Negative Positive
Title: Good source of historical facts; no theory or analysis
Review: What Segrave does, he does well, and this is to conduct thorough archival research. The book is a straightforward re-presentation of this material, without much embellisment by Segrave. His chapters are paired examinations of somewhat arbitrarily defined eras - "practices" over several decades is met in the next chapter with "responses" to these practices over the same decades. This provides what little structure the book has, and doesn't contribute much analytically.This book is a solid introduction to media-recorded historical events and attitudes concerning tipping in the U.S., and a good general factual background on that. A must for any serious research on tipping. However, anyone looking for any sort of theory or analysis must look elsewhere, as Segrave is very deliberately focused on one thing - "just the facts, please".
Is the review positive or negative? 