Michael Adamson offers students of American business and economic development an interesting study of a major construction firm and its innovative methods. He argues the company's use of design-build techniques and concrete formed on site allowed “the restoration of the master builder to the commercial building site” (p. xv). In advancing this argument Adamson adds to our understanding of post–World War II urbanization and economic growth in the United States.

Adamson basically wrote a birth-forward biography of the company and of Charles J. Pankow, the major founder and controlling stockholder. Because the Hawaii unit and other portions of the enterprise existed as virtually stand-alone entities, however, the author retraced some years and some events in different chapters. Indeed, he does an admirable job of explaining why the title reads “Pankow Companies” and not “the Pankow Company,” and why Charles Pankow reorganized his business as a limited partnership serving as the parent organization to other concerns as the firm grew, the tax system changed, and the need to bind his most talented managers to his business increased.

Throughout the twists and turns of the life of Purdue University–educated Charles Pankow, and his still-operating firm, Adamson insists that Pankow and other company leaders steadily promoted design-build methods. Design-build—as opposed to design-bid-build—allowed for more flexible and adaptive approaches to construction and greater cooperation between developer, designer, and builder. After consultation with the owner and designer, the builder provided a structure that fit the budget and plans of the owner and designer instead of simply presenting a bid on a job. That method, along with the onsite production of concrete floors, walls, and beams, often resulted in a less expensive but higher quality product. In that sense Pankow emerges as both an ultimate engineer who elevated the role of builders and a consummate businessman who pioneered methods to expand office and retail space.

Pankow often insisted that recessions favored his business more than booms because his methods allowed better control of costs, and during recessions the availability of the highly skilled labor needed to put those methods into practice increased. He also rode out busts by not overextending his operations, by having a few key relationships with developers, by his senior partners or himself serving as developers, and by the strength of the demand for new construction in Hawaii when the mainland entered recession.

If true, these claims of success in recession provide a primer on how to succeed in the construction industry over the long haul; however, proving those claims requires more comparison with other construction firms than Adamson provides. Other firms are mentioned, but usually only as the training grounds for Charles Pankow and his key associates or as concerns formed by employees who jumped ship. Likewise, despite many photographs of major buildings and key employees, there are few graphs or charts comparing Pankow with industry averages or other major companies. Perhaps Adamson simply lacked access to key financial records, because Pankow's firm is ongoing, but the lack of hard numbers limits the significance of this book.

More imaginative use of the available sources also would have increased the book's significance. Take the case of labor and compensation. Oral interviews, the bedrock of this study, indicate that Pankow and other top managers hired union labor. They did not cut costs by hiring at the lowest possible wages; instead, they hired reliable, experienced, and self-directed workers, field superintendents, and managers who avoided costly errors. Pankow companies paid in effect the most efficient wage, not the lowest wage. They paid wages and provided compensation packages that secured the greatest available talent and experience, reduced turnover, and preserved the knowledge and commitment needed to use design-build methods and on-site fabrication of components of a building. Was this practice unique to the construction trades and, particularly, to Pankow companies? Where did the idea come from? Did it come from a desire to restore the status of the master builder or from a hard-boiled business sense that riding out recessions required the reputation provided by highly skilled labor and good management? Obviously, Charles Pankow, who died a decade ago, could not answer these questions, and according to Adamson, the company kept relatively few records. Still, Adamson should have better framed these questions and focused on them as reasons for success. Instead, what we have often reads as one new building project after another and then a jump shift to Hawaii and back.

While traipsing through these building projects, however, Adamson intriguingly suggests that preexisting and carefully nurtured connections also played a key role in the success of the Pankow companies. Charles Pankow had followed his father into the construction business, and some of his earliest projects as head of his own company were completed in affiliation with his father's company. Acquaintances and contacts made while working for others played a role in the early viability of Pankow's business. It seems that Pankow instructed George F. Hutton, who headed operations in Hawaii, to carefully cultivate repeat customers and potential new business. One glaring hole in this trail of carefully nurtured connections concerns the financing of Pankow's own development efforts and of the start-up of his construction business. Did Pankow use his construction business as a bank to finance development projects or did he have special access to insurance companies and bankers? Certainly, his major long-term customer on the mainland seems to have been Safeco Insurance. Did that lead to other sources of capital? Again, even with limited sources, pushing beyond the self-imposed boundaries of this book would have borne fruit.

Despite limited sources and imagination, Adamson provides an intriguing thesis. The design-build methodology combined with on-site fabrication shifted the balance of power back toward construction companies and engineers. This at least partially explains the impressive increase in building activity in post–World War II America.