One of the chief reasons people congregate in cities is to make money. Yet urban historians in the United States have too often neglected the business institutions integral to metropolitan development. Domenic Vitiello (with the assistance of George E. Thomas) has endeavoured to answer this neglect in his history of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. He recounts the history of the exchange in the context of Philadelphia's history and traces its influence, or lack of influence, on the growth of that city. By doing so, he offers a worthy example of hybrid urban-business history that others might follow.

Vitiello begins his account in the eighteenth century, examining the mercantile exchange that met at Philadelphia's London Coffee House. He correctly emphasizes colonial Philadelphia's role in a global transatlantic economy, recognizing that the much-discussed phenomenon of globalization is nothing new. Throughout its history, Philadelphia has been a player in the world economy. In 1790 businessmen formally created what became known as the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. Antedating its New York counterpart by two years, it was the first stock exchange in the United States. As the home of the Bank of the United States and the United States Mint, Philadelphia was the financial capital of America in the early nineteenth century, and the nascent stock exchange benefited from this status. In the 1830s the Bank of the United States lost its role as the nation's central bank, but by that time the stock exchange was embarking on a new era of vitality and significance. It financed the coal mines, canals and railroads that were to make Philadelphia an industrial hub. Moreover, in the 1860s Philadelphia financiers bankrolled the Union victory in the Civil War. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange stagnated as did the city's economy. Though Philadelphia remained a major industrial centre, in commerce and finance it was clearly second-rate compared to New York City and its manufacturing base was not expanding at the rate of booming Midwestern hubs. Until the mid-twentieth century the fortunes of Philadelphia and its stock exchange paralleled one another. Vitiello contends, however, that during the late twentieth century they pursued divergent paths. The city's ageing economic base deteriorated whereas the long-lethargic stock exchange embraced innovation and found new life. Basically, the stock exchange no longer reflected or greatly influenced the fortunes of the city.

In this compact history Vitiello has performed a signal service to urban historians. Some readers might wish he had explained more fully some of the technical jargon of finance that appears in the narrative. To those untutored in financial capitalism, the meaning of certain passages might well prove obscure. On the whole, however, Vitiello illuminates the significance of business institutions in the making of a city. Urban history is not simply the social history of race and class or a recitation of the dreams of planners and reformers. It is the story of money and how the making of money made the metropolitan world of today.