Philip Scranton's important book is the first systematic effort to understand the character and development of specialty producers across the US economy after the Civil War, when they played a significant but little investigated role in industrialization. The book is an effective complement to, and in part a critique of, the thesis that the emergence of mass production and managerial firms generated a new, more guided and progressive kind of capitalist development. Building on the flexible specialization literature, Scranton argues that the focus on mass production and the managerial firm is too narrow because it misses the growth of specialty producers, which he conceives as firms that manufactured to custom order or in small batches. Endless Novelty explores “the industrial and institutional dynamic” of specialty manufacturing in the 1865–1925 period, a dynamic which Scranton maintains was different from but just as important as that of mass production. Ascending before or alongside the managerial firm, specialty producers generated a significantly larger share of manufacturing output—roughly half of all manufacturing value added over the 1890 to 1923 period. Moreover, Scranton argues, they were technologically and organizationally innovative and produced machinery and related elements required for mass production. If the argument is right, Chandler's thesis explains only part of the transformation of American manufacturing and must be complemented and in part underpinned by the history of specialty production.