The Historian articles from December 2007

The Historian archives from December 2007

The legacy of Forsey v. Cunningham: safeguarding the integrity of the right to trial by jury.(Essay)
December 22, 2007... THIS IS THE STORY of a simple lawsuit that originated in the colony of New York in 1763. The case arose out of a dispute over the payment of a debt owed by one merchant to another. It was driven by the political ideology of a dedicated Tory...

Did radar win the Battle of Britain?(Essay)
December 22, 2007... IN AUGUST 2006, the reported conclusions of three historians from the Joint Services Staff Command College, Shrivenbam, that the Royal Navy had won the Battle of Britain caused an uproar in the British national media. (1) The sensational...

"We both have reason to feel good about the book": Russell Long, T. Harry Williams, and Huey Long.(Critical essay)
December 22, 2007... T. HARRY WILLIAMS'S BIOGRAPHY Huey Long, published in October 1969, received critical and scholarly acclaim almost as soon as it hit the shelves. George Brown Tindall, in the American Historical Review, called the biography "an absorbing story,...

Atomic heroes and atomic monsters: American and Japanese cartoonists confront the onset of the nuclear age, 1945-80.(Essay)
December 22, 2007... IN THE IMMEDIATE YEARS after the close of the Second World War, American and Japanese comic book/manga artists both reflected and helped shape their respective worlds of popular culture. Perhaps the picture-and-text combination of comic...

The Palestinian Peasant Economy under the Mandate: A Story of Colonial Bungling.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Palestinian Peasant Economy Under the Mandate: A Story of Colonial Bungling. By Amos Nadan. (Cambridge, Mass.: Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University, 2006. Pp. xx, 370. $19.95.) The author of this study has taken on a...

The Wonga Coup: Guns, Thugs, and a Ruthless Determination to Create Mayhem in an Oil-Rich Corner of Africa.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Wonga Coup: Guns, Thugs, and a Ruthless Determination to Create Mayhem in an Oil-Rich Corner of Africa. By Adam Roberts. (London: Profile Books, 2006. Pp. xviii, 312. $26.00.) In March 2004, a heavily armed force of British, South...

A Burning Hunger: One Family's Struggle against Apartheid.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... A Burning Hunger: One Family's Struggle Against Apartheid. By Lynda Schuster. (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2006. Pp. 451. $19.95.) In the early 1970s, the reviewer was present at a small, elegant dinner in Parktown, a suburb of...

No Insignificant Part: The Rhodesia Native Regiment and the East Africa Campaign of the First World War.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... No Insignificant Part: The Rhodesia Native Regiment and the East Africa Campaign of the First World War. By Timothy J. Stapleton. (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006. Pp. xii, 188. $55.00.) In this book, the author...

The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton: The Life and Legacy of America's Most Elusive Founding Father.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton: The Life and Legacy of America's Most Elusive Founding Father. Edited by Douglas Ambrose and Robert W. T. Martin. (New York, N.Y.: New York University Press, 2006. Pp. x, 300. $45.00.) If you ask most...

To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City. By Martha Biondi. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003. Pp. 360. $18.95.) In the summer of 1947, a small group of young African-Americans launched a...

Nature and the Environment in Nineteenth-Century American Life.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Nature and the Environment in Nineteenth-Century Life. By Brian Black. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. Pp. 239. $49.95.) This author's examination of environmental practice in nineteenth-century America is the latest in a long and...

A Hanging in Nacogdoches: Murder, Race, Politics, and Polemics in Texas's Oldest Town, 1870-1916.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... A Hanging in Nacogdoches: Murder, Race, Politics, and Polemics in Texas's Oldest Town, 1870-1916. By Gary B. Borders. (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 2006. Pp. xi, 209. $19.95.) In this study, the author examines the life of a...

After Pinochet: The Chilean Road to Democracy and the Market.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... After Pinochet: The Chilean Road to Democracy and the Market. Edited by Silvia Borzutsky and Lois Hecht Oppenheim. (Gainsville, Fla.: University of Florida Press, 2006. Pp. xxvi, 186. $55.00.) Pinochet's 1980 constitution "legalized" the...

At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68. By Taylor Branch. (New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 2006. Pp. xiii, 1039. $35.00.) This reviewer is hardly alone in envying the author's rare skills as a narrative historian. These...

Louis Armstrong's New Orleans.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Louis Armstrong's New Orleans. By Thomas Brothers. (New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. Pp. xii, 386. $26.95.) This is an excellent study with a misleading title. Instead of providing a panoramic view of New Orleans from 1901 to...

John M. Schofield and the Politics of Generalship.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... John M. Schofield and the Politics of Generalship. By Donald B. Connelly. (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Pp. xiv, 471. $49.95.) This study of Union general John M. Schofield is less a full-length biography...

An Opportunity Lost: The Truman Administration and the Farm Policy Debate.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... An Opportunity Lost: The Truman Administration and the Farm Policy Debate. By Virgil W. Dean. (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 2006. Pp. xv, 275. $39.95.) In this book, the author examines a notable "might have been" in the...

Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt's Foreign Policies, 1933-1945.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt's Foreign Policies, 1933-1945. By Justus D. Doenecke and Mark A. Stoler. (New York, N.Y.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. Pp. vi, 238. $72.00.) The foreign policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, controversial in...

The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan. By John Ehrman. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005. Pp. 296. $18.00.) The author of this book argues that the age of FDR has been replaced by the age of Reagan. The liberal regime...

Benjamin Franklin's Printing Network: Disseminating Virtue in Early America.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Benjamin Franklin's Printing Network: Disseminating Virtue in Early America. By Ralph Frasca. (Columbia, Miss.: University of Missouri Press, 2006. Pp ix, 295. $44.95.) The year 2006 marks the three hundredth anniversary of Benjamin...

A Pickpocket's Tale: The Criminal World of Nineteenth-Century New York.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... A Pickpocket's Tale: The Criminal World of Nineteenth-Century New York. By Timothy Gilfoyle. (New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton and Company, 2006. Pp xvi, 437. $27.95.) It is easy to find fault with this book. It is repetitive, wordy, and...

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, N.Y.: Pantheon Books, 2006. Pp. 383. $26.95.) This author has written a well-researched,...

The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890. By Steven Hahn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xvii, 354. $21.95.) This is a welcome new edition of Steven Hahn's...

Neoliberal Economics, Democratic Transition, and Mapuche Demands for Rights in Chile.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Neoliberal Economics, Democratic Transition, and Mapuche Demands for Rights in Chile. By Diane Haughney. (Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 2006. Pp. 320. $59.95.) This book is a study of two conflicting issues: the...

The Roman Predicament: How the Rules of International Order Create the Politics of Empire.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Roman Predicament: How the Rules of International Order Create the Politics of Empire. By Harold James. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006. Pp. 176. $24.95.) The question of the United States as an empire is a hot-button...

Mapp v. Ohio: Guarding Against Unreasonable Searches and Seizures.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Mapp v. Ohio: Guarding Against Unreasonable Searches and Seizures. By Carolyn N. Long. (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 2006. Pp. xii, 224. $15.95.) Between 1925 and 1969, in perhaps the twentieth century's single most...

Jay Cooke's Gamble: The Northern Pacific Railroad, the Sioux, and the Panic of 1873.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Jay Cooke's Gamble: The Northern Pacific Railroad, the Sioux, and the Panic of 1873. By M. John Lubetkin. (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press 2006. Pp. xviii, 380. $29.95.) This book is a dramatic narrative that helps explain the...

Water and Ritual: The Rise and Fall of Classic Maya Rulers.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Water and Ritual: The Rise and Fall of Classic Maya Rulers. By Lisa J. Lucero. (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 2006. Pp. xiv, 253. $45.00.) Throughout the lowland jungles and scrub forests of eastern Mesoamerica lie the ruins of...

Sex among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730-1830.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Sex Among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730-1830. By Clare A. Lyons. (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Pp. xii, 420. $22.50.) In the decades leading...

The Era of Education: The Presidents and the Schools, 1965-2001.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Era of Education: The Presidents and the Schools, 1965-2001. By Lawrence J. McAndrews. (Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Pp. ix, 308. $45.00.) Literature tracing the convolutions of school reform in recent years has...

A Game of Inches: The Stories behind the Innovations that Shaped Baseball: The Game on the Field.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... A Game of Inches: The Stories Behind the Innovations that Shaped Baseball, The Game on the Field. By Peter Morris. (Chicago, Ill.: Ivan R. Dee, 2006. Pp. xxv, 533. $29.95.) If you are a baseball fan, did you know the rule for nine-inning...

Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution. By Charles Rappleye. (New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 2006. Pp. 400. $27.00.) Despite a misleading title, this book tells a tale of Rhode Island...

Antonin Scalia's Jurisprudence: Text and Tradition.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Antonin Scalia's Jurisprudence: Text and Tradition. By Ralph A. Rossum. (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 2006. Pp. 312. $34.95.) The author of this book sets out to write a "sympathetic" account of Justice Scalia, one that...

Lyrics and Borrowed Tunes of the American Temperance Movement.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Lyrics and Borrowed Tunes of the American Temperance Movement. Edited by Paul D. Sanders. (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 2006. Pp. xi, 281. $19.95.) The title accurately describes the book's contents, a compilation of...

Maurice Rosenblatt and the Fall of Joseph McCarthy.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Maurice Rosenblatt and the Fall of Joseph McCarthy. By Shelby Scates. (Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press in association with History Ink, 2006. Pp. 135. $18.95.) Maurice Rosenblatt [1915-2005] played an inside role in...

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11: How One Film Divided a Nation.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11: How One Film Divided a Nation. By Robert Brent Toplin. (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 2006. Pp. 161. $24.95.) In summer 2004, during George W. Bush's presidential reelection campaign,...

"Behind Bayonets": The Civil War in Northern Ohio.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... "Behind Bayonets": The Civil War in Northern Ohio. By David Van Tassel, with John Vacha. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2006. Pp. x, 125. $35.00.) This thin volume provides a pleasant and informative look at what was going on in...

George Washington's Enforcers: Policing the Continental Army.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... George Washington's Enforcers: Policing the Continental Army. By Harry M. Ward. (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006. Pp. xiii, 268. $45.00.) George Washington's promotion of military discipline in the Continental...

LBJ: Architect of American Ambition.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... LBJ: Architect of American Ambition. By Randall B. Woods (New York, N.Y.: Free Press, 2006. Pp. 956. $35.00.) At last there is a biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson worthy of the man. Using important new sources, such as the fascinating and...

The OSS and Ho Chi Minh: Unexpected Allies in the War against Japan.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The OSS and Ho Chi Minh: Unexpected Allies in the War Against Japan. By Dixee Bartholomew-Feis. (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 2006. Pp. x, 435. $34.95.) In September 1945, in the last report that Office of Strategic...

The Problem of Beauty: Aesthetic Thought and Pursuits in Northern Song Dynasty China.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Problem of Beauty: Aesthetic Thought and Pursuits in Northern Song Dynasty China. By Ronald Egan. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. 1,405. $49.95.) When confronted with the information that a man he had recommended...

The Changing Face of China: From Mao to Market.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Changing Face of China: From Mao to Market. By John Gittings. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. ix, 372. $30.00.) Writing in the New Republic, the author of this book commented recently on "the paths available to nations...

Seditious Histories: Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Pasts.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Seditious Histories: Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Pasts. By Craig J. Reynolds. (Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 2006. Pp. v, 367. $35.00.) This collection is the long-awaited compilation of new and previously...

The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: The Remarkable Story of Captain Cook's Encounters in the South Seas.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: The Remarkable Story of Captain Cook's Encounters in the South Seas. By Anne Salmond. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003. Pp. xxii, 506. $30.00.) The author of this book is a much-respected New...

The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France. By David Andress. (New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2006. Pp. 441. $26.00.) It is perhaps understandable that books that delve into the historical origins of...

Gunning for the Red Baron.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Gunning for the Red Baron. By Leon Bennett. (College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 2006. Pp. 207. $29.95.) This is a book written by an aeronautical engineer, and it shows, for better and for worse. If you are a specialist or...

Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Mussolini's Italy: Life, Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945. By R. J. B. Bosworth. (New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press, 2006. Pp. xi, 692. $35.00.) This volume devoted to a study of Mussolini's Italy should be of particular interest to...

The Voyage of the Vizcaina: The Mystery of Christopher Columbus's Last Ship.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Voyage of the Vizcaina: The Mystery of Christopher Columbus's Last Ship. By Klaus Brinkbaumer and Clemens Hoges. Translated by Annette Streck. (New York, N.Y. and London: Harcourt, 2006. Pp. 328. $26.00.) In 1504 Columbus's caravel,...

Ending the French Revolution: Violence, Justice, and Repression from the Terror to Napoleon.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Ending the French Revolution: Violence, Justice, and Repression from the Terror to Napoleon. By Howard G. Brown. (Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Press, 2006. Pp. vii, 461. $45.00.) This author brings together an impressive...

Confronting the "Good Death": Nazi Euthanasia on Trial, 1945-1953.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Confronting the "Good Death": Nazi Euthanasia on Trial, 1945-1953. By Michael S. Bryant. (Boulder, Colo.: University Press of Colorado, 2005. Pp. xiii, 269. $34.95.) The first National Socialist killing program consumed Germany's long-term...

Mozart and His Operas.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Mozart and His Operas. By David Cairns. (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2006. Pp. xi, 290. $29.95.) After the flood of new biographies and other types of books in 1991, the two-hundredth anniversary of Mozart's death, one...

Cusanus: The Legacy of Learned Ignorance.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Cusanus: The Legacy of Learned Ignorance. Edited by Peter J. Casarella. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2006. Pp. xxxi, 280. $74.95.) Nicholas of Cusa is not an easy read, and this collection of papers approaching...

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. Pp. x, 296. $35.00.) In the Spring of 1761, just before resigning as abbess of the Convent of La Purisima...

Rediscovering Homer: Inside the Origins of the Epic.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Rediscovering Homer: Inside the Origins of the Epic. By Andrew Dalby. (New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton, 2006. Pp. xxxiv, 266. $26.95.) Who wrote the Iliad and Odyssey that we read? This question differs from who composed or sung "them" before...

Victory through Coalition: Britain and France during the First World War.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Victory through Coalition: Britain and France during the First World War. By Elizabeth Greenhalgh. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xv, 304. $75.00.) This latest work in the trendy field of coalition warfare analyzes the...

The Religion of the Etruscans.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Religion of the Etruscans. Edited by Nancy Thomson de Grummond and Erika Simon. (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 2006. Pp. 225. $50.00.) In the first chapter of this work, the author writes that "it is a little odd, given the...

Jewish Forced Labor under the Nazis: Economic Needs and Racial Aims, 1938-1944.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Jewish Forced Labor under the Nazis: Economic Needs and Racial Aims, 1938-1944. By Wolf Gruner. Translated by Kathleen M. Dell'Orto. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press with the United States Holocaust Museum, 2006. Pp. xiv, 322. $75.00.)...

Himmler's Crusade: The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Himmler's Crusade: The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race. By Christopher Hale. (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, 2003. Pp. x, 422. $27.95.) In the winter of 1938, a team of five Nazi SS officers, accompanied by an...

Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought. By Isaiah Berlin. Edited by Henry Hardy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006. Pp. ix, 292. $29.95.) Later described as the "torso" of all prior...

Gender and Petty Violence in London, 1680-1720.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Gender and Petty Violence in London, 1680-1720. By Jennine Hurl-Eamon. (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2005. Pp. xii, 213. $44.95.) Using hitherto underutilized source material, the author has written a thought-provoking book...

The Devil and Demonism in Early Modern England.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Devil and Demonism in Early Modern England. By Nathan Johnstone. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. x, 334. $85.00.) In this book, the author explores the popular perception and role of the devil in early modern England....

The Pastoral Role of the Roman Catholic Church in Pre-Famine Ireland, 1750-1850.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Pastoral Role of the Roman Catholic Church in Pre-Famine Ireland, 1750-1850. By Emmet Larkin. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press and Dublin: The Four Courts, 2006. Pp. xvi, 298. $69.95.) In the three or four...

Jean-Paul Sartre.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Jean-Paul Sartre. By Andrew Leak. (London: Reaktion Books, 2006. Pp. vii, 167. $16.95.) Writing a short biographical introduction to Sartre is no easy feat, and it would be difficult to top this author's effort. After all, Sartre was one...

Suspended Animation: Pain, Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Suspended Animation: Pain, Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture. By Robert Mills. (London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 2005. Pp. 248. $29.95.) This book is a study of the iconography and literature of medieval penal representations,...

Culture and Customs of the Baltic States.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Culture and Customs of the Baltic States. By Kevin O'Conner. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. Pp. 253. $49.95.) The present volume forms part of a projected series of books on the culture and customs of Europe. The foreword makes...

Russian Conservatism and Its Critics: A Study in Political Culture.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Russian Conservatism and Its Critics: A Study in Political Culture. By Richard Pipes. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005. Pp. x, 216. $30.00.) This study of the Russian Revolution offers a valuable survey of five hundred years...

The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain. By Bernard Porter. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. xxiii, 475. $26.95.) It might seem perverse for a historian of empire as serious as the author of this...

Caesar in Gaul and Rome: War in Words.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Caesar in Gaul and Rome: War in Words. By Andrew M. Riggsby. (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 2006. Pp. viii, 271. $45.00.) Julius Caesar towers over the last century of the Roman Republic. His voice, along with that of Cicero,...

Cultural Force: Makers and Defenders of the French Colonial Empire.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Cultural Force: Makers and Defenders of the French Colonial Empire. By Barnett Singer and John Langdon. (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004. Pp. xi, 483. $45.00.) The starting point for this book is that "Western or French,...

Madness at Home: The Psychiatrist, the Patient, and the Family in England, 1820-1860.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Madness at Home: The Psychiatrist, the Patient, and the Family in England, 1820-1860. By Akihito Suzuki. (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2006. Pp. ix, 260. $49.95.) The progressive expansion of English asylums in the...

Notorious Murders, Black Lanterns, & Moveable Goods: The Transformation of Edinburgh's Underworld in the Early Nineteenth Century.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Notorious Murders, Black Lanterns, & Moveable Goods: The Transformation of Edinburgh's Underworld in the Early Nineteenth Century. By Deborah A. Symonds. (Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press, 2006. Pp. xiv, 180. $39.95.) Venue 33, the...

1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion. By Daniel Szechi. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006. Pp. xvi, 351. $50.00.) Desperately distressed by the Hanoverian succession to the British throne in 1714, the inequities of the new union...

The Social Life of Money in the English Past.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Social Life of Money in the English Past. By Deborah Valenze. (New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xvi, 308. $23.99.) The significance of money will come as no surprise to anyone with a mortgage, an adolescent, or the...

Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. By Alexei Yurchak. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006. Pp. x, 331. $24.95.) By the time Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, the Soviet Union had...

The Typological Imaginary: Circumcision, Technology, History.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Typological Imaginary: Circumcision, Technology, History. By Kathleen Biddick. (Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Pp. ix, 148. $34.95.) The author of this book focuses her effort on the use of the symbolic act...

The Age of Total War, 1860-1945.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Age of Total War, 1860-1945. By Jeremy Black. (Westport, Conn., and London: Praeger Security International, 2006. Pp. xi, 202. $44.95.) This latest volume of the more than forty books written by military historian Jeremy Black is rather...

The Power of Projections: How Maps Reflect Global Politics and History.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Power of Projections: How Maps Reflect Global Politics and History. By Arthur Jay Klinghoffer. (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2006. Pp. xv, 192. $49.95.) Well-written and attractively produced, but not as original as it suggests, this is...

Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World's Great Family Businesses.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World's Great Family Businesses. By David S. Landes. (New York, N.Y.: Viking, 2006. Pp. xx, 380. $25.95.) The author of this book, who, until he assumed emeritus status, held appointments in both...

The Cambridge History of Christianity: Volume 9, World Christianities c. 1914-c. 2000.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... The Cambridge History of Christianity: Volume 9, World Christianities c. 1914-c. 2000. Edited by Hugh McLeod. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xviii, 717. $180.00.) This volume is an invaluable asset and is an obligatory...

Phi Alpha Theta initiates.
December 22, 2007... Armstrong Atlantic State University (Sigma Theta) 20 April 2007: Kerry J. Buchan. Ball State University (Mu Beta) 30 July 2007: Melissa Kay Booth, Erin E. Hamilton, James Bradley Hickey, Donald L. Irby, Sylvester Moore-El, Matthew M. Neer,...