In 1890, the U.S. Census Bureau declared the American frontier closed: California had been settled, and the gradual westward movement of American pioneers was officially over. Three years later, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner wrote that the closing of the American frontier marked the end of a crucial formative period in American history. He noted that "the frontier is the line of most rapid Americanization," and argued that the American character--"that coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and acquisitiveness; that practical inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things ... that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism"--grew out of the frontier mentality that made Americans what they are. Turner's account of the American mind was as mournful as it was insightful; without a wilderness to conquer, he suggested, Americans would no longer be fully themselves.

Such sorrowful nostalgia was short-sighted, however. The thrilling formative risk of westward expansion may have been a thing of the past by 1890, but the mindset that thrived on the frontier did not close along with it. Indeed, Americans have spent the last century busily contriving new frontiers for themselves. Space, as we know from Star Trek, is perhaps the most famous of these. But despite the show's assurances, space is hardly the final frontier. A new one was opened as recently as 1982, when the FCC announced its plans to give away spectrum to prospective developers of cellular phone technology.

Spectrum, or the range of frequencies on which energy moves through time and space, is, according to James B. Murray, "the commodity on which every kind of wireless communication runs, from garage door openers to pagers to satellite dishes and beyond." Murray's new book, Wireless Nation: The Frenzied Launch of the Cellular Revolution in America, chronicles what John Sidgmore of WorldCom calls a "modern gold rush," the wild and crazy scramble that has seen thousands of latter-day prospectors risk everything for the potentially priceless rights to the frequencies upon which cellular technology would run. President Clinton himself once referred to spectrum as an information age "gold mine," and indeed it has turned out to be the sonic equivalent of solid gold: given away by the FCC for next to nothing during the 1980s, spectrum has been a source of seemingly bottomless wealth and opportunity to the lucky few who own it.

Partly because no one knew for sure whether cellular technology would take off, partly because the FCC continually botched the distribution of spectrum (which at various points it tried to allocate according to merit, to give away by lottery, and to auction off to the highest bidder), the race for spectrum truly was a gamble in lawless, uncharted territory. Indeed, in recent years spectrum has been a sort of wireless Wild West, and the story of how it was settled is every bit as colorful as the legendary history that has become the stuff of John Wayne films and Louis L'Amour fiction. As Murray puts it, "the birth of America's cellular telephone industry is a story filled with more geniuses, charlatans, heroes, and goats than any novel or play."

Those geniuses, charlatans, heroes, and goats come alive as Murray describes the smarts, the stupidities, and the shenanigans of the singular characters and corporations that have chased spectrum over the last twenty years. Indeed, Wireless Nation is as much a history of the personalities behind the cellular industry as it is a history of how that industry came into being. Beginning with Guglielmo Marconi's experiments with wireless telegraphic radio in the 1890's, the book takes a swift tour through the development of wireless technology during the twentieth century. But the bulk of Wireless Nation centers on the years from 1982 to the present, and is devoted to detailed accounts of the brilliant dealmaking, slick doubledealing, and spectacular bungling that made up the scramble for spectrum. Murray delivers unforgettable portraits of billionaire moguls wheeling and dealing in the Waldorf Astoria; brilliant irascibles making enemies as fast as they make money; slimy hucksters bending, breaking, and even butchering the rules; and ordinary working-class Americans, truckdrivers, nurses, and teachers who bet on spectrum early and won bigger than they ever could have imagined.

Against this backdrop stands the hero of Wireless Nation, the cleverest and most visionary dealmaker of them all, Craig McCaw. The smalltime owner of a Seattle cable company who saw from the first how huge cellular would be, McCaw did billions of dollars in deals during the 1980's and early '90's, buying up all the spectrum he could, no matter where it was, at whatever price it took, from every licenseholder who would sell. While major corporations such as Western Union, AT&T, and MCI squandered the chance to make a killing, McCaw and his team built an empire so extensive that it eventually covered the whole U.S. McCaw sold his spectrum holdings--and the nationwide coverage they enabled--to AT&T for 12.6 billion dollars in 1993. The sale that sealed McCaw's status as the legendary genius of cellular thus allowed AT&T to buy its way back into an industry it foolishly passed by in 1982.

In 1982, AT&T predicted that there would be 900,000 cell phone users in the U.S. by the year 2000. But the reality of the industry was far greater than the dream: by the summer of 2000, there were over 100 million cell phone users in the U.S. The lure of mobile, unfettered communication; the freedom of calling from the car, street, or plane; the efficiency of phoning a person rather than a place--these have sold more cell phones to a wider segment of the population than analysts ever thought possible. Concerns about car accidents and brain cancer haven't dampened enthusiasm for cellular. Today, 40% of American use cell phones; 70% are expected to be unplugged by 2007.

But there is a great irony to the story of America's wireless gold rush. Because it was a gold rush--an essentially unregulated speculative free for all--there is a patchwork quality to the privatized, competitive industry that now puts it at a disadvantage as wireless technology advances. In Europe and Asia, for example, where most cellular systems were launched by governmental agencies, cellular is spreading faster, works better, and is much more sophisticated than in the U.S. In some parts of Europe and Asia, cell phone use already tops 90%, and more and more people are abandoning traditional telephones entirely.

A history of how America both blazed the trail and lost the race, Wireless Nation is finally a chronicle of both the glories and pitfalls of free market capitalism. Europeans and Asians, not Americans, will be the first to transmit photos and Web pages via cell phone. And in 2001, more Asians will access the internet through wireless phone than through personal computer--a crossover Americans are not expected to make until 2004.