Contesting the Master Narrative: Essays in Social History. – Review – book review Thomas Bender Contesting the Master Narrative: Essays in Social History. By Edited by Jeffrey Fox and Shelton Stromquist (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998. 266pp.). It is difficult to characterize this volume, which derives from a “Workshop on the Rhetoric of […]
Category: Journal of Social History
Crossing over the Line: Legislating Morality and the Mann Act Beryl Satter In June of 1910 President Taft signed the White Slave Traffic Act into law. This law, more commonly known as the Mann Act, made it a federal crime to transport women or girls across state lines with the “intent and purpose to induce, […]
Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World – Review Benjamin McArthur By Dale Cockrell (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. xx plus 236pp. $54.95). Social historians who have not dipped into the recent historical literature of the American theatre may be in for a surprise. Replacing the traditional chronicles of performance, full of […]
Building environments: perspectives in vernacular architecture, volume X Simon J. Bronner Building Environments: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, Volume X. Edited by Kenneth A. Breisch and Alison K. Hoagland (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005. xiv + 299 pp. $32.00). If ever there was an odd addition to the series of volumes devoted to vernacular architecture […]
Seeing Like A State. – Review – book review Michael Adas Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. By James C. Scott (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998. xiv plus 445pp.). It does not require a very thorough examination of the history of the long twentieth […]
Mental Disability in Victorian England: The Earlswood Asylum, 1847-1901 – Book Review Gerald N. Grob Mental Disability in Victorian England: The Earlswood Asylum, 1847-1901. By David Wright (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. xii plus 244 pp. $65.00). Since the 1960s the histories of psychiatry and mental illnesses have become vibrant and controversial subjects. They arouse […]
The Culture of the English People: Iron Age to the Industrial Revolution. – book reviews Alan Macfarlane The aim and scope of this book are accurately reflected in its title. About one third of the work traces the history of housing in England. Not only the physical structure but all aspects of heating, lighting and […]
Slavery in North Carolina, 1748-1775. – book reviews Douglas Ambrose North Carolina has received considerably less scholarly attention than have other mainland southern colonies of British North America. Its late settlement, diversified economy, and thin documentary record have made it less attractive to historians than the Chesapeake or the Carolina and Georgia low country. Marvin […]
Houdini, Tarzan and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America. . – Reviews – book review Kevin White Houdini, Tarzan and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America. By John F. Kasson (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001. viii plus 256 […]
Insecure Prosperity: Small-Town Jews in Industrial America, 1890-1940. – book reviews Deborah Dash Moore Ewa Morawska has written a gem of a book – not the hard-edged diamond she refers to in her fascinating appendix (itself a model account of a researcher’s path), but the opalescent mother of pearl with its many nuances. Although she […]