis that Wichita\u27s elite was the key ingredient in the town\u27s development. Miner contends, for instance, that Wichita\u27s brief but profitable involvement in the cattle trade was due less to the town\u27s fortuitous location than to the alertness and aggressiveness of its businessmen. Taking issue with Robert Dykstra and others who have emphasized the divisions among Wichita\u27s business leaders, Miner finds a broad consensus in the urge to promote Wichita as a place to make money. The argument has merit and comports with the view of a few historians who in recent years have taken an idiosyncratic approach to urban history by reasserting the importance of every city\u27s own character and personality. Unfortunately, Miner\u27s is a weak effort. Wichita\u27s business community and political leaders, except for a few notables, are not identified or described in any detail, nor are they compared to those of other Kansas towns. Miner can not demonstrate that Wichita\u27s businessmen were any more farsighted or aggressive than other entrepreneurs on this urban frontier. Miner asserts his thesis rather offhandedly, for to elaborate would interrupt the narrative. The book lacks conceptual sophistication