Scott Alan Johnston, <i>The Clocks Are Telling Lies: Science, Society, and the Construction of Time</i> Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022. Pp. 264. ISBN 978-0-2280-0843-9. CA$49.95 (cloth).

This book's flyleaf describes it as 'an exploration of why we tell time the way we do'.Its engagingly written opening offers readers unfamiliar with the field an argument about the social nature of timekeeping and introduces the Canadian railway engineer Sandford Fleming's campaign for standard time and the role of the 1884 International Meridian Conference (IMC).Many books cover similar ground, so it seems fair to ask what this one adds.Paul Glennie and Nigel Thrift's Shaping the Day (2009) told the story of technical, intellectual and social developments that shaped timekeeping over the longue durée.Derek Howse's Greenwich Time and the Longitude (1997) outlined how the Greenwich meridian and GMT became local, national and then international standards.Ian Bartky's One Time Fits All (2007) described Fleming's lobbying and how standard time was, slowly, implemented with the adoption of time zones.Most recently, Charles Withers revisited the politics and geographies of the prime meridian and the IMC in Zero Degrees (2017).This book offers both less and more than the title suggests.It does not cover the history of 'the construction of time', paying no attention to the measurement of solar time or the creation of mean time, and little to the navigational, religious or social contexts that drove standardization before the railway and the telegraph.It does, however, add significant depth to the discussion in North America and Britain before, during and after the IMC.It makes good use of primary sources to find new things to say about a well-known story.Using correspondence and institutional archives, Johnston reveals the contingencies and varied interests that shaped discussions in 1884 and limited the IMC's impact on everyday timekeeping.He also provides context on the nature of the scientific community in the late nineteenth century and the range of concerns reflected in the adoption and reception of changes to timekeeping.These include professional gatekeeping, which excluded women's and a range of others' voices, and national, religious and social concerns that made agreement on standards elusive.An important contribution is the reconstruction of internal discussion about Britain's delegation to the IMC.This reveals differing views within government and the overriding concern of the Science and Art Department that agreement on Greenwich should not precipitate acceptance of the metric system.Although Fleming's campaigning had motivated the conference, Johnston shows that his place at the table was far from guaranteed.He also presents useful material on time dissemination and education in North America, including fascinating examples of indigenous communities adopting standard time to demonstrate their capacity to run educational establishments.The sections on Britain seem less novel: newspaper humour about timekeeping changes, the status of

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