Pompeii: The Living City – By Alex Butterworth and Ray Laurence

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EDITORIAL OFFICE: Elliott Hall IV, Ohio Wesleyan University;Delaware, OH 43015. TELEPHONE: 740-368-3642. Facsimile: 740-368-3643.

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EDITOR

Richard SpallOhio Wesleyan University

REGIONAL SUB-EDITORS

Robert Dietle(Modern Western Europe)Western Kentucky University

Richard B. Allen(Africa, Middle East, and South Asia)

Framingham State College

Douglas R. Bisson(Early Modern Europe)Belmont University

Betty Dessants(United States Since 1865)

Shippensburg University

Helen S. Hundley(Russia and Eastern Europe)Wichita State University

Nigel Kennell & Stefanie Kennell(Ancient World)

Memorial University of Newfoundland

Jose C. Moya(Latin America)University of California atLos Angeles

Paulette L. Pepin(Medieval Europe)

University of New Haven

Susan Mitchell Sommers(Britain and the Empire)Saint Vincent College

Richard Spall(Historiography)

Ohio Wesleyan University

Susan Westbury(United States)Illinois State University

Peter Worthing(East Asia and the Pacific)

Texas Christian University

STUDENT EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS

SENIOR ASSISTANTS

Jennifer Kirsop Ryan JarvisScarlett Rebman Matthew McGuire

Kaleigh Felisberto Ben Malecki Zak GomesRyan Colopy Colin Magruder Troy JeffreyJanna Dagley Patrick O’Connor Abraham GustavsonSean Kennedy Kara Reiter Lauren McCulloughMatt Lovering Alex Branstool Jesse Hysell

WORD PROCESSING: LAURIE GEORGE & VALERIE HAMILL

mailto:[email protected]

http://go.owu.edu/~brhistor

AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST

Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787–2005. By James T.Campbell. (New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press, 2006. Pp. xxvi, 513. $29.95.)

The author of this study has written a fascinating book that examines twocenturies of African American journeys to Africa. Using representative individu-als for successive generations, James T. Campbell explains Africa’s persistenthold on African Americans. The cast of characters includes the famous LangstonHughes and W. E. B. DuBois and the less known Ayuba Suleiman Diallo andWilliam Henry Sheppard. Suspended between two continents and cultures, suchmen harbored ambivalence toward America, where they faced slavery, racism,discrimination, and lack of economic opportunity. At the same time, culturalechoes of Africa reverberated through their subconscious and the continent oftheir forefathers exerted a powerful and mysterious pull. The result was anamalgam of unrealistic expectations and journeys to Africa that rarely exceededexpectations.

The long shadow of colonization and its tragic consequences stalk the book’spages. Liberia and, to some extent, Sierra Leone show there was a uniquelyAmerican quality about returning to Africa. Emigrants did not want to becomeAfricans but wanted to create a society where they were free to enjoy the privilegesdenied them in North America. As Campbell archly observes, “early proponentsof African emigration revealed just how profoundly American they were” (30).Even though Liberia was an obvious failure, colonization was fairly popular in the1850s and it experienced resurgence thirty years later. That repatriation to a fetidand dangerous nation could hold such sway is testimony to the bleak prospectsthat African Americans faced in the United States.

African American missionaries regarded Africa as particularly fertile groundfor the spread of the Gospel. They were, perhaps, too successful, and pressurefrom European colonial officials forced American churches to limit the number ofblack missionaries. Campbell ironically notes that during the nadir of race rela-tions in the United States, a movement emerged where African Americans tried tospread the blessings of Christianity and American civilization. Intellectuals andjournalists went to Africa with high hopes of finding paradise or being automati-cally accepted in society. Langston Hughes, for instance, famously threw hisbooks overboard as a symbolic jettisoning of European culture. Ironically, Afri-cans assumed the light-skinned Hughes was a white man. The indifference ofAfricans was a startling eye-opener.

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Campbell’s elegant writing and breadth of knowledge makes this book adelight. The reader is treated to delightful diversions on a range of topics. At timesthe author is just as informative about African history as he is about Americansociety. The shortcomings of this book are few. It is somewhat curious that neitherMartin Luther King Jr. nor Alex Haley hold a position of prominence in the book.Also, the interaction with Africa is mainly confined to the western coast, and somuch of the continent remains outside the book’s purview. In the final analysis,Africa was a point of refuge for African Americans who saw what they wanted tosee when they looked at Africa and revealed who they really were.

University of Memphis Robert Gudmestad

The Hellenistic Settlements in Syria, the Red Sea Basin, and North Africa. By GetzelM. Cohen. (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2006. Pp. xiv, 477.$85.00.)

Anyone who has puzzled through Hellenistic site names in ancient and moderntexts will immediately recognize the importance of this book. There are oftenmultiple sites with the same name, multiple names for the same site, and commonsite names with unknown locations, so that getting the story straight seemsimpossible. In fact, it is maddeningly impossible, but the author of this work hasmade it significantly less frustrating. A companion volume to his HellenisticSettlements in Europe, the Islands, and Asia Minor [1995], the present bookintegrates and interprets copious literary, archaeological, epigraphic, and numis-matic material on other Hellenistic sites. The result is a detailed study that is bothan enjoyable read and an essential reference work on the Hellenistic and Romanworlds.

The most impressive aspect is Getzel M. Cohen’s facility with sources from wellover ten centuries and across multiple cultures (Greek, Egyptian, Roman, Byzan-tine, Arab, etc.). He rarely, if ever, fails to analyze the sources in relevant context.In several cases, Cohen corrects the ancient sources themselves. His descriptions of“Palestine” and “Coele Syria” clear up some long-standing misconceptions byshowing the various and changing geographical entities referred to by these terms.

Although the work is aimed specifically at Hellenistic and Roman specialists,Cohen provides clear explanations of technical terms that might otherwiseconfuse newcomers. His occasional delightful asides, such as that on the moderndebates over the size of African versus Indian elephants in the ancient world, willinterest nonspecialist and specialist alike (45–48). His discussion of archaeological

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work at Doura Europos should serve as a solid model for presenting any archaeo-logical dispute in a balanced way (156–169).

One of the perennial discussions of Hellenistic and Roman scholarship, theextent to which Alexandria is distinct from Egypt, gets extended and clear treat-ment here (356–381 and appendix iv, 409–423). Any future discussion of Alex-andria ad Aegyptum will necessarily begin with Cohen’s mass of evidence andconvincing conclusions. His explanation of multiple names for single Egyptiansites will clarify much about Egyptian history of several periods (52–58).

The book does not entirely stand by itself, and having the companion volumeat hand will be of much help, as the current volume refers often to discussions inthe former, especially early on. The change of style between footnotes and end-notes might frustrate or turn away some potential readers. Having endnotes aftereach individual site description makes a certain amount of sense, but it ends upgiving the book a hypertechnical look, which might just conceal the truly engagingdescriptions and narrative passages sprinkled amidst the straightforward docu-mentation and reference material.

After encountering this work, the reader, no doubt, will be amazed by theambiguity—or lacunae—in other authors’ listings and descriptions of sites in theHellenistic and Roman worlds.

Grove City College Mark W. Graham

Morocco under King Hassan. By Stephen O. Hughes. (Reading, England: Ithaca Press,2005. Pp. vii, 385. $34.50.)

British journalist Stephen O. Hughes first arrived in Morocco in 1952 and spentthe better part of five decades there. In this fact-filled history, Hughes weighs in ona variety of subjects, peppering his discussions of the economy, political corrup-tion, the status of minorities, and women’s rights with knowing, first-person “Iwas there” anecdotes. Although the thirty-eight-year reign of King Hassan II isHughes’s principal focus, the book’s best pages may well be the first hundred,which are devoted to the French protectorate, the independence movement, andMohammed V’s postindependence rule. Although the violence of that struggle,both against the French and between internal factions, pales in comparison toevents in Algeria, what Hughes describes is nonetheless harrowing. The turmoil ofindependence explains, in part, Hassan’s subsequent recourse to autocratic andoften repressive rule during his long reign.

As “Commander of the Faithful,” King Hassan was revered by Morocco’smasses as quasi-sacred, while Morocco’s radicals and leftist intellectuals reviled


him as a ruthless anachronism. Hughes does not shy from criticizing the monarch,but he offers a generally positive account. Hassan is for him an exponent ofreligious moderation and tolerance and a ruler genuinely interested in the welfareof his subjects. He credits Hassan for not allowing the never-ending WesternSahara dispute to boil over into outright war with neighboring Algeria. Not least,Hughes portrays Hassan as an audacious politician with a talent for neutralizinghis opposition.

Hughes devotes several chapters to the murky Ben Barka affair (the socialistleader who disappeared in Jimmy Hoffa-like fashion in Paris in 1965), and hegives detailed accounts of the two spectacular coup attempts of the early 1970sthat nearly killed Hassan. In the aftermath, the military was purged and hundredsincarcerated, including the family of General Oufkir. The former Defense Ministerand royal hatchet man (thought to be personally responsible for Ben Barka’sdeath) was “suicided” after the first abortive coup.

The horrific ordeal of the Oufkir family and those others left to rot in the desertprison of Tazmamart later came to symbolize the so-called “years of lead,” thename generally given by Moroccans to the oppressive 1970s and 1980s—a nameHughes curiously neglects to use. Considering Hassan’s autocratic rule, it is ironicthat Hughes devotes the bulk of his narrative to Morocco’s parliamentary politicswith its alphabet soup of ineffective parties and paralyzed coalitions. He praisesHassan for liberalization and the “incremental democratization” of the lastdecade of his reign.

First published in 2001, Hughes’s account ends with the accession of the youngMohammed VI to the throne. Although events may have validated Hughes’sdismissive account of Hassan’s leftist opposition, it is too early to say whether hisequally dismissive attitude toward the monarchy’s Islamist opponents is war-ranted. This threat is given greater weight by Marvine Howe, another veteranobserver of the Moroccan scene, whose 2005 book, Morocco: The IslamistAwakening and Other Challenges, takes up where Hughes leaves off.

Oregon State University Jonathan G. Katz

Turkey’s Modernization: Refugees from Nazism and Ataturk’s Vision. By ArnoldReisman. (Washington, D.C.: New Academia Publishing, 2006. Pp. 511. $28.00.)

This massive book (sixteen chapters and 145 illustrations) is the most compre-hensive and probably the definitive study of a little-known event, namely therefuge and employment in the early 1930s of a group of Jewish scholars in Turkishuniversities. According to the author, neither professionals teaching Holocaust


history nor many rabbis preaching on the subject “had any knowledge whatsoeverof Turkey’s role in saving so many intellectuals,” mostly Jews and some anti-NaziGerman victims of Hitler’s Civil Service Law, which passed shortly after he cameto power in January 1933 (xxiii). One of the many targets of the law was theBerlin Group (followed after 1938 by the Vienna Circle). The group comprisedleading philosophers, scientists, scholars, and critics who had gathered aroundHans Reichenbach; even Albert Einstein had connection with it before he leftGermany in December 1932.

Through negotiations with the Turkish government by the Emergency Assis-tance Organization for German Scientists, headed by Dr. Philipp Schwartz, firstthirty, then three hundred, academicians and fifty technicians, urban planners,artists, librarians, etc., were appointed to positions at Istanbul and Ankara. Thisagreement corresponded with Ataturk’s effort to modernize Turkey rapidly; hencethe title of the book. Arnold Reisman, a survivor of the Holocaust, remindsreaders that the Turks had received Jews persecuted in Europe as early as 1376(from Hungary), 1394 (France), and 1492 (Spain); even Leon Trotsky was grantedrefuge before he moved to Mexico. After 1933, some 1,000–1,200 people, includ-ing members of the intellectuals’ families, found refuge in Turkey; some, such asDr. Alfred Kantorowicz, were released from concentration camps at the insistenceof the Turkish government. The refugees, in turn, helped save other Jews fromextermination. For example, Albert Eckstein persuaded the Turkish governmentto let twenty thousand European Jews go through the country, among them 233who came out of Bergen-Belsen in July 1944. The author provides numerousdetailed accounts of individual refugees, their lives in Turkey, and their relationswith their split families, as well as some unusual incidents. In one case, Kantor-owicz was summoned from his bed and brought to the Dolmabahce Palace withall his dentistry equipment to provide the Shah of Iran, then visiting Ataturk, witha “set of teeth outshining all others” (166). After the defeat of Germany some ofthe refugees, such as Kantorowicz and Fritz Neumark, went back home; otherscame to the United States. The impact of the refugee professors and scientists onTurkey is hard to evaluate. They arrived just as Turkey was developing its radicalpositivist-secularist nationalist policy after its first effort at democracy, with theestablishment of the opposition Liberal Party in 1930, had failed. The governmentopenly embraced westernization as its ultimate goal, and the refugees ironicallyserved as the representatives and spokesmen of the science, economy, and tech-nology of the very West that persecuted them because of their faith and origin,which Turkey had recognized as their natural right for centuries. Having studiedunder two of the “German professors,” as they were commonly known, this


reviewer can testify personally that they were highly appreciated and respectedand left lasting memories. But Turkey had at that time only two universities (nowninety-eight), hardly enough to make a wide impact on a population of just overtwenty million (now seventy-three million) with low literacy.

The author provides lists of names and ample information not only about theactivities and problems (salary, retirement) of the refugees, but also about theTurkish local and national political and social events that affected their work andultimately Turkey’s development, which Reisman says lost momentum after Atat-urk’s death in 1938. This book, which deserves a lengthier treatment, is a mine ofuseful information, suitable for all students of Turkish and of Jewish history, andthe reviewer recommends it very highly.

University of Wisconsin, Madison Kemal H. Karpat

Nadir Shah’s Quest for Legitimacy in Post-Safavid Iran. By Ernest S. Tucker. (Gaines-ville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 2006. Pp. xv, 150. $65.00.)

Having risen to power through his military victories, Nadir Quli Khan first deposedthe reigning Safavid Shah, Tahmasp II, on the grounds of his incompetence to rule,then his infant son, ‘Abbas III, and in 1736 took the crown for himself. In so doing,he antagonized those whose loyalty was to the Safavid dynasty, which had ruledIran since 1501. In short, Nadir was an usurper, and, after the murder of Tahmaspand ‘Abbas in 1740, was indirectly responsible for regicide.

Such transitions of power were hardly a novelty in Iranian history, and asimilar, more or less violent upheaval marked the establishment of the Qajardynasty at the end of the eighteenth century. What, if anything, was differentabout Nadir Shah, why was legitimacy a particular problem in his case, and whywas there apparently such a sentiment in favor of the Safavids? The clerical classeshad become increasingly alienated from the regime in its latter years and ques-tioned the Safavids’ own legitimacy, while military support was made conspicuousby its absence during the Afghan siege of Isfahan in 1722, during which time nota single force came from the provinces to try to relieve the capital and rescue theshah. The last years of Safavid rule tell of a regime that had forfeited its authorityand was unable to maintain the integrity of Iran’s borders. What then did theconcept of legitimacy involve?

Nadir Shah, like other parvenus, turned to religion to underpin his rule, andhere Ernest S. Tucker discusses in detail his attempts to create an alternative to thestate-sponsored Shi‘ism of the Safavids, at least for foreign consumption. Hispersistent efforts to establish a fifth official Muslim law school—however well-


meaning in its desire to bridge the gaps between Sunnism and Shi‘ism—certainlywon little support within Iran. Tucker draws on previously unused sources todiscuss Nadir’s negotiations with the Ottomans on this issue, especially theCouncil of Najaf in 1743, and also the second string in his bow, his claim to takehis rightful place alongside the Mughals and Ottomans in the community ofMuslim emperors on the basis of a shared Turkoman ancestry, which has not beenstressed previously.

This brief study is somewhat repetitive in drawing out the few points that canbe brought to bear on the issue, but Tucker gives us a valuable insight into theparadoxes of Ottoman relations with Iran in the eighteenth century—the loyaltyto treaty arrangements made with the inveterate enemy, the Safavids, and thereluctance to deal with a new neighbor in Iran espousing a return to Sunnism—aswell as the longer-term consequences of Nadir’s initiatives: namely a frameworkfor relations between independent Muslim states in the early modern world and,in Iran, the increasing separation of the religious establishment from the crown.Among the several strengths of this study is its sensitivity to the nuances of thecontemporary Persian historians’ accounts of Nadir’s reign.

University of Cambridge Charles Melville

THE AMERICAS

The War That Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War. By FredAnderson. (New York, N.Y.: Viking, 2005. Pp. xxv, 293. $25.95.)

This book on the French and Indian War provides as good a read as anythingCharles Dickens ever wrote, and is, in some ways, not at all dissimilar. FredAnderson’s work, of course, is the fine art of history, not fiction. But The WarThat Made America is nonetheless literature. Anderson’s narrative reveals a trulyDickensian world in which extraordinary characters collide in unpredictable wayswith possible outcomes evident at any of the numerous turning points and pivotalmoments in the story. A sense throughout that something very important—ifmomentarily obscure or ambiguous—is going on pervades this account of struggleand cultural encounter. It arrives at a conclusion not as the foreseeable result of asingle sequence of contingent events but through the complex, sometimes unfath-omable, interweaving of multiple story lines. Thus the America that emerges in thefinal chapters on the meaning of the colonial movement toward rebellion againstGreat Britain in the 1770s is but a mirror reflecting and refracting developmentsdating to the beginning of Anderson’s “short history.”


Consider George Washington. No minor character, to be sure, but unknownand too green to be of any account at the onset of the Seven Years’ War. Andersonopens and closes with gambits on his role in history. Destiny has long creditedWashington with touching off the imperial conflagration between Britain andFrance as the militia commander who fired on the French forces of Joseph Coulonde Villiers de Jumonville camped at an undistinguished glen in disputed territorynear the forks of the Ohio River in 1754. Anderson’s account, however, achievescomplexity and depth not in what has traditionally been assigned to Washington’syouthful indiscretion, but to the highly intentional murder of the woundedJumonville by Tanaghrisson, a native Catawba and adopted Seneca. The murderwas a calculated, if desperate, attempt to assert Iroquois sovereignty over the OhioCountry and its native inhabitants by implicating the British in a deed that byIndian standards would require retribution and bring the empire into alignmentwith Iroquoian visions of territorial conquest. The unbelievable twistings andturnings of plot as a result reveal unintended consequences, leading history indirections sensed most strongly at those moments or places where newprotagonists—some Indian, some English, some French, some Spanish, and allmoving in intercultural worlds—confront new realities such as Thomas Dunbar’sretreat after Braddock’s defeat in 1755, the fall of forts Louisbourg and Fronte-nac, the Treaty of Easton, William Pitt’s rise to power, or the battle of QuiberonBay. All lead to an end in which Washington’s interests and Iroquoian projectionsof imperial power collide once again in the Ohio country and plummet Britishcolonials into rebellion and the making of a new nation state.

Is so much complexity and conflict in which character as well as culture shapeoutcome and consequence good history? In the master craftsmanship of FredAnderson it is. Lucidity and clarity make light the burden of deciphering the pastwithout sacrificing the nuance, paradox, and irony that join history with litera-ture. As a companion to the eponymous PBS documentary and a complement tonumerous events, exhibits, and publications marking the two-hundred-fiftiethanniversary of the Seven Years’ War, this book is intended for a popular audience.The magnificent collection of more than eighty-five illustrations—many of theobjects and images never before published—assembled and captioned by R. ScottStephenson, an eminent Seven Years’ War scholar in his own right, assures thebroad reach of this volume. But breadth does not belie depth in a work thatscholars and their students will no doubt consult with the same critical admirationDickens garnered for sounding the most profound of human dramas.

Shenandoah University Warren R. Hofstra


‘Injuns!’: Native Americans in the Movies. By Edward Buscombe. (London, England:Reaktion Books, 2006. Pp. 243. $16.00.)

Despite the title, the author of this book analyzes far more than Native Americanportrayals in film. Instead, he presents a concise and readable survey of the “ideaof the Indian” in Western thought. He chose the term “Injuns” understanding itsbaggage, but argues that the term more accurately presents how non-Indiansviewed Native Americans in American history, and indeed in European books andfilm. Although not groundbreaking, this book would complement courses onNative American history, the American West, and western film.

Edward Buscombe refreshingly avoids the temptation to analyze the historicalaccuracy of “the western” in film and instead concentrates on Indians as aconstruct of American (and European) assumptions. He first traces this portrayalin early American literature, art, and photography. In later chapters, he addressesthe twentieth-century tensions over race and how those issues translated to film,the consistent theme of non-Indians playing Indians both on and off screen, andthe popularity and unique nature of European Westerns.

Nineteenth-century images, ideas, and policies all framed white perceptionsof the “other.” From “savage” Indians attacking pale, sexualized white womento Edward Curtis’s photographs and the traveling Wild West Show, these por-trayals served to “freeze the Indians in time” (25). Instead of revealing Indiandiversity, art reduced all Indians to Plains warriors living in teepees. Buscombenotes that Edward Curtis even brought costumes from other tribes to correctsome “inauthentic” Indians. The addition of dime novels and the appeal ofWilliam “Buffalo Bill” Cody insured that twentieth-century motion pictureaudiences would demand the Indians they already knew—historical accuracyaside.

Weaving seamlessly through the twentieth century, Buscombe contrasts Indianpolicies such as “termination” with liberal films like Broken Arrow that usednineteenth-century Apaches to address issues of assimilation and reservationpolicy. Buscombe argues that these films reflected political liberal thought fromthe 1950s and 1960s attempting to reverse the nearly universal negative portrayalof Indians. Despite their liberal bent, such films still valued assimilation, whitesuperiority, and a fear of miscegenation. For example, well into the 1960s, filmscripts chose to kill off Indian females rather than allowing them to marry whites.After examples sharing the American propensity to project political and culturalissues in film, it is not surprising to see how Europeans did likewise in German andBritish films.

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The book succeeds as a survey of the “invented Indian,” although not withoutproblems. Buscombe addresses the obvious errors in the autobiography of IronEyes Cody (who claimed not only to be Indian, but to have worked on D. W.Griffith films in 1911 after his 1907 birth), but is far more accepting of thehagiography of Buffalo Bill Cody. Recent scholarship shows that Cody’s ownclaims of Pony Express heroics are as questionable as Iron Eyes’s own inventedpast. In his discussion on miscegenation, Buscombe misses the fascinating court-ship from John Ford’s The Searchers, where Marty (part-Indian) weds Laurie(white racist). Those errors aside, however, the author presents a concise andaccessible survey of Native Americans in American history, art, literature, andfilm.

University of Oklahoma Brad F. Raley

John Tyler: The Accidental President. By Edward P. Crapol. (Chapel Hill, N.C.:University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Pp. 332. $37.50.)

A new book about John Tyler cannot quite be cause for excitement, but thisvolume is certainly a worthy contribution to the study of the Tyler presidency anda skillful look at politics in the United States leading up to the Civil War. Mostpeople do not usually think of John Tyler as being much of a player in the run-upto the war, but Edward P. Crapol’s operative thesis is that the presidency of JohnTyler, and more, the man himself, embodied all that drove the union to war.Chances are good that any scholar who writes about John Tyler would agree withthe author that Tyler “was a stronger and more effective president than generallyremembered,” but more to the point here is that he was also the “personificationof the great American tragedy that led to bloody civil war and the loss of over600,000 American lives” (3).

Tyler achieves such personification through three distinct ingredients in hispolitical character. The first we see is his dedication to the practice of nationalexpansion as a means of binding the union closer together. This may seemcontradictory, but Crapol shows that it is, in fact, a presumption of Jeffersonianlineage that first manifested itself in the Louisiana Purchase. Texas was Tyler’sLouisiana. Second is Tyler’s conviction regarding states’ rights that informed hispolitics both before and after his presidency, culminating with his support ofVirginian secession and his becoming the only “traitorous” president in Americanhistory. The third ingredient emerges in the ideological interim that is his presi-dency, in which he pursued a centralization that belied his “pretensions to beinga strict constructionist” (279). As president, Tyler “administered a severe body

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blow to Henry Clay’s concept of legislative dominance and a restricted andtethered chief executive” (281). Given the author’s foreshadowing of the CivilWar, it is not much of a stretch to see a Lincoln in Tyler’s precedents.

Anyone familiar with the University of Kansas series on the presidency will seean inevitable similarity between this book and the volumes in that series. But thisbook is a subtle blend of biography with presidential history—the personal withthe political—something the University of Kansas series never quite achieved.Although what Crapol has written is not a biography of John Tyler, neither is ita simple recitation of the issues, achievements, and failures of his presidency. In agenerally familiar yet fairly dramatic passage toward the end of the book, againstthe backdrop of Richmond in flames, we see the wholesale sacking of Tyler’splantation, and the episode is emblematic of a distinctly melancholy tone thatunderlies the book. In a sense, the book is a morality play, in which the failures ofJohn Tyler’s political philosophy drive him, and the nation, inexorably closer towar.

One wishes for a more evocative title, for the title given reflects more of thetraditional view of Tyler, and it does not quite fit with Crapol’s viewpoint.Accidental, yes, but inconsequential, by no means.

Baylor University David A. Smith

Born in the Country: A History of Rural America. By David B. Danbom. (Baltimore,Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, 2006 edition. Pp. xviii, 302.$20.00.)

In this new edition, a leading historian of rural America traces the story of thecountryside from the pre-Columbian era to the present. David B. Danbom syn-thesizes the historical scholarship on American agriculture and rural life andwrites the most accessible and comprehensive scholarly treatment of the subject.Danbom’s study works on all levels, from the farmstead to Washington, D.C., andbeyond that. The author deftly shows that what happened on American farms wasoften tied to distant events, the aspirations of rural people, and the tensionbetween urban and rural Americans. Readers familiar with agricultural and ruralhistory will not be surprised by much in this book, but they will be treated to anup-to-date synthesis and skillful narrative.

There are a few significant changes in the new edition. In addition to updatingthe “Suggestions for Further Reading” section, the author blends the final twochapters of the previous edition into one and includes a new afterword, titled “ARural America without Agriculture.” The other major change is an interpretive


shift. The author is more pessimistic regarding developments of the second half ofthe twentieth century in the 2006 edition. In several instances, Danbom insertslanguage about agriculture’s new “peripheral” or “trivial” position in theeconomy and asserts that farmers themselves are now curiosities (235, 257, and245). In the previous edition, he concluded with an anecdote about a visit heconducted to a farm and the sympathetic observation that rural people weresurvivors and that the nation is richer because of them. The new edition echoes thefirst in recognizing the decline in distinctiveness of rural life, but does so moreexplicitly and with a stronger critique of the new technology and organization ofcontemporary agriculture.

This reviewer used this book with great success to teach a sophomore-levelcourse titled “History of the American Farmer.” Students, who were mostlybusiness majors, liked the book, often indicating that they did not plan to sell itback to the bookstore. They cited the pace and especially the texture of the bookas key strengths. Born in the Country is broad enough to provide context, yet finegrained enough for readers to get a sense of what it has meant to live and workon the land from multiple perspectives, including those of region; status as free,enslaved, or indentured laborers; as well as during times of economic prosperityand collapse. This book is an excellent resource for undergraduates, althoughgraduate students and specialists unfamiliar with rural topics would also find ituseful.

University of West Georgia J. L. Anderson

Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World. By David BrionDavis. (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. 331. $30.00.)

This book confirms the author’s status as a preeminent scholar of slavery in theWestern world. Acknowledging that slavery and its abolition in the Americascannot be understood outside of a global and historical context, Inhuman Bondagechronicles the story of slavery in the New World in a comparative and interdisci-plinary manner. The central premise running throughout the study is that slaverywas a fundamental, indeed indispensable, part of New World settlement. Buildingupon this foundation, David Brion Davis adeptly weaves the development, char-acter, and eventual abolition of slavery into the core of western settlement.

As the title suggests, Davis depicts chattel slavery, at its most basic level, as aconscious effort to systematically and completely dehumanize its victims. Davisgoes so far as to compare enslavement to the domestication of wild animals andcontends that American slavery in particular was the ultimate form of inhuman


bondage. He does not, however, argue that this dehumanization was entirelysuccessful, as slaves did not lose their essential humanity and did continually resisttheir enslavement. Throughout the book, Davis integrates the central debatessurrounding the major topics of slavery in his own narrative, but he does morethan simplify the debates. Davis often situates his own ideology into the largerscholarly discussion, as he does when he fuses religion, ethnic identity, andeconomics into the reasoning for the growth of slavery in the Americas.

Although not designed to be a comprehensive overview of all New World slavesocieties, the scope of Inhuman Bondage is extensive, ranging from the develop-ment of slavery in the Americas, to the Atlantic slave trade and the character ofNew World slavery, and finally to the abolition of slavery throughout the NewWorld by the end of the nineteenth century. Davis opens with a discussion of theAmistad case as a quintessential example of the multinational character of slaveryin the New World. When discussing the origins of slavery in the Americas, Davissituates the institution’s development within the context of the Bible and theancient Greek and Roman models. Likewise, Davis places the rise of prejudicialattitudes within the context of biblical, medieval, ancient, and Enlightenmentsources. The influence of the revolutions (American, French, and Haitian) on thecharacter of slavery and the impact of slave resistance and rebellion, particularlyin the British Caribbean, is another primary focal point of this book. In everychapter, Davis places New World slavery in the context of its historical andgeographic past.

Inhuman Bondage is the result of Davis’s extensive cumulative experience andresearch from his years of teaching, researching, and writing. The book waswritten in response to increased public interest in the subject as well as Davis’scandid contention of the public’s ignorance in many matters surrounding slavery.It thus represents his effort to bring the discussion of slavery, and the ideology ofslavery, to a larger public audience. Davis’s narrative provides a readable andaccessible history of the development and abolition of slavery in the Americas thatdovetails outstandingly well with the emergent field of the Atlantic World.

Radford University Sharon A. Roger Hepburn

Political Indoctrination in the U.S. Army from World War II to the Vietnam War. ByChristopher S. DeRosa. (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 2006.Pp. xiv, 328. $49.95.)

When historians consider how the U.S. Army trains soldiers for war, their researchoften focuses on maneuvers and marksmanship. This author further illuminates


our understanding of army training through an analysis of service troop informa-tion programs designed to ensure soldiers’ “ideological commitment” in battle(xi). Christopher S. DeRosa argues that the army’s effort, from World War IIthrough Vietnam, to indoctrinate the force politically failed to attain completelythe desired results. Army service culture and the target audience never fullyaccepted political views from above, aside from a handful of true believers andconverts.

For over three decades, “Pentagon officials sought to provide American sol-diers with ideological armor” against fascists and communists (xi, xiii). Promptingthis activity in part were government researchers who, by 1942, concluded thatU.S. troops were less intense than allies in hating the enemy (17). That findingsuggested a lackluster commitment on the part of American soldiers, who viewedthe war merely as a “detour” in life and not a momentous event (17). Politicalindoctrination became a tool to convince American troops to fight harder andsacrifice more. By war’s end, indoctrination seldom increased combat ardorbecause most combatants were willing to do their part but nothing further.Undeterred, army policy makers continued indoctrination programs into twoCold War-limited conflicts, Korea and Vietnam. Korean War “anti-ideology”political indoctrination provided little defense against subversion and brainwash-ing (132). In Vietnam, the U.S. government failed to articulate national politicalobjectives, thus soldier attitudes toward the enemy were hardly affected.

Central to DeRosa’s narrative is an examination of how political indoctrina-tion was conceived and executed through certain army policy makers who soughtto inflame troop emotions. Films, lectures, pamphlets, the Stars and Stripesnewspaper, and the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service became weaponsin a war for U.S. soldier political compliance. Officials labeled this effort “troopinformation” to avoid the word “propaganda,” an idiom associated more withnondemocratic enemies than with America (100). The quandary became how topresent information to attain what officials wanted: an ideologically steeled force.Although many soldiers claimed to have enjoyed the films and reading materials,DeRosa establishes that whether or not soldiers actually hated the enemy morethan they did before they went to war is problematic. In truth, many soldierseither retained the views they had before military service or simply were just notinterested in what the army was selling.

The book is a scholarly history that includes a well-utilized and in-depthassessment of primary and secondary sources, government publications, films, andradio and television programs, as well as a detailed bibliography that historianswill find informative. But the author more than informs, for he advises those


concerned with shaping army political consensus to consider the consequences oftheir actions. As DeRosa puts it, America’s national and educational institutionsadequately prepare citizens to embrace national ideals. Problems arise, however,when citizens become soldiers only to find that their nationally held beliefs are atodds with that for which they are supposedly fighting (263). That warning isDeRosa’s most crucial contribution.

Western Illinois University Walter E. Kretchik

Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina. By S. Max Edelson. (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. xii, 383. $45.00.)

The author of this book is to be congratulated for writing one of the most originalworks about the colonial South to appear in the last two decades. He focuses onplantations, their owners, and the slaves who labored on them. Previously, schol-ars regarded plantations primarily for the wealth they generated, or the relation-ships formed between masters and slaves there. S. Max Edelson does not ignorethese two fundamentals but augments them, detailing the dynamic nature ofplantations and their capacity to shape cultural perceptions and identities. Thedynamism is obvious in the environmental stages he tracks. Land was assessed(by English and then colonial standards), provided staples for export (shiftingbetween crops as prices rose or fell), and then reformed as new plantationsappeared in frontier zones. The author is ambitious, reshaping our understandingof how much agency slaves had prior to the Revolution (which is much less thanhistorians previously thought); how much patriarchy existed in the roles playedby planters (varying by proximity to their landholdings and numbers of slavesowned); and how a dual system of plantations developed, serving multiple plant-ers’ goals. This is a “big book” for scholars of the colonial South and, like PeterWood’s Black Majority nearly thirty years ago, is built on a prodigious amount ofresearch.

The first chapter lays out competing visions of what Carolina might become[1670–1690] from the perspectives of English proprietors, African slaves, NativeAmericans, and the first white landowners. Planters quickly discarded the notionof Carolina as an exotic facsimile of England, growing unusual products forproprietary profit, preferring instead to grow staples for sustenance and reinvestprofits in slaves. Chapter two describes the period of experimentation [1690–1720] when rice cultivation eventually dominated Carolina’s landscape. Ratherthan take sides in the debate about whether slaves or planters first “discovered”rice, Edelson notes how its increasing importance solved a twofold problem—


providing a stable food source for slaves and a staple crop for export. Theemergence of the task labor system appeared at roughly the same time plantersbegan forcing slaves to grow their own food; the appearance of rice is no triumphof slaves’ ingenuity but a shared expedient that ironically chained them to prof-itable rice fields. Chapter three is about land, the most important commodity afterslaves and rice, and the fundamental need to control water courses. Edelson givesdetails on typical plantation size and location and shows how innovations (e.g.,second flooding of rice fields, how indigo cultivation relied on gang rather thantask labor) altered land and labor patterns. The fourth chapter is a tour de force.Edelson describes the development after 1750 of concentric rings of expandinggrowth, with an inner core of well-developed farms (largely built on older,converted rice fields) servicing Charleston’s food needs surrounded by two fron-tier zones where slave labor camps built rice plantations that were rarely visited byplanters. The earlier growth pattern along river tributaries leading to Charlestongave way to remove settlements with minimal shelter, food, and oversight. Out-lying farms bore little resemblance to older, core-area plantations, which wereconverted by planters into ostentatious showcases. Chapter five considers com-peting notions (English and Carolinian) of planter identity. Were they savages liketheir slaves, or men of science whose expertise grew from direct experience? InEnglish eyes, midcentury slave owners suffered in comparison to settlers who wentto East Florida or Georgia.

A final chapter, following the career of Henry Laurens, reveals how he wentfrom merchant, to plantation partner, to owner of multiple plantations by theRevolution’s commencement. The destruction wrought by war, although at aterrible cost to Laurens, freed him from performing on two stages—colonial andmetropolitan—simultaneously. Mastery of land, water, and slaves remainedelusive for planters like Laurens; with the ties to England broken, they wouldhenceforth set their own standards about refinement and plantation management.

Florida State University Sally E. Hadden

Reconstructing the Commercial Republic. By Stephen L. Elkin (Chicago, Ill.: Univer-sity of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. xiii, 413. $35.00.)

The author of this study, a political scientist, offers theory grounded in Americanhistory. Stephen L. Elkin turns to James Madison to define his discussion. In thislucid, systematic, and deeply contemplated work, Elkin provides historians witha discussion of power and society that they must confront to improve their own


understanding. His book represents an opportunity for a conversation with politi-cal science that might move American historians beyond simplistic thinking aboutprivilege and democracy.

Instead of discussing power abstractly or myopically, Elkin focuses on“regimes”—arrangements of power in concrete geographic and economic settings.Elkin argues that Americans have long been devoted to a “commercial republic,”one of many good regimes possible. In a commercial republic, according to Elkin,the people are sovereign, but choose to limit their power in order to allow areasof robust individual liberty. Property is especially advantaged. In a social democ-racy, on the other hand, the people govern without check on their power.

In Elkin’s opinion, and he argues in Madison’s view as well, the sovereignpeople self-limit their power in a commercial republic less because of the authorityof the Supreme Court than because of the arrangements of political and economicrealities. Arranging and rearranging these “factors” is what wise constitutionmaking addresses.

According to Elkin, Madison limited the people’s sovereignty by privilegingproperty-holders by making the government national and republican. Madisonalso called for an extending sphere of power and wealth that would increase thenumber of interests in the realm. The extended sphere would frustrate any factionfrom becoming an oppressive majority and would thereby make property or assetholders deliberate to define a common good in order to gain and hold power.Elkin innovatively emphasizes the importance of deliberation by which an interestor faction recognizes other interests and thereby seeks to court them by arrivingat a formulation of the common good.

At the same time, it is the enterprise of constitutional thinking that Elkinlionizes and exercises, not the details of Madison’s design. Elkin argues thatMadison’s answers need to be remodeled to remedy current realities. In particular,the property-holders of Madison’s time have become powerful international cor-porations whom officeholders and localities need to accommodate to produceprosperity in order to win office. Additionally, the holders of corporate power areincreasingly disconnected from the Republic and are unconcerned about broad-ening their concept of self-interest to produce a plausible policy for the commongood. Thus faction, in Elkin’s view, is threatening the commercial republic’sexistence like never before, and he produces ample evidence of the commercialrepublic’s possible demise.

Elkin’s remedies involve resuscitating local government and securing the eco-nomic foundation and self-confidence of the middle class. These choices arearguable, but Elkin’s deep description of American politics and society as


it exists—and his discussions of current political theory—is clearly a vitalachievement.

University of Massachusetts Amherst Barry Levy

The Silencing of Ruby McCollum: Race, Class, and Gender in the South. By TammyEvans. (Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 2006. Pp. xi, 173. $34.95.)

The author of this book has produced an interesting book about the rhetoric ofsilence. Although not a historian, this professor of composition discusses thepower of silence evident in a murder case that shook the small southern commu-nity of Live Oak, Florida, in 1952. Ruby McCollum, a black woman, shot andkilled C. LeRoy Adams, a prominent white physician and recently elected statesenator on August 3, 1952. McCollum charged at least six years of physical andsexual abuse by Adams. Accused of murder, McCollum spent two years in solitaryconfinement in a Suwannee County jail cell before authorities sentenced her to theFlorida State Mental Hospital in Chattahoochee. She was released in 1974.

Tammy Evans produces little new information about the case, which has beenwritten about most recently by Arthur Ellis in The Trial of Ruby McCollum: TheTrue-Crime Story That Shook the Foundations of the Segregationist South [2003].However, she closely examines the text created by the murder and ensuing trials,particularly that of William Bradford Huie and Zora Neale Hurston. Employingthe tools of the literary critic, Evans effectively shows how patriarchy and whitesupremacy in Live Oak constructed a story and silenced McCollum and others toprotect their community and its history. Evans does this in three chapters: “‘Wordsand Doing’: The Politics of Silence in Southern Rhetoric”; “‘It Was All Routine’:The Trial(s) of Ruby McCollum”; and “‘Discourses of Contention’: PunctuatingMcCollum’s Sentence(s) of Silence.” There is also an introduction and conclusion.

Ruby McCollum never had the opportunity to tell her story to Judge HalAdams, who deemed much of her testimony inadmissible. Both fear and powersilenced Zora Neale Hurston, who was covering the story for the PittsburghCourier, and William Bradford Huie, a journalist who in 1956 published RubyMcCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail. Evans analyzes the very revealingcorrespondence between Hurston and Huie and the news articles Hurston sub-mitted to the Pittsburgh Courier. Until now, the only memory of Ruby McCollumwas a deliberately created one. Evans cleverly shows how fear, race, class, gender,power, and silence all contributed to the crafting of a public Ruby McCollum andin doing so gives McCollum a voice. The author posits that McCollum’s self-


imposed “silence may well have been a conscious tactical maneuver—and one thatshe knew all too well from her own experience to be highly effective” (138).

Building on the works of Cheryl Glen, Kenneth Burke, and Cary Nelson, Evansargues that “Silence, like a performative speech act, is a crucial component ofSouthern ideology; it determines what stories are told in the South and, conse-quently, what stories are discarded” (26). Live Oak, Florida, is where this com-pelling story takes place; it is also Evans’s hometown. She, however, is talkingabout silence and a region—the South. Although those in English and literarycriticism will feel more comfortable with Evans’s take on this historical incident,historians can learn a lesson or two about paying attention to silence.

Florida State University Maxine D. Jones

Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance. By Ric Gillespie.(Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2006. Pp. vii, 276. $28.95.)

Certain figures from the so-called Golden Age of Aviation have maintained aremarkable level of public interest, the most extreme example being CharlesLindbergh. Although a few others also have enjoyed lasting fame, perhaps theonly individual to match the intensity of interest shown in Lindbergh is AmeliaEarhart. Her disappearance over the South Pacific in 1937 provided her a certainlevel of immortality by making her a particular figure of myth and fable. This newbook is yet another contribution to the growing literature examining the life,legacy, and disappearance of the “Lady Lindbergh.”

This work by the executive director of the International Group for HistoricAircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) focuses almost exclusively on the historic flight andthe subsequent search effort. In the first half of the book, the author examines theearly preparations for the flight, the aborted first attempt from Hawaii, and thefirst stages of the second attempt. The second half covers the fateful flight toHowland Island, the realization that Earhart was missing, and the fairly lengthyeffort to search for her. Along the way, Ric Gillespie explores the actions andmotives of a wide cast of characters from the government officials who provideda certain level of special treatment to Earhart, to the radio operators on the USSItasca (who had been charged with providing radio navigation assistance to theflier), to various individuals who claimed to have heard radio signals from Earhartin the hours and days after her disappearance.

The book’s strength lies in the author’s careful and critical examination of thepreparations (or lack thereof) for the flight. He points out not only the weaknesses


of Earhart’s preparations but also the rather reluctant participation of the U.S.military in supporting the flight. The author makes a strong argument that Earhartand her husband, publisher George Putnam, placed far more emphasis on guar-anteeing publicity than on working out the details needed for successful coordi-nation with the USS Itasca’s radio operators. At the same time, the authordemonstrates how the reluctant participation by the military sometimes coloredand shaped their own judgments and efforts.

In some ways, the book would have been stronger had it just focused onissues such as those. Instead, Gillespie and TIGHAR clearly wanted to “findAmelia.” To that end, the author bends over backwards to give credence to anyand all evidence that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, crash-landed onan island in the Phoenix Group. He more than hints that a more rigorous searchof those islands might have resulted in, at the least, stronger evidence of thecrash landing.

The book is a fairly good examination of the state of radio communicationand radio navigation technology in the 1930s. It also examines the mistakes madeby many individuals that resulted in the disappearance of Earhart and the ulti-mately unsuccessful search operation. In the end, it is mostly an example of thecontinued obsession with uncovering the exact fate of America’s most famouswoman pilot.

University of Dayton Janet R. Bednarek

Lost and Found: Reclaiming the Japanese American Incarceration. By Karen L.Ishizuka. (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Pp. ix, 217. $24.95.)

In November 1994, “America’s Concentration Camps: Remembering the Japa-nese American Experience” opened at the Japanese American National Museumin Los Angeles. It was on display for eleven months and over the next decadewould travel to New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Little Rock. This hand-somely produced volume is the story of the exhibition: the process of its creation,its impact on both those who managed and viewed it, and how it came to serve asa way to both “recover history and recover from history” (174). In this sense, thisbook, which is authored by the exhibition’s curator, serves as meditation on theroles of public history, individual experience, and historical memory.

Karen L. Ishizuka does not intend this book to be a scholarly analysis of theWWII incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans, because there are manyworks that have already accomplished that task. Instead, the focus remains on theinteraction between the exhibit and its observers. The organizers of the exhibit


meant for the project to be interactive and for the observers or participants toengage actively with the exhibit and thus contribute to its ongoing development.This feat was accomplished by having camp survivors register their names andcamp addresses in camp registries and to place small replicas of their barracks onscale models of each of the camps. Performing these acts allowed the participantsto reclaim the memory of the camps as their own and, for many, by doing so theywere able to come to grips with their wartime experiences.

In addition to some of the photographs that made up the exhibit, Ishizukaincludes a variety of anecdotes and conversations that made this exhibit soextraordinary. She offers an insightful coverage of the debates over whether or notit was valid to refer to these camps as “concentration camps,” given the horrorsof the Holocaust, and how it was decided by the exhibit organizers and somemembers of the Jewish-American community that it would be wrong to deny thenature of these camps and that the term “concentration camps” cannot be“owned” by the victims of the Holocaust. Another conversation that speaks to theimpact of the camps on those who least expected it is the story of a Caucasianmale who had found a box belonging to his late mother and discovered insidedocuments and photographs that revealed that his maternal grandfather had beenJapanese American and had been among those interned. It was not until he visitedthe exhibit that he was able to come to accept this part of his past. As he relayedto Ishizuka, “Here I am this white guy—or I used to be” (142).

The reviewer has been teaching Asian American history for twenty years anddid not think there was much more about the camps that would surprise him, butthis book moved him in ways he had not expected. He recommends it to everyoneinterested in this dark episode of our national history.

Williams College K. Scott Wong

Key Command: Ulysses S. Grant’s District of Cairo. By T. K. Kionka. (Columbia, Mo.:University of Missouri Press, 2006. Pp. xii, 229. $39.95.)

In 1861, Cairo, Illinois, was a small town of two thousand people, but its strategiclocation at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers made it the focus ofboth Union and Confederate attention when war erupted that April. In September,Ulysses Grant arrived in Cairo to assume command of what became the head-quarters of a military district that encompassed portions of Illinois, Kentucky, andMissouri, a position he would occupy for approximately six months. The authorof this book seeks to explain the importance of both of these facts. First, he tells


the story of Cairo in the Civil War, asking what kind of a place it had been beforethe war, how its strategic importance made it the focus of important activitiesduring the war, and how these activities transformed the postwar town. Second,he tells the story of how Grant’s brief tenure in Cairo provided experiences thatshaped his ascension to greater things later in his career.

T. K. Kionka explains Grant’s (and Cairo’s) difficulties with military discipline,handling prisoners of war, dealing with Southern sympathizers, providing hospitalcare for soldiers, curtailing smuggling, handling white refugees, suppressing cor-ruption in war supply, and dealing with contraband. At times Kionka’s focus is onGrant’s handling of military problems and at times it is on the town itself. Hernarrative leaves Cairo occasionally to follow Grant in his September 1861 move-ment on Paducah, Kentucky, his November 1861 attack on the rebel camp atBelmont, Missouri, and his February 1862 victories at Forts Henry and Donelson.She concludes that the war allowed the town of Cairo to escape from its troubledpast (it had almost gone out of existence twice in the antebellum era) and achieve“more success than its founders ever imagined” (211). “The presence of themilitary base had transformed Cairo into a community with the business oppor-tunities and the cosmopolitan society of a metropolis” (208). She also claims that,in Cairo, Grant “developed the strategic and administrative abilities that sup-ported his campaigns throughout the war and allowed him to finally reclaim thecountry” (211). She may well be right about Cairo, but her expansive claim aboutthe influence of Grant’s brief tenure there on his later military successes seems abit overstated.

Readers interested in wartime administrative problems in the West will findmaterial of interest in this book. Grant aficionados will find useful discussions ofGrant’s early war administrative duties that are usually treated rather cursorily inbiographies and military histories. Be forewarned, however, that to this authorGrant can do no wrong. Kionka paints a portrait of a heroic Grant whose militaryjudgment, administrative acumen, and personal integrity are unquestioned. Manyreaders may also be frustrated by the lack of clear focus in the work. Is theauthor’s primary interest in Grant or in the town of Cairo? Because she wants tofocus on both, the reader is jerked back and forth between them in an unsystem-atic way. She moves from Cairo to Grant and from narrative to topical chapterswithout a clear pattern. Sometimes the chapters follow either the town or Grantfar beyond the chronological period when they were intimately connected to eachother. Finally, the book desperately needed a map of places discussed in the text.In short, there is useful information in Key Command, but the book would havebeen better if it had a clearer focus (less divided purpose), more critical judgments


(particularly of Grant), more persuasive (modest) conclusions, and a better orga-nizational structure.

The University of Alabama Lawrence Frederick Kohl

Jefferson and the Press: Crucible of Liberty. By Jerry W. Knudson. (Columbia, S.C.:University of South Carolina Press, 2006. Pp. xvii, 221. $34.95.)

Late in his life, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “When I read the newspapers and seewhat a mass of falsehood and what an atom of truth they contain, I am mortifiedwith the consideration that 90/100th of mankind pass through life imagining theyhave known what was going forward when they would have been nearer the truthhad they heard nothing.” Despite this and other similar statements, Jeffersonremained an inveterate newspaper reader throughout his life. Jerry W. Knudsonshows in Jefferson and the Press that, as a politically active public figure at theturn of the nineteenth century, Jefferson could hardly have done otherwise. Thisbook might have been better titled The Press and Jefferson, as Knudson presentsa detailed analysis of how key events of Jefferson’s presidency were treated bymajor newspapers of the day. Knudson bases his analysis on eight newspapers:four Federalist (The Columbian Centinel [Boston], New York Evening Post, TheGazette of the United States [Philadelphia], and the Richmond Recorder); andfour Republican (The Independent Chronicle [Boston], Philadelphia Aurora, TheNational Intelligencer [Washington, D.C.], and the Richmond Enquirer). Afterthree excellent introductory chapters in which he chronicles the rise of the partisanpress during the first decade of the nineteenth century and then profiles the editorsand publishers of his Republican and Federalist newspapers, he presents a seriesof case studies that consider how these periodicals treated Jefferson and hispolicies. Among the events considered are the election of 1800, Thomas Paine’sreturn to the United States in 1802, the Louisiana Purchase, the Burr-Hamiltonduel, Jefferson’s battle with the judiciary, and the Embargo.

In Jefferson and the Press, Knudson skillfully illustrates the differences betweenFederalists and Republicans, as expressed in the press. He shows that editorsresorted to rhetorical extremes, including vicious ad hominem attacks, to promotetheir partisan positions. Fundamentally, the divisions between the two embryonicparties were ideological and Knudson divines the ideological differences under therhetorical flights of fancy. Knudson’s analysis raises an important issue. Despitehis evenhanded treatment, considering Federalist and Republican periodicals inequal measure, the Federalists dominated the press during the first decade of thenineteenth century to an overwhelming extent. The Federalists dominated the


media at a time when the party was in decline. Put another way, the Federalistscontrolled the media while the Republicans controlled the government. Althoughaware of this situation, Knudson never entirely explains why this was so. Oneexplanation is that the partisan press may not have been as influential as Knudsonasserts.

This is a lively, informative study, which the author began as a 1962 Ph.D.dissertation at the University of Virginia. Although it has been updated in light ofrecent research, in places this seems somewhat superficial. For example, althoughKnudson briefly mentions Jeffrey L. Pasley’s Tyranny of Printers: NewspaperPolitics in the Early American Republic [2001], he needs to demonstrate howJefferson and the Press relates to Pasley’s excellent work (xvi). Jefferson and thePress complements Pasley’s seminal study but it does not surpass it.

University of Edinburgh Frank Cogliano

The JFK Assassination Debates: Lone Gunman versus Conspiracy. By Michael L.Kurtz. (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 2006. Pp. vii, 280. $29.95.)

In his “Selected Bibliography,” the author lists over one hundred books, an equalnumber of articles, numerous governmental studies, tens of films, and severalInternet sites, nearly all of which focus on who killed President John F. Kennedyand whether the assassin acted alone or was part of a conspiracy. The plethora ofstudies on this subject begs the question, why do we need another one? MichaelL. Kurtz answers this question not by contending that he has unearthed “sensa-tional new evidence” nor that he has reached a definitive answer to the riddle ofwho assassinated JFK. Rather, Kurtz suggests that men and women should readhis study because it is scholarly, “not partisan,” draws on the best of both sides ofthe debate, and makes use of recently released documents and three decades ofpersonal research (xii).

Relative novices to the subject matter will find the early chapters of this book(1 through 4) rewarding. In them, Kurtz lays out the basic arguments regardingwhether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or whether he was part of a largerconspiracy. He succinctly summarizes the reasoning of the Warren Commissionthat Oswald alone fired the shots that killed President Kennedy, and he reviews themajor criticisms that have been made of these findings. The remainder of thebook, chapters five through nine, however, is more problematic, for two reasons.First, it is much more difficult to follow—the addition of some flow charts ortables might have helped—and because it includes some strident claims, such as“Fidel Castro had John Kennedy murdered” (195). Second, the latter part of the


book suffers from Kurtz’s failure to live up to his pledge to present a balanced and“dispassionate account of the facts, as opposed to partisan conjecture about thecrime” (xii).

Indeed, Kurtz applies two distinct standards, one for those who believe Oswaldacted alone and another for those, like himself, who see a conspiracy. In criticizingthe former, he consistently declares that their analysis would never hold up in acourt. Yet, Kurtz’s assertions that Castro had JFK murdered and that organizedcrime figures were deeply involved hinges on a much lower standard of proof,such as telephone interviews rather than sworn testimony subject to cross-examination. Kurtz also mischaracterizes the findings of the House Select Com-mittee on Assassinations (HSCA), placing it firmly in the lone gunman camp whenin fact it concluded that “President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated asa result of a conspiracy.” He does so, one supposes, because the HSCA foundthat the Cuban government and organized crime were “not involved” in theassassination.

In sum, The JFK Assassination Debates does not live up to its billing on theinside flap of the dust jacket as an “objective accounting of what we actuallyknow and don’t know,” perhaps because such a work might not attract theattention of publishers, which seek to meet the demand for the sensational.

York College Peter B. Levy

American Indian Constitutional Reform and the Rebuilding of Native Nations. Editedby Eric D. Lemont. (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 2006. Pp. xiii, 343.$21.95.)

The collection of nine essays and many first-hand reports presented here is not somuch history—although it contains some historical information—as it is socialscience, law, political science, and current events. It is an interdisciplinaryapproach to modern problems in Native American constitution writing andreform. Its emphasis is on the period since 1975 and the American government’scontinuing efforts to encourage Indian self-determination. The book contains ninechapters divided into three parts, with professional American Indian scholars,lawyers, constitutional theorists, and tribal leaders all contributing.

There are several themes, but in a general sense they can be summed up in theeditor’s question: “How can American Indians balance a largely spiritual, holistic,oral, family-based, consensus-oriented view of the world within a larger societythat is secular, individualistic, written, and majoritarian” (3)? There is, of course,no single answer, but the thrust of the essays and oral accounts seems to suggest


that for Native Americans the leading solution to their dilemma centers on theidea of retaining traditional Indian forms and values.

The essays are instructive and soundly reasoned. Written by scholars firmlygrounded in current Indian events and conditions, they deal with a variety ofconstitutional topics, including the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the chal-lenges to and processes in constitutional rewriting, citizenship requirements forIndian groups, and effective Indian governance, among others.

The reviewer’s favorite essay is Elmer Rusco’s “The Indian Reorganization Actand Indian Self-Government.” Rusco reviews events leading to the law anddiscusses its important provisions (especially sections sixteen, seventeen, andeighteen). Also, he carefully analyzes a good bit of the misunderstanding associ-ated with the bill, including wrong-headed ideas about a nonexistent, Bureau ofIndian Affairs-inspired “model constitution” and myths about the government’sso-called use of the measure to block—rather than enhance—tribal self-government. It is a superb piece in its use of evidence and its striking ability tocorrect errors and clear up prevalent misperceptions.

The twenty-seven interviews, or “first-hand accounts,” as they are called, areless sophisticated, but they are clear, to the point, and full of a sense of frustrationover constitutional reform. They come mainly from Native Americans who are atwork actively seeking to rewrite Indian constitutions so that the new documentsmight reconcile their values with those of the larger society and at the same timepromote Indian self-determination.

In short, it is a good and useful book on modern Indian political theory andpractice.

Texas Tech University Paul H. Carlson

The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism. By Timothy Marr. (New York, N.Y.:Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xii, 309. $24.99.)

This author’s thoroughly researched and documented book is indispensablereading for anyone seriously interested in the genealogy of America’s conflictedview of Islam. The author coins the expression “Islamicism,” a largely fundamen-talist, unchanging disposition toward Islam, to describe the reductive process oflumping diverse Muslim cultures under a monolithic rubric that has helpedAmerica define its mission throughout much of its history. John Locke may haveshaped the liberal republicanism of the nation, but it was Montesquieu’s condem-nation of Islamic tyranny in The Spirit of the Laws [1748] that was probably morewidely read. Oriental despotism justified America’s sense of moral superiority—its


manifest, or not-so-manifest, destiny—over the barbarians. No sooner was theAmerican Board of Commission for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) founded in 1810than a mission was sent to Palestine and “Western Asia” to recapture the HolyLand, populate it with Jews, and wait for the second advent of Christ.

If such ventures were often disappointing, travel and contact with Muslimshelped dispel a few prejudices. A “chastened comparative Orientalism” allowedabolitionists to embarrass the virtuous republic by showcasing the Muslims’ morehumane treatment of slaves and their ability to resist the enslaving powers ofalcohol. When the Bey of Tunis prohibited slavery in his nation in 1846 and theOttoman sultan abolished the slave market in Constantinople the following year,the New York Tribune asked: “What would these heathen Turks think of Slaveryand the Slave-Trade, as it exists in this republican and civilized country, whereChristian slave-breeders so often make merchandise of their own children?”Meanwhile, American missionaries found themselves competing with rum dealersbent on introducing a New World vice to a people who were praised by theex-President John Adams for their exemplary temperance.

Herman Melville used Islamicist conventions to “infidelize the moral majorityof his age, and perhaps, even allude to the despotism of his country,” ridicule theProtestant work ethic, and expose the self-deceptive tenets of western “sniveliza-tion.” Women, too, used Islam to strike a blow at America’s despotic conventions.By introducing her pair of Turkish-style trousers, Amelia Jenks Bloomer reclaimedthe harem as a site of freedom. The popular response, however, was swift. In1852, a critic asked condescendingly: “Shall the harems of the East set the fashionfor the boudoirs of the West? . . . Have we quit Paris, dear delightful Paris! For theSublime Porte, and her mantua-makers for the Blue Beards of Constantinople?”

Islam may have had its virtues, but it has remained a metaphor for manyun-American activities. For example, the rise of Mormonism in the mid-nineteenth century was seen to some extent as the infiltration of America byMuslim fifth columnists. Will “Islamicism” ever cede its distorting lenses to amore open-minded approach, as the author wishes? One certainly hopes so, butthe odds do not look good right now.

University of New England Anouar Majid

Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations. ByCraig Nelson. (New York, N.Y.: Viking, 2006. Pp. xv, 396. $27.95.)

Thomas Paine is periodically rediscovered as the “forgotten Founder.” Arriving inAmerica with a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin, Paine fought at


George Washington’s side and wrote pamphlets that stated the case and ralliedsupport for American independence. The opening lines of The American Crisisgave us the phrase, “These are the times that try men’s souls,” and the terms“summer soldier” and “sunshine patriot.” Ronald Reagan accepted the Repub-lican nomination in 1980, quoting Paine: “We have it in our power to begin theworld over again.”

Craig Nelson again presents us with the man about whom John Adams wroteto Thomas Jefferson, “[h]istory . . . [would] ascribe the American Revolution”(93). Nelson provides long excerpts from Paine’s writing, judging correctly thatreaders will appreciate Paine’s prose style. Paine was a “high popularizer,” trans-lating the Revolution’s political theory into terms accessible to the public. AsPaine explained his “design to make those that can scarcely read understand,” hewould “avoid every literary ornament and put it in language as plain as thealphabet” (203). His vigorous prose still appeals.

Paine’s fascinating life is difficult to reconstruct in detail, in part because of thedestruction of most of his personal papers in a fire, which left his story to be toldby those who, in the end, came to dislike him. Late eighteenth-century political lifewas transnational, as Paine’s career shows. He achieved his first success inAmerica, then returned to England, where he articulated a theory of republicandemocracy that was hardly welcome to that nation’s governing class. Painemoved—or fled—to France, where he served in the revolutionary National Assem-bly and was imprisoned by his former revolutionary allies because his viewsagainst capital punishment led him to oppose the execution of Louis XVI.

Why is Paine seen today as a secondary figure? Partly because, by all accounts,he was not easy to get along with over the long term. Impoverishing himself byrefusing to accept any royalties from his pamphlets’ huge sales, Paine may haveseemed perhaps a bit too fanatical for the more urbane of the Founders. Nelsonlists “the least attractive elements of [Paine’s] personality—his egotism, sancti-mony, vanity, and parsimony—making him a disagreeable party guest,” not tomention a difficult friend (307). Paine did have devoted supporters, but they wereprimarily in the second and third tiers of power. In addition, Paine’s last greatpamphlet, The Age of Reason, was a deist tract that was taken as “a defence ofinfidelity,” as Paine’s old friend Samuel Adams put it in a critical public letter(270).

Nelson gives us a “life and times,” including short histories of the Americanand French Revolutions. More often than he should, the author provides readerswith mere lists and descriptions of landscapes. He obtrusively mixes the past tenseand the historical present tense. Still, Nelson’s prose generally flows easily. He is


no Thomas Paine as a stylist, but readers will appreciate Paine’s achievements asNelson admiringly presents them.

Harvard Law School Mark Tushnet

Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad. ByKenneth Osgood. (Lawrence, Kans.: University of Kansas Press, 2006. Pp. xiv, 367.$45.00.)

The author of this study has produced a beautifully written and splendidlyresearched narrative of the Eisenhower administration’s global psychologicaloffensive of the 1950s. Using primary sources from the National Archives,the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, the USIA Archive, and other collections,Kenneth Osgood does a marvelous job of distilling an enormous amount ofdocumentation.

Rather than cover the now-familiar ground of America’s efforts to reachaudiences living behind the Iron Curtain, Osgood examines how U.S. officialstargeted the “free world” as well as American audiences in their quest to mobilizeand retain support for an all-consuming, protracted struggle against the SovietUnion. He explores not only the formulation of high-level psychological warfarepolicy, but also the implementation of these guidelines in over thirty nations. Thisfeat alone makes this book a very ambitious and impressive endeavor.

Osgood begins with four chapters devoted to the development of politicalwarfare. He provides a nice overview of U.S. propaganda programs from WorldWar I through the early 1960s, and demonstrates the transformation of interna-tional relations triggered by the maturation of radio, press, and television. Rec-ognizing the imperatives of demoralizing enemies, maintaining national morale,and retaining the support of allied and neutral nations, U.S. policymakers inte-grated ideas, symbols, and rhetoric into their geopolitical and military strategies.With the onset of the Cold War, propaganda gained even greater importance.Faced with the prospect of nuclear annihilation in the event of direct militaryconfrontation, the United States and the Soviet Union “channeled their rivalryinto nonmilitary spheres of competition that increasingly revolved around thesymbolic dimensions of national power and progress” (33).

A long-time proponent of psychological warfare, Dwight D. Eisenhoweracutely understood the ideological dimensions of the Cold War. Rattled by theSoviet calls for “peaceful coexistence” following the death of Stalin, Eisenhowerembarked on a counteroffensive to expose the shallowness of Soviet overtures andto preserve American leadership of the free world. The Cold War increasingly


became a contest about “demonstrating the superiority of competing ways oflife—political systems, economic organizations, ideological foundations, culturaland artistic accomplishments, scientific and technological progress, and relationsbetween races, classes, and genders” (75).

Osgood provides a mountain of evidence to demonstrate the centrality ofpropaganda in the Cold War. In six thematic chapters, he shows how propagandaconsiderations shaped U.S. responses to disarmament, international criticism ofsegregation, the space race, and a perceived decline in American prestige abroad.He nicely integrates covert and overt propaganda operations, public and privateactors, and global and local themes. He is less successful in addressing the heateddomestic political debates attending these efforts to define the American way oflife abroad.

This quibble aside, Total Cold War is a strong addition to the historiographyof American cultural diplomacy. It deserves a wide audience among scholars of theCold War, the Eisenhower era, U.S. foreign relations, and psychological warfare.

Oklahoma State University Laura A. Belmonte

An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King. By William F. Pepper. (NewYork, N.Y.: Verso, 2003. Pp. ix, 334. $25.00.)

The author frames this book against the backdrop of the civil rights movement ofthe 1960s. That decade was the most revolutionary period in the nation’s historysince the Civil War. Segregationists used violence against both black and whiteprotesters in a desperate attempt to maintain the status quo of the South. MartinLuther King Jr., the preeminent leader of the crusade for freedom and justice, wasamong the casualties of that tumultuous era. The broad conspiracy against Kingcoincided with his opposition to the Vietnam War and his determination to leadthe Poor People’s Campaign to the nation’s capital. This volume tells the story ofthe author’s quest to uncover the truth of what actually happened on that fatefulday in Memphis nearly forty years ago. William F. Pepper, who is an attorney,spent more than two decades conducting an exhaustive investigation of theassassination of America’s foremost champion of nonviolent social change. As heexposes the covert operation that led to King’s death, the identity of manyindividuals who were involved is revealed along with their roles in the plot. Forexample, Pepper asserts that Memphians Frank C. Liberto, a produce dealer, andLoyd Jowers, a restaurant owner, emerge as two of the central figures in themurder drama. Numerous individuals and institutions far beyond the MemphisPolice Department and the state of Tennessee participated in the resulting tragic


event of 4 April 1968. Pepper does not hesitate to implicate the FBI, the CIA, andthe U.S. military in building his case against the federal government. The involve-ment of organized crime in the secret plan added to the variety of the plot.

In this book, Pepper does a masterful job of detailing the events that occurredin the days and hours prior to King’s death as evidence of a criminal plan againsthim. The transfer of the only two black firemen from the station a short distancefrom the Lorraine Motel combined with the removal of the black detective EdRedditt from his surveillance post near the motel left King without security.Furthermore, army sharpshooters were in place on 4 April, in case they wereneeded to carry out the execution of the apostle of nonviolence. Pepper maintainsthat “Dr. King’s room at the Lorraine Motel was switched from one on a secludedground-floor courtyard to a highly exposed one with a balcony” (17). This workalso reveals that the City of Memphis tampered with the crime scene by cuttingdown a tree and bushes near the motel shortly after the assassination.

Pepper is critical of the investigations of King’s death by the House SelectCommittee on Assassinations and especially of the Department of Justice. Theinvestigators refused to interview key individuals, and the task force of theDepartment of Justice ignored more than fifty pieces of evidence that were crucialin the case. The inadequate work by those investigative bodies reinforced thegovernment’s official story that James Earl Ray was the lone assassin. Pepperconcludes that the assassination of King and its “subsequent cover-up is a searingindictment of betrayal and abuse of power” (96).

An Act of State contains three appendices and is illustrated with a map of thescene of the assassination and several photographs. In the “Epilogue,” Pepperissues a harsh condemnation of the government for promoting corporate greedand accuses the United States of sponsoring state terrorism. Although this mono-graph includes an explanatory notes section, this reviewer would have appreciateda bibliography. This book represents the most thorough dismantling of the gov-ernment’s official position on the assassination of the famous civil rights leader.

Kent State University Leonne M. Hudson

Lincoln’s Defense of Politics: The Public Man and His Opponents in the Crisis overSlavery. By Thomas E. Schneider. (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press,2006. Pp. xi, 224. $39.95.)

This book is not altogether what it seems. It is not quite a work of history, and itdoes not focus its attention primarily on Abraham Lincoln. Thomas E. Schneideris a political scientist who is primarily interested in political and constitutional


ideas. Here he has chosen to reveal something about Lincoln’s thought by focus-ing his attention on those who were opposed to him. The bulk of his brief textconsists of chapters on Alexander Stephens, John C. Calhoun, and GeorgeFitzhugh from the proslavery South and on Henry David Thoreau, William LloydGarrison, and Frederick Douglass from the antislavery element in the North.Using these six contemporaries as foils, he hopes his analysis of the ideas ofLincoln’s opponents will enhance our understanding of the genius of Lincoln’spolitical ideas in the era of the Civil War. Only in his conclusion, “The Case forPolitics,” does the author finally put Lincoln’s ideas at the center of the discussion.

Schneider is interested particularly in the relationship between constitutionalismand notions of a moral order that constitutes a “higher law.” He argues that neitherSouthern rights men nor Northern abolitionists wanted a political settlement of theproblem of slavery. The former wanted only to stand their constitutional ground,while the latter sought a moral solution. Only Lincoln, Schneider maintains,believed that law and morality did not exclude each other. He did not see pro-Unionand antislavery principles as exclusive, while everyone else demanded that a choicebe made between the two. Only Lincoln saw in politics a way that combined bothconstitutional duties and moral law. “Lincoln’s approach to the slavery question,”Schneider maintains, “was not primarily moral in the usual sense, but political”(180). In fact, politics were not only a means to Lincoln, but an end in themselves.He wanted to preserve not just the Union, but popular government. In the end, then,Lincoln’s approach to the war was more political than moral.

Lincoln is the hero of this work because of his faith in politics. According toSchneider, the weakness of the other thinkers discussed, no matter how constitu-tionally learned or morally righteous they were, lies in their willingness to subjectthe great questions of their day to the political process. There is nothing particu-larly new in Schneider’s interpretation of Lincoln himself, unless it is the impli-cation that he felt no real tension between his moral and his constitutionalobligations. This position, however, tends to underestimate Lincoln’s achieve-ments in prioritizing and reconciling his views on slavery and the law. Morepersuasive on this score is William Lee Miller’s Lincoln: An Ethical Biography, awork that makes one appreciate the depth of his wrestling with the inherenttensions between law and morality. Nevertheless, Schneider’s discussion of Lin-coln’s opponents does help to contextualize Lincoln’s thought, to reveal intellec-tual roads not taken and, ultimately, to suggest once again how wise the voters of1860 were to elevate this Illinois lawyer to the presidency.

University of Alabama Lawrence Frederick Kohl


Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States. BySharon Smith. (Chicago, Ill.: Haymarket Books, 2006. Pp. ix, 377. $16.00.)

This book begins with the premise that the history of working-class radicalismand its potential to create revolutionary changes has been inadequately docu-mented, if not completely ignored. The work presents examples of working-classradicalism during four overlapping time periods: 1854–1900; 1900–1930s; late1930s–1970s; and 1970s to approximately 2003. Throughout the study, theauthor adopts a consistently Marxist approach to her analysis.

Although ostensibly attempting to capture the history of working-class radi-calism, Sharon Smith also presents a sustained argument concerning the forces sheidentifies as derailing or suppressing its revolutionary potential. She especiallyindicts prominent capitalists, the two-party system (especially Democrats), andthe conservative leadership of the major labor unions. During the first two timeperiods, the author places fairly equal emphasis on both examples of working-class radicalism and the forces working against it. In the latter time periods(especially the last), however, the examples of radicalism fade into the backgroundwhile the indictments of capitalists, the Democrats, and labor leaders take centerstage.

The author’s contention that the level of radicalism in the American workingclass has not been documented adequately nor emphasized has some merit.Although evidence of radicalism has not been completely ignored, many studieshave focused instead on the nonrevolutionary or conservative nature of theAmerican labor movement. Her arguments concerning the revolutionary potentialof the working class, however, are not well developed. Although many examplesare presented, the author offers no systematic analysis of the degree of radicalismwithin the rank-and-file. For example, she suggests a high degree of radicalismwithin the working class, although not really presenting any strong quantitative(or systematically examined qualitative) evidence of the percentage or proportionthat viewed themselves as radical. Nor does she closely examine how well promi-nent radical leaders reflected the sentiments of the rank-and-file. This is particu-larly true in her examination of the period since the 1930s.

Further, the degree to which examples of radicalism play a less prominent rolein the later part of the book certainly leaves the impression that radicalism withinthe working class has faded over time. Although the author argues that theconditions that could have or should have produced radical sentiments have notchanged, she does not do a good job of explaining how the potential of working-class radicalism could remain while examples of it became fewer in number. And,


within her Marxist framework, she simply dismisses entirely many of the gainsthat have been made by working-class Americans.

The early sections of the book do serve as a reminder of the many examplesof working-class radicalism and the importance of understanding the varietyand complexity of the American working class in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The final sections of the book, however, become less a historyof working-class radicalism and more a sustained, and often strident, indictmentof American capitalism. As a Marxist’s analysis of the American labor movement,it is focused and consistent. As a history of working-class radicalism, it has anumber of limitations.

The University of Dayton Janet R. Bednarek

New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City. By J.Mark Souther. (Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Pp. 344.$34.95.)

The author of this study has written an impressive first book in which he examinesthe transformation of New Orleans from a commercial port city into a predomi-nantly tourist mecca after World War II. His primary focal points are jazz; historicpreservation, particularly in the French Quarter; the acquisition of a professionalfootball team; and Mardi Gras. The author is at his best when he describes thenuanced impact of marketing these tourist-oriented endeavors upon Crescent Cityculture. Tourism, for example, undoubtedly contributed to the preservation of thecity’s unique French Quarter, but the advancing trend toward commercialismthreatened to ruin the neighborhood for residential life, turning it into a panoramaof T-shirt shops, strip clubs, loud and often invasive street performers, chainhotels, and time-share condos that ranged somewhere between tawdry and lewd.The advent of professional football, on the other hand, laid bare the city’sdiscriminatory racial practices. Tourism helped to revive jazz, but the innovativemusic form often became lost among night spots that featured rock, country, andrap.

J. Mark Souther perceptively understands that the centralization of tourismwithin the New Orleans economy represented a fierce struggle between a tradi-tional, mainly local elite that abhorred change and a modern, more inclusivegroup with new ideas that welcomed outsiders and their money. He also acknowl-edges that the desire to present a favorable impression of the city to prospectivetourists caused municipal fathers to gloss over the community’s serious problems


of crime, poverty, deteriorating infrastructure, and inadequate education. Touristsrarely viewed this dark underbelly of the Crescent City milieu beyond the brightlights of the Old Quarter. Souther also recognizes that the turn to tourism was anact of desperation as the city’s commercial, oil-based economy began to fade.

Souther is a superb writer who has done extensive research. There are, none-theless, grounds for quibbles. The author makes some minor mistakes. DeLessepsS. Morrison was not the first four-term mayor; Martin Behrman won five times.Elvis Presley did not make King Creole in 1950. The author additionally givessparse consideration to the impact of casino gambling upon the Crescent City’sflagging tourist industry in the 1990s. Souther does mention that Ernest “Dutch”Morial sought to create a local economy that was not totally dependent ontourism, but he neglects to note that Victor H. Schiro agreed. In the 1960s, MayorSchiro promoted the Committee of Fifty, a joint effort with the chamber ofcommerce to lure potential outside investors into the city. The plan was initiallysuccessful, attracting developer Marvin Kratter from New York as well as severalTexas big rollers to the Crescent City, but the local socioeconomic elite viewedthese eager entrepreneurs as intruders, not likely partners, and shunned them.Despite the value of their cultural and economic contributions, the newcomerseventually departed.

Souther also does not give enough attention to the concept that the failure—and unwillingness—of local financial leaders to advance the diversified eco-nomic foundation that Schiro and Morial desired produced the desperation thatmoved Mayor Moon Landrieu and his cohorts to turn to tourism as a dubiouspanacea during the 1970s. The author, furthermore, does not apparently notethat the promotion of tourism helped to exacerbate the city’s social ills as wellas mask them. At a time when African Americans in the Crescent City wereshedding the burdens of racial injustice and seeking new career opportunities,the emerging local focus on tourism reduced their prospects to low-incomeservice positions that restricted future economic advancement, the precise resultthat both Schiro and Morial feared. The two unlikely political allies wantedmore for their city and its citizens. With a shaky economic base that “whiteflight” further weakened, however, the ability of the Crescent City to address itssocial problems became severely limited. Behind the charming façade of the BigEasy, the community began spiraling into a morass of neglect that featured themutually interactive growth of crime and poverty. The profits of tourism,although ample for some, were not enough to offset stultifying decay. MayorsLandrieu, Sidney J. Barthelemy, and Marc Morial, Dutch’s son, had crafted adevil’s bargain.


Despite these vital issues, Souther has written an outstanding work. His post-script on New Orleans after Katrina is extraordinarily wise. His work is unques-tionably one of the finest studies of the modern Crescent City, a must for anyonewho hopes to understand the history and fate of the South’s fallen metropolis.

Wright State University Edward F. Haas

Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochet’s Chile, 1973–1988. BySteve J. Stern. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Pp. xxxi, 538. $27.95.)

Through his past work on colonialism in the Andes, his brilliant critique of“world system” analysis, his work on gender in colonial Mexico, and his influenceon a generation of graduate students, this author has made an extraordinaryimprint on the field of Latin American history. He now presents not one, but threebooks on what he calls the “memory question,” the process of defining anddisputing the historical memory of the Pinochet regime. Battling for Hearts andMinds, the second book of the trilogy, focuses on the cultural struggle to legitimizeor delegitimize the regime from the military coup of 11 September 1973 to theOctober 1988 plebiscite that ultimately led to Pinochet’s retirement.

Drawing on a wide array of sources, including written documents, audiovisualmaterial, and oral history, Steve J. Stern argues, “Struggles over the truth of‘how to remember’ constituted the battleground for moral, cultural, and politicallegitimacy” (2). Although opposition attempts to question Pinochet’s claim tohave saved the nation from destruction were initially met with little success,these efforts increasingly resonated with Chileans after 1983. “Memory strugglesmerged with larger struggles for social control, political direction, and culturalinfluence so intense that memory turned into mass experience” (382–383). In theprocess, Chileans’ thinking about history and human rights also changed. By1988, many Chileans viewed Pinochet’s regime as a threat to their view of theircountry’s history.

The book is divided into two parts, the first focusing on the period from 1973to 1982, during which the opposition to Pinochet struggled to gain traction, whilethe second concentrates on the growth of opposition from 1983 to 1988. Follow-ing each chapter, Stern includes an afterword intended to elaborate on, or com-plicate, the subject, offering a view from the provinces to complement a chapterfocused largely on Santiago, to cite only one example. The afterwords furtherStern’s effort to look at a variety of viewpoints on the “memory struggles.”

Stern is at his best when he focuses on the struggles of individual actors suchas the gallery owner Paulina Waugh (chapter three) or the student Tonya, who


came of age during the Pinochet years (afterword to chapter four). Many of theseaccounts are riveting. However, much of the book remains on a more generallevel, offering less of the analysis at which Stern excels. Stern devotes much of thebook to presenting a narrative of the key “memory knots”—moments that rangwith meaning—of the Pinochet regime. Although this approach provides a frame-work for struggles over historical memory, it also hampers further analysis ofsome of the key moments, particularly in Part one. Indeed, Stern spends relativelylittle time untangling the “memory knots” that he identifies.

Nevertheless, this book and the larger trilogy it belongs to represent an im-pressive accomplishment by one of today’s most influential historians of LatinAmerica. For readers less familiar with the events of the Pinochet regime, andparticularly for those interested in questions of historical memory, Battling forHearts and Minds will be rewarding reading.

Gustavus Adolphus College Sujay Rao

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady. By Gil Troy. (Lawrence, Kans.:University Press of Kansas, 2006. Pp. xiv, 263. $24.95.)

Early in Bill Clinton’s first presidential term, the reviewer was on a flight toWashington, D.C., when she heard the pilot say, “And if you look out on the rightside of the plane you’ll see the White House, where the president and her husbandlive.” The joke was sexist, of course, but this reviewer could not dismiss it onthose grounds. It reflected a trend that would have a determinative impact onHillary Rodham Clinton’s political career: the increasing discomfort of manyAmericans with her and her husband’s “copresidency.”

Now that Hillary Clinton is no longer first lady, has twice won election to theU.S. Senate, and has announced her own presidential campaign, the nation seemsmore accepting of her as a policymaker. Still, as Gil Troy argues in this study ofher White House years, she remains a “polarizing” figure. This is a result, in part,of her inability to project a consistent identity. Over her eight years in the WhiteHouse, she morphed from feminist copresident in a power suit to “wronged”woman “standing by her man” in an Oscar de la Renta gown. Troy suggests thatmost Americans did not want the former and did not trust the latter of thesecontrasting public images.

Recognizing that the role of first lady has no constitutional foundation but onlya tradition guiding its performance, Troy is generally sympathetic to Clinton’sstruggles to carve out her own unique role. He also praises her “elasticity.” Hesees her as a would-be synthesis of “two central archetypes and ideologies in


American public life, the Puritan and the Progressive.” Her Puritan side—sober,self-controlled, and disciplined—preaches “a gospel of individual accountability”;her Progressive side—generous, idealistic, and inclined toward socialengineering—favors “governmental social responsibility” (6–7). Troy admits thatshe has done rather well negotiating the fault lines between these two archetypes,but also that they make the American public unsure of just who she is.

Of the book’s highly readable six chapters, the one on the Monica Lewinskyscandal and subsequent impeachment trial of Bill Clinton is the strongest. HereTroy argues that “Hillary Rodham Clinton probably made her most significanthistorical contribution to her husband’s administration—while also setting thestage for her emergence as a political power in her own right” (169). Her publicjourney from anger, then mourning, and finally to forgiveness helped save herhusband’s presidency from total debacle while it laid the groundwork for her ownpolitical career. What Troy does not address are the limitations of this contribu-tion. It could not win the election of 2000 for the scandal-ridden Democrats.

To prepare for his study, Troy eschewed interviewing either of the Clintons, butrelied instead on reports from the print and televised media. Writing with con-siderable flair, he uses this material deftly, avoiding the rehash of every detail whilecarefully selecting those that reveal the complex implications of Hillary Clinton’spublic experience. By the end, however, his book emerges as more a history of her“image” than an analysis of her character. Despite his best efforts, that remains anenigma.

Saint Louis University Elisabeth Israels Perry

Blue & Gray Navies: The Civil War Afloat. By Spencer C. Tucker. (Annapolis, Md.:Naval Institute Press, 2006. Pp. xxviii, 426. $34.95.)

There was more to the Civil War than the great battles on land, such as Antietamand Gettysburg, which have for so long commanded our attention. In this newsurvey, Spencer C. Tucker provides compelling narratives of engagements betweenUnion and Confederate forces on oceans and rivers, as well as concise discussionsof ship construction and new weapons technologies. Drawing on a recent out-pouring of scholarship in this field, Tucker skillfully integrates the newest second-ary literature with his own original research. The result is this well-writtenoverview of the naval history of the Civil War, which ranks as a most compre-hensive study of the subject now available.

Especially for those readers who know something about the Civil War erabut less about naval history, the author offers a wealth of fascinating material.


Tucker effectively explains the Union naval blockade and the importance ofBritish neutrality. There are detailed accounts of well-known battles, such asthose between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia in 1862, and betweenthe USS Kearsarge and the CSS Alabama in 1864. Four of the fourteenchapters discuss operations on the western rivers, where naval forces oftenoperated in combination with armies. One chapter relates the remarkablestory of the Confederate “commerce raiders,” who captured and burned dozensof Northern commercial vessels all around the world. Throughout the text,illustrations and maps enrich the presentation. Many readers will benefitfrom the glossary, which defines technical terms such as “in ordinary” and “fireraft.”

Like much of the best recent literature in this field, Blue & Gray Navies paysspecial attention to naval technology. Tucker describes the ironclad programs andincludes a short chapter on submarines and mines. The author’s expert knowledgeof naval ordnance enriches his battle narratives. In an account of Union opera-tions against Charleston in 1863, for example, Tucker explains that the largestguns carried by U.S. ships were ineffective there because their firing rate of sevenminutes was too long to allow them to knock out Confederate forts. Much of thetime, the author shows, new technologies had poor results. The ironclads wereunderpowered. Guns were weak enough to allow close-range battles lastingseveral hours; ramming remained an important tactic. The H. L. Hunley, anexperimental Confederate submarine, was a deathtrap that killed most of themembers of all three of its crews.

Most of the weaknesses of this book are related to its broad scope. Manysubjects are necessarily handled in a cursory fashion, sometimes in ways that willfail to satisfy experts. In some sections of the book, the citations are so infrequentas to make it difficult for readers to identify sources. Occupied with synthesizinga large body of information, Tucker does little to present a central argument orbroad conceptual framework. The short conclusion, which praises the efforts ofboth navies and makes the unremarkable point that “Union Navy activitiesshortened the war,” will disappoint those readers interested in the place of theCivil War in the larger contexts of American and global naval history (365).Nonetheless, the achievements of this wide-ranging book are considerable.Thanks to Tucker’s work, the next generation of students and scholars is nowmuch better equipped to chart new courses across the seas of nineteenth-centurynaval history.

University of North Carolina, Charlotte Mark R. Wilson


The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861–1865. By MarkR. Wilson. (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Pp. xii, 306.$45.00.)

Although many Civil War histories chronicle battles or campaigns, few analyzein detail funding issues or the manner in which supplies were produced anddistributed during the conflict. In this book, Mark R. Wilson provides an excel-lent treatment of the constantly evolving financial and manufacturing infrastruc-ture that supported United States armies during the Civil War. Although Unionforces from the war’s outset had access to far more resources than the Confed-erates, the United States government had to create a system of procurement anddistribution that allowed its armies to press this advantage. As the author pointsout, this was no easy task, as it involved a massive economic mobilization andthe creation of an effective governmental and military bureaucracy to managethe effort.

The book is organized chronologically, with the initial pages devoted to fun-damental economic and supply issues that concerned both federal and stateleaders at the beginning of the war. Immediately following the fall of Fort Sumterand Abraham Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteer troops in April of 1861, officialsfrom state after state in the North began contacting Washington with queriesconcerning their responsibilities for supplying the new soldiers. Out of necessitythe North, early on, created a decentralized procurement system that lackeduniformity and operated with a number of different organizations and individualspurchasing military supplies. As the war progressed, however, it became apparentthat this system was not the answer, and an important transition took place withnational authority usurping the authority of the states. As Wilson points out,“however rational the centralization of procurement authority might have been, italso represented a potentially radical redistribution of economic authority” (32).The author goes on to describe the organization and long-range consequences ofthe Federal military apparatus that developed between 1861 and 1865. Theauthor explains that the expanding war effort created a massive mixed militaryeconomy sustained by a network of military procurement officers, public officials,and private concerns. Of note is the contention that although the system dealtwith the distribution of supplies worth millions of dollars, it was relatively free ofpartisan political influences. Wilson also argues effectively that, despite a massivemilitary demobilization in 1865, the federal economic model created during thewar years cast a long and influential shadow over the emerging industrialeconomy of the Gilded Age.


The author offers a significant contribution to Civil War literature. Using awide range of primary sources, Wilson has produced a work that gives readers anunderstanding of an often ignored but critically important foundational elementof the Union war effort. Without an efficient supply network, there would havebeen far fewer sabers rattling and bullets whistling on the battlefield, and prob-ably far fewer Union victories. The book is also well written, and the material ispresented in a clear, concise manner. Although reading economic history cansometimes be a bit tedious, that is not the case here. As a result, any student of theCivil War or the development of the modern American industrial economy shouldfind this book of great interest.

Gainesville State College Ben Wynne

Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America Rich. By Robert E. Wrightand David J. Cowen. (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. 240.$25.00.)

Theirs are not household names: Tench Coxe, Albert Gallatin, Thomas Willing,Robert Morris, William Duer, Nicholas Biddle, and Stephen Girard. But accordingto this book, these men, along with the better known Alexander Hamilton andAndrew Jackson, are responsible for making economic prosperity possible in theearly American republic. By creating a financial system that efficiently matchedthose who had money with entrepreneurs who had none, these nine men can beregarded as America’s “financial founding fathers.”

Robert E. Wright and David J. Cowen begin with a basic question aboutnineteenth-century America: How and why did the United States become sowealthy so fast? There is more than one answer. But history textbooks, influencedby decades of “bottom up” social history, give the authors reason to say thatfinance has been too much ignored. Who now remembers that in 1789 the largestdepartment of the executive branch was not State, nor Commerce, nor Defense,but the Treasury? Finance is a subject full of scary words such as “assumption”and “specie standard.” Thus Wright, an economics professor at New York Uni-versity, and Cowen, an independent scholar who once worked on Wall Street,aspire to make an eye-glazing subject as lively as it is significant. In this theylargely succeed.

The authors’ method is biographical, but in fact they are less interested in thelives of the financial founders than in the system of finance they founded. Theinfrastructure of the system included a central bank; a unit of account thatdoubled as a means of payment (the dollar); incorporated financial intermediaries,


such as banks and insurers, and markets for equity and debt. Following LouisBrandeis, the authors call this system the “golden goose,” because it made com-merce, industry, wealth, and, ultimately, a stable democracy possible. An assump-tion influencing the tone of the book is that the system was a fair one: “Those whobest fed the goose, in other words, received the most golden eggs” (8).

Seeking a readership beyond academia, Wright and Cowen tell a story that isbrisk yet richly detailed. It would be hard to say how far they strayed fromstandard secondary sources, as an annotated bibliography has been substitutedfor footnotes. Economic historians will turn the pages quickly.

Still, for nonspecialists and teachers like this reviewer who slight financialhistory, there are many fine anecdotes and some real surprises. What does it mean,for example, that five of the nine financial founders were orphans? But the biggestsurprise has to be the authors’ disagreement with the standard narrative of financein the early national period. As talk of a “Bank War” suggests, it is easy toemphasize disagreements between the two parties over the financial system. ButWright and Cowen set debates over a national bank, the meaning of a nationaldebt, etc., into the context of an overall consensus among partisans that financewas the goose that laid the golden eggs. When the dust of election-year argumentshad settled, everyone believed in economic prosperity and saw that financialdevelopment was the means to get there. Thus, in the financial system, the authorssee an “underlying continuity” to early American history (6).

Augustana College Lendol Calder

ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

ARVN: Life and Death in the South Vietnamese Army. By Robert K. Brigham.(Lawrence, Kans.: University of Kansas Press, 2006. Pp. xiv, 178. $29.95.)

In 1975 one in six able-bodied South Vietnamese males between the ages ofsixteen and sixty served in the government’s armed forces, and over two hundredthousand men had been lost in combat, but the story of the Army of the Republicof Vietnam (ARVN) soldier remains a black hole in the history of the VietnamWar. Robert K. Brigham’s short study, based on interviews with former ARVNveterans and documents in Vietnamese government archives, provides illuminat-ing insights into the lives of the ARVN soldiers.

Brigham confirms established interpretations of the larger causes of ARVNdeficiencies and the failures of the Saigon government. However, his three chapterson conscription, training, and morale break new ground with their devastatingly


detailed picture of ARVN’s inexplicable disregard for the well-being of its men.The unprecedented introduction of universal conscription alienated much of therural population by denuding the countryside of manpower essential to sustainrural life without providing security or other tangible benefits. Conditions onlyworsened after conscription. Inadequate political training, shockingly poorcombat training, and indifference to the welfare of the soldiers generated feelingsof victimization and estrangement. Brigham offers convincing evidence thatrecruits left boot camp unprepared for combat and convinced that they wereinferior to the better-trained Communist forces. Morale was further underminedby low pay, bad food, and an almost nonexistent leave policy. As a result, the basiccombat units of ARVN lacked the elemental bonds of solidarity with one anotherthat are the mainstay of any fighting force.

Brigham is especially convincing in showing how individual soldiers adapted tosuch isolating circumstances. Soldiers brought their families into their barracksand military camps, gave first precedence to family survival, and they fought asmembers of an extended family. “The focus on families in the absence of anymeaningful national program based on the Vietnamese concept of ai quoc (patrio-tism) meant that ARVN soldiers reverted to the familiar: the comfortable culture-bound dominance of the family in their daily lives.” By contrast, “Communistshad learned how to transfer filial piety from the family to the village and then tothe state” (130).

Misguided American policies contributed to the problems. American advisorsfirst transformed locally based light forces suited for antiguerrilla operations intoheavy divisions equipped for conventional war. As ARVN became dependent onAmerican aid, its training and tactics shifted according to ever-changing Americanpreferences. When the U.S. assumed responsibility for major offensive operationsin 1967, it relegated ARVN to a secondary role in policing pacified areas. By thetime a new strategy of Vietnamization required a more proactive military posture,it was too late to reverse the consequences of long years of neglect and dependencyon America.

Brigham’s interviews vividly capture the feelings, aspirations, and fears of footsoldiers as they prepared for battle and coped with imminent defeat. ARVN offersthought-provoking insights and raises important questions, but the extremebrevity of the volume imposes significant limits. Although ARVN fought for overfifteen years and suffered very significant casualties, the analysis of its perfor-mance on the battlefield is limited to a few battles and a discussion of changingAmerican strategy. Readers learn that some units fought well and others did not,but not why this was the case. The discussion of the Diem regime’s approach to


political indoctrination and conscription is excellent; by contrast, neither NguyenCao Ky nor Nguyen Van Thieu is mentioned by name.

ARVN is a significant contribution that whets our appetite to learn more aboutARVN and its soldiers. It also should remind us of pitfalls awaiting Americanmilitary advisors who want to impose American ways of military organization onallied forces.

Claremont McKenna College Arthur Lewis Rosenbaum

Nehru: A Political Life. By Judith M. Brown (New Haven, Conn.: Yale UniversityPress, 2003. Pp. xvi, 407. $35.00.)

Jawaharlal Nehru [1889–1964] was one of the foremost leaders of the Indiannationalist movement and the first Prime Minister of independent India. Hispolitical career spans half a century of nationalist politics, and there is an enor-mous amount of published and unpublished material on him. Fifty volumes of hiscollected works have already been published, and at least twenty more are to come.

Judith M. Brown is one of the few British historians who has focused on theGandhian phase of India’s struggle for freedom. All her books are carefullyresearched and meticulously documented. Like other young historians (laterknown as the “Cambridge School”) who chose to venture into the field of modernIndian history in the 1970s and 1980s, in her earlier books she seemed to havedifficulties in comprehending the ethos of Indian nationalism and the idealisticcomponent contained in it. With every book she has written, she has furtheroutgrown this limitation, and from this standpoint her book on Nehru is the mostmature.

Brown has read widely and has drawn profusely on Nehru’s own writings onother published and unpublished sources. In one volume, she has managed topack a fairly detailed account of Nehru’s crowded thirty years in the freedomstruggle as well as seventeen years in office. Her narrative is concise, cogent, andon the whole balanced while dealing with controversial issues. For example,British propaganda during World War II had held Congress leaders responsible forthe failure of the Cripps Mission in 1942, but Brown lays the responsibilitysquarely on Prime Minister Churchill and the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow. Brown’scomments on several other oft-debated issues are carefully framed. She describesthe Gandhi–Nehru relationship as “complex, in which each learned from theother” and argues that Nehru did not break with Gandhi’s leadership as it was“indisputable for mass nationalism.” On Nehru’s economic policies, which haveelicited much criticism in recent years, Brown points out that Nehru owed his


inspiration for a centralized planned economy not only to the Soviet model, butto several other sources, and that his policy was eclectic rather than doctrinaire.She recognizes the idealist element in Nehru’s policy of nonalignment with the twoantagonistic ideological-cum-military blocs led by the United States and SovietUnion. She refutes the oft-repeated criticism of Nehru for reluctance in condemn-ing the Soviet Union for the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution. She showsthat Nehru’s initial ambivalence was really because he could not get through tothe Indian embassies in Budapest and Moscow fast enough because of the dis-ruption of communication. When he belatedly received reports from them, hecondemned the Soviet action in the Indian Parliament in no uncertain terms andcalled for the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

Brown notes the deficiencies and limitations of Nehru, such as failure toenforce land reforms, to foresee the population explosion, and to accelerateuniversal elementary education. However, all in all, Nehru emerges from this bookas one of the tallest political figures of the twentieth century, as an architect ofIndian freedom, a democratic ruler, and as a champion of world peace.

New Delhi, India B. R. Nanbda

State or Merchant? Political Economy and Political Process in 1740s China. By HelenDunstan. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. xv, 523.$54.95.)

One of the signal achievements of Chinese society in the seventeenth and eigh-teenth centuries was the sustenance of a population that nearly doubled on an areaof arable land that increased only modestly. In part, this feat was achieved byChinese merchants, riding the wave of inexorable commercialization of theChinese food economy. But the eighteenth-century Qing dynasty [1644–1911]contributed by developing perhaps the most sophisticated relief grain storagemechanisms in the world, known as the “Ever Normal Granaries.” In State orMerchant? Helen Dunstan explores the respective contributions of these twoorders to China’s late-imperial food economy. More precisely, she explores thestate’s view of the capacities of the mercantile and governmental orders as theywere expressed in a debate that took place in the 1740s over the amount of grainthat needed to be stored to protect against famine.

Much of the book consists of translations and explications of officials’ contri-butions to this debate. These translations are executed with grace, literacy, andintelligence; Dunstan is a very adept translator of eighteenth-century officialprose. She renders her sources clearly and precisely, leaving silences where she


finds them, and eschews the presentism, which makes eighteenth-century officialssound like failed modern economists. To read this book is to enter a world ofliterate, numerate, and Confucian officials struggling by their own lights toaddress the serious issues of their day. They are numerate, but not statisticians;analytical, but not social scientists.

A brief review can hardly do justice to the arguments of an enormous and densevolume and the debates that it will inevitably stimulate. The author succeeds inrendering not only individual official contributions, but a whole discourse, withmany issues at stake. It suffices to say that Dunstan claims to have found analmost literal smoking gun in the mass of dry economic analyses she has studied.She argues that after an ill-advised (or perhaps not advised at all) imperial effortto expand grain storage targets in the early 1740s, the Qianlong emperor retreatedas he discovered the cost of the Jinchuan War, a conflict spurred by a rebellion inTibetan territories annexed by the Qing after a war in the early 1720s. This is nosmall contention that, if sustained by further research, links two wings of the Qinghistory field, those who are inclined to see the empire as a rationalizing state, andthose who see it as an expanding empire. Obviously it was both, systematicallymustering the resources of agrarian China to support expansionist military effortson the frontier. Dunstan’s detailed and meticulous reading of the archives exploresthe link between the two efforts.

University of Washington R. Kent Guy

The Making of the Chinese State: Ethnicity and Expansion on the Ming Borderlands.By Leo K. Shin. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xxi,246. $80.00.)

In marked contrast to the works of earlier generations of China scholars thattended to focus on the “civilizing” process of “Sinicization,” more recent schol-arship has shifted toward a more nuanced understanding of the relationshipbetween the Han Chinese majority and the other ethnic groups that comprised theimperial (as well as the modern) Chinese state. The present work by Leo K. Shincontinues this trend. Shin attempts to present an alternative narrative of howmodern China “became Chinese” by considering how the position and identifi-cation of ethnic minorities within the modern Chinese state have been shaped bypolicies of expansion and accommodation dating back to the Ming dynasty[1368–1644]. Specifically, Shin seeks to modify the narratives of “concertedannexation” and “Han acculturation” that he argues are rooted in primordialistapproaches to the concept of ethnicity (3). In the process he hopes to induce his


readers to step outside the limited framework of “Han” versus “non-Han” toarrive at a more complete understanding of how the modern Chinese state wasboth created and imagined, a point he discusses in the book’s conclusion. Shinstresses that his book is “about how representatives and agents of state-officials,but also travelers and settlers, constructed and perpetuated distinctions, and it isabout how they, in doing so, reinforced what it meant to be civilized and—byextension—to be Chinese” (19). However, this is not a mere theoretical study ofimagined communities. Shin includes ample discussion of concrete events andpolicies, solidly grounded in primary source materials, including local and pro-vincial gazetteers and privately compiled ethnographies.

He emphasizes that what we now think of as the southern boundary of Chinawas in fact demarcated during the Ming period. Furthermore, many of modernChina’s “recognized minorities” first appeared in the historical record duringMing times. And although the Manchu Qing [1644–1911] empire was certainlymore consciously “multi-ethnic” than its Ming predecessor, this does not meanthat Ming officials and statesmen were unaware of the challenges and implicationsof governing a multiethnic state. To the contrary, they adopted a variety ofinnovative strategies to divide, conquer, assimilate, and acculturate, depending onparticular circumstances and with varying degrees of success, mirroring theirmodern PRC counterparts.

For the most part, the book succeeds in achieving its stated aims, but someareas could use improvement. First, Shin confines his analysis to the Guangxiprovince, viewing it as an archetypal borderland. Although this is not entirelyobjectionable, at times the book suffers from a sort of tunnel vision that leads theauthor to ignore primary sources from other nearby provinces that could enhancehis argument. For example, his discussion of the prominent aboriginal chieftainsof Guangxi invites comparisons with the Yangs of Sichuan, yet the latter are givenonly cursory mention. Likewise, more comparisons with other border studies—hedoes cite Richard White’s seminal The Middle Ground—would be especiallywelcome. Subjects such as this invite comparison and can introduce Chinesehistory to a much broader audience, but Shin has missed the opportunity here.

With respect to technical matters, there are few typographical errors, and themaps and illustrations generally enhance the text, although some of the imagessuffer from a lack of clarity. Overall, this is a useful book that advances ourunderstanding of the thorny relationship between territorial expansion and ethnicidentity in modern China.

Ball State University Kenneth M. Swope


EUROPE

Churchill: The Unexpected Hero. By Paul Addison. (New York, N.Y.: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 2005. Pp. 308. $25.00.)

The author of this book has written one of the best short biographies andhistoriographies of Winston Churchill to appear in the past decade. Affiliated withthe Centre for Second World War Studies at the University of Edinburgh, PaulAddison is the author of several books on twentieth-century Britain, World WarII, the home front, and Churchill. After completing a thirty-thousand-word articleon Churchill for the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Addisonproduced this delightful study for Oxford’s new Lives and Legacies series.

Although Churchill changed little from youth to old age in terms of hispersonality, character, and beliefs, the author grasps how public perception ofChurchill shifted from being mostly negative before the Second World War towidely recognizing him as one of the great men of the century. In his EnglishHistory, 1914–1945, A. J. P. Taylor, a hypercritical historian, called Churchill “thesaviour of his country” in one of his footnotes. The mostly negative views aboutChurchill before 1940, as well as the mostly positive views of him afterward,comprised Churchill’s long public career, which Addison cleverly describes as oneof snakes and ladders, with Gallipoli being the longest snake and Churchill’s warleadership in 1940 being the longest ladder.

Writing in clear and lively prose, telling a few new stories, citing some primarysources, and using surprising secondary sources and cartoons available on theInternet, Addison offers three brief chapters on young Winston, 1874–1901; “TheRenegade, 1901–1911”; and the “Lilliput Napoleon, 1911–1915.” In two longerchapters, Addison judiciously recounts “The Winstonburg Line, 1915–1924” and“Respectability Won and Lost, 1924–1939.” Addison’s longest chapter is onWorld War II, “The Making of a Hero, 1939–1945,” which is followed by a shortchapter, “Climbing Olympus, 1945–1965.”

The last two chapters help Addison answer the question he poses at the end ofhis study: “How did a man who for decades had been written off as erratic anduntrustworthy come to be acclaimed as the ‘saviour of his country’?” Addisonexplains how before 1940, Churchill, a big risk-taker in politics and war, “veeredbetween triumph and disaster” instead of safely following a “steady middlecourse” (246). In 1940, when France fell and Britain turned to Churchill, thepublic then embraced his egotism, oratory, and passion for warfare. Churchillturned out to be a popular British leader in World War II and a prominent world


figure early in the Cold War, which he demonstrated in his hugely successful warmemoirs. He has become a mythical figure as many statues of him were erected byChurchill loyalists. Critics and historians have exploded most of the myths sur-rounding his life, but even “the recognition of his frailties and flaws . . . workedin his favor,” as he has been turned into “a hero our disenchanted culture canaccept and admire: a hero with feet of clay” (254).

Arizona State University Roger Adelson

Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945. Edited by Paul Addison and Jeremy A.Crang. (Chicago, Ill.: Ivan R. Dee, 2006. Pp. x, 260. $16.95.)

The destruction of the ancient and beautiful German city of Dresden by Alliedbombers on 13–14 February 1945 has two aspects: as concrete historical fact andas a locus for a moral and political controversy. In this book, the editors demon-strate that, even after myths are dispelled and the facts rigorously established, acore of controversy remains.

The book consists of six papers delivered at a University of Edinburgh collo-quium in 2003, with three additional chapters. The contributors are all recognizedexperts in their fields, including such luminaries as Hew Strachan, Tami DavisBiddle, and Richard Overy. Although there is no overarching viewpoint, PaulAddison and Jeremy A. Crang seem to have commissioned papers to create an“analytical narrative,” from an examination of British bombing and strategic wardoctrine; through the genesis, tactics, and experience of the raid itself; to thepersisting postwar controversy. The strength of this method is that each chapter isa complete argument, independently researched and conceptualized, with nocompromise necessary for conformity with an overall thesis. A drawback is thatFirestorm is primarily interpretive rather than descriptive, and more useful toscholars and military buffs than to the general public.

The authors perform a signal service in definitively clearing away much mis-information and historical detritus about the bombing. Dresden has become alegitimate symbol of the horrors of modern warfare, but reality about thebombing has been obscured by a fog of exaggeration and oversimplification.Dresden during the raid was hell on earth—but 25,000 to 40,000 died, not135,000, or 200,000, or more, as David Irving and others have claimed. Dresdenwas hardly a prime military target, but it did have manufacturing and transportfacilities of military importance. And planners of the raid, including British AirChief Marshal Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, surely hoped to demoralize thecivilian population, but that was not their sole motivation. Nazi apologists, the


former East German government, revisionist German historians, and many whoare simply appalled by the destruction have made great play of Dresden by usinginaccurate information. That will no longer be possible.

The bombing of Dresden remains morally dubious. Hew Strachan, in hischapter on the evolution of strategic bombing doctrine in Britain, demonstratesthat a flawed understanding of both the efficacy of aerial bombardment and thelikely reaction of civilians led some to advocate terror bombing. Sebastian Coxshows that a long and exhausting war induced callousness on the part of thosewho chose targets for the Allied armadas. And Donald Bloxham, while drawinga careful distinction between war crimes and crimes against humanity, makes acogent, if not entirely persuasive, legal case that the raid on Dresden was indeeda war crime.

This book will not settle the debate over Dresden. It will, however, ensure thatthis debate is conducted on a firmer base of historical reality.

University of Pittsburgh Bernard Hagerty

The Revolution of 1905: A Short History. By Abraham Ascher. (Stanford, Calif.:Stanford University Press, 2004. Pp. xiv, 239. $20.95.)

This is not only the best one-volume history of the Russian Revolution of 1905,but a model of writing on a large topic, with balance and fullness presented inrelatively brief compass. It far surpasses Sidney Harcave’s First Blood, which waslengthier and treated only the year 1905. In this book, the author argues that the“1905 Revolution” actually ran from 1904 to mid-1907. This work is the productof long study, drawing not only on the author’s own two-volume history of the1905 Revolution but on the most recent studies of late imperial Russian history aswell, including his own excellent works on Peter A. Stolypin, Paul Akselrod, theMensheviks, and other topics. Complementing his exhaustive research, AbrahamAscher’s judgment is temperate, judicious, and forgiving. In its balance andcomprehensiveness, this brief history of one of Russia’s great turning points offerspenetrating insight into that troubled country’s basic historical forces.

For all its scholarly balance, there is yet an interpretive shape to the text, albeita widely accepted one. Ascher thinks that Bolshevism was a tragic turn for Russiain that her immediately preceding political life—the 1905 Revolution inparticular—had revealed a wealth of energy and initiative lying beneath the brittleshell of the repressive Tsarist order, much of which was stifled in the Soviet period.Yet Russia’s larger historical tragedy is also contained within the three-year storytold in this book.


As a man of le juste milieu, Ascher is not particularly admiring of the partiesand personalities of the Left. Hence, the narrative of the radicals’ great momentsin calendar 1905, although impeccably fair and objective, does not recreate theexcitement of such arresting events as the wildfire of sympathy strikes that brokeout in January or the direct democracy practiced by the uniquely Russian sovietsof workers’ deputies. Rather, Ascher’s studiedly cool account of revolutionarymoments of 1905 serves as the prelude to the story that he apparently regards asmore interesting, if not more significant—the attempts in 1906 and 1907 to rootthe new political arrangements granted in the October Manifesto in the volatileand rapidly shifting social and political ground resulting from the upheavalsof 1905.

Once the brief ministries of Witte and Goremykin had passed away, thenarrative focuses on the valiant but thankless and unsuccessful attempts ofStolypin to forge a viable link between the autocratic government and the newDuma institution. No one else comes off as reasonable or temperate in this tale;the radicalism of the deputies’ demands on the government was matched by thegovernment’s inflexible defense of autocratic privilege and use of strong armtactics. As the largest party in the first two Dumas, the Kadets’ unwillingness tooffend the Left or to appear to support the government was a key ingredient of theresulting stalemate. Nicholas II rather than Stolypin is shown to be the source ofthe government’s harsh policies, as the prolongation of the field courts martial andthe cancellation of a milder policy toward Jews—both opposed by Stolypin—illustrates.

In his conclusion, Ascher puts the 1904–1907 events in the broader flow ofRussian history, characterizing them as the earlier beginnings of the democraticand individualistic aspirations that have emerged since 1991. Yet his sober andbalanced description of the 1905 Revolution also reminds the reader that suchliberations from repressive, authoritarian rule in Russia have also brought vio-lence and new repression.

North Carolina State University Gerald Surh

Ages in Chaos: James Hutton and the Discovery of Deep Time. By Stephen Baxter.(New York, N.Y.: Tom Doherty Associates, 2006. Pp. 256, $13.95.)

James Hutton [1726–1797] was a significant yet largely unheralded participant inthe Scottish Enlightenment. Like many of his fellow luminaries, he was a poly-math (agriculturalist, botanist, chemist, medical doctor, meteorologist, philoso-pher), but made his mark primarily as a geologist. Today scientists estimate the


Earth to be more than four billion years old. In Hutton’s time and place, eminentscholars using biblical evidence concluded it to be six thousand years of age.Hutton, through imaginative insights and shrewd observations, thought it to bemuch more ancient thereby introducing the notion of “deep time.” Moreover, bybuilding on what one observed, one could reconstruct what must have occurredand anticipate what might occur as Earth forms eroded, consolidated, anduplifted. His conclusions, their initial reception, and their contribution to subse-quent study of the Earth’s makeup are the themes of this book.

Mathematician and engineer by training, science fiction author, and self-taughthistorian, Stephen Baxter is also something of a polymath. Pursuing his maintheme, he follows several lines of enquiry. First, he attempts to lay out the innerman. Despite sparse relevant evidence, he claims Hutton to be a hard drinker(especially of claret) and a “scurrilous rogue” who kept a secret from his friendsabout the existence of an illegitimate son (180). Second, the author attempts toevoke the sociopolitical milieu in which Hutton functioned. For example, hetraces the efforts of Charles Edward Stuart to overthrow the British monarchy in1745. He lays out, as well, the early features of the Industrial Revolution. And heprovides potted biographies of Hutton’s Enlightenment colleagues, includingAdam Smith, James Watt, and Erasmus Darwin.

Although Baxter is not at his best in these previously mentioned endeavors, hemore than makes up for their limitations in pursuing several others. Previouswork, like that of Isaac Newton, to which Hutton was indebted, is recognized.Hutton’s wide-ranging, arduous investigative trips seeking out and describingvarious, especially Scottish, landforms are extremely evocative. Despite their“foggy impenetrability,” he clarifies and makes accessible Hutton’s writing bothpublished and unpublished (191). He recreates the response of Hutton’s criticsand supporters to his writings. He is especially insightful in rebutting the chargeof critics that Hutton was an atheist rather than, like many Enlightenment figures,a deist. Finally he traces how Hutton’s work was taken on board, ignored, altered,or rejected by subsequent influential geologists such as Charles Lyell. For example,his claim that granite was an igneous rock, that is, of volcanic origin, waseventually accepted, but his belief that phlogiston, a hypothetical substance,accounted for the heat of subterranean earth was rejected. Indeed, the underlyingmessage of how scientific breakthroughs originate in cooperation and competitionamong scholars is, for this reviewer, the highlight of this book. Others might findits sensitive handling of the clash between faith and reason of particular interest.

University of British Columbia Robert Kubicek


Strange, Inhuman Deaths: Murder in Tudor England. By John Bellamy. (Westport,Conn.: Praeger, 2006. Pp. vi, 209. $49.95.)

In the author’s newest foray into Tudor legal culture, we are introduced to theplace murder held in society through an examination of both its criminal char-acteristics and of the way in which the English people understood its meaning.Beginning with the “murder” of Richard Hun early in Henry VIII’s reign, JohnBellamy traces the growing fascination with murder, abetted by the moral lens thatProtestantism offered along with the currency provided by the printed word.

The first part of the book focuses on the legal aspects. Between 1509 and 1559,twenty-two statutes were enacted that dealt with murder, and with these, agrowing sophistication within the law created a more nuanced differentiationbetween premeditated killing and manslaughter, as well as in how accompliceswould be treated. Throughout the book, there is also a sustained discussion on therole of pardons and torture within the emerging new legal process. At the sametime, when describing the various judicial procedures, Bellamy makes it clear thatthe odds were stacked against accused murderers, who were not even given a copyof the charges against them. Execution was always the penalty for those foundguilty, while the means depended on the nature of the crime.

From here Bellamy launches into an examination of four celebrated murdercases from mid-Tudor England, the time when chroniclers, especially Holinshed,and pamphleteers began paying attention to the crime. In the first, the disappear-ance of a boarder in the home of Philip Witherick leads to the host’s convictionand execution for murder, based on the ever-changing testimony of his ten-year-old son. This case highlights the pressures often applied by local officials (con-stables and bailiffs) to obtain “confessions,” to the point of injustice. In thisinstance, the supposed murder victim reappeared, but only after Witherick’sexecution. In the next episode, the ex-mayor of Faversham is the victim of acontract killing arranged by his wife and her lover. Here we become more familiarwith the legal subtleties linked to gender (e.g., a wife’s murder of her husband waspetty treason and thus meant execution by burning rather than hanging) and theimpact Elizabethan dramas based on chronicled cases can have in teaching morallessons to their audiences. The next case study is the gruesome kidnapping,torture, and murder of William Hartgill and his son by their rival, Lord Stourton.Bellamy here reveals the manner in which the jealousies and festering animositiesof families economically linked can sometimes reach the breaking point, even asa repentant gallows speech offers hope of ultimate redemption. Finally, there is thestory of the good husband, George Sanders, being murdered by his wife and her


evil accomplice, Ann Drury, in 1573. In the famous pamphlet and subsequentstage rendering of the case, Drury becomes the stereotypical wicked, depravedwoman, who exudes malevolence by practicing palmistry and illicit medicine.

In total, Bellamy’s analysis of these cases is rather muted and unfortunatelythere is no conclusion that attempts to tie them all together in some significantway. Instead, we are given noteworthy illustrations of how the Tudor period,which witnessed the emergence of the Renaissance, the birth of Protestantism andits Puritan variation, the advent of printing, and the restoration of law and order,also saw a related growth of interest in salacious tales of murder with all of theirancillary attention to morality, patriotism, and even entertainment value. On thisscore, not much has changed between the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries.

Florida Atlantic University Ben Lowe

The Warsaw Uprising of 1944. By Wlodzimierz Borodziej. Translated by BarbaraHarshav. (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. Pp. 183. $45.00.)

A few years ago, when Poland celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of the 1944Warsaw Uprising, many Poles were annoyed that so many foreigners confusedthat bloody struggle with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of the previous year.Wlodzimierz Borodziej’s small book, first published in 2001 in German, gives ashort overview of this important event. In just under 150 pages, the Polishhistorian sets down the background, circumstances, events, and importance of thisstruggle that is so important to Polish national memory and so neglected outsidethat country. The book has little by the way of new information or interpretationsfor specialists, but can serve as an excellent introduction to these events fornon-Polonists.

Borodziej’s book is divided into eleven short chapters and an epilogue. He firstgives the reader an overall view of Polish resistance in the period from 1939, thedifficulties of coordination of underground troops with the London exile govern-ment, and plans in Poland for demonstrative attacks on the German troops as theyretreated from cities in erstwhile eastern Poland, especially Wilno (Vilnius) andLwów (L’viv). By attacking the Germans in this way, the Poles of the undergroundArmia Krajowa (AK) hoped to gain respect, perhaps even cooperation, from theRed Army. Unfortunately, as Borodziej shows, the AK was too weak and too shorton weapons to make much of an impression on Soviet leadership, and one maydoubt whether Moscow had any interest in true cooperation with the Poles in anycase.


Having set the stage (and this takes nearly the entire first half of the book),Borodziej proceeds to analyze the discussions on the timing of uprisings againstthe now-retreating Nazi army. Despite the lack of sufficient weapons, the decisionwas reached—after much heartfelt and heated deliberation—to launch an uprisingon 1 August. The rest of the book details the events of the uprising itself, theinsurgents’ initial successes at taking the central part of Warsaw, including the OldTown, then the tragic and inexorable retaking of the city by the German troopsover the next two months, while the Red Army remained fairly immobile on theother side of the Vistula River and the USSR refused landing rights for alliedaircraft that might have brought much-needed supplies and weapons to the Poles.

Borodziej points out that the Red Army’s failure to advance in aid to the rebelswas at least in part a military decision: the Soviet units were exhausted andoverextended and had met unexpectedly strong German resistance in the easternsuburbs of the Polish capital. But, in the end, the Soviet decision not to help thePolish uprising must be seen as a mainly political decision, based on the cynicalcalculus that allowing Poles (even with Soviet help) to liberate their capital wouldonly encourage the Polish patriotic forces that the USSR least trusted to runpostwar Poland. Borodziej ends with an epilogue that discusses the postwarregime’s interpretations of the uprising (remarkably, no memorial to this strugglewas erected in People’s Poland until the mid-1980s, when the communist regimewas—although we did not know it at the time—on its way out).

This is an excellent short introduction to a crucial event in recent Polish history,despite some errors in transliteration and translation. The book is especiallyrecommended for nonspecialists interested in World War II, Poland in the twen-tieth century, and Polish–Soviet relations.

Southern Illinois University, Carbondale Theodore R. Weeks

Pompeii: The Living City. By Alex Butterworth and Ray Laurence. (New York, N.Y.:St Martin’s Press, 2006. Pp. viii, 354. $27.95.)

In claiming reanimation of the Vesuvius-buried city, this book’s title does notdeceive. The authors pay tribute in their introduction to the two and a halfcenturies of excavation and interpretation that have accumulated the informa-tional resources on which they base their own “microhistorical” narrative aimingto present “a story of life as it was lived in all its strangeness during the trouble-some twenty-five years leading up to Pompeii’s destruction” (6). The color ofunforeseen doom may recall Bulwer-Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii, which the


present book might be said to rival in its combination of inventiveness andarchaeologically derived information.

The approach is concomitantly chronological and thematic. Beginning in theyear AD 54, which saw Nero installed as Roman Emperor in the seat of hismurdered adoptive father Claudius, the narrative enters Pompeii through thehousehold of the Lucretii Valentes, a family whose civic standing would come tobe closely associated with the emperor through appointment of their paterfamiliasas Flamen Neronis, the priestly representative of the imperial cult. As its time lineunfolds, the authors sustain a double vision of the Pompeian and Roman politicalclimates as they are intertwined through the elevation of a native daughter, theshamelessly opportunistic Poppea Sabina, as Nero’s second wife. The microhis-torical component emerges in the construction of chapters around such topics asslavery and the household, the duties of magistrates, cloth and food production,religious cults of diverse origin, public entertainments, and the inevitable sexindustry, often interpreting the local evidence with information grafted fromsimilar practices in Rome. Alongside the physical remains of the city, graffiti andinscriptions—as scholars have consulted them for sociological analysis in theponderous Corpus Inscriptiorum Latinorum—are the primary sources of infor-mation both for persons and for lifestyles. Employing such studies, in a range fromloan tablets to tavern scrawls, our authors bring the city to life through its people,spreading attention over the classes from the most distinguished officeholder andpublic benefactor of the era to a runaway slave girl seeking asylum. Occasionallythe cultural narrative is interspersed with a little fictive jeu d’esprit: the slave girlclings precariously to Nero’s statue; the benefactor reflectively anticipates thegames he is about to sponsor. Italic typeface clearly marks the originality of theseinterpolations.

The historical narrative peaks in crisis with the calamitous earthquake ofAD 62, and subsequent aftershocks that crumbled numerous buildings necessitat-ing massive repairs still incomplete at the moment of the eruption. Taking theearthquake very seriously as a cause of death and disease to match its materialdestruction, the authors also dress it as a stage for an eventual visit of Nero to thecity, with a hypothetical account of preparations, which is probably overdone.Many recently published scholars will find their contributions recognizably andanonymously greeting them from the pages. Although the book includes a com-prehensive bibliography, a fuller bibliographical essay would have supplied inter-ested persons with further reading and would have given more scholars their due.

Indiana University, Bloomington Eleanor Winsor Leach


Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947. By Christopher Clark.(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2006. Pp. vi, 776. $35.00.)

In the beginning, there was no Prussia, and in the end the state was dissolved. Theevents between the assent of Brandenburg and the dismantling of Prussia providea fascinating story beyond misconceptions and stereotypes. It is impossible torelate the account without including the rise and demise of both the Hohenzol-lerns and National Socialism, but there is much more to the story. Prussia was theland of Kant, Hegel, and Marx; as well as the home of industry, education,theology, the Enlightenment, and one of the world’s most professional militaryforces. Prussia witnessed expanded trade, attempted Jewish emancipation, scat-tered state boundaries, and the formation of Germany. It is a challenge to write acomprehensive narrative interweaving multiple themes in a single volume, butChristopher Clark is ready for the task.

Clark manages to blend major themes in a survey that combines enough detailto capture the spirit of each major transformation in Prussian history. Forexample, after he introduces the formative characters of Brandenburg, the GreatElector enters the stage. Clark blends his story with the social, political, andeconomic themes that he will follow through the course of the book. Although hecannot, and should not, discuss events in great detail, the author cleverly capturesshifts in social consciousness. He accomplishes this by examining Prussian histo-riography, examples of primary sources, and newly revised interpretative twists.This technique effectively surfaces throughout the book, and it shines in discus-sions of the Enlightenment, the wars of unification, and the collapse of the WeimarRepublic. Clark exhibits an uncanny ability to provide insight into events withoutlosing focus on the main theme.

Clark uses irony and shifting scenes effectively. For example, readers movethrough the Prussian Enlightenment and the political aspirations of Frederick IIwhen, suddenly, they are cast among a group of young officers standing in the lineof fire on one of Frederick’s battlefields. Clark captures the essence of discipline,fear, and the horror of battle in a few paragraphs. He accomplishes the same thingwhen discussing Napoleon and when summarizing the multiple and contradictorypositions of Prussians during the rise of Hitler. The technique is less effective whendiscussing Bismarck and Hindenburg, but even these examinations reflect estab-lished historiography. In short, Clark is a scholar who writes like an accomplishednovelist.

Iron Kingdom will satisfy a number of different audiences. Scholars willappreciate the extensive use of sources and summaries of historiography. Students


who read the book will receive a comprehensive survey of Prussia, and generalreaders will find an excellent story that grabs and holds attention. Iron Kingdomis a wonderful work written as if the reader were sitting in the classroom of amaster history teacher who has the ability to remove students from their contem-porary surroundings and settle them in an age past.

Grand Valley State University Jonathan R. White

Lust for Liberty: The Politics of Social Revolt in Medieval Europe, 1200–1425. BySamuel K. Cohn Jr. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. xii,375. $49.95.)

The author of this book is a social historian of wide-ranging interests. He hasexplored marginal groups and populations in various parts of later medievalEurope, the social effects of the Black Death, and peasant revolts in Tuscany. InSamuel K. Cohn Jr.’s latest book, the author brings these interests together in ascholarly tour de force that challenges virtually every long-standing assumptionabout social unrest in medieval Europe.

Cohn draws on a great many narrative sources, corrected and supplemented bya battery of archival sources, to examine hundreds of uprisings, from the mostfamous and important to the most seemingly insignificant of local disturbances.Popular revolts, as Cohn defines them, are revolts by peasants, workers, orartisans against public authorities or higher social orders. He develops an effectivetypology, distinguishing different types of revolts from one another, but takes carenot to impose artificial distinctions. Although his view is long and broad, he is everattentive to regional and local differences (especially between sub-Alpine andtrans-Alpine revolts).

On the strength of his broad examination, Cohn rejects the prevailing wisdomabout medieval revolts: they were very rare prior to the Black Death, whichprovoked a sudden flurry of them; they were born of miserable economic privationor hunger (“bread riots,” in which women were the principal actors) and invariablydoomed to failure; and they were heavily dependent on leadership “from above”from aristocrats or ecclesiastics who provided direction and focus to the undisci-plined masses. Cohn’s close analysis yields very different conclusions. He showsthat popular revolts were far more common than is widely perceived; they were lesslikely to be driven by poverty or hunger than by political objectives or demands forbetter working conditions. Noble or clerical leadership was the exception, not thenorm; women were not especially prominent in “bread riots,” which were a veryrare occurrence, or any other type of medieval revolt. Ideological revolts (i.e., those


associated with religious dissent) were unusual. Most surprisingly, Cohn demon-strates that popular revolts were far more successful than most scholars have beenwilling to acknowledge; they often managed to acquire at least some redress ofpopular grievances, and even unsuccessful uprisings seldom engendered a repres-sive reaction from authorities. Cohn explores the symbolic and rhetorical expres-sions associated with popular rebellions and provides a critically important chapterreexamining the extent to which the Black Death should be seen as the determina-tive factor in popular uprisings after 1350.

It seems churlish to seek fault in so meticulously researched and wonderfullywritten a book, but one point bears mentioning: the title is somewhat misleading.The focus, although broad, is confined primarily to the Low Countries, France,and Italy. The English Peasant Revolt of 1381 attracts some attention, but schol-ars seeking an extensive discussion of social revolts in, say, Germany or (espe-cially) Iberia or Eastern Europe will be left somewhat unsatisfied. Even so, thereis no denying that Lust for Liberty is a magnificent scholarly achievement. Itshould (and doubtless will) transform scholarly views of and approaches to animportant phenomenon in the social history of the Western Middle Ages.

University of Louisville Blake R. Beattie

A Question of Balance: How France and the United States Created Cold War Europe.By Michael Creswell. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. xvi,238. $49.95.)

The author of this study argues that France played a major, if not the major, rolein determining the final structure of the western alliance in the early 1950s. Thisrevisionist interpretation contrasts with those that emphasize American andBritish leadership. Michael Creswell sees French leeriness of a rearmed Germanyas the key stumbling block to assembling a comprehensive Western European andAtlantic coalition to offset Soviet power. Influential French political and militaryfactions opposed any rearmament of their traditional enemy. Even those con-vinced that an effective response to Soviet power required both German man-power and industrial strength were cautious. They wanted assurance that thoseresources could never be deployed unilaterally, specifically against France. Suchconcerns helped prevent the inclusion of West Germany when the North AtlanticTreaty Organization was formed in 1949.

A series of French statesmen grappled with an alternative that would create aninternationalized military force, a European army operating under supervision ofthe European Defense Community (EDC). Questions like how much Germany


should contribute to the EDC, what size its military units could be, and how tolimit its forces to common rather than national objectives delayed and eventuallyprevented French ratification of the scheme. Moreover, France insisted that bothGreat Britain and the United States make substantial, long-term commitments tothe defense of Western Europe before acquiescing to any multilateral arrange-ment. Both Atlantic powers eventually did promise such support. By 1954, a long,simmering dispute over control of the Saar region was resolved, and PierreMendes-France used the Geneva Conference to negotiate an armistice inIndochina. Those successes encouraged him to drop the EDC initiative in prefer-ence to admitting Germany to full NATO membership. According to Creswell,that was how France dictated the final structure of the Western Cold War alliance.

Reading this well-documented book about the tortured, protracted, and repeti-tive objections and roadblocks to a final agreement may leave a reader asexhausted as the participants. About the time when the French threw up theirseventh “protocol” demanding promises or adjustments to the EDC treaty fromthe other allies, everyone on all sides must have been thoroughly sick of the affair.But Creswell’s meticulous and detailed description of the political factions, inter-national conundrums, and individual personalities at work makes sense of it all.The author includes extensive endnotes citing an impressive variety of archivaland both primary and secondary sources he consulted to develop this complex,multinational story.

This book will primarily benefit those with an interest in the inner workings ofinternational diplomacy and in the tortured progress toward a final Westernstrategy for the Cold War. The story frequently mentions major world events likethe Korean and Indochinese wars, but they serve mainly as background eventsthat influenced or detracted attention from the front lines of the developing ColdWar in Europe.

Oklahoma State University John Dobson

Roman Imperial Policy from Julian to Theodosius. By R. Malcolm Errington. (ChapelHill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Pp. xii, 336. $45.00.)

Since Edward Gibbon’s day, the overarching question about ancient Rome hasbeen why the empire fell, if that is in fact what happened to it. A more pertinentquestion, though, might be: how was the empire held together for as long as itwas? In his thoughtful and highly readable book, R. Malcolm Errington maintainsthat the thirty years from the death of the apostate Julian in 364 to the death ofTheodosius provide a key to answering this question. During that period, the


Romans came to terms with the separatism that was being imposed on the empireby external forces and internal currents.

Errington divides his subject into three large sections: “Actors & Events,”“East & West,” and “Religion & the State.” He shows how the conflict betweencertain principles created deeper problems. The Romans thought in terms ofdynasties, but no one dynasty could hold power long enough to control both partsof the empire. Even when members of one family, such as the brothers Valens andValentinian, ruled together, they divided the empire between them. The death ofone did not guarantee a successor from that family. The reign of each became defacto regional. The conflict between unity and separatism was also felt geographi-cally. Constantine had divided the empire into three prefectures, two in the Westand one in the East. Those prefectures, and their subordinate dioceses, remainedthe fundamental partes imperii, regardless of who the emperor was or where heestablished his residence. The concept of imperial capital cities decreased inimportance in the late fourth century as the emperors moved around in responseto crises on the frontiers, implementing a strategy of “active defense” (44).

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is Errington’s discussion ofreligion in the late fourth century. After the turmoil created by Julian’s restorationof pagan observances and his tolerance of all Christian communities, the status ofChristianity and its relationship to the secular government became an unsettledquestion. The movement of the Western court from Trier to Milan in 381 broughtthat branch of the government into closer contact with, and under pressure from,Milan’s energetic bishop, Ambrose, who pushed the Nicene cause relentlessly. Inthe East, the overriding problem was the selection of the bishop of Constantinopleand finding a way to move that church toward acceptance of a Nicene theology.Theodosius seems to have had little theological conviction, just a bureaucrat’sdesire for a unified church.

Errington does not break new ground here so much as invite the reader to lookat familiar territory from a different angle. The result is rewarding and is asubstantial contribution to the study of this era.

Hope College Albert A. Bell Jr.

A Scented Palace: The Secret History of Marie Antoinette’s Perfumer. By Elisabeth deFeydeau. Translated by Jane Lizop. (New York, N.Y.: I. B. Tauris, 2006. Pp. xxi,140. $26.95.)

This author contributes to an excellent body of work on Marie Antoinette that hasappeared in recent years. Hers, however, is distinctive because it chooses for a


subject the queen’s perfumer, whose life included far more than serving the court.Her expertise is remarkable because she is both a historian and a consultant to theperfume industry. She is able to represent scents in words so well that the lively,well-translated text stimulates the sense of the reader. The result is a solid and veryinteresting book.

The study is not limited to perfume. The place of the bourgeoisie in theprovinces and Paris, the effect of the Enlightenment, and the impact of theRevolution on daily life become subjects along with Marie Antoinette. The authorcaptures people and events through the documents left by Jean-Louis Fargeon, aman of talent and ambition who furnished perfumes and cosmetics for an aris-tocracy whose wasteful consumption was a necessary cost of having to live nobly.Fargeon’s fortune was made when he moved to Paris and attracted that clientele.From a family of perfumers in Montpellier, Fargeon had a natural talent forfragrances and, according to the author, a keen interest in finding ways to preservethe beauty of women. Raised in the spirit of the Enlightenment, he was exposedto the ideas on senses in the writings of Condillac, Diderot, and Rousseau. He leftfor Paris at the same time that Marie Antoinette arrived from Vienna to wed thefuture Louis XVI. An instant success, Fargeon was first called to Versailles to servethe needs of Jean Du Barry, Louis XV’s least admirable mistress. He was aston-ished by the beauty and the stench of Versailles, a palace where etiquette andrefinement did not seem to require prompt removal of human waste and garbage.Its residents sorely needed the strong fragrances of Fargeon, who began to makeregular trips to the palace while also becoming a master in his guild, beginning hisown family, and expanding his Paris business.

Elisabeth de Feydeau makes excellent use of Fargeon’s journal to reveal thecareful planning that went into each step of creating perfumes, lotions, and aproper bourgeois family. A true entrepreneur, Fargeon aggressively pursued busi-ness in the provinces and London, taking part in the rapid growth of the luxurytrade after 1780. His contact with Marie Antoinette at Versailles assured hissuccess, for she set a ruinously extravagant pace at a court where everyone had tokeep up. As he ingratiated himself with her, Marie Antoinette became the objectof hatred and ridicule in Paris. De Feydeau details the often absurd formalities thatgoverned life at court and details the queen’s great expenditure on clothing andFargeon’s perfumes and potions to preserve beauty. The perfumer was just a singleactor in a large cast that served her every whim. In 1782, the financial situationbecame perilous and the queen’s expenditures caused an angry response, isolatingher and making her take refuge in the Petit Trianon. There she had a perfect farmbuilt and played at the rustic life while continuing to spend at an alarming pace.


For Fargeon, Marie Antoinette’s extravagance, along with that of other aristo-crats, enabled him to become a country gentleman with a true estate nearParis.

When the Revolution broke out in 1789, Fargeon had mixed feelings. Heregretted the effect on those at court whom he admired, but he cast his lot withthe first revolutionaries and joined the National Guard. As the violence of thesummer of 1789 drove the aristocracy into exile, his business suffered, althoughhe continued to serve Marie Antoinette, even after the inept attempt of the royalfamily to flee resulted in her imprisonment. One of the strengths of this book ishow it describes the slide of Paris into a radical revolutionary mentality.Fargeon noted the use of the guillotine for the first time and then the degen-eration of political and social life. Through the thoughts of Fargeon, Elisabethde Feydeau presents a sympathetic account of the sad last months of MarieAntoinette. His kind reminiscences contrasted with the farcical trial and theugly execution the queen endured. The spurious judicial standards appalledFargeon and the Terror made him lose faith in the Revolution as his remainingclients mounted the scaffold. He came to believe that Paris was vile and itsresidents dissolute. In 1794, he was arrested because of his previous relationshipwith the court and endured months of incarceration. When Fargeon finallyfaced judges, they accused him only of crimes relating to his lifestyle as awealthy person; however, his membership in the National Guard and donationsto Revolutionary causes saved his life. His release occurred the same day theTerror ended, with the execution of Robespierre. Fargeon then returned to cre-ating perfumes, first for the Directory and then for Napoleon’s court, until hisdeath in 1806.

The study concludes with two appendices. The first, drawn from Fargeon’sown treatise on perfumes, lists all the ingredients and their scents and demon-strates the success he had in mingling exotic with commonplace sources. Thesecond appendix has excerpts from eighteenth-century sources detailing generaltechniques for creating perfumes. The work has limited notes and does notcontain an index or bibliography.

University of New Mexico Charlie R. Steen

The Terror: The Shadow of the Guillotine, France, 1792–1794. By Graeme Fife. (NewYork, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, 2006. Pp. 417. $30.00.)

Although the author does not provide a specific thesis statement in introducing hisbook, it is nonetheless altogether clear that he accepts neither the Terror nor one


of its major leaders, Maximilien Robespierre. It is obvious, at least to thisreviewer, that he understands neither. The revolution was faced, simultaneously,with two desperate crises and, in order to survive, it had to resort to draconianmeasures. Graeme Fife does not seem to understand the severity of either, muchless both.

First came a foreign war against the powers of the First Coalition, 1793–1797(Austria, Prussia, England, Sardinia, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Baden, Hesse,Hanover, and the Netherlands). To meet this crisis the National Conventionadopted the levée en masse, a total mobilization of France’s resources, men,materiel, and money in order to wage war. By June 1794, the levée was beginningto pay off, as shown by the victory at Fleurus over the Austrians.

The second crisis, and certainly the more serious one, was widespread internalrebellion that challenged the Paris-dominated government. At one time or another,two-thirds of France was in arms against Paris in what was a civil war. On morethan one occasion, however, such disturbances were solved by timely concessionsrather than terror; in other places, such as Lyon, the Terror was more rhetoricalthan it was real (cf., Lyford P. Edwards, The Natural History of Revolution). Fifedoes not seem to appreciate this.

The Terror was successfully intended to meet this crisis. Its total number ofvictims was not 25,000, but rather 250,000 if one counts the death toll from theVendée rebellion, which virtually all modern historians of the Revolution havedone. This figure includes both the forces of the republic and the Vendéean rebels.Granted, the Terror was on occasion and in places particularly bloody, brutal, andeven indiscriminate, although there were areas of France where the Terror wasnever felt. Nonetheless, if one accepts the Revolution on balance as being apositive thing (and, personally, this reviewer does), then the Terror must beaccepted as an integral part of it; this was the view of Mme. de Staël (astutedaughter of Jacques Necker, Finance Minister to Louis XVI), witness to theRevolution. Further, Fife makes no mention of the Republican General LazareHoche, commander of the Army of the Coasts of Cherbourg, who negotiated anhonorable peace with François Charette, the Vendée rebel leader. The peace thatresulted was uneasy, but it was a positive start.

Although he was beyond doubt a fanatic, Robespierre was not a blood-drinkeras Fife would have us believe. For example, it was not Robespierre, “the Incor-ruptible” (as he was known even to his enemies), alone who brought about theexecution of Danton, one of the early heroes of the Revolution. It was not evenRobespierre with his allies on the Committee of Public Safety, Couthon andSaint-Just, but rather a majority of the combined Committees of Public Safety and


General Security who agreed to send Danton to the guillotine. In fact, Robespierrewas initially reluctant to move against Danton, and it took a good deal ofpersuading by a majority of the two committees to bring him around.

Although Fife’s translations from the French are smooth, accurate, and appro-priately idiomatic, he provides no citations. Further, there are both importantdocumentary and secondary sources that he has not used. Among primary sourcesare Buchez and Roux, Histoire parlementaire de la Rêvolution française (fortyvolumes, 1834–1838), an important potpourri of primary material andcommentary/narrative; le anciene Moniteur (rèimpression thirty volumes, 1840–1845), the official government newspaper; and Alphonse Aulard, ed., Receuil desActes du comité de salut public (thirty volumes, 1889–1929).

Thoughtful consultation and other important secondary sources might havemade what is at best a mediocre book a much better one.

University of Denver Eric A. Arnold Jr.

Surrealism and the Spanish Civil War. By Robin Adèle Greeley. (New Haven, Conn.:Yale University Press, 2006. Pp. vii, 261. $60.00.)

The meaning of surrealist art is ambivalent, art historian Robin Adèle Greeleycontends, even when placed within the politically polarized context of the SpanishCivil War. In her superb book, she critically interprets works by Joan Miró,Salvador Dalí, José Caballero, André Masson, and Pablo Picasso to unraveltortuous correspondences between aesthetics and politics during this tempestuousera. Some of these surrealists were visionaries of socialist revolution, while othersentertained fascist fantasies of domination. Some were staunch supporters of therepublic; a few were tepid, and a couple resigned themselves to Franco’s victory.Although surrealist art sometimes served politically didactic purposes, ultimatelyits modernist aesthetic lacked a coherent political ideology or the mobilizingpower to safeguard the Second Spanish Republic.

Scrutinizing surrealism’s self-proclaimed leftist orientation, Greeley examinesthe multivalent political meanings of surrealist art through five case studies. Firstshe examines two major works by Miró commissioned for the Spanish RepublicanPavilion in the 1937 Paris World’s Fair, The Reaper wall mural and a Help Spaincommercial poster. Yet these didactic works were aesthetically and politically lessprovocative, she demonstrates, than two other pieces from this period, Woman inRevolt and Still Life with Old Shoe, which more strongly fused Miró’s Catalannationalism with his theoretical project of the “assassination of painting.”Turning next to Salvador Dalí, his flirtations with fascism have been widely


acknowledged. Greeley pushes the critique further by exploring issues of sexualviolence and male domination in paintings by Dalí, whose explicit content wasantifascist, such as Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonition of Civil Warand Autumn Cannibalism.

Perhaps the most intriguing Spanish surrealist in this book is José Caballero,whose surrealistic art “evolved and functioned” in ways, Greeley states, “that onecan relate his stylistic consistencies to his wild political swings” (96). Bluntly put,Caballero worked both for the left-center Republic and the fascist Franco regime,during and after the war. André Masson’s political affiliation, by contrast, sidedexplicitly with the radical left. His uniquely Nietzschean conception of commu-nism, best expressed through the countersurrealist journal Acéphale, celebratedthe violent destruction of bourgeois society, particularly in its most extremeformation as Nazism. The final chapter is devoted to Picasso’s Guernica as a“horrific metaphor for the physical annihilation of life” (148). Among Picasso’sworks, this painting displayed the strongest affinities between modernist aestheticsand contemporary politics.

Greeley’s book is intellectually engaging and amply illustrated with 125 plates.Yet from a historical perspective, there are some peculiarities in relation to itssubject. The Spanish painters with the strongest surrealist credentials, Caballeroand Dalí, had the weakest political commitments and were strongly tied toCatholic symbolism. The politically radical Masson had a contentious relation-ship with the surrealist movement. Miró had passed his surrealist phase, and theterm only marginally applies to Picasso’s art. Therefore, Greeley’s discussions mayspeak more to contemporary aesthetic and critical theory than to historicalcontext. Still, historians will learn important details from this scintillating study,and they should seriously ponder its implications.

University of Alaska Southeast Robin Walz

In Defense of Christian Hungary: Religion, Nationalism, and Anti-Semitism, 1890–1944. By Paul A. Hanebrink. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006. Pp. x,255. $39.95.)

The book under review is a pedantic scholarly work that tries to explain thereasons behind the growth of ethnic intolerance in interwar Hungary. The authorattributes this phenomenon to the increase of anti-Semitism within the leadershipof the Hungarian Christian churches, and in particular the Catholic Church, withits millennial traditions and numerical superiority (64 percent of the population).


Anti-Semitism is as old as Christianity, but during the initial eighteen centuriesit took the form of religious anti-Semitism. The Jews were viewed as “Christkillers” and “evil,” as stereotyped by Shakespeare’s Shylock. In the nineteenthcentury, religious anti-Semitism was joined by cultural and racial anti-Semitism, ofwhich the latter was the most dangerous. It was this new race-based anti-Semitismthat led to the Holocaust and to the slaughter of six million human beings, amongthem a half million Hungarians.

The path to the Holocaust, however, was not sudden, nor immediate. It waspreceded by a period of assimilation that followed the Law of Jewish Emancipa-tion [1868], whereby the Jews became full-fledged “Hungarians of the Jewishfaith.” (This contrasts with Russia where they became “Russian citizens of Jewishnationality”.) Until the end of World War I, the assimilation of the HungarianJews was a natural and healthy process, which enriched Hungarian culture andsociety immeasurably. But this wholesome process came to an end with Austria-Hungary’s defeat, historic Hungary’s dismemberment, and the Treaty of Trianon(4 June 1920), which resulted in the loss of 71 percent of Hungary’s territory and65 percent of its citizens, among them three and a half million Hungarians.

The destruction of their country created a trauma that few Hungarians wereable to digest. Searching for the causes of this national tragedy they foundscapegoats, who turned out to be the Jews. This came from the fact that the Jewswere heavily represented in the Marxist socialist movements, including the Hun-garian Bolsheviks under Béla Kun’s leadership. They were now accused of havingundermined the country. It was this new political reality that transformed therelatively mild religious-social anti-Semitism of the dualist age into the political-racial anti-Semitism of the interwar period. It was also this phenomenon that ledto the Hungarian Holocaust, but only after Hungary’s military occupation by theGermans on March 19, 1944.

The author is correct about the presence of anti-Semitism within Hungarianreligious nationalism, but it is questionable that this religious nationalism was theprimary culprit in the growth of racist anti-Semitism. Its influence cannot becompared to the role of Hitler’s racial ideology, which called for the exterminationof all Jews. The role of Hungarian religious nationalism was basically its failureto stand up more forcibly in defense of Jewish Hungarians in 1944. It should beremembered, however, that such acts of “standing up” implied risks, as demon-strated by the fate of the Bishop of Veszprém (later Cardinal Mindszenty), who inNovember 1944 was arrested and incarcerated by the fascists.

In contrast to the author’s views, Christian nationalism was not the primaryculprit on the path to the Holocaust. In point of fact, much of the previously


mentioned wholesome assimilation took place under the protection of the sameChristian nationalism in the three decades prior to the collapse of historicHungary. Notwithstanding these observations, Paul A. Hanebrink’s book is avaluable contribution to the history of the social-cultural-political developmentsof Hungary in the six decades after 1890.

Duquesne University Steven Béla Várdy

Diplomacy and War at NATO: The Secretary General and Military Action After theCold War. Ryan C. Hendrickson. (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press,2006. Pp. viii, 172. $16.95.)

As perhaps the most successful military alliance in history, NATO is lauded bymany observers for helping win the Cold War without the organization firing ashot. Yet that conflict’s demise led some prominent voices to predict the collapseof the alliance, as its raison d’être, the Soviet Union, ceased to exist. NATOresponded by transforming its mission, adopting new strategies, and welcomingnew members. Today the organization seems poised to play a key role in inter-national politics for years to come. Although scholars have explored these andother developments, they have overlooked the role played by NATO’s secretarygeneral, the alliance’s public face and chief diplomat. Ryan C. Hendricksonattempts to rectify this oversight in this book.

Hendrickson examines the role the post-Cold War secretaries-general played inleading the alliance in the run-up to, or during, military action. He comparesManfred Wörner, Willy Claes, Javier Solana, and Lord George Robertson, andgives them all high marks for successfully navigating the alliance over the high seasof international public opinion, internal division, and momentous change in theglobal political environment.

The skill displayed by these secretaries-general has enabled NATO to exertgreater international sway than the UN. For example, if the UN fails to takedecisive action on an important issue, it opens the door for NATO to seize theinitiative. The secretary general is most influential in NATO’s North AtlanticCouncil, which wields political authority and holds powers of decision. Here heis able to forge consensus. Although each secretary general employed a differentstyle, Hendrickson deems them all successful.

Nonetheless, one senses that the United States, aided by the United Kingdom,is still the king maker and deal breaker at NATO. The secretary-general’s inabilityto command the assent of the United States and other powerful nations rendershim helpless to exercise influence at the systemic level.


The author’s findings, and a strength of the book, derive from the many currentand former officials he interviewed. This same source base also constitutes thebook’s main limitation. Ironically, it is unclear if Hendrickson interviewed any ofthe individuals he has chosen to study, as some of the interviewees chose to remainanonymous. Likewise, it is uncertain if the individuals he did interview repre-sented the dominant sentiments in the alliance. Greater national diversity wouldhave provided better balance to the book. It would have also been useful to haveobtained the viewpoint of Russian officials, who presumably might offer a differ-ent take on NATO’s secretary-general.

Although a political scientist, Hendrickson avoids grounding his work in anytheory of international relations. Employing a theory, however, could haveenriched the book by increasing its explanatory power. Hendrickson also shunsthe quantitative approach, instead demonstrating the continuing value of a his-torically informed, clearly written, and well-organized narrative.

Hendrickson’s book fills an important gap in our studies of NATO. Mostscholars have relegated the secretary-general to the sidelines in alliance decisionmaking, but the author puts him front and center without exaggerating hisimportance. One can only hope that this book spurs others to pursue in-depthstudies about the preeminent diplomat of the world’s most important interna-tional organization.

Florida State University Michael Creswell

The Family and the Nation: Gender and Citizenship in Revolutionary France, 1789–1830. By Jennifer Ngaire Heuer. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005.Pp. vi, 256. $34.95.)

Weighing in on the ongoing discussion of family matters versus political partici-pation during and following the French Revolution, the author of this bookpresents us with a lucid and well-balanced picture of the struggle as it continueduntil 1830. Although she recognizes the marginalization of women after theautumn of 1793 and the uprisings of Prairial, she emphasizes women’s naturalcentrality in the ongoing tension between private and public spheres. Attitudestoward responsibilities of national citizenship and those pertaining to familymatters, in their intricate interaction, are shown in her work as having undergonea gradual evolution throughout the period under examination. Early in theRevolution, the king was seen as the head of the “great family of the nation,”within which citizenship rights and duties took precedence over individuals andfamilies. By examining changes in legislation governing the complexities of the


situation, and combining these with case studies in social and political contexts,Jennifer Ngaire Heuer traces a process of reversal.

During the Terror and under the Directory, the continuing struggle to clarifythe different forms that membership in the nation might take was accompanied byquestions pertaining to previous laws, with Heuer citing the case of SuzanneLepeletier as an illustration of how the redefinition of nation came about. Theauthor interprets the outcome as illustrating the changed view that France wasnow a “nation of families” and was not in itself “a great family.”

Dealing with the topic of women’s emigration during the revolutionary years,Heuer shows how measures against émigrés and their families continued after theTerror and well into the years of the Directory. Women were asked to demonstrateloyalty to the nation rather than loyalty to children or to husbands who hademigrated. The author analyzes the arguments around women’s patriotic duty andshows how laws and attitudes evolved in a manner that eventually resulted in aview of women’s and men’s situations as being very different. By 1801, womenwere excused, for the most part, from the crime of emigration and were allowedto put family first if they so chose.

In her discussion of the backlash that occurred with Napoleon’s Civil Code,Heuer looks at the debate in the context of divorce, explores changes in lawsdealing with returning émigrés and new immigrants, and discusses the ramifica-tions of a woman’s loss of French citizenship. She also demonstrates how changesinstituted during the revolutionary era continued to resonate long thereafter in thelives of women.

The author has presented a concise and logical discussion of her topic withefficient use of a wide variety of reputable sources. Although this presentationwould benefit from increased analysis and interpretation of data and more con-nections between thesis, case studies, and secondary themes, Heuer’s work isthoroughly researched, scholarly, and well written. It constitutes a valuable con-tribution to historical debate.

University of Alberta Shirley A. Roessler

Why Was Charles I Executed? By Clive Holmes. (London, England: HambledonContinuum, 2006. Pp. x, 244. $34.95.)

Judging from the title of this book and the graphic cover illustration of bloodspurting from the decapitated torso of the king, one might assume that this bookis about the execution of Charles I, but it is not. Instead, it consists of eight


chapters, each of which bears a title in the form of a question: “Why Did CharlesI Call the Long Parliament?,” “How Did the King Gain Support in Parliament?,”“How Did the King Get an Army?,” “Why Did Parliament Win the Civil War?,”“Why Was the King Executed?,” “Why Was the Rump Parliament Dissolved?,”“Why Was Cromwell Offered the Crown?,” and “Was There an English Revolu-tion?” Thus the ostensible subject of the book actually occupies only one chapter.

In his introduction, Clive Holmes explains how the traditional narrative of thisperiod was challenged in the last decades of the twentieth century by revisionists.Likewise, the blurb on the dust jacket declares that the old answers “no longersatisfy” while the new answers “often leave readers unclear.” In the balance of hisbook, however, Holmes makes no further reference to these controversies orparticular historians. Instead, he provides his own answers in the form of acomplex combination of narrative and analysis that borrows heavily from theworks of previous scholars from all schools of interpretation. Presumably, Holmesand his editors thought this “master narrative” would be less confusing to readersthan frequent references to professional debates and other historians. Meanwhile,readers seeking clarification on these points can turn to the useful bibliographicessay at the end of the book where Holmes is certainly not reticent aboutexpressing his opinion of other people’s work.

Holmes provides thorough, thoughtful, and learned answers to the questionshe poses. He has researched widely and deeply. He is at his best when he bringshis special expertise in local history to bear on larger questions, as he does, forexample, in explaining the “breakdown of the machinery of local government” onthe eve of civil war, Parliament’s “creation of a machine to secure total victory”during the war, and the subjection of the localities to the rule of the major generalsafter the war, “a project that horrified the gentry” (13, 82, 151). Throughout thebook, Holmes effectively demonstrates that godly zeal and political radicalismmight prevail for a day, but in the long run they were no match for the inertia oftradition and entrenched interests. Ultimately, this was at most an “attenuatedrevolution,” and the period “did not witness the overarching transformation ofthe structure of society and of political culture so vividly imagined by some radicalthinkers” (187, 197).

It is unfortunate that Holmes did not bear another question in mind whenwriting: who is expected to purchase and read this book? The quotations are aptand dramatic, but there are far too many of them. The paragraphs are huge. Thenarrative often turns back on itself. The analysis is mind numbingly complex anddetailed in places. And sometimes Holmes simply loses sight of the question he isaddressing. General readers lured by the misleading title and cover illustration of


this book will not be able to make sense of the densely argued contents, andspecialists will already know what Holmes is trying to say.

Illinois Wesleyan University Michael B. Young

Confrontation at Lepanto: Christendom vs. Islam. By T. C. F. Hopkins. (New York,N.Y.: Tom Doherty Associates, 2006. Pp. 208. $21.95.)

This book, written under a pseudonym by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, who is mostlyknown for her science-fiction novels, is a novelistic account of the naval battle thattook place in 1571 between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League of Europe.It is a work of popular history that is intended mostly for recreational readers,particularly those who are interested in naval history and in late sixteenth-centuryEuropean politics.

The main argument of the book is that the Battle of Lepanto was a decisivemoment in history, inasmuch as “after Lepanto the pendulum swung back theother way and the wealth began to flow from East to West, a pattern thatcontinues to this day” (23). The author defines the battle as a “crucial turningpoint in the ongoing conflict between the Middle East and Europe, which has notyet completely been resolved” and claims that “the politics of faith informed everyaspect of the long struggle that culminated at Lepanto” (15, 28). According toYarbro, the fact that Ottomans and Europeans “misread one another’s motives ishardly surprising, given their various religious paradigms and their largely incom-patible world views” (68).

The book has many strengths. First, it is very easy to read, as the prose is clear,concise, and engaging. Second, the author manages to place the Battle of Lepantoin a historical context, discussing not only the battle itself but also the factors thatled to the battle and the events in its aftermath. Third, Yarbro provides the readerswith an insight into the personalities of the main figures involved in the battle,which makes the book even more interesting.

Nevertheless, the fact that the author is trying to make an argument abouthistory in a recreational book without providing any evidence constitutes a majorproblem. Although she mentions reading a “few surviving accounts and fragmen-tal reports” on the battle, because of the lack of footnotes or endnotes it is notclear how reliable and impartial these sources are and how she employs them inthe book.

Finally, the author does not offer anything new beyond her novelistic perspec-tive. Subscribing to the idea of “clash of civilizations,” the author iterates the same


argument as most scholars who wrote on the subject and emphasizes the impor-tance of the religious tension rather than the political and economic factors in theBattle of Lepanto.

University of Arizona Serpil Atamaz-Hazar

Contesting the Crusades. By Norman Housley. (Oxford, England: Blackwell Publish-ing, 2006. Pp. xiii, 198. $72.95.)

In the last generation, the study of the crusades has become the most popular topicin the field of the history of medieval Europe. Excellent resources are availableboth in primary materials and in secondary literature. However, students areseldom strong on historiography, and the subject is therefore an ideal vehicle forconveying the means by which the history taught in universities has been created.Norman Housley has succeeded brilliantly in providing such a book; it is acces-sible, concise, and comprehensive. In his essential first chapter, he tackles thefundamental problem of definition, carefully setting out the nature of the debates,most importantly those between “traditionalists” and “pluralists.” Was crusadingbased on the recovery and retention of Jerusalem, or can it be seen as a particulartype of holy war that, fought for penitential reasons, spread to many differenttheatres? How far was it subject to change over time? How long did it last?Subsequent chapters examine the historiography of specific elements: the FirstCrusade; the developments of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; crusader moti-vation; crusades in Iberia and the Baltic; crusades aimed at schismatics, heretics,and political opponents of the papacy; the crusades of the post-1291 era; andfinally the consequences both for contemporaries and for ourselves.

Motivation is a central issue, in which the debate has sometimes polarizedaround spiritual and material attitudes. Recent sensitive analysis of charters andletters has shown the centrality of religious beliefs, while demographic researchdemonstrates that a general explanation based on population pressure is no longertenable. Even the ambitious merchants of the Italian cities, zealous in their pursuitof commercial privileges, were partly driven by a combination of devotion andprestige. Nevertheless, practical concerns were never far from the crusaders’minds, and when individuals are investigated there are many nuances. Ultimately,as the author argues, there is a need to look at the crusaders as they sawthemselves, urged, as they were, to examine their own consciences to determine“right intention.” Interest in the impetus that began and sustained crusadinghas been matched by discussion over “decline,” which is no longer seen as athirteenth-century phenomenon simply connected to Jerusalem. Late medieval


crusading was undoubtedly a living issue, but it was different. Many crusaderswere attracted by the Reisen in Eastern Europe, others worked to counter theOttoman threat, while in the early fifteenth century, the Hussite crusades wereaccepted as a matter of general importance.

The legacy is complex. The crusades made warfare central to papal policy andthus gave killing a new status; yet, given the inherent tendency for violence inWestern society, they also introduced an ethical element, which has its descendantin modern attempts to define a “just war” and to frame a set of “laws of war.” Theeffects of crusading on the relations between Christianity and other faiths areperhaps less ambivalent. Hostile attitudes to Muslims and Jews and, indeed, toOrthodox Christians were heavily reinforced, the legacy of which we are stillliving with today.

University of Reading Malcolm Barber

After Hitler: Recivilizing Germans, 1945–1995. By Konrad H. Jarausch. (Oxford,England: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. viii, 379. $35.00.)

If including Hitler in the title sells more copies of this excellent book all the better,but this work by a notable German historian, who shuttles between Germany andthe University of North Carolina, scarcely mentions him. On the other hand, theHolocaust perpetrated against Jews and Slavs appears from the first page to thelast. With eighty-seven pages of footnotes, representing almost 25 percent of thetext, the volume is a monument of scholarship attesting to the remarkable trans-formation of civil culture in Germany after the horrors of World War II. War is anextension of politics, but Konrad H. Jarausch argues, in effect, that politics is anextension of civil culture. The shocking crimes of the Nazi regime were at firstignored for various reasons, shunted aside or even denied, but they inevitablysurfaced to affect the reconstruction effort. In the end, the occupiers did not allowthe Germans to forget the past as they imposed their respective systems. Theauthor concentrates on the West when discussing how the Germans were able toevade punishment during the Cold War. As a result, the onus of utilizing thetalents of guilty parties falls largely on the western powers in the first part of thisaccount. Under almost hothouse conditions, civil society in West Germanyresponded to past failures and the attractions of western prosperity by embracingdemocracy and human rights, while the East railed against capitalism but couldoffer little more than security and modest material sustenance. The myth of socialequality concealed the perquisites of party membership.


The second part of the book centers on the “generation of ‘68” in the West.The author admits to having difficulty finding an analytical framework, butassembles a list of failures anyway. More work needs to be done here. It could bethat Jarausch concedes too much programmatic content to the young people,thereby missing the unadorned motive of frustration and anger toward the oldergeneration. He hints, though, that the movement might have generated enduringhumanitarian sensitivity to go with its suspicion of authority; an older DanielCohn-Bendit, for example, became an ombudsman pleading for tolerance towardforeigners.

The third and most entertaining section deals with the happy surprise ofreunification and problems of reintegration. The party dictatorship in EastGermany lost legitimacy starting no later than 17 June 1953, when the workersrevolted and Soviet tanks intervened, but events in Hungary, Berlin, and Czecho-slovakia in the following years confirmed the reality of a Soviet empire. The basisof adamant Christian Democratic opposition to communism gets littleattention—it is consistently identified as conservatism rather than as religion—butthe author stresses that the Protestant churches in the East succeeded in becominga locus of growing opposition to the regime as the end approached. Jarauschappears most indebted to the sociologist and political theorist Jürgen Habermas,but admits comments from every source into the story.

Marquette University Michael J. Zeps, S.J.

Madness, Religion and the State in Early Modern Europe: A Bavarian Beacon. ByDavid Lederer. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xvii,361. $90.00.)

This lucid study of the cultural history of spiritual psyche in Bavaria begins at theintersection of theology and science, and from there radiates to madness, politics,history, and the formation of early modern mentalities. It locates the genesis of themodern disciplines of psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy within acomplex network of early modern pastoral medicine that attended to a range ofspiritual anguish, from simple affliction to demonic possessions, melancholia, andsuicide. The author tracks the influence of religion and spiritual healing on earlymodern medicine and contextualizes those practices within the intellectual shiftsof the Reformation. In doing so, the author shapes our understanding of theorigins of psychology and psychiatry. Even now, modern medicine grapples withthe psychological symptoms produced by the mental anguish of diseased souls,precisely the dark terrain of early modern spiritual psyche. This is a regional study


centered on the duchy of Bavaria. However, it is the most valuable kind of regionalstudy, one that has crucial implications for the larger historical and social pro-cesses that constructed the state and its attitude toward issues of normalcy,madness, and identity formation. One of the author’s most significant achieve-ments in this book is the painstaking archival recovery of several kinds of sources.These extend from early modern administrative records—case histories onmadness and demonic possession—to records from pilgrimages, manuscriptletters, pamphlets, and criminal and civil legal cases. Statistical data are treatedwith measured skepticism and the historical evidence is presented in immenselyreadable prose. The result is a richly detailed and engaging study that vitallyilluminates the way spiritual psyche touched the lives of people in early modernBavaria and seeped into the foundations of modern scientific disciplines.

University of Colorado at Denver Pompa Banerjee

The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, and Representation. By Louis Montrose.(Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. xii, 341. $25.00.)

This is a richly detailed and thoughtfully constructed book. The title has a doublemeaning and alludes to this author’s bifocal approach to Elizabeth I. First, heinvestigates the queen as a historical figure, and second, he examines the subjec-tification of Elizabeth, and her image, via representation (3). The author’s basicpremise is that “royal panegyric was [not] aimed either upward toward themonarch [n]or downward toward her courtiers but that it was a discourse bothshared and contested by the monarch and her courtiers, by the state and itssubjects” (112).

Arranged in five parts, in rough chronological order, the book opens with adiscerning examination of Elizabeth within the wider Tudor context and evaluateshow the Elizabethan regime dealt with the controversial issues of legitimacy,succession, gender, and religion. Here readers learn, for example, how Elizabethblatantly drew upon all available resources to accentuate and advertise all iden-tifications of her with her father. Part two is devoted to the inherently problematicsubject of Elizabeth as “monarch-idol”—more specifically, the simultaneous andcontradictory repudiation and appropriation of the person of the queen as thesacred head of the church and state. Of particular importance here is tracing howover time elements of the Roman Catholic Church were secularly transformedinto “civic and courtly pageantry in praise of the Queen” (75). Part three providesa fascinating investigation of how those sympathetic and hostile to the Elizabe-than regime (foreign and domestic) exploited the royal body as a medium for


religious and political negotiations. A case in point is how supporters of the LowCountries used Elizabeth’s image to promote and justify an Anglo-Dutch allianceagainst Spain (132). In part four, the author takes a more grassroots approach toElizabethan imagery and explores not only how it was popularly disseminated (athome and abroad), but how it was popularly received. Especially illuminating isthe author’s discussion of the novel ways Elizabeth’s detractors (lower down thesocial scale) criticized the queen; not least by defacing and disfiguring the queen’simage, but also by creating and misusing unauthorized images of her through“image appropriation” (182). The last three chapters, which comprise Part five,deal with how the construction of Elizabeth’s image changed with her advancingage.

Overall, the author’s arguments are convincing and the work is as much astudy of Queen Elizabeth I as it is of the Elizabethan era. To reconstruct hisnarrative, Louis Montrose amassed a diverse array of sources (of which hedisplays an impressive command) including portraits, engravings, woodcuts,memoirs, letters, sermons, homilies, poetry, plays, prose, royal seals, medals, andcoinage. The book will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers from advancedscholars and specialists of the Elizabethan period to more general readers ofElizabethan history, literature, and art.

One can find very little at fault with the book; in fact, the reviewer’s only minorcriticism pertains to two unduly polemical comments about the present-day warin Iraq. Phrases such as “the self-styled liberators of latter-day Iraq” and “theso-called war on terror” seem oddly out of place in a book on Elizabeth I andserve only to date a study, which should have focused squarely on its period (165,192). In the end, however, The Subject of Elizabeth remains a well-written andfascinating work.

University of Tennessee, Chattanooga Michelle White

69 A.D.: The Year of Four Emperors. By Gwyn Morgan. (Oxford, England: OxfordUniversity Press, 2006. Pp. xii, 322. $30.00.)

The eighteen months between June AD 68 and December 69 are the subject of thisbook. This period brought disorder and violence to the heart and the periphery ofthe Roman Empire, in sharp contrast with the relatively quiet times of the yearsof the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Four emperors succeeded quickly to the throne.Galba, elevated soon after Nero’s disappearance, was assassinated seven monthslater, in January 69. Otho, the perpetrator of Galba’s murder, lasted an evenshorter time: he took his own life less than four months later, in April. Vitellius,


his successor, a profligate man, lasted a little longer, the rest of the year; he wasassassinated by Vespasian’s men in December. The reign of Vespasian put an endto this pattern of quick elevation to the throne and similarly quick disappearanceby establishing the Flavian dynasty, which lasted twenty-seven years. The strugglefor supremacy was not just a matter of turnovers, but seemed to subvert the verypolitical and social fabric of the empire. According to the people of the times aswell as later historians, the Senate seemed to emerge as the toothless tool of strongmen, the praetorians became the real arbiters of the throne, and a new social eliteapparently came to the fore.

This view was set long ago by one of the great minds of antiquity: Tacitus, themandatory source for anyone dealing with the period. Gwyn Morgan decided toevaluate those tumultuous years, still having Tacitus as his main source but alsorelying on the views of other classical authors and discoveries in any other fieldthat could enlighten the subject.

Morgan does not dismiss the seriousness of the negative psychological impactof the events nor the increase of criminal disorder in the capital when soldiers wereinvolved in chasing the enemies of their leaders elsewhere. He also maintains thatfour regions experienced grave upheavals and disorder, specifically Palestine,Moesia, sections of Gallia, and Italy. Yet the impact was not catastrophic univer-sally. Life elsewhere in the Roman empire continued along the same patterns ofthe past. Nor is it accurate, Morgan argues, to say that the praetorians inparticular and the army in general became the arbiters of the throne. They wereimportant, but always along the same line of earlier years. The social elite was nota new creation of the times but followed changes already in motion before 69.Also it is quite inaccurate to establish a causal link between the events of 69 andthose of 192 after the murder of Commodus or of 235 after the assassination ofSeverus Alexander.

Morgan’s interpretation challenges Tacitus’ views but softly or graciouslyagrees with him. Yet there is no doubt of the author’s scholarship nor of his deepknowledge of the sources, which he cleverly assesses in one of the appendices. Inthe end, however, the reader is left satisfied only in part. In many ways Morgan’sview is less novel than he may think, for the reader soon realizes that the author’smain concern, in spite of disagreements here and there, is to restate the funda-mental validity of Tacitus’ views. Also, for a scholar who is so fond of Tacitus,stylistically Morgan’s book is clearly not in the mainstream of the great Roman’sliterary approach. Morgan is often repetitive and unnecessarily wordy. At times hespends ten words to describe something for which most other writers would usetwo.


1Morgan’s book, in spite of its pitfalls, is well researched, the story fascinating,the argument never boring. Yet I must repeat a warning. Buy it, read it, but alsoexpect to remain at times a little disappointed.

University of Western Ontario Antonio Santosuosso

Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested Citizenship inLondon. By Lydia Murdoch. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,2006. Pp. xii, 252. $44.95.)

In 1898, the Reverend John Howard of the East London Wesleyan Missioncandidly told one of Charles Booth’s social inquirers that the purpose of churchmission reports, which often described heart-rending scenes of poverty and deg-radation, was “to bring in the shekels, and though in ours we go through it mostcarefully to eliminate anything which is untruthful, I don’t know that one is boundto tell the whole truth.”1 This admission is concerned with a slightly different formof charitable work and so does not appear in Lydia Murdoch’s book. But itnevertheless captures a good deal of what she seeks to say about the manipulationof images of the poor—in this case children—by London welfare institutions inthe late nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries. In order to raise morefunds, such institutions, particularly those of Barnardo, consistently constructedmelodramatic stories of children rescued from an orphan life on the wicked EastEnd streets or from villainous poor parents, escaping into the safe embrace of thecharity worker hero. Most of the orphans were not so at all (so “imagined” as inthe title) and their family circumstances were much more complex and ordinarilyhuman than the propaganda allowed. Much of what Murdoch seeks to do issimply set the record straight. She does so very well, in an accessible style, drawingon the rich materials and casework notes of the institutions.

These false characterizations permitted sympathy for the children while allow-ing the poverty of adults to continue to be blamed not on an economic system, buton the faults of individuals. Welfare institutions, both private and state, for theirown purposes fed and reinforced stereotyped views of the poor, and Murdoch, inher very specific focus, provides an extremely useful discussion and illustration ofthe overlapping and “extremely fluid” ways in which Victorians categorized theshortcomings of the poor in terms of “race,” heredity, or environmental influence(32). Murdoch’s study is also an important further contribution to the increasing

1. Booth MSS B 184. Charles Booth Collection, British Library of Political and EconomicSciences, 42.


recent body of work on the complex relationship of the poor with welfare bodiesand how they often used these within a continuum of strategies as part of their“makeshift economies.”

Murdoch uses disagreement over the idea and nature of the true citizen as hercentral narrative tension. Although the aim in many of the institutions was to instillmiddle-class ideals of citizenship, such as domesticity, in the children, according toMurdoch these bodies acted in other ways contrary to the working class’s ownconceptions of the rights and liberties of the English citizen, often refusing access orreclamation of children. This reviewer thinks Murdoch stretches this neat di-chotomy too far, and in terms of her general themes she does not perhaps break agreat deal of new ground. But this is a very useful book, which through an engagingstory provides an excellent way for many readers to appreciate the debates aboutthe nature of the poor, as well as the reality of their lives and their complex feelingstoward the developing institutions and interventions of the Victorian period.

Monash University Marc Brodie

The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe. By Brian W.Ogilvie. (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. xvi, 385. $45.00.)

The author of this book has written a beautifully crafted monograph on Renais-sance natural history. This is a learned, scholarly, and analytical work that goeswell beyond surveys in the history of science or Renaissance history, yet at thesame time is eminently readable and at times rather entertaining, no mean featwhen considering the subject matter. Where else can one learn of the early naturalhistory of the walrus and the bird of paradise?

For this reviewer, who gained an extensive background in the history ofRenaissance science while in graduate school long ago, but then moved on to moremodern research interests, this book reacquainted him with old friends, so tospeak, and important material that he had not thought about in years. It is a studythat is at the heart of any broad understanding of the history of science, andinterpretively critical for its views concerning the period that followed the Renais-sance, namely the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.If one is interested in learning much about the Renaissance in terms of the place ofthe ancients, as well as the methods and new directions of the humanists, there isno better way to explore and understand the period than to read Brian W. Ogilvie.

Central to this study is the question of “when did natural history emerge as adiscipline?” And here the author draws connections to broader movements takingplace during the Renaissance by focusing on five topics: “the cultural movement of


humanism; the intense contemporary interest in empiricism and the fact; collectingand the culture of curiosity; the emergence of new forms of scientific organization;and the vexed question of the Renaissance ‘world view’” (11). Each of these areasis dealt with in a microscopic manner, interfaced with an analysis of change overtime by examining four successive generations of natural history practitioners.

To begin with, between the 1490s and the 1530s the field of practitioners wasconfined to physicians and humanists, who were largely interested in the medici-nal uses of various plants that were described by the ancients, especially Galen.Subsequently, between the 1530s and the 1560s, the locus of activity shifted fromsouthern to northern Europe, and it was recognized that the plants described bythe ancients were often not present in places like Germany, Switzerland, andHolland. The impulse to study plants increasingly was a result of learning forlearning’s sake, rather than for medical applications. A third era, between 1560 orso and the 1590s, witnessed the rise of networks of communication among naturalhistorians, the assembly of herbarium collections, and the fabrication of detailedwoodcuts. Finally, by the last period, ending in 1620, the mass of material becameso imposing that workers grappled with various classificatory schemes. The devel-opment of systems that immediately followed the Renaissance culminated withthe specialist efforts of Linneaus, in the process leaving behind the more“amateur” collectors and gardeners.

The reviewer’s only real criticism of this book centers on the people so integralto this story. Although their books were covered in painstaking detail, one wouldhave liked to have learned more about individuals with names like Aldrovandi,Bauhin, Brunfels, Clusuius, Cordus, and Gessner. That said, Ogilvie is “must”reading for anyone with a deep interest in the Renaissance.

University of Dayton John A. Heitmann

The Biography of the Object in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Edited byRoberta J. M. Olson, Patricia L. Reilly, and Rupert Shepherd. (Malden, Mass.:Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Pp. vii, 147. $59.95.)

When a student of history studies the genre, it is often an examination of political,economic, social, or some other mainstream branch of history. When an object isdiscussed, it is usually in connection with its creator and the impact that it had onthat person. But in this book, the authors attempt to focus on the objectsthemselves, including how they came into existence as well as their afterlives.

Most of these essays were originally presented as papers at the thirty-seventhInternational Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan, in May


2002. As a decision was made to publish these ten articles, the work becamethe third volume in the Society for Renaissance Studies published by BlackwellPublishing.

This book covers a wide range of topics, including color in the Italian Renais-sance, selected furnishings and domestic goods in Florence, and the afterlife of anearly medieval chapel. These objects possess “some authority, even if not anauthority which could rival that of ancient texts” (5). The authors of these essaysattempt to demonstrate that objects, too, are important to the study of history.These authors, however, provide a method that deepens our understanding of theperiod. An example of such can be observed in the elaborate banquet preparationsin the early sixteenth century. The essay, entitled “Banquet plate and Renaissanceculture,” describes various food courses in what has been described as the “goldenage of Italian gastronomy” (43). The author tells of the items that are in FredericoII’s plate inventory of 1540–1542 to be used in banquets, which included “basins,ewers, salvers, sauce boats, fruit dishes, drinking cups, candlesticks, foodwarmers, salts, pails, confection dishes, wine coolers, spoons, forks, and otheraccoutrements [sic]” (42). Practices such as using forks, instead of eating withfingers, advanced table manners and social status.

The last part of the volume discusses the fact that objects were often “reusedin roles other than those for which they were originally produced” (78). Oneexample would be the icon of the Virgin and Child in Santa Maria Maggiore. Thisicon was reinvented through a mass distribution of the images in a number ofdifferent ways, which ultimately transformed it into “a symbol of Roman Catholicauthority during the Counter-Reformation” (79).

The Biography of the Object in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy is a rathersignificant book, but it is not an easy book to read. Perhaps this is because, in part,of the fact that the essays’ original intent was to be presented as separate papersto a rather specialized audience, one that knows a great deal about the time periodand the material that is being presented. If the reader is not well versed in thematerial, then this book will be a challenge.

University of the Cumberlands Eric L. Wake

A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France. By JenniferPitts. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006. Pp. 400. $24.95.)

The author of this book explores a crucial evolution in European politicalthought: how is it that critiques of empire by “Liberal” thinkers in the 1780sdisappeared within fifty years, displaced by claims for the justice and utility of


imperialism from Liberals like John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville? Theanswer—in part—lies in the complex interplay of how Europeans viewed non-European peoples, changing theories of social-civilizational progress, and restric-tive definitions of “national community and political capacity.” The works ofAdam Smith, Edmund Burke, Jeremy Bentham, James and John Stuart Mill, andAlexis de Tocqueville carry the analysis. Smith, Burke, and Bentham are broadlycritical while the Mills (father and son) and de Tocqueville emerge as decidedproponents.

Adam Smith’s stadial model of social progress—in which peoples moved fromhunting to pastoral, agricultural, and commercial stages—seemed to imply judg-ments of civility and barbarity, yet Smith viewed progress as a natural andcontingent process that provided no basis for cross-cultural judgments from aposition of civilizational self-satisfaction. Consequently, a central failure of impe-rialism rigged for the benefit of commercial cliques was that it distorted thenatural progress of non-European societies. For Burke, sympathy and moralimagination—analogous to Smith’s fellow-feeling—were crucial for justice. Thesuspension of European moral and political norms in the India of Warren Hast-ings or the Ireland of the Protestant Ascendancy sprang from British ignoranceabout those peoples. Ignorance led to a lack of moral imagination and theunwillingness to imagine Indians or Irish Catholics as objects of moral concern orpeople worthy of inclusion within a more expansive (liberal and imperial) Brit-ishness. For Bentham, too, ignorance about colonial subjects, especially the inabil-ity of the British ever to understand their subjects’ interests better than thosesubjects themselves, made the civilizing mission a fallacy; the universal, reforminglegislator riding a wave of imperial rule falls away in favor of modest legal reformsdeeply sensitive to time and place. These critiques all fell short of consistentpositions against conquest, empire, and rule over settler communities or non-Europeans, not least because of the power of a British imperial political cultureitself.

Disposing of the social and cultural complexity of non-Europeans was essentialfor fashioning a liberal imperialism. The simplistic dichotomy between Europeancivility and non-European barbarity championed by the Mills supported anauthoritarian civilizing mission among peoples incapable of self-government, evenif the elder Mill expressed doubts if it would ever be in the British interest to ruleIndia, and John Stuart attacked the impoverishment of Irish peasants anddemanded the punishment of Governor Eyre for his brutal handling of the MorantBay rebellion in Jamaica. Alexis de Tocqueville occupies an interesting position inthis context. His appreciation for cultural complexity and the inherent violence of


European rule coexisted with a zealous call for a French imperial project thatwould advance national greatness abroad and safeguard liberalism at home byuniting a fractured body politic behind a collective enterprise.

Jennifer Pitts situates these thinkers in their social-intellectual context(s) andconsciously works to restore the complexity and ambiguity of their ideas in theface of caricature, misreading, and appropriation. Inevitably, the focus on thesethinkers tends to skew the analysis toward a metropolitan viewpoint. The rela-tionship between ideas, action, and reaction outwith the metropole is largelymissing. Yet, that this now becomes an even more pressing matter for investiga-tion indicates the importance of this thoughtful and engaging book.

Union College John Cramsie

Lenin: A Revolutionary Life. By Christopher Read. (New York, N.Y.: Routledge,2006. Pp. 311. $19.95.)

One, of course, wonders why another book on Lenin should be published, addingto the literally thousands already published in all the major languages. It seemsthat the time to have Lenin as a subject is hardly appropriate in view of thecollapse of the regime that he established and in what seems to be a profoundlycounterrevolutionary period. And the author of the reviewed book has providedan explanation: the study of Lenin is more appropriate for the time of thecounterrevolution than for the time of the revolution. Indeed, during most ofLenin’s lifetime, revolution was an abstraction. Europe had not experienced anyreal revolutions since 1871, and Russia had no experience of mass upheaval sincethe end of the eighteenth century. The revolutionary wave had risen absolutelyunexpectedly in the beginning of the twentieth century. And one could pose thequestion as to what degree Lenin is to be credited/responsible for the events tocome, the drastic change of the course of world history, e.g., the success of theBolshevik Revolution and the following waves of revolutions that shot throughthe twentieth century.

Implicitly responding to these questions, Christopher Read, in the end of hisbook—and this information could well have been placed at the beginning of thebook––has presented the views of several leading western specialists on Lenin.Most of them see Lenin as a demonic person whose ideas and actions shaped themajor events in Russian and world history in the twentieth century; thus, theybelieve he was the prime reason for the rise of events from the gulag to Auschwitz.Although some historians make Lenin the devil incarnate, responsible for whatwould be done in the twentieth century, other western historians have actually


followed the image of Lenin in Soviet publications, where he emerged as a greatgenius and a sort of saintly figure who had led humanity to salvation. The datagiven compel the reader to avoid this oversimplistic dichotomy.

It is clear that Lenin had a great ability to understand the interplay of politicaland social forces and the ability to strike at the appropriate moment. In fact, againstthe will of the majority of the party, he had urged the Bolsheviks to strike in thefateful days of October 1917. And from this perspective, Lenin indeed madehistory; for without him, the Bolshevik Revolution could well not have taken placeat all or could have been unsuccessful. Still—and this is the most important findingof the book, or, at least, its implication—one should not overestimate Lenin.

Lenin’s theoretical and, especially, philosophical findings are often trivial orjust commentaries on the ideas of others. His private life was not much differentfrom that of the lives of quite a few peripatetic intellectuals who moved from onecountry to another in search of jobs. In fact, as the author tells us, he had theweaknesses and traits of all other mortals: in his case, a love for chocolate bars,hunting trips, and his mistress. And this raises the question as to what degreeLenin did indeed shape history and can be seen as being responsible for all thehorrors of Soviet and world history in the twentieth century. It is true that theBolsheviks might not have been successful without Lenin. Still, this does not meanthat the history of the last century would have been more peaceful. World War Imost likely would have led to global upheaval with or without Lenin. And theGreat Depression and the general misery of much of the world would have led tobrutal dictatorships, terror, and wars. The conditions would produce “Lenins”; itis not accidental that many of the world’s revolutionaries, or terrorists, if youwish, and dictators had or have similarities to Lenin. From this perspective, onecould validate the famous Soviet expression: “Lenin lives!” He will live indefi-nitely, with each generation reinventing its own “Lenin,” or, to be precise,“Lenins.” And this certainly justifies a new book about him, written in thebeginning of the twenty-first century.

Indiana University Dmitry Shlapentokh

The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism.By Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall. (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press,2005. Pp. xi, 341. $55.00.)

The role Abbé Grégoire played during the French Revolution and its aftermath iswell known to students of the period. From an obscure background, Grégoire roseto prominence as an intellectual and politician, surviving the tumultuous 1790s to


serve in Napoleon’s government. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall’s excellent biographytakes this familiar life and weaves it into a larger examination of the concept ofuniversalism, the Revolutionary project of turning a diverse people into a unifiednation. Grégoire’s approach to this problem, and Sepinwall’s account of his life,emphasize the centrality of regeneration, a process that would induce Frenchmento leave aside their particularities to become coequal members of the nation.

In writing about Grégoire’s life, Sepinwall embraces the new social biography,seeking both to illuminate her subject and offer a broad vantage on his society. Tothat end, she divides her biography into three sections: intellectual origins of theRevolution, Revolutionary change, and its ideological legacy. In her account, thecourse of Grégoire’s life follows these broad shifts, shaping and responding to them.

The notion of regeneration, the intellectual thread that binds the book, cropsup in Grégoire’s earliest writings, evidence of an abiding interest in identitycreation. Although still a curé, Grégoire took an interest in Jews and paths to theirmembership in the French community. He advocated Jewish emancipation, butonly after a long process of correction ending in their voluntary conversion.Although he rejected pejorative views of Judaism, he embraced the creation of aFrench Catholic identity.

Among other groups that Grégoire slated for inclusion in the nation were slavesand patois speakers. Although Grégoire took different approaches to integratingeach group, overall he emphasized the need to leave aside diversity for nationalunity. With respect to slavery, Grégoire’s approach mirrored his attitude towardJews. Although he believed that slaves should be emancipated, he anticipated along period of moral and physical regeneration and an embrace of French valuesand mores. Here Sepinwall astutely points out how Grégoire’s views facilitatedFrench colonialism. Regenerating slaves could look to a day when they would becapable of ruling themselves; in the meanwhile, they lived under the benevolentrule of Frenchmen.

In contrast to his views on slaves, Jews, and rural dwellers, Grégoire believedthat women could never become fully integrated into the national community.Regeneration relied on homogenization. Women’s differences, rooted in biology inGrégoire’s view, could never be effaced by voluntary action. As such, they had nohopes of becoming citizens. Here, Grégoire’s embrace of Enlightenment rational-ity failed him. Although he welcomed groups like Jews and blacks, whose mem-bership in the nation others rejected, his faith in the power of regeneration failedwhen it came to female biology.

Sepinwall’s masterful analysis of Grégoire’s project of regeneration resonates ina modern day France that still struggles with how to reconcile a French identity


with markers of difference like race, language, and religion. Grégoire’s legacy liveson in a nation uneasy with immigrants and their alien culture, still seeking adefinition of French identity that unifies all.

Wayne State University Janine M. Lanza

Slavery, Family and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic: The World of theLascelles, 1648–1834. By S. D. Smith. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2006. Pp. xvi, 380. $99.00.)

The author of this study infuses old-fashioned Namierite genealogy into the latestscholarship on Atlantic slavery to come up with one of the most compelling anddetailed accounts of the commercial webs and families behind the horrors of theMiddle Passage and beyond it. In this latest installment in the Cambridge Studiesin Economic History series, S. D. Smith focuses on the remarkable resiliency of theLascelles family, who maintained estates and associated business interests inBarbados from the midseventeenth century until 1975.

As he points out, the Lascelles with their Harewood House in Yorkshire werenot always so willing to draw attention to their slave-trading and plantation roots,having married into the royal family in the early twentieth century. Yet, as animperialist Great Britain transformed itself into a multicultural trendsetter by theBlair era, exposing the sins of the past became a way of atoning for the persistentracism of the present. Thus, the publication of this book is quite timely and comeson the heels of efforts by the Lascelles’ Harewood Trust itself, among others, toraise the public profile of the longstanding relationships between the gentry ofYorkshire and sugar and slavery in the Caribbean. Smith’s meticulous researchshows that these commercial and familial ties were quite elaborate, going farbeyond Yorkshire in Britain to include partners in both England and Scotland andbeyond Barbados in the West Indies to Jamaica, the Ceded Islands, and DutchDemerara. The author begins by establishing the origins of this intricate webthrough telling the story of the Vassall and Hall families who became connectedto the Lascelles by trade and by blood. He then relates the rise of Henry andEdward Lascelles to the center stage of the economic and political machinationsof the Atlantic world, placing their alleged corruption and Henry’s eventualsuicide within their contemporary context. Most interesting later in the eighteenthcentury was the Lascelles’ use of the debts and bankruptcy of one of their leadingassociates, Gedney Clarke, to strengthen their own interests and estates. Indeed,during the 1760s and early 1770s, the family owned no plantations, preferring tofinance the debts of others; the bad luck and decisions of their friends and debtors


such as Clarke suddenly bestowed over 25,000 acres of land and many slaves totheir ownership over an array of islands and colonies by 1787.

The Lascelles’ record as absentee landlords through emancipation, Smith con-cludes, was helped by having such a large-sale enterprise to weather the hurri-canes, wars, and rebellions that came with the territory; to this big business, runby the Lascelles, who were now the Earls of Harewood, slavery was not a dyingor inefficient way of making money on the eve of its abolition. Smith concludes hiswork by examining the lives of the enslaved without whom the previously men-tioned commercial axis would not have existed and of the free black populationwith whom the Lascelles collaborated. Many of the records of the Lascelles’plantations were destroyed by a German bombing raid on a law office in 1940,but this study relies on available qualitative and quantitative evidence to providea sort of balance at its end to its previous sole concentration on the slaveholdersand traders. The very nature and paucity of the documents on West Indian slavesrenders impossible the retelling of their stories with the same nuances and detailsthat Smith relates in reference to the Lascelles, but just acknowledging thatimportant gentry family’s role in maintaining West Indian slavery helps us toappreciate the impact that sugar and slavery had on the British Empire.

Norfolk State University Charles H. Ford

The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: Reassessments and New Approaches.Edited by Jay M. Smith. (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press,2006. Pp. x, 337. $65.00.)

A renewed emphasis on social history rescues these nobles from “benign neglect”in this collection of symposium papers (3). The contributors’ intention is to placethe nobility in the context of a twenty-first century narrative of eighteenth-centuryFrance and to revive social interpretations (of institutions, groups, and economicchange) and integrate them with older cultural analysis. They examine the nobilityfrom three perspectives: the economy (Michael Kwass, Gail Bossenga, Robert M.Schwartz, and John Shovlin), political culture (Rafe Blaufarb, Mita Choudhury,and Thomas E. Kaiser), and the “aristocratic reaction” (Johnson Kent Wright, JayM. Smith, and Doina Pasca Harsanyi). In general, rather than refuting earlierscholarship, the authors shift the focus to emphasize what they now consider tobe of greater importance.

Social, political, economic, and legal conflicts involving the nobility went backdecades, occasionally even a century or two. These were old quarrels expressed inthe new terms of Enlightenment discourse: between noble and monarch; between


nobles and other strata of society (tenants, peasants, and bourgeoisie); within thenobility between provincial seigneurs and Versailles courtiers; and then between“good” nobles who favored reform and disdainful “aristocrats” against it. Finallythere were personal conflicts between individual nobles (e.g., Alexandre deLameth and the Comte D’Escherny) as they struggled to reconcile commitment toreform and loyalty to their order with the emerging reality of the Revolution.Throughout the century, the nobles’ self-image diverged from the impression ofthem held by others in France. Differences sharpened and deepened at the onset ofthe Revolutionary era until there was no distinction between benevolent nobleswho welcomed, and even espoused, social reform and the malevolent, corrupt“aristocrats” who opposed it. Much to the dismay of many baffled nobles, they allcame to be branded as universally detested “aristocrats.”

Jonathan Dewald’s thoughtful survey of the kaleidoscopic portrayal of thenobility from 1820 to 1960, in history and literature, concludes the book. Con-temporary societal concerns and the unavoidable biases of writers shaped thesechanging views—a gentle reminder that historical understanding is always aproduct of time, circumstance, and philosophical disputes. Nonspecialists will findseveral of the essays of particular value, because they engage topics of generalinterest, require no expert knowledge, and are readily understood: Schwartz’sfascinating account reveals how two seigneurial families of rural “capitalists”accumulated and managed their assets during this epoch and survived the Revo-lution; Wright’s intriguing deconstruction of L’Esprit des Lois depicts Montes-quieu as a defender both of monarchy and of nobility as he defined them; andKaiser’s illuminating and cogent exposition describes the salient events by whichhe believes the noble order was transformed into an “aristocratic” conspiracy.

This well-edited and well-written anthology combines the latest research witha range of subjects on a variety of levels and has something for the professionalhistorian and for the general reader alike.

California State University, Sacramento Frank Garosi

Reality Fictions: Romance, History, and Governmental Authority, 1025–1180. ByRobert M. Stein. (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 2006. Pp. 294.$30.00.)

This new book ought to be an important exception to the rule that the influenceof literary historians upon medieval historians is small. It ought to have a centralplace in the library of every historian who is keen to pursue social questions intothe literary as well as the historical texts. Robert M. Stein is master of both, and


his chief argument is that eleventh- and twelfth-century historiography developedin close connection with other forms of reality fiction, including romance and epic,to cope with novel political questions, especially under the pressure of growingroyal power. He argues convincingly that at least many examples of romance andepic share with the new history the desire to tell a great story, not only with, butalso from authority. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s pivotal work may not be admiredby historians today—or by some of their medieval predecessors—but it was in factaccepted as speaking about the real; we might say that its ambiguities werefoundational. Chapter four on epic is perhaps most convincing here; the socio-political relevance that dominates a work such as the Chanson of Girart deRoussillon becomes undeniable under Stein’s handling. What Stein calls the“historiographical impulse” is patent and one conclusion is that historians shouldread epics (206).

Like other literary scholars, Stein puts back together the fictional and historicaltexts and ideas that Richard Southern highlighted long ago, but he does it fromessentially historiographical premises. Stein’s engine of development is resolutelysociopolitical. Eleventh-century bishops used their writers to amplify episcopalpower against the interventions of the uncontrolled charismatic saint; Englishpatriots resisted the Normans with semihistories of the saintly, hidden KingHarold; and epics were written as an aristocratic response to the simple-mindedand often brutal pressure of the new, administrative, royal state and its feudalism.It is a typical touch that Stein finds the impulses and, indeed, emotions forfeudalism earlier than recent historians expect them, certainly by the twelfthcentury.

Perhaps the most difficult chapter for the historian, however, is chapter three,“Dreaming Other Worlds.” Stein is aware that many literary scholars dismissromance as historically irrelevant, a genre seen “as a fantasy escape,” and this maybe more true of historians. Sagely, he chooses to discuss The History of the Kingsof Britain in this chapter and argues that it is a fictional work of history that“continuously opens . . . the whole narrative into realms of interiority” and“intense emotional experience” (126, 123). Put otherwise, romance will excel atexamining what history cannot easily accommodate: the emotional, the sense ofexperience, and the frustration that historical actors and narratives face. Theargument is elegant, and most readers will agree that at least part of the work ofa romance such as the Chevalier au Lion is to deal with this emotional surfeit,historiography’s residue. One of the great, unanswered questions that RealityFictions raises, therefore, is why Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History, which standsas the base of numerous key traditions of historiography and romance, did not


become the model for representing experience within the historiographical genre.We may still wonder why the twelfth century produced so many reality genres, butStein’s Reality Fictions may well provide answer enough. Lucid, vivid, consis-tently intelligent, and deeply informed in documentary and literary sources,Reality Fictions explains why writing the real mattered to diverse eleventh- andtwelfth-century people. Stein shows how history, hagiography, epic, and romancedeveloped together, constituting something of a cultural breakthrough for medi-eval Europe, which was built on a powerful social, political, and psychologicalplatform.

Wesleyan University David Gary Shaw

Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects. By Manfredo Tafuri. Forwardby K. Michael Hays. Translated and with a Preface by Daniel Sherer. (New Haven,Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006. Pp. xxxi, 408. $50.00.)

By the time of his death in 1994, Manfredo Tafuri had built a reputation as oneof the most controversial, challenging, and innovative scholars in the field ofarchitectural history. In the English-speaking world, his work was frequentlyassociated with the heated debates over the meaning and significance of theavant-garde in modern architecture, but there was only limited awareness ofTafuri’s continuing reflections on the Renaissance that could be found as early as1966 in his L’Architettura del Manierismo nel Rinascimento Europeo. Shortlybefore his death, he published Ricerca del Rinascimento [1992], a book that mightwell be considered his magnum opus. It is a rich and complex work of scholarshipthat challenges architectural historians, as well as historians in general, to rethinkthe many ways we have appropriated the Renaissance as a historical category. Intypical Tafuri manner, if anything about Tafuri can be called typical, he has givenus as much a study of epistemology and historiography as a study of Renaissancearchitecture. Yet Tafuri’s careful scholarship supports an argument that the archi-tecture and culture of the Italian Renaissance can still speak to modernity, but inunexpected ways that are rarely apparent in contemporary historical scholarship.

Daniel Sherer has, for the first time, translated this important work into Englishunder the title Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects. He hasdone a remarkable job. The art of translation is difficult under the best ofcircumstances when the original text is ordinary and prosaic. In the case of Tafuri,where the ideas are complex and subtle, the challenge of rendering the originalItalian into English takes on a complexity that only a gifted scholar such as Sherercould achieve with sensitivity and integrity. As he so aptly notes in the Translator’s


Preface, “all translation is essentially interpretation,” and consequently it iscritical to understand context to capture the author’s meaning. Although this textis a difficult read, even for the seasoned scholar, Sherer has truly made it accessiblewith his judicious interpretations.

Do not expect a comprehensive and linear treatment of Renaissance architec-ture. Such an approach would betray Tafuri’s methodology. As the subtitle sug-gests, this study is about princes, cities, and architects. The primary, but notexclusive, focus is on Rome, Florence, and Vienna, where the urban strategies ofthe princes intersected with the theory and practice of the architects. At this nexuswe find the humanist commitment to the classical past (tradition) in tension withthe humanist drive for experimentation. Here the definitive act of architecturalrepresentation brings together both the concordant and discordant forces ofprevailing intellectual, social, political, and religious realities. Here Tafuri is at hisbest, supporting his arguments with a rich array of archival sources. In a text of258 pages, there are 166 architectural plates and more than 250 pages of copiousfootnotes. Whether you agree or disagree with Tafuri’s conclusions, the sheervolume of evidence opens new avenues for inquiry. After examining Tafuri’sscholarship, one can scarcely think of the Renaissance without pausing to reflect.

University of Dayton Paul J. Morman

The Unfree French: Life Under the Occupation. By Richard Vinen. (New Haven,Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006. Pp. 496. $35.00.)

This reviewer was reminded of the work of the late British historian of the FrenchRevolution, Richard Cobb, as he read this study of occupied France between 1940and 1945. Although different in terms of subject matter and historical period,both Cobb and the author of this work share a mistrust of facile generalizationand an enthusiastic appreciation for the colorful tapestry of individual actionsthat make up past events. The picture that emerges from their work is complexand nuanced, but then when are human affairs ever simple?

This was certainly the case in France during the Second World War. Drawingon traditional archival and literary sources, as well as the less traditional (butnumerous) self-published memoirs of the period, Richard Vinen demonstrates thatno aspect of this period can be explained in simple or general terms. The questionof French collaboration during the Occupation illustrates this point well. Vinendemonstrates that even though some French collaborationists were motivated byan admiration for Nazism or opportunism, the majority acted on the basis ofother more complex and personal motives. For example, many of the young men


who had volunteered to work in Germany under Vichy’s Service du TravailObligatoire program later faced accusations of collaborationism. However, Vinenpoints out that a number of factors, unrelated to a desire to help the Nazis, ofteninfluenced their decision. Class frequently played a role. Young men from well-offbackgrounds often possessed the means and contacts to avoid going to Germanywhile the less economically fortunate had fewer options of resistance open tothem. Moreover, many young men were often the victims of local officials, whowere anxious to avoid anticipated reprisals if they did not fulfill governmentdemands. Many families operated on the same assumption, believing that Vichywould retaliate against them if their younger members avoided work service. Thisretaliation never materialized. But individuals at the time had no way of knowingthis and acted accordingly.

The situation of women during the occupation was often tragic. Most arefamiliar with the image of femmes tondues (women who had their heads shavedfor alleged collaboration). Vinen looks behind this image to find the real peopleinvolved, discovering that many were poor women who had been virtually thrustinto the arms of the Germans because they were marginalized, abused, andrejected by their communities and families. Many simply had the misfortune towork in occupations, such as waitresses, which put them in constant contact withthe occupiers. Once again, a variety of factors, often unconnected with politicalbeliefs or patriotism, influenced individual decisions during the occupation.

It is impossible in a review this brief to do justice to the rich diversity of thisbook. The ambivalent nature of Pétainism, the growth and activities of theresistance, the varied lives of prisoners of war in Germany, and the experience ofliberation are just a few examples of other topics that Vinen examines. Readerswill gain a deeper appreciation and sympathy for this period of French historyafter completing this excellent book.

Tarleton State University Christopher E. Guthrie

Classics in Progress: Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome. Edited by T. P. Wiseman.(Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xvi, 451. $39.95.)

In 1954, Maurice Platnauer charged seventeen distinguished British classicistswith the task of summarizing “the advance made along the main lines of classicalscholarship” (xiii). In the resultant volume, Fifty Years of Classical Scholarship,these “main lines” concentrated exclusively on literary figures, from Homer to the“Silver Latin” poets of the first century AD. In 2002, T. P. Wiseman gathered anequally distinguished group to survey the territory, and a glance at the table of


contents alone reveals the field’s new orientation: texts considered now includedocumentary evidence (Bowman on Egypt; Crawford on Diocletian’s prices edict);visual evidence receives serious attention by R. R. R. Smith; and the chronologicalboundaries stretch into the sixth century and beyond. The collection, althoughconfessedly (and inevitably) eclectic, is uniformly excellent; jocund readabilityinterchanges with serious probing of new evidence and avenues of approach.

The chapters of chief interest to the historian convey well the methodologicalrange. Most concretely, the discovery of new texts promotes reassessment ofcherished ideas. J. Davies sketches the changes in Greek history since the 1960s,when focus moved from narrative and institutions to a consideration of ideologi-cal issues such as the role of the countryside and problems of ethnicity. Heconcludes with case studies of how the discovery of four very different epigraphictexts has generated interest in areas previously underexamined (fourth-centuryAthenian legislation; boundary disputes in Hellenistic Asia Minor). Perhaps moresignificant in shaping the discipline than new finds is the forging of newapproaches. Smith embraces most seriously the editor’s mandate in his “The Useof Images: Visual History and Ancient History,” a brilliantly useful essay for bothits synthesis of past scholarship and Smith’s attempt to unite this scholarshipunder a single theoretical construct. He explores the interplay between an aes-theticizing, “Plinian” art history that sees art as an autonomous production of theindividual artist, and more recent, historically informed approaches that concen-trate on the consumer and the ways in which an artist’s individual style rests onhistorically contingent circumstances. The essay will particularly interest socialand cultural historians, who must constantly wrestle with variations on Smith’srecurrent theme: What use is visual history for ancient history? In the field of lateantiquity, Averil Cameron traces developments from the early narrative histories(inevitably treating issues of decline and fall) to an interest, beginning in the 1960sand 1970s, in local histories. By isolating regional histories from the masternarrative of the time (the fall of Rome and rise of Christianity), scholars haveturned their minds to the formation of cultural identities, thereby locating conti-nuity in a time of political and institutional uncertainties. In ways that reachbeyond her title (“The ‘Long’ Late Antiquity: A Late Twentieth-Century Model”),Cameron meditates on the different ways scholars write history.

A third approach that these essays employ is the reassessment of ancientdebates, such as whether Socrates deserved condemnation from his native Athens(Schofield’s “Socrates on Trial in the USA”). J. Barnes examines a later contro-versy, namely the attack on early Christians for their unwillingness to applyphilosophical principles of logic to their theology. On the contrary, Barnes exposes


the Christian stance against logic as disingenuous and proposes “optimistically”that the early apologists derived their knowledge from an early handbook on logicwritten by Galen. Of more pertinence to the historian are Cartledge’s thoughtfulremarks about an issue that has occupied scholars at least since Aristotle: wasslavery essential to the success of ancient Greek civilization? After reviewing fivescholarly investigations of the subject from the second half of the twentiethcentury, he concludes that the “inescapable inference is that the Greeks couldconceive of no practical alternative to slavery” (261). Finally, in his own contri-bution the editor reevaluates the primary sources in an attempt to rebut what hasbecome a prevailing attitude among historians, that the elite of the RomanRepublic made political decisions based not on individual ideology, but on per-sonal and family connections. The lines are redrawn.

Anyone who questions whether there remains value in studying the ancientGreeks and Romans need only consult almost any page of this volume to find adiscipline that, far from dead, is kicking and scratching as it continues to grow.

University of Kansas Anthony Corbeill

GENERAL, COMPARATIVE, AND HISTORIOGRAPHICAL

Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830. By John H.Elliott. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006. Pp. 506. $35.00.)

Two great empires were built in the Americas: one Spanish, one British. TheSpanish had a head start of over one hundred years, and brought to America acommitment to centralized authority and the vertical integration of indigenouspeoples into the corporate structures of society. Tardy and tentative, landing in aregion that was sparsely populated and lacking in immediately exploitableresources like gold and silver, the British developed their colonies in fragments,and, finding it nearly impossible to bring either European civilization or Chris-tianity to the natives, developed a pattern of marginalizing the indigenous,pushing them farther and farther to extinction. And yet of course this fragmented,marginalizing empire would prove to be the more resilient, the richer, the moreunified, and the stronger of the two.

The two empires have been the obsession of colonial historians for generations,but surprisingly little comparative work has been done on them. In fact, as J. H.Elliott himself argues in his own opening remarks, historians have long treated thetwo empires as different subject matters, the studies of which have little to say toone another. But now Elliott offers what amounts to a masterwork of synthesis. In


Empires of the Atlantic World, Elliott brings a lifetime of research to bear on areading of the two empires, noting what institutions, values, and experiences theyshared and which they did not, thereby accounting both for their many oftenoverlooked points of contact and their major distinctive qualities. Elliott eschewseasy generalizations and sociological explanations. He does not begin with an ideaof the contrasting destinies of Spanish and British America and an attempt toback-read their causes. Rather, he carefully reconstructs the experiences of colo-nization each nation underwent; how each went about conquering and exploitingthe land and subjecting the surviving natives to European hegemony; repopulatingits precincts with their own people; organizing economies, governments, religions,and cultures; and fashioning what would eventually become the two spheres ofLatin and Anglo-America.

Empire in Elliott’s view is not always a pretty picture, but it is wholly human,and developed in keeping with an enormously complex array of traditions, habits,needs, ambitions, passions, demographics, national interests, international rival-ries, legal mechanisms, statutory laws, and religious ideologies—not to mentioninnovations in economics, agriculture, technology, the organization of labor, andpolitical thought.

In many ways, given our current obsessions and values, the Spanish modelseems the more attractive. After all, the Spanish colonies were integrative ratherthan competitive, and that meant among other things that they were not nearly soinclined toward genocide or mass chattel slavery as the English colonies to thenorth. Nor were they so inclined toward waging war on their neighbors andrivals, or for that matter, on themselves. But judging the empires from so late adate is probably beside the point—both are gone, and things entirely new havetaken their places.

And unfortunately, what the real point of comparing the two empires at lengthmay be is a question that eventually gets lost in this lengthy and seeminglyexhaustive volume. Beautifully written, always carefully developed, and usuallybased on the latest findings of historical research, this study ultimately suffersfrom what is also one of its strengths. It does not have a thesis. In the end, havingpainstakingly traced the vast complexities of empire in South America and NorthAmerica, the volume trails off into conventional political history, explaining intired order the events that went into the American Revolution and somewhat laterthe revolutions in Latin America. The end result is disappointing, to say the least.Well worth reading and studying, and sure to be a valuable resource for studentsfor some time to come, this history without a thesis does not, ultimately, have apoint. Or if it does have a point, it is not one to which many contemporary


scholars will be sympathetic. The volume concludes by championing the winnersof imperial history in the Americas, the revolutionary classes, the aspiring classes,the movers and shakers; it forgets about those who, in the early going of theexposition—the Indians, the slaves, the marginalized servant classes, and theexploited workers from all sides of the society of the Atlantic world, and not fromEngland and Spain alone—it had earlier been so assiduously trying to remember.

Lancaster University, United Kingdom Robert Appelbaum

The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West. ByNiall Ferguson. (New York, N.Y.: Penguin, 2006. Pp. lxxi, 808. $35.00.)

In this lengthy book the author tries to cover the way in which the world changedfrom one dominated by European powers at the beginning of the twentiethcentury into one at its end, in which what he calls the West is of negligiblesignificance and is very much embattled. In line with some of his earlier publica-tions, Niall Ferguson pays very considerable attention to financial details andeconomic trends, placing these in the contexts of international comparisons atdifferent times. He is, in addition, especially interested in showing how theconcept of race played a highly significant role. From this perspective he showshow the attempt at the 1919 peace settlement to replace the dynastic with thenational principle of organizing states had as one of its important effects thecreation of national minorities and proved especially deleterious for Jews, whowere a minority everywhere.

After discussing the background of World War I, the author briefly covers thatwar. Ferguson then describes the years between the wars with special reference tothose economic and minority issues that especially interest him. The policy ofappeasement is reviewed at length. There follows a highly idiosyncratic coverageof World War II and a survey of the postwar era to the end of the century. Thisincludes extensive coverage of the Korean War, the Cold War, and the rise ofChina and also of Islam.

Throughout the text the author finds ways to blame the United States forwhatever went wrong, frequently distorting the evidence to make it fit with hispreconceptions. Thus, there is no reference either to the endless efforts of Presi-dent Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull to keep the Japanese talkinguntil they could see that Germany might well lose the war, or to the last-minuteoffer to sell Japan all the oil they needed if they would only get out of southernIndochina.


There is not space to list even a portion of the blatant errors. UnfortunatelyFerguson has no sense of Adolf Hitler’s aims or his intention to break theAnglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 even before it was signed (316). Simi-larly he has the Chinese, instead of the Japanese government, refusing the 1937–1938 peace mediation offered by Germany (481). The account of the war from1942–1944 in Chapter fifteen covers the economic aspects, but is otherwisedevoid of any real engagement with the dramatic events of those years.

The author’s ideas and interpretations will be of interest to specialists in thelarge range of subjects covered by this book. Ferguson takes on numerous estab-lished views held by the public and by historians. He punctures many of these,sometimes wisely, yet more often in a rather dubious manner. Anyone wanting ageneral introduction to the way in which the European powers came to contributeto the destruction of their own predominance will find Sally Marks’s book, TheEbbing of European Ascendancy: An International History of the World 1914–1945, more helpful in half as many pages.

University of North Carolina Gerhard L. Weinberg

Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in a HistoricalPerspective. By Istvan Hont. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.Pp. 539. $49.95.)

The purpose of this book is to identify the “genesis, content and consequences” ofthe rise of the “jealousy of trade” (2). The book takes its name from DavidHume’s essay, which paraphrases Thomas Hobbes’s concept of the jealousy ofstates. This collection of essays is a history of political thought with one keydifference from standard treatises. It includes economics (through trade) in thedebates, thereby correcting Hobbesian disdain and Marxian preoccupation withthat discipline. The unfolding of political economy is arresting because of itsresonance in contemporary debates on international trade. The book is a collec-tion of seven essays published between 1983 and 1994. A substantial introductionconnects the chapters and their themes. Jealousy of trade is depicted as a post-Machiavellian phenomenon with strong post-Hobbesian undertones and refers tothe juxtaposition of politics and economy at a point when success in internationaltrade became imperative for the military and political survival of the state andacquisition of external economic resources was deemed essential for both self-preservation and grandezza.

The first chapter explores how the concept of commercial reciprocity enteredmodern political theory. Rejecting the Hobbesian society of fear, Adam Smith


adapted Samuel Von Pufendorf’s idea of utility as a force for social integration toargue that “it is not from the benevolence of the butcher . . . that we expect ourdinner, but from their regard to their own interest” (161). Chapters two and threedeal with the consequences of jealousy of trade as European countries fought forinternational markets, particularly as England sought to deal with competitionfrom cheap labor. The chapters thus provide tremendous insight for core econo-mies like the United States, which is facing similar competition today. As opposedto growing demands for protectionism, Charles Davenant and Henry Martynpushed for the merits of outsourcing. Yet another debate centers on Hume’sargument that wage differentials would help economic development to spreadover the entire world as opposed to Josiah Tucker’s contention that high produc-tivity and division of labor would allow rich countries like England to maintaintheir lead. Chapter four provides insights from Hume’s famous essay, “Of PublicDebt,” to highlight the dangers posed by excessive public debt as a result of warfinance.

Chapters five and six deal with yet another issue dominating the tradingcommunity today, that of liberalization of agriculture. The author argues thatSmith was misunderstood and criticized for advocating the total liberalization ofagriculture as a way to deal with famines caused by ill-conceived regulatoryregimes. However, according to Istvan Hont, unlike the physiocrats’ insistence onthe absoluteness of private property, Smith admitted that in times of necessity,property rights could be overridden. A somewhat disconnected Chapter sevenconducts a historical inquiry into the theoretical debates on popular sovereigntyand the possible connection between nation and state in the late eighteenthcentury. This book deals with themes that are currently shaping the internationaltrade and development debate, and therefore is a must read for anyone trying tounderstand the contemporary political economy of globalization.

University of Indianapolis Jyotika Saksena


Pompeii: The Living City – By Alex Butterworth and Ray Laurence

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