Focusing on the historic controversies surrounding freight rates, Close Ties explores the ways in which Canadians tried to regulate the nation's first big business, the railways. Ken Cruikshank challenges earlier interpretations, concluding that the history of railway regulation in Canada is not a story of powerful business corporations using governments to subvert the people's interests, nor a tale of righteous people overcoming robber barons. Instead, he presents a more complex and engaging account of how governments tried to accommodate the equally selfish demands of divergent and...