The Journal of Interdisciplinary History articles from March 2000

The Journal of Interdisciplinary History archives from March 2000

Witchcraft Fears and Psychosocial Factors in Disease.
March 22, 2000... Since MacFarlane published Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England in 1970, there has been "fairly widespread agreement" among historians "that pre-industrial European witchcraft has enough in common with contemporary primitive forms to be...

Food for Growth: Trends in Indonesia's Food Supply, 1880-1995.
March 22, 2000... The interaction between economic development and changes in the average quantity of food consumed is likely to be strongest in economies that expand from low standards of living. In such cases, the income elasticity of demand for food is high...

A Predatory Social Structure: Informers in Westminster, 1737-1741.
March 22, 2000... Demers, Andr[acute{e}]e This research note has two purposes. It examines how the Gin Act of 1736 helped create a predatory social structure in Westminster, and it illustrates how social network analysis can be used to uncover links between...

The Evolution of the Book.
March 22, 2000... The Evolution of the Book. By Frederick G. Kilgour (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998) 180 pp. $35.00 At first glance, this work represents an interdisciplinary venture that might commend itself to readers of this journal. The author,...

The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making.
March 22, 2000... The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making. By Adrian Johns (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998) 753 pp. $40.00 This volume brings together the "history of science" and the "history of print" by replacing the...

A History of the Modem Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society.
March 22, 2000... A History of the Modem Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society. By Mary Poovey (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998) 419 pp. $49.00 cloth $17.00 paper The concept of fact is fundamental in the modern world....

The Uncertain Sciences.
March 22, 2000... The Uncertain Sciences. By Bruce Mazlish (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1998) 328 pp. $35.00 Since their appearance in the eighteenth century, the "human" sciences have seemed "uncertain" when compared to the natural sciences. This...

Past into Present: Effective Techniques for First-Person Historical Interpretation.
March 22, 2000... Past into Present: Effective Techniques for First-Person Historical Interpretation. By Stacy F. Roth (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998) 254 pp. $39.95 cloth $14.95 paper Roth is a practitioner of first-person historical...

The Gender of History: Men, Women and Historical Practice.
March 22, 2000... The Gender of History: Men, Women and Historical Practice. By Bonnie G. Smith (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1998) 306 pp. $35.00 The Gender of History is an important and provocative book that challenges "the 'singular' tale...

A Sin Against the Future: Imprisonment in the World.
March 22, 2000... A Sin Against the Future: Imprisonment in the World. By Vivien Stern (Boston, Northeastern University Press, 1998) 432 pp. $47.50 cloth $18.95 paper As the title warns, this is not a cautious and dispassionate study of prisons. Stern sets...

A Cursing Brain? The Histories of Tourette Syndrome.
March 22, 2000... A Cursing Brain? The Histories of Tourette Syndrome. By Howard I. Kushner (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1999) 303 pp. $29.95 If you think that it is easy to define an illness by sorting through the confusing tangle of...

Deciphering Global Epidemics: Analytical Approaches to the Disease Records of World Cities, 1888-1912.
March 22, 2000... Deciphering Global Epidemics: Analytical Approaches to the Disease Records of World Cities, 1888-1912. By Andrew Cliff, Peter Haggett, and Matthew Smallman-Raynor (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1998) 469 pp. $74.95 cloth $29.95 paper...

The Family in Greek History.
March 22, 2000... The Family in Greek History. By Cynthia B. Patterson (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1998) 286 pp. $35.00 Patterson investigates the ancient Greek family as an integral part of political life rather than as a discreet subject...

The Shock of Medievalism.
March 22, 2000... The Shock of Medievalism. By Kathleen Biddick (Durham, Duke University Press, 1998) 315 pp. $49.95 cloth $19.95 paper I would have liked to summarize the contents of this book, actually a collection of seven essays, but the author has taken...

Transformations of Patriarchy in the West 1500-1900.
March 22, 2000... Transformations of Patriarchy in the West 1500-1900. By Pavla Miller (Bloomington, University of Indiana Press, 1999) 400 pp. $35.00 Miller's book examines familial, political, and economic change in the West between the sixteenth and...

The Flight of Icarus: Artisan Autobiography in Early Modern Europe.
March 22, 2000... The Flight of Icarus: Artisan Autobiography in Early Modern Europe. By James S. Amelang (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1998) 497 pp. $60.00 Amelang has written a fascinating, yet flawed, study of artisan autobiography in early...

Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe.
March 22, 2000... Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe. By Richard I. Cohen (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998) 358 pp. $50.00 In this innovative and thought-provoking book, Cohen illustrates how an awareness of Jewish art can enhance...

Pathology in the 19th and 20th Centuries.
March 22, 2000... Pathology in the 19th and 20th Centuries: The Relationship between Theory and Practice. Edited by Cay-R[ddot{u}]diger Pr[ddot{u}]ll in collaboration with John Woodward (Sheffield, European Association for the History of Medicine and Health...

Identity's Architect: A Biography of Erik H. Erikson.
March 22, 2000... Identity's Architect: A Biography of Erik H. Erikson. By Lawrence J. Friedman (New York, Scribner, 1999) 592 pp. $35.00 Friedman has written an exemplary psychobiography of the master of the genre. Although Friedman avoids reducing...

Family, Commerce and Religion in London and Cologne: Anglo-German Emigrants c. 1000-C. 1300.
March 22, 2000... Family, Commerce and Religion in London and Cologne: Anglo-German Emigrants c. 1000-C. 1300. By Joseph P. Huffman (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1998) 273 pp. $59.95 It is a common prejudice among Anglophone and French medieval...

Women in Early Modern England 1550-1720.
March 22, 2000... Women in Early Modern England 1550-1720. By Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998) 480 pp. $35.00 It is difficult to imagine a field of historical inquiry more wrought with shibboleths, developed...

Parish Communities and Religious Conflict in the Vale of Gloucester, 1590-1690.
March 22, 2000... Parish Communities and Religious Conflict in the Vale of Gloucester, 1590-1690. By Daniel C. Beaver (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1998) 462 pp. $49.50 This excellent monograph links local social structure and the...

Anglo-American Securities Regulation--Cultural and Political Roots, 1690-1860.
March 22, 2000... Anglo-American Securities Regulation--Cultural and Political Roots, 1690-1860. By Stuart Banner (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998) 318 pp. $69.95 The fascination of Americans with the stock market is hardly new. But not many...

Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain.
March 22, 2000... Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain. By G. R. Searle (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998) 300 pp. $85.00 The Victorian Age in Britain was the high point of laissez-faire economics, but it was also a period when people were...

Human Demography and Disease.
March 22, 2000... Human Demography and Disease. By Susan Scott and Christopher J. Duncan (New York, Cambridge University Press, I998) 354 pp. $74.95 The approach followed in this book is the systematic application of time-series analysis to British yearly...

The Self-Fashioning of Disraeli 1818-1851.
March 22, 2000... The Self-Fashioning of Disraeli 1818-1851. Edited by Charles Richmond and Paul Smith (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1998) 212 pp. $49.95 The idea that Benjamin Disraeli, parvenu and dilettante on the make, had to "self-fashion" his...

The Politics of Retirement in Britain, 1878-1948.
March 22, 2000... The Politics of Retirement in Britain, 1878-1948. By John Macnicol (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1998) 425 PP. $74.95 The 1942 Beveridge Report, promising comprehensive social security for everyone from cradle to grave, has been...

Britain and Japan: A Comparative Economic and Social History since 1900.
March 22, 2000... Britain and Japan: A Comparative Economic and Social History since 1900. By Kenneth D. Brown (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1998) 269 pp. $79.95 cloth $29.95 paper Brown employs a modified version of the structural model by A. H. Halsey in...

Parisian Scholars in the Early Fourteenth Century: A Social Portrait.
March 22, 2000... Parisian Scholars in the Early Fourteenth Century: A Social Portrait. By William J. Courtenay (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 284 pp. $64.95 Symonette, a jongleuse (we might say, "performance artist") from the small town of...

The Practice of Patriarchy: Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early Modem France.
March 22, 2000... The Practice of Patriarchy: Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early Modem France. By Julie Hardwick (University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998) 240 pp. $55.00 cloth $19.95 paper In prescriptive sources,...

Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris during the Age of Revolution.
March 22, 2000... Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris during the Age of Revolution. By Paul Metzner (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998) 385 pp. $50.00 Trivia can have great historical appeal. Museum showcases...

Mastering the Market: The State and the Grain Trade in Northern France, 1700-1860.
March 22, 2000... Mastering the Market: The State and the Grain Trade in Northern France, 1700-1860. By Judith A. Miller (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1998) 334 pp. $49.95 A case could be made that three loosely related assertions underlying...

Noble Power during the French Wars of Religion: The Guise Affinity and the Catholic Cause in Normandy.
March 22, 2000... Noble Power during the French Wars of Religion: The Guise Affinity and the Catholic Cause in Normandy. By Stuart Carroll (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1998) 298 pp. $59.95 This book is one of a growing number of similar...

La terre et l'argent: L'agriculture et le cr[cute{e}]dit en France du XVIIIe au d[cute{e}but du XXe si[cute{e}]cle.
March 22, 2000... La terre et l'argent: L'agriculture et le cr[cute{e}]dit en France du XVIIIe au d[cute{e}but du XXe si[cute{e}]cle. By Gilles Postel-Vinay (Paris, Editions Albin Michel, 1998) 462 pp. Fr I80 A new generation of historians has discovered a...

Fraternity Among the French Peasantry: Sociability and Voluntary Associations in the Loire Valley, 1815-1914.
March 22, 2000... Fraternity Among the French Peasantry: Sociability and Voluntary Associations in the Loire Valley, 1815-1914. By Alan R. H. Baker (New York, Cambridge University Press, I999) 373 pp. $74.95 In the context of arguments about the...

The Urbanization of Opera: Music Theater in Paris in the Nineteenth Century.
March 22, 2000... The Urbanization of Opera: Music Theater in Paris in the Nineteenth Century. By Anselm Gerhard (trans. Mary Whittall) (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998) 503 pp. $50.00 Richard Wagner's jealous rage against Giacomo Meyerbeer, a...

The Jews of Modern France.
March 22, 2000... The Jews of Modern France. By Paula E. Hyman (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998) 283 pp. $45.00 cloth $16.95 paper This lucidly written book is the first in a series devoted to providing a systematic overview of the major...

The Empress, the Queen, and the Nun: Women and Power at the Court of Philip III of Spain.
March 22, 2000... The Empress, the Queen, and the Nun: Women and Power at the Court of Philip III of Spain. By Magdalena S. S[acute{a}]nchez (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) 268 pp. $39.95 According to S[acute{a}]inchez, the Austrian...

Russia under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horsemen to the Lenin Mausoleum.
March 22, 2000... Russia under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horsemen to the Lenin Mausoleum. By Martin Malia (Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 1999) 514 pp. $35.00 Malia's brilliantly conceived intellectual history of Europe since c. 1700 uses...

Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856-1914.
March 22, 2000... Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856-1914. By Stephen P. Frank (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999) 352 pp. $55.00 The author's central contention in this remarkable study of justice in rural Russia after...

Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless.
March 22, 2000... Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless. By Daniel Pens (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1998) 237 pp. $39.95 In this engaging, succinct, and cogent monograph, Penis investigates the League of the Godless, a...

Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native American Mapmaking and Map Use.
March 22, 2000... Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native American Mapmaking and Map Use. Edited by G. Malcolm Lewis (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998) 318 pp. $60.00 This impressive and well-illustrated collection of essays traverses a...

With Liberty for Some: 500 Years of Imprisonment in America.
March 22, 2000... With Liberty for Some: 500 Years of Imprisonment in America. By Scott Christianson (Boston, Northeastern University Press, 1998) 394 pp. $35.00 The subtitle of this book is no exaggeration. Christianson begins in 1492, with Christopher...

Beyond the Household: Women's Place in the Early South, 1700-1835.
March 22, 2000... Beyond the Household: Women's Place in the Early South, 1700-1835. By Cynthia A. Kierner (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1998) 304 pp. $55.00 cloth $18.95 paper In accounts of the colonial American South, women appear as frequent and...

Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898.
March 22, 2000... Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. By Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998) 1383 pp. $49.95 This remarkable history of New York City is not "interdisciplinary" in any conventional sense, but it...

A Separate Canaan: The Making of an Afro-Moravian World in North Carolina, 1763-1840.
March 22, 2000... A Separate Canaan: The Making of an Afro-Moravian World in North Carolina, 1763-1840. By Jon F. Sensbach (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1998) 342 pp. $45.00 cloth $17.95 paper This carefully crafted study places the story...

Restless Visionaries: The Social Roots of Antebellum Reform in Alabama and Michigan.
March 22, 2000... Restless Visionaries: The Social Roots of Antebellum Reform in Alabama and Michigan. By John W. Quist (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1999) 562 pp. $57.50 With exception of passing reference to its limited impact on...

Mental Territories: Mapping the Inland Empire.
March 22, 2000... Mental Territories: Mapping the Inland Empire. By Katherine G. Morrissey (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1997) 220 pp. $45.00 cloth $18.95 paper The American West is shaped as much by myth as by reality. As Morrissey writes in Mental...

American Mobbing 1828--1861: Toward Civil War.
March 22, 2000... American Mobbing 1828--1861: Toward Civil War. By David Grimsted (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998) 372 pp. $65.00 Whatever else they may have been, riots in the antebellum United States were political. Whereas most historians are...

The Shattering of Texas Unionism: Politics in the Lone Star State During the Civil War Era.
March 22, 2000... The Shattering of Texas Unionism: Politics in the Lone Star State During the Civil War Era. By Dale Baum (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1999) 283 pp. $37.50 Baum is the foremost practitioner of the quantitative approach to...

Party Ideologies in America, 1828-1996.
March 22, 2000... Party Ideologies in America, 1828-1996. By John Gerring (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1998) 337 pp. $64.95 The central thesis of Gerring's engaging book is that American political parties have, and historically have had, consistent...

Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877.
March 22, 2000... Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877. By Daniel W. Stowell (New York, Oxford University Press, I998) 278 pp. $65.00 Perhaps no sub-field of American history has been more recast by the assault on...

Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act.
March 22, 2000... Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act. By Andrew Gyory (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1998) 354 pp. $49.95 cloth $19.95 paper Why did the United States pass the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882?...

Democracy in Desperation: The Depression of 1893.
March 22, 2000... Democracy in Desperation: The Depression of 1893. By Douglas Steeples and David O. Whitten (Westport, Greenwood Press, 1998) 261 pp. $59.95 Steeples and Whitten's study of the depression of the 1890s is a welcome addition to the literature...

Organized Labor and American Politics, 1894-1994.
March 22, 2000... Organized Labor and American Politics, 1894-1994: The Labor-Liberal Alliance. Edited by Kevin Boyle (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1998) 274 pp. $71.50 Workers' Paradox: The Republican Origins of New Deal Labor Policy, 1886-...

Working with Class: Social Workers and the Politics of Middle-Class Identity.
March 22, 2000... Working with Class: Social Workers and the Politics of Middle-Class Identity. By Daniel J. Walkowitz (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1999) 440 pp. $59.95 cloth $22.50 paper Social work belongs to a set of...

Mind Games: American Culture and the Birth of Psychotherapy.
March 22, 2000... Mind Games: American Culture and the Birth of Psychotherapy. By Eric Caplan (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998) 242 pp. $35.00 This book argues that the emergence of psychotherapy in the United States during the early...

Disciplining Reproduction: Modernity, American Life Sciences, and "The Problems of Sex".
March 22, 2000... Disciplining Reproduction: Modernity, American Life Sciences, and "The Problems of Sex." By Adele E. Clarke (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998) 421 pp. $45.00 This is a book both broad in focus and focused within its breadth....

New and Improved: The Transformation of American Women's Emotional Culture.
March 22, 2000... New and Improved: The Transformation of American Women's Emotional Culture. By John C. Spurlock and Cynthia A. Magistro (New York, New York University Press, 1998) 213 pp. $35.00 "I want to be modem and whicked [sic] and sophisticated,"...

War and Welfare: Europe and the United States, 1945 to the Present.
March 22, 2000... War and Welfare: Europe and the United States, 1945 to the Present. By Jytte Klausen (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1998) 341 pp. $59.95 Klausen's War and Welfare is a rich and ambitious book. It reflects the value of comparative politics...

Why the American Century?
March 22, 2000... Why the American Century? By Olivier Zunz (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998) 245 pp. $24.00 Why the American Century? is a fascinating work for several reasons. For one, Zunz is a new social historian who believes that the recent...

The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life.
March 22, 2000... The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life. By Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen (New York, Columbia University Press, 1998) 291 pp. $27.50 Finally! After years of sweeping but ill-informed pronouncements from pundits...

Campanha Gaucha: A Brazilian Ranching System, 1850-1920.
March 22, 2000... Campanha Gaucha: A Brazilian Ranching System, 1850-1920. By Stephen Bell (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 292 pp. $55.00 The history of Brazilian agriculture has been conspicuously neglected. Such treatment is hardly warranted...

Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers: The Duala and Their Hinterland, c. 1600--c. 1960.
March 22, 2000... Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers: The Duala and Their Hinterland, c. 1600--c. 1960. By Ralph A. Austen and Jonathan Derrick (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 253 pp. $64.95 cloth $24.95 paper Studies of West African coastal...

Violence in Nigeria: The Crisis of Religious Politics and Secular Ideologies.
March 22, 2000... Violence in Nigeria: The Crisis of Religious Politics and Secular Ideologies. By Toyin Falola (Rochester, University of Rochester Press, 1998) 386 pp. $71.00 This is an important book, examining in depth a neglected dimension of Nigeria s...

The Divided Economy of Mandatory Palestine.
March 22, 2000... The Divided Economy of Mandatory Palestine. By Jacob Metzer (New York Cambridge University Press, 1998) 275 pp. $59.95 This meticulous study of the dual economy of Palestine during the highly formative British mandatory period (1920-1948)...

From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors and the Emergence of Israel.
March 22, 2000... From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors and the Emergence of Israel. By Idith Zertal (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998) 334 pp. $29.95 In this powerful and meticulously researched study of the clandestine immigration...