Peter Scott has delivered a landmark book for students of interwar domestic modernity, which considers the methods, structures, and technologies by which British and American companies provided the most desirable of consumer durables of that period: furniture, radios, cars, and vacuum cleaners. These products transformed British life in the interwar period, especially in the southeast and midlands of England, where those in regular employment enjoyed rising net incomes. Historians have attempted to reconstruct this world of domestic consumption from the point of view of the buyer, and have provided intriguing results, but a paucity of sources makes it difficult to tell the full story. Scott's investigation into the supply side of this process is, therefore, most welcome.

The research for this book, which is exemplary, is based on a deep reading of almost fifty different company archives in the United Kingdom and the United States. This is a major undertaking and the result is a book of great authority and detail, revealed in many useful tables and diagrams. The book is divided into four well-chosen sections, three of which consider successful instances of the development of mass markets in Britain: furniture and new housing; electronic entertainment; and white goods. A fourth section examines two relative failures: cars and telephones. Scott uses an industry value chain approach to analyze these products and estimates where value was added and power resided in each industry, describing the consequences for suppliers and consumers. The book is, because of its subject matter, likely to have a wide readership beyond business history and those readers would have benefited from a fuller explanation and problematizing of industry value chain analysis as an interrogative tool than has been provided here.

The structure and scope of the book also throws up one or two surprises. In a book whose title includes “Creating Mass Markets for Consumer Durables in Inter-war Britain,” which is pretty specific, it is odd to see two separate chapters about the United States: “America's Route to a Mass Market in Radio” and “The Hard Sell: Marketing Vacuum Cleaners in the United States.” Of course, British commercial practice was indebted to American precedents, and American companies, such as Hoover and Firestone, established local subsidiaries to jump Britain's tariff barriers. These chapters are, however, written not to explain how America influenced British practice, but as subjects in their own right. The book's structure would have been improved if these chapters had been repurposed as shorter, contextual sections for their British equivalents.

The structure and the detailed analysis of this book sometimes make for a difficult read, and Scott's preference for corporations and statistics over individuals and stories does not lend itself to the development of an engaging narrative. The book is, nevertheless, an important contribution to the history of interwar Britain, with implications beyond the boundaries of business history. Scott's handling of detail and his mastery of obscure primary sources provides us with much that is new and valuable—for example, in his explanation of how Britain's building industry, banks, building societies, surveyors, and agents worked together to fuel suburbanization. His use of value chain analysis is successful, for example, when he shows how a government monopoly, patent control, technological development, retail strategies, and installment credit interacted to produce a mass market for radio sets. This book provides a definitive history of its subject and will be a valuable source for years to come.