Natasha Vall's book makes a major contribution to the study of urban history and also provides a substantial methodological discussion of wider interest than urban history. Her study is of two northern industrial cities, both of which had large shipbuilding industries and big unskilled workforces in the twentieth century. The book constitutes a thoughtful and impressive comparative study. While industrial decline is the most notable similarity, her sensitive and well-researched study also reveals that decline brings out substantial differences. Malmo was notable for more deskilling of labour and for experiencing industrial decline later, notably from the 1970s. Dr Vall raises many perceptive points. Should the transition from industrial-based economies to ones centred more on consumption and entertainment be seen as decline (other than industrial decline)? Her comparative approach facilitates many shrewd discussions of what-might-have-beens in both cities. She observes that ‘the counterfactual question is generated in the context of empirical, rather than imagined historical circumstances, and each example provides a commentary on the other's counterfactual’ (p. 165). In comparing two cities over six decades she is shrewd in her foci. She takes several broad themes: the decline of industry and the coming of its economic successors, labour and housing, social change, culture and the rise of regionalism. Within these she provides fresh and succinct discussions of major aspects of these. For instance, on culture, she analyses in subsections elite consensus and cultural welfarism, in which various patronizing efforts to take arts to working people largely failed, cultural policy and the 1960s and after counter-culture, and local politics and football culture. These subsections are concisely argued comparative studies, which also help her study to move forward in time. Her empirical counterfactual method enables her to offer judgments on a range of issues. For instance, on the frequent claims that a large and growing public sector substantially contributes to explanations for slow growth in manufacturing she comments that the opposite was the case in Malmo.

Natasha Vall's book is notable for its direct discussion of its methodology. She provides a thoughtful chapter devoted to the theory of comparative history and to what her study offers as evidence of its merits. She makes the case for Malmo and Newcastle for studying them in the same time period. This makes sense, not least as they were influenced by each other in such matters as housing. Others have discussed the possibilities of comparisons in different time periods, comparing similar stages of industrial development, a point briefly commented on by Stefan Berger in The British Labour Party and the German Social Democrats 1900–1939 (1994). I wonder if there could be advantage from consideration of whether some social developments are different owing to later industrialization. This would be a social variant of Alexander Gerschenkron's Economic Backwardness in Comparative Perspective (1954), in which he argued for a range of economic patterns arising as a consequence of later industrialization. Natasha Vall also suggests that her comparative methodology is sufficiently robust to undercut objections to her history from postmodernists. She sees such comparative urban studies as hers as being at the forefront of new European history, with its focus on regions. She comments, ‘This “geographic turn” raises many new questions about the character, economy, politics and culture of such places’ (p. 183). She has written a very able and thought-provoking book, which is a pleasure to read.