Dave Tabler’s DELAWARE FROM FREEWAYS TO E-WAYS is popular history—it serves as a short introduction to a variety of topics about Delaware, rather than entering any deep analysis or constructing an analytical argument—but it is popular history well-presented. The facts and imagery are drawn from a variety of archives, historical societies, and local-interest groups, so there’s no impeaching the text’s bona fides. The imagery itself is compelling, especially imagery of technology (19th-century lighthouse schematics, 1960s spacesuit designs, and photography of polio patients in “iron lung” machines, all stood out for this reviewer). In this regard—as a coffee-table book, where a reader might casually flip pages and stop on a picture that piques their interest—FROM FREEWAYS TO E-WAYS is perfectly serviceable.

Upon closer scrutiny, however, the text proves to be poorly organized for either sustained enjoyment or understanding. The most straightforward problem is that the text about any particular topic is only given the space of three or four paragraphs, accompanying an appropriate image. Any further information is relegated to endnotes (the arguably mistitled “Notes on Photographs”). The problem is that these endnotes comprise the bulk of the text. By page count, they constitute half the book; and, by volume, the overwhelming majority of actual information is found in this section. In many instances, the most interesting or valuable information about any given topic is “below the fold,” forcing a reader to break flow, consult the endnotes, then flip back to their place in the first half of the text. Sometimes, this means a reader will miss historical curios like the doughty Mary Hopkins, who drove the state’s first mobile libraries to service rural communities in 1912, or the particulars of the original Fenwick Island Lighthouse (“An imported Parisian prism, which a watchman manually rotated every two minutes, amplified the light from whale oil lamps”). In other instances, this obscures important, unflattering history about capitalists like the du Ponts—who vocally opposed the creation of social security and defamed such measures as “a vicious combination of Fascism, Socialism, and Communism.” It’s unclear why the text isn’t simply arranged for completeness, and for ease of reading and understanding. As is, a reader can either learn about a topic or enjoy a smooth, straightforward reading experience, but cannot quite do both.

Unusual decisions about structure characterize the overall organization of the text, as well. The title itself—from freeways to e-ways—belies the fact that many of the topics (cultural ones like indigenous people, industrial ones like canning, ecological ones like waterways) have roots well outside the 20th century, and their inclusion in a work about the transition from physical to digital infrastructure can be difficult to justify. Internally, the topics are arranged in a nominally chronological order, broken into four overarching sections (1900-25, 1926-50, etc.). These sections are very rough groupings, and contain material that doesn’t always clearly connect: does “Bird Migration” belong under “Corporate Legacies & Societal Shifts,” or “Nanticoke Powwows” under “Toward Digital Horizons”? The juxtaposition of such broad, complex topics often confuses the chronology, and, at times, inhibits understanding.

DELAWARE FROM FREEWAYS TO E-WAYS would benefit from some reorganization, which would allow it to better accomplish the goal of engaging and informing readers. Nonetheless, the content of the book is compelling and historically valuable, especially drawing as it does from archival sources.

Dave Tabler’s DELAWARE FROM FREEWAYS TO E-WAYS is full of vibrant imagery and interesting history, though a lack of clear structure sometimes impedes both learning and enjoyment.

~Dan Accardi for IndieReader