There is little doubt that planters dominated the political, economic, and social structures of Virginia. Their power remained virtually unchallenged through the rise and fall of the colonial tobacco boom, the dramatic expansion of slavery in the Chesapeake colonies, and the struggle for independence that culminated in their own backyard at Yorktown. Despite their vaunted status in the Old Dominion's history, the characterization of the planters' economic worldview is less settled. Many historians argue that they had no or little entrepreneurial spirit and instead became risk-averse conservatives whose influence rested upon their large land holdings, political networking, and domination of tidewater society. In her compact book entitled Irons in the Fire: The Business History of the Tayloe Family and Virginia's Gentry, 1700–1860, Laura Croghan Kamoie breaks from this interpretation by using the lives of three John Tayloes as knitted case studies in planter entrepreneurship during the colonial and early national periods of Virginia's history. She concludes that Johns I, II, and III employed strategies of diversification and risk-taking throughout their collective business careers, and that John III had become the “consummate entrepreneur” by the early nineteenth century (p. 124). Although focused on a single family, Irons in the Fire has much to offer to the early business and economic history of the American South.

Kamoie reconstructs the Tayloes' entrepreneurial spirit quite convincingly by drawing upon extensive manuscript records and blending them into a readable narrative account of the three generations. She begins Irons in the Fire with the story of John I, born into one of Virginia's wealthiest families and raised amidst the collapse of tobacco prices in the early eighteenth century. John I bought land to expand the family's holdings in the Northern Neck of Virginia, but also diversified his interests when he constructed an ironworks on his land along Neabsco Creek in the Potomac River basin. By mid-century, Tayloe had over 100 slaves on this land engaged in ironworking, growing oats and corn, and raising livestock. John II extended this trend by adding shipbuilding, flour milling, and new crops into the family's business holdings. As they saw “no contradiction or conflict between his interests in land and slaves and those in business and industry” (p. 35), Kamoie thus presents the first two John Tayloes as prototypes for a new historical model for southern planters involving diversification, risk-taking, and vision. Although she provides some evidence that other planters acted as the Tayloes did, the brevity of Irons in the Fire prevents a more extensive exploration as to the typicality of such behavior among Virginia's other planter families.

John III continued the longstanding practice of adding land to the Tayloe family holdings, but also dabbled in Federalist politics and urban development. After 1801 he split the year between the new capital of Washington, D.C. and the traditional family home at his Mount Airy Plantation in Virginia. He invested heavily in Washington real estate and eventually moved into hotels, stage lines, and local internal improvements. John III also became a director of the Bank of the United States in 1808 and was enmeshed in the affairs of the BUS until his death in 1828. After dutifully listing all of his investments and ventures, Kamoie concludes that “Tayloe's consistent willingness to expand, diversify, and adjust his commercial activities revealed a versatility and entrepreneurship comparable to those of any northern businessman of the period” (p. 150).

One clear regional distinction, however, remains significant to the story of planter entrepreneurs. As southerners, all three generations of the Tayloe family engaged in slavery. In assessing John III's management of his plantations across Virginia, Kamoie also engages in a close examination of the lives of those held in bondage by the Tayloe family. Reinforcing themes already established by the work of Ron Lewis (Coal, Iron, and Slaves: Industrial Slavery in Maryland and Virginia, 1715–1865. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979) and John Bezís-Selfa (Forging America: Ironworkers, Adventurers, and the Industrious Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004) she finds that John III depended upon highly skilled African-American labor in not only his agricultural pursuits, but also in ironmaking, milling, shipping, and horse breeding and racing. Like those scholars before her, she highlights the ways in which slavery could be adapted to a number of economic endeavors without much difficulty. Slaveholding never seemed to limit the scale and scope of the Tayloe family endeavors; indeed the adaptability of their bonded workers offered these Virginia planters a certain degree of flexibility in allocating labor. Kamoie might have delved more deeply into the Tayloe family's approach to slavery. She notes the many positive incentives offered to their enslaved workers, but also hints at a brusque management style, as John III “wished to avoid separating families, but he frequently did so when it suited his interests” (pp. 122–23). If John III is to serve as the model entrepreneur in Kamoie's narrative, the question of whether he was a model slaveholder as well is an underdeveloped theme here.

This brief book provides a compelling portrait of one of Virginia's most significant planter families. Kamoie is a gifted writer and she breathes life into the Tayloe family—no easy task given the terse prose of early business records. Her assertion that not all Virginia planters were aristocratic and risk-averse grandees is convincing, but could be more applicable had she spent more time assessing the Tayloes' typicality among their peers in Virginia and elsewhere. At times, a more extensive foray into the South outside of the Tayloe family's sphere of interest might have reinforced Kamoie's ideas about planter entrepreneurship. These limitations of space aside, Irons in the Fire is an excellent work of history that should be required reading for those interested in the development of southern business practices in colonial America and the early United States.