Journal of Social History articles from December 2007

Journal of Social History archives from December 2007

So lonesome I could die: nostalgia and debates over Emotional Control in the Civil War North.
December 22, 2007... Home seemed to be always on some Union soldiers' minds. "We are all in pretty good sperits although some are quite home sick," one soldier confessed in a letter written midway through the war. Talking about "the old fashioned times we will have...

Betting, sport and the British, 1918-1939.(SECTION I LEISURE AND WORK)
December 22, 2007... The interwar period was characterized in Britain by an expansion of leisure spending, reinforcing and extending pre-1914 patterns. New leisure forms, ranging from the cinema and radio to speedway, motoring, the pools and greyhound racing,...

Layers, flows and intersections: Jeronymo Jose de Mello and artisan life in Rio de Janeiro, 1840s-1880s.(SECTION I LEISURE AND WORK)
December 22, 2007... Jeronymo Jose de Mello was a tinker (latoeiro) resident in Rio de Janeiro during the second half of the nineteenth century. (1) One of the thousands of skilled Portuguese immigrants to arrive in Brazil's capital in this period, he set up a...

"The Crime of Survival": fraud prosecutions, community surveillance, and the original "welfare queen".(SECTION II GENDER AND PERCEPTIONS OF DEVIANCE)(fraud case against Linda Taylor also known as the welfare queen)
December 22, 2007... The welfare recipients collecting trash along New York highways in 1999 would easily have been mistaken for convicts by passing drivers. Recipients, working in exchange for their cash grants at around $1.10 per hour, had been issued orange...

"I did not want to face the shame of exposure": gender ideologies and child murder in post-emancipation Jamaica.(SECTION II GENDER AND PERCEPTIONS OF DEVIANCE)
December 22, 2007... On 8 December 1998 passers-by found a baby crying in the Mizpah district in Glengoffe. The baby was taken to hospital but died while undergoing treatment. Two days later the baby's mother was arrested and charged with infanticide. (1)...

To "doe some good upon their countrymen": the paradox of Indian slavery in early Anglo-America.(SECTION III REGIONAL ISSUES)
December 22, 2007... In the wake of the Pequot War in New England in 1637, seventeen Pequot Indians--fifteen boys and two women--were ordered to be sent out of New England by Massachusetts officials. Hundreds of captives had been taken by the English Puritans as a...

National endogamy and double standards: sexuality and nationalism in East-Central Europe during the 19th century.(SECTION III REGIONAL ISSUES)
December 22, 2007... During the "long nineteenth century," nationalism came to permeate all aspects of European society, including attitudes toward human sexuality. Both sexuality and nationalism are complex phenomena that overlap in myriad ways. However, national...

Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality. By Elizabeth Ewen and Stuart Ewen (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006. 560pp. $34.95). Ewen and Ewen begin their fascinating exploration of stereotyping in Western culture by...

How Race is Made: Slavery, Segregation, and the Senses.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... How Race is Made: Slavery, Segregation, and the Senses. By Mark M. Smith (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. 200 pp.). In 1896, the United States Supreme Court heard the famous case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Homer Plessy, a...

Women, Welfare and Local Politics, 1880-1920: 'We Might Be Trusted.'.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Women, Welfare and Local Politics, 1880-1920: 'We Might Be Trusted.' By Steven King (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2006. 364 pp.). In this examination of the life and papers of Mary Haslam, poor law guardian and leader of the women's...

The River Flows On: Black Resistance, Culture, and Identity Formation in Early America.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The River Flows On: Black Resistance, Culture, and Identity Formation in Early America. By Walter C. Rucker (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005. xii plus 288 pp. $49.95 cloth). There is a recent and outstanding literature...

Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Postwar America.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Postwar America. By Renee C. Romano (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. xiii plus 368 pp.). In Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Postwar America Renee C. Romano traces the changes that...

Children of the Father King: Youth, Authority, and Legal Minority in Colonial Lima.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Children of the Father King: Youth, Authority, and Legal Minority in Colonial Lima. By Bianca Premo (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. xiii plus 350 pp. $24.95). This path-breaking study provides a social history of...

The Shame and the Sorrow: Dutch-Amerindian Encounters in New Netherland.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Shame and the Sorrow: Dutch-Amerindian Encounters in New Netherland. By Donna Merwick (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. 332 pp.). For most people life is lived somewhere in the space between their ideals and the...

Visions of Belonging: Family Stories, Popular Culture, and Postwar Democracy, 1940-1960.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Visions of Belonging: Family Stories, Popular Culture, and Postwar Democracy, 1940-1960. By Judith E. Smith (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. xiv plus 444 pp.). Judith Smith's book on family stories and the social visions of...

Place and Politics: Local Identity, Civic Culture, and German Nationalism in North Germany during the Revolutionary Era.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Place and Politics: Local Identity, Civic Culture, and German Nationalism in North Germany during the Revolutionary Era. By Katherine Aaslestad (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005. xiii plus 384 pp.). Katherine Aaslestad's fine study on...

Tear off the Masks! Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Tear off the Masks! Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia. By Sheila Fitzpatrick (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. xii plus 332 pp.). This is a collection of linked essays chiefly about social identity. Most have...

Nature's Altars: Mountains, Gender, and American Environmentalism.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Nature's Altars: Mountains, Gender, and American Environmentalism. By Susan Schrepfer (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2005. 316 pp. $35). In Nature's Altars: Mountains, Gender, and American Environmentalism, Susan Schrepfer...

First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt: Homicide in Chicago, 1875-1920.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt: Homicide in Chicago, 1875-1920. By Jeffrey S. Adler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. 367 pp. $35.00). Jeffrey Adler's First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt represents one of the most...

Blood and Violence in Early Modern France.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Blood and Violence in Early Modern France. By Stuart Carroll (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 369 pp. $110.00). Blood and Violence in Early Modern France provides a fascinating exploration of the intense inter-familial disputes that...

A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York. By Timothy J. Gilfoyle (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. xvii plus 460 pp. $27.95). A Pickpocket's Tale provides a remarkably fresh view into New York's underworld,...

Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America. By James Green (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006. 383 pp. $26.95). In the evening of May 4, 1886 workers gathered to attend...

Worker Resistance under Stalin: Class and Revolution on the Shop Floor.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Worker Resistance under Stalin: Class and Revolution on the Shop Floor. By Jeffrey J. Rossman (Cambridge, MA and London, UK: Harvard University Press, 2005. ix plus 314 pp.). In the period 1928-32, the height of Stalin's "revolution from...

From the Revolution to the Maquiladoras: Gender, Labor, and Globalization in Nicaragua.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... From the Revolution to the Maquiladoras: Gender, Labor, and Globalization in Nicaragua. By Jennifer Bickam Mendez (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005). "Our movement was born in a storm." The activist quoted (page 103) in this...

The Face of Decline: The Pennsylvania Anthracite Region in the Twentieth Century.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Face of Decline: The Pennsylvania Anthracite Region in the Twentieth Century. By Thomas Dublin and Walter Licht (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. x plus 268 pp. $64, cloth; $24.95, paper). The roots of this story of industrial...

Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom.(The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820-1875)(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom. By Tiya Miles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. xix plus 306 pp. $34.95, $22.95). The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land,...

International Exposure: Perspectives on Modern European Pornography, 1800-2000.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... International Exposure: Perspectives on Modern European Pornography, 1800-2000. Edited by Lisa Z. Sigel (New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2005. viii plus 283 pp.). This insightful, intellectually provocative...

Two Views: Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm since Hippocrates.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Two Views: Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates. By David Wootton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. xvi plus 320 pp. $25.00). 1. An ancient theme in the history of medicine is the story of the enlightened physician...

The Freedom to Smoke: Tobacco Consumption and Identity.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Freedom to Smoke: Tobacco Consumption and Identity. By Jarrett Rudy (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press. xi plus 232. $27.95 paper). The construction of individual identity lies at the heart of this intriguing,...

Social Change in America: From the Revolution Through the Civil War.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Social Change in America: From the Revolution Through the Civil War. By Christopher Clark (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006. xiii plus 349 pp. $27.50). Christopher Clark's Social Change in America is a wide-ranging survey of the social history...

One Nation Divisible: What America Was and What It Is Becoming.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... One Nation Divisible: What America Was and What It Is Becoming. By Michael B. Katz and Mark J. Stern (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006. xi + 349 pp. $37.50). In 224 pages of text, bolstered by 47 pages of notes and 61 pages of...

American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia. Edited by Bruce Frohnen, Jeremy Beer, and Jeffrey O. Nelson (Wilmington, DE, ISI Books, 2006., xxv plus 979 pp.). The American Conservatism has a useful introduction that gives an account of its...

Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614.(Spanish history)(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614. By Leonard Patrick Harvey (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005. xiv plus 448 pp.). The Handless Maiden: Moriscos and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Spain. By Mary Elizabeth...

From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500-2000.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500-2000. Edited by Stephen Topik, Carlos Marichal and Zephyr Frank (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006). The concept of "commodity chains,"...

The English Rural Poor, 1850-1914.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The English Rural Poor, 1850-1914. Edited by Mark Freeman (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2005. 2000 pp. in 5 volumes [pounds sterling]50/$750). There is no shortage of documentary material dealing with rural labouring lives in Victorian and...

Homecomings: Returning POWs and the Legacies of Defeat in Postwar Germany.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Homecomings: Returning POWs and the Legacies of Defeat in Postwar Germany. By Frank Biess (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. xiii plus 367 pp.). When fighting in Europe ended on May 8, 1945, approximately eleven million German...

Students: A Gendered History.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Students: A Gendered History. By Carol Dyhouse (London: Routledge, 2006. xiv plus 273 pp.). As is well known, the number of students having some experience of higher education in the UK has mushroomed in the last decade or so. This has...

Rebellious Nuns: The Troubled History of a Mexican Convent, 1752-1863.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Rebellious Nuns: The Troubled History of a Mexican Convent, 1752-1863. By Margaret Chowning. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. x plus 296 pp. $35.00/cloth). This account of a convent rebellion places nuns squarely in the center of...

Police Stories: Building the French State, 1815-1851.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Police Stories: Building the French State, 1815-1851. By John Merriman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. viii plus 254 pp.). Among the police systems best understood in terms of their historical antecedents, that of France stands...