Associate Professor Of History Research Articles

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

The Gods of Prophetstown: The Battle of Tippecanoe and the Holy War for the American Frontier (review)

Reviewed by: The Gods of Prophetstown: The Battle of Tippecanoe and the Holy War for the American Frontier John P. Bowes (bio) The Gods of Prophetstown: The Battle of Tippecanoe and the Holy War for the American Frontier. By Adam Jortner. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. x, 310. $27.95 cloth) [End Page 199] In The Gods of Prophetstown, Adam Jortner asserts that it is necessary to view the conflict between Americans and American Indians over the Old Northwest Territory in the early nineteenth century within a religious framework. First, he emphasizes that religious movements, like that led by the Shawnee Prophet in the early 1800s, were driving forces for change and not simply products of historical events. Second, he proposes that the conflicts between American Indians and the United States in the Old Northwest culminating in the War of 1812 were, in fact, part of a religious war “with the vast expanse of the western frontier, a holy land, as the prize” (p. 11). Therefore, even though political factors played a role in the creation of and battle over this particular frontier, the gods shaped the contest. In The Gods of Prophetstown, the persons of Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee Prophet, and William Henry Harrison represent these competing religious worldviews. The strong prologue of the book begins by dissecting the various explanations given over time for the Shawnee Prophet’s prediction of the solar eclipse of June 16, 1806. Rather than focusing on the source or validity of that prediction, however, Jortner stresses that to understand the nature of this religious war it is necessary to take seriously the religious values of the parties involved. The Shawnee Prophet and his followers believed in the power and truth of the celestial sign, and that faith in the supernatural strengthened their resolve to resist American expansion. Even when Tecumseh became an influential figure in the development and maintenance of this pan-Indian confederacy, then, the religious message of the Prophet provided the firm foundation. The case for religion as a driving force in the actions taken by William Henry Harrison during the same period of time is not made as effectively. Harrison’s political ambitions are evident, and the book does well to provide insight into the territorial governor’s approach to handling the pan-Indian confederacy that arose in his jurisdiction. Yet in that process Jortner also weakens the notion that Harrison viewed this as a religious war. When Jortner writes that “Congress [End Page 200] retroactively approved Harrison’s decisions [to attack the Prophet at Tippecanoe] because it accepted his contention of a British plot,” he accomplishes two things (p. 199). First, he reveals the strength of his intricate explanation of the battle and its geopolitical context. Second, he dilutes his view of the conflict as a religious war. Even the observation that Congress believed God was on the side of the Americans is not enough to support the argument that the war was an uncommonly religious conflict. Over the course of seventeen chapters, including the prologue and epilogue, Jortner provides a well-crafted narrative that explains in great detail the events that framed the conflicts that consumed the Great Lakes region in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. The Gods of Prophetstown is therefore a welcome addition to the historiography. Ultimately, however, although religion provides a framework for the narrative, it is not the heart of this analysis. In that respect, the book appears not to fulfill the promise of the prologue. Jortner is at his best when he is unraveling the assumptions that have long framed conclusions about events like the Shawnee Prophet’s prediction and the Battle of Tippecanoe. But religion serves more as a bookend, showing up most effectively in the prologue and the epilogue. John P. Bowes John P. Bowes is an associate professor of history at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky. He is the author of Exiles and Pioneers: Eastern Indians in the Trans-Mississippi West (2007) and is currently writing a book titled, Northern Indian Removal: An Unfamiliar History. Copyright © 2012 Kentucky Historical Society

A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community (review)

Reviewed by: A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community Patricia Richard (bio) A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community. By Nicole Etcheson. (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2011. Pp. x, 371. $39.95 cloth) The book under review considers the impact of the Civil War on the home front and in particular on Putnam County, Indiana. Examining the war from a communal perspective has deep roots in Civil War scholarship and one of the most famous of these studies was done by Edward L. Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859–1863 (2003). Ayers compared two counties: one in Pennsylvania and one in Virginia. Mathew Gallman and Phillip Paludan provided more general studies of the northern home front in The North Fights the Civil War: The Home Front (1994) and “A People’s Contest”: The Union and the Civil War, 1861–1865 (1996), respectively. Nicole Etcheson continues a home-front focus with a microhistory of Putnam County in which she considers class, gender, and race as influenced by the national events before, during, and after the war. A Generation at War is a multifaceted study that builds on Civil War political and social history by expanding the examination to include [End Page 211] the prewar and postwar periods to gain, as she puts it, “a better sense of the changes the war brought” to this rural Indiana county and “contrast the urban focus of previous Northern home-front studies” (p.12). Divided into three logical parts consisting of prewar (beginning in 1850), the war, and postwar (beyond 1877), she then divides each section into men’s sphere and politics, women’s sphere and their dependence on men, and the issue of race in Putnam County. She ties each section together by following the lives of local citizens throughout this period. She argues that all Americans were influenced by the issue of slavery and race whether they were intimately involved in or opposed to abolition or not. Basing her conclusions on an impressive array of town, county, state, and national records, newspapers, diaries, correspondence, and memoirs, she provides a complex look at Putnam County and how it fits into this tumultuous period. It is the scope of this study that gives it weight. By examining both prewar and postwar history, Etcheson is able to show the lasting impact of the conflict. Among many of her important points, she reminds us that northern states had complex ideas about race and war goals. Antebellum Indiana, for instance, had pervasive racism represented in antiblack laws that forbade the migration of blacks into the state and provided few civil protections for black residents. In spite of the small black community of Putnam though, after the war prominent African American residents encouraged North Carolina blacks to migrate to Indiana. The partisan politics that split over race issues before the war and resorted to violence continued after the war by attacking these newcomers who challenged white supremacy. Likewise, she cleverly uses pension benefits to consider gender and race. While pensions bolstered veterans as the breadwinners of their families, in an ironic twist they also gave soldiers’ widows an independence that they had never enjoyed while their husbands were alive. Furthermore, pensions allowed black veterans to enjoy the benefits and thus were a “radical break with white supremacy” (p. 212). [End Page 212] Overall, this work is well suited to undergraduate study. It could be used to discuss the impact of national political issues on local politics, Indiana history as part and parcel of the war effort, gender roles and race relations, the issues of divided citizenry and the Copperheads, and more. Etcheson’s scope of the 1850s to the 1880s provides scholars with a broad look at the impact of the war that is rarely seen on such an intimate level. This work has much to offer both student and Civil War scholar. Patricia Richard Patricia Richard is associate professor of history at Metropolitan State College of Denver in Denver, Colorado, and author of Busy Hands: Images of the Family in the Northern Civil War Effort (2003). Copyright © 2012 Kentucky...

Contributors

christopher r. boyer is associate professor of history and Latin American and Latino studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His scholarship concentrates on the social and environmental history of modern Mexico. He is currently finishing a book on the social history of forest management in Mexico between 1880 and 1991, and he edited a volume of environmental histories of modern Mexico that will be published next year. His articles have appeared in the Latin American Historical Review, Historia Mexicana, the American Historical Review, and other journals. He is coeditor with Lise Sedrez of a University of Arizona Press book series on Latin American environmental history. His first book, Becoming Campesinos: Politics, Identity, and Agrarian Struggle in Postrevolutionary Michoacán, 1920 – 1935 (Stanford University Press, 2003) explains how the Mexican land reform influenced rural political culture in the 1920s and 1930s.vera candiani teaches colonial Latin American history at Princeton University. A specialist on the social history of technology and environmental change, Candiani is the author of “The Great Colonial Drainage: Conflict and Collaboration in the Transformation of Mexico City’s Environment” (book manuscript under review), and “Bourbons and Water,” in Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader, edited by Jordana Dym and Karl Offen (University of Chicago Press, 2011).mark carey is assistant professor of history in the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon. He specializes in Latin American environmental history and the history of science, with a focus on climate history, natural disasters, water, health, and mountaineering. His book In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers: Climate Change and Andean Society (Oxford University Press) was published in 2010. An article, “The History of Ice: How Glaciers Became an Endangered Species,” won the Leopold-Hidy Prize for the best article in the journal Environmental History in 2007. He is currently writing a book on mountaineering history in South America and collaborating with geographers in a three-year research project, funded by the National Science Foundation, on climate, water, and export agriculture in Peru.keely maxwell is an assistant professor of environmental studies at Franklin and Marshall College. She has conducted interdisciplinary ethnographic, ecological, and historical research in Peru for over a decade. Recent publications include articles on Andean energy landscapes and on Inca Trail tourism and local livelihoods. A manuscript on the cultural politics of heritage conservation and tourism in Machu Picchu is in progress. Another of her research projects analyzes historic and contemporary vicuña conservation and commodification.matthew vitz received his PhD in 2010 from New York University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies of the University of California, San Diego, from 2010 to 2011. Currently a visiting assistant professor of Latin American history at Dartmouth College, he is revising his dissertation, “Revolutionary Environments: The Politics of Nature and Space in the Valley of Mexico, 1890 – 1950,” into a book manuscript.emily wakild is assistant professor of history at Wake Forest University. She specializes in the history of Mexico and modern Latin America with a focus on social change, revolution, and the environment. Her book Revolutionary Parks: Conservation, Social Justice, and Mexico’s National Parks, 1910 – 1940 was published by the University of Arizona Press in 2011. Recent journal articles include “Border Chasm: International Boundary Parks and Mexican Conservation, 1935 – 1945” (Environmental History, 2009) and “Naturalizing Modernity: Urban Parks, Public Gardens, and Drainage Projects in Porfirian Mexico City” (Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 2007). At present she is working on a comparative history of transnational conservation and scientific research in Amazonia and Patagonia.

BLUEPRINTS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF AFRICAN AMERICAN YOUTHGail Garfield, Through Our Eyes: African American Men’s Experiences of Race, Gender, and Violence. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2010. Pp. 256. Cloth $72.00. Paper $24.95.Shawn A. Ginwright, Black Youth Rising: Activism and Racial Healing in Urban America. New York: Teachers College Press, 2010. Pp. 180. Cloth $62.00. Paper $25.95.

Previous articleNext article No AccessESSAY REVIEW—IIBLUEPRINTS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF AFRICAN AMERICAN YOUTH Gail Garfield, Through Our Eyes: African American Men’s Experiences of Race, Gender, and Violence. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2010. Pp. 256. Cloth $72.00. Paper $24.95. Shawn A. Ginwright, Black Youth Rising: Activism and Racial Healing in Urban America. New York: Teachers College Press, 2010. Pp. 180. Cloth $62.00. Paper $25.95.Clyde C. RobertsonClyde C. RobertsonClyde C. Robertson is Associate Professor of History at Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama. Search for more articles by this author Clyde C. Robertson is Associate Professor of History at Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama.PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of African American History Volume 97, Number 1-2Winter-Spring 2012African Americans and Movements for Reparations: Past, Present, and Future A journal of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.5323/jafriamerhist.97.1-2.0163 Views: 22Total views on this site Copyright 2012 ASALHPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia (review)

Reviewed by: Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia Paul Josephson (bio) Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia. By Marshall Goldman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. 256. $16.95. In Petrostate Marshall Goldman discusses the high politics of the oil and gas industry in Russia (and the USSR) over the past 100 years. He focuses on the post-Soviet era in five of seven chapters. Goldman, a leading specialist [End Page 855] on the command economy and a veteran Sovietologist, has followed the economics and politics of the former USSR for decades; this book is one of many studies he has produced aimed at a popular audience. Here he considers the importance of resource development, especially energy wealth, in Russia’s ongoing effort to reassert superpower ambitions after the breakup of the USSR. He describes the centralization of power in Moscow and the reestablishment of a stable economy after an economic crisis in the late 1990s, for which Vladimir Putin has gained credit, rightly or wrongly. Putin strongly believes that mineral resources are the key to the nation’s future, and that the Russian government should reassert its control over them, even those where joint ventures or other arrangements have given multinationals a stake in Russian oil and gas. For historians of technology, this book may be of interest here and there. Chapters 1 and 2 consider the Soviet period and the long history of oil exploration and production. Goldman offers some discussion of how Russia’s traditional “backwardness” in technology led to various innovations, but also to heavy reliance on the West. Still, the focus of this book is more the high politics of oil production, for example the role of oil as a diplomatic tool—the support of socialist Eastern Europe with subsidies and the efforts to punish Ukraine and Georgia for their Western turn by controlling gas pipeline deliveries, among other methods. This raises the specter of risks for European clients of Russian oil and gas. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are totally reliant on Russian gas, Germany 38 percent, Turkey 64 percent, and Europe generally 26 percent. Goldman discusses at length the transition from state industry under Soviet power to privatization and back to state domination, if not outright ownership, of the oil and gas industry. The privatization of the industry in the 1990s when no market mechanisms existed led to chaos. The assets were acquired by men—exclusively men—who happened to be in the right place at the right time politically, but were not necessarily good managers. They exploited resources, but avoided investment in surveys or technology. Recently, better geological exploration and equipment, including that based on Western technology, has helped the industry. Goldman reveals the hazards of involvement for multinationals in Russian industry, with changing rules and tax provisions, and courts that have yet to learn the rule of law. He notes cultural differences, and even comments on a sense of paranoia and xenophobia among the Russians. Once the energy sector revitalized and Russia was no longer supplicant, then it no longer needed to offer the generous terms of earlier periods to encourage Western technology and know-how to develop fields. This led to the ongoing legal and quasi-legal efforts of the government to retake control of various companies. Goldman acknowledges that energy resources around the world have been nationalized, and that it is therefore a Russian right to do [End Page 856] so, but he, like many observers, believes that Russia needs to do this in a less peremptory and more lawful manner. Petrostate is a good place to start to understand oil and gas in Russia. Goldman relies on English-language newspapers (Western and Russian), and also interviews. The narrative can be repetitious and disorganized, and the presence of scores of subheadings indicates that Goldman feels comfortable telling a story, but not necessarily providing analytical themes. For example, he refers to the Russian political culture of the oligarchs but does not explain its origin or evolution. Paul Josephson Paul Josephson is an associate professor of history at Colby College and the author of Would Trotsky Wear a Bluetooth? (2009) and Lenin’s Laureate (2010). He is currently...

White Collar Radicals: TVA's Knoxville Fifteen, The New Deal, and the McCarthy Era (review)

Reviewed by: White Collar Radicals: TVA's Knoxville Fifteen, The New Deal, and the McCarthy Era Jason Scott Smith (bio) White Collar Radicals: TVA's Knoxville Fifteen, The New Deal, and the McCarthy Era. By Aaron D. Purcell. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2009. Pp. xviii, 258. $39.95 cloth) This elegant study tells the story of the second Red Scare from the bottom up. Relying on rarely used sources, including diaries, Federal Bureau of Investigation files, and a wide range of archival and manuscript collections, Aaron Purcell uses the lives of fifteen entry-level Tennessee Valley Authority employees to open a broader discussion of the fate of domestic radicalism during the Cold War. [End Page 134] "This small group of largely harmless 'New Dealers,'" Purcell argues, "attracted the attention of anti-Communist investigators even before World War II, and the relentless campaign to connect Reds in the TVA's mailroom with Reds in the TVA's boardroom continued into the mid 1950s" (p. xxv). With this work, Purcell captures the national security state at its creation, tracing the impact that government-run loyalty investigations had on the lives of his subjects through the 1940s and 1950s. In part one of his study, "Visions," Purcell provides brief portraits of his cast of characters. Drawn by the promise of economic and social transformation that the TVA held for the Tennessee Valley region, Purcell's fifteen employees shared a desire "to organize workers into unions, end segregation, and expand educational opportunities for all laborers" (p. 11). Purcell overreaches somewhat when he states that "Young idealistic Americans found the promises of the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, and the New Deal irresistible," but he is correct in observing that the TVA (along with other New Deal agencies) "attracted fresh talent with similar minds, hoping to create a better economic and social system" (pp. 36-37). Purcell's cohort, which he terms the "Knoxville Fifteen," had backgrounds in union-organizing (several of them had training at the Highlander Folk School), but before joining the TVA only one had formally become a member of the Communist Party. Although the Knoxville Fifteen held only "minor positions of short duration" in the TVA, their sympathy for Communist Party positions on labor and civil rights issues became the justification for federal investigations of their loyalties (p. 73). In part two, "Realities," Purcell explores these investigations, carried out by the FBI, House Un-American Activities Committee, and other federal bodies during World War II and the early Cold War. Conservative anticommunists in Congress, such as Senator Kenneth McKellar, unsuccessfully sought to use the issue of communists in the TVA to thwart the appointment of former TVA head David Lilienthal to run the Atomic Energy Commission. The federal government loyalty program initiated by President Harry Truman proved [End Page 135] particularly problematic for some members of the Knoxville Fifteen. In 1953, economist William Remington was convicted of perjury for lying about membership in the Communist Party and found guilty of lying about transmitting secret documents. Sentenced to three years in federal prison, Remington was murdered by three other inmates. Throughout his study, Purcell carefully balances the larger political stakes that the Cold War raised for radical Americans with attention to the lived experience of the fifteen TVA employees. Scholars interested in the domestic politics of anticommunism and the history of American radicals will profit from reading this serious and engaged monograph. Jason Scott Smith Jason Scott Smith is associate professor of history at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is the author of Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956 (2006), and is presently finishing a brief narrative history of the New Deal and Great Depression. Copyright © 2011 Kentucky Historical Society

Contributors

Contributors

Primitive Art, Primitive Accumulation, and the Origin of the Work of Art in German New Guinea

Research Article| April 01 2011 Primitive Art, Primitive Accumulation, and the Origin of the Work of Art in German New Guinea Andrew Zimmerman Andrew Zimmerman Andrew Zimmerman is associate professor of history at the George Washington University. He is the author of Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany (Chicago, 2001) and Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South (Princeton, 2010). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of the Present (2011) 1 (1): 5–30. https://doi.org/10.5406/historypresent.1.1.0005 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Andrew Zimmerman; Primitive Art, Primitive Accumulation, and the Origin of the Work of Art in German New Guinea. History of the Present 1 April 2011; 1 (1): 5–30. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/historypresent.1.1.0005 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsHistory of the Present Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2011 University of Illinois Press2011 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Dangerous pregnancies

Dangerous pregnancies

WEINBREN, Daniel, The Oddfellows 1810–2010: Two Hundred Years of Making Friends and Helping People (Lancaster: Carnegie Publishing, 2010), pp. x + 371, £25 Hbk; ISBN: 978­1­85936­207

Reviewed by: Simon Cordery, Associate Professor of History, Department Chair, Monmouth College, Illinois, USA, 700 E. Broadway, Monmouth, Il 61462, USA. Email: simon@monm.edu

Harnessing Power in Industrial America: Horses at Work. By Ann Norton Greene. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. xiv + 322 pp. Illustrations, notes, appendix, and index. Cloth $31.00.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBOOK REVIEWSHarnessing Power in Industrial America: Horses at Work. By Ann Norton Greene. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. xiv + 322 pp. Illustrations, notes, appendix, and index. Cloth $31.00.Kathryn MorseKathryn Morse Kathryn Morse, author of The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush (Washington, 2003), is an associate professor of history and the director of the Program in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 15, Number 4October 2010 Published for the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society Views: 3Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/emq108 Views: 3Total views on this site HistoryPublished online October 14, 2010 © 2010 The Author. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Selling Beauty: Cosmetics, Commerce, and French Society by Morag Martin

hope is that the republican values of France, based on equality and brotherhood will be understood and respected. In succeeding moments, we learn that the public defense lawyer of one of the skinheads was of Arabic origin. We also witness the reading of a letter, written months later by the parents of François, to the three young men in prison. In the letter they express the hope that these youths will grow in tolerance and respect for others, and they invite them to write back to them if they wish. This film takes a mature look at violence in contemporary society and a mature and humane response to it by an afflicted family. Appropriate for a course about contemporary society in France, it would be equally adaptable to a course on world cultures, or even a criminal justice course with an international outlook. It provides both educator and students with abundant information. Neumann University (PA) Maria G. Traub Society and Culture edited by Marie-Christine Koop MARTIN, MORAG. Selling Beauty: Cosmetics, Commerce, and French Society, 1750–1830. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2009. ISBN 978-0-8018-9309-4. Pp. viii+228. $55 (HC). This study offers an overview of the history of the French cosmetics industry, arguably the world’s best-known purveyor of beauty products. Morag Martin, Associate Professor of History at the College at Brockport, State University of New York, traces the industry from the mid-eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century, at which time it already possessed many features of its modern successor, including its commercialization. Several parts of this book were published previously , but the majority of the eight chapters consist of entirely new material. The author demonstrates how tastes in beauty (and the products used to create it) evolved during this time period, from artificially whitened skin, reddened cheeks and powdered wigs inherited from the Ancien Régime, to the subsequent Rousseau-inspired, more natural ideal created with less artifice. She analyzes the cosmetic industry’s response to these changes in consumer taste using as her sources newspaper ads for cosmetics, beauty manuals and medical treatises, as well as stories, poems and anecdotes about beauty (2). The result is a richly annotated examination of the French toilette—both female and male—in its historical and commercial context, the reading of which occasionally feels like a slightly voyeuristic experience. One of the things this reviewer found especially interesting about this book is the fact that Martin not only guides us into the private spaces where women went to make themselves presentable, while showing simultaneously how the definition of this term evolved over time, but that she also takes readers behind the scenes of the male beautification process. Men and primping are not commonly linked, but this book partakes in the recent gender study-inspired interest in the history of masculinity and thus discusses such topics as men’s use of rouge, perfumes, face paint, creams and wigs. In addition, the last chapter is devoted entirely to men’s hair and perhaps more importantly, the dreaded lack thereof. Throughout the book, readers also get a glimpse of the history of medicine Reviews 177 since cosmetics were part of medicine and physicians were involved in creating and selling them. In summary, while the initial five chapters focus on the second half of the title, “beauty,” the final three chapters are centered on the title’s first half, “selling .” In the former part, Martin discusses first how cosmetics were consumed, produced, and advertised at the end of the eighteenth century, and then how beauty products, as they became ever more available to increasing numbers of French consumers, came to be the object of growing criticism from æsthetic, moral and medical perspectives. In the latter part, readers learn how entrepreneurs selling cosmetics reacted to this criticism and the accompanying change in the definition of beauty. Twelve black-and-white figures appear alongside the text, aptly illustrating various beauty standards as well as advertising techniques used to sell cosmetics. In this reviewer’s opinion, the four figures included in Chapter Seven entitled “Selling the Orient” are instrumental in making it one of the strongest chapters, even though it has...

Technology, Innovation, and Southern Industrialization: From the Antebellum Era to the Computer Age (review)

Reviewed by: Technology, Innovation, and Southern Industrialization: From the Antebellum Era to the Computer Age Bruce Eelman (bio) Technology, Innovation, and Southern Industrialization: From the Antebellum Era to the Computer Age. Edited by Susanna Delfino and Michele Gillespie. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008. Pp. xiii+215. $24.95. Over the past decade, scholarship on commercial and industrial change in the American South has been particularly vibrant. This collection of essays represents the fertile nature of this research and suggests opportunities for wider study. A foreword by noted economic historian Gavin Wright focuses [End Page 930] on the importance of these case studies for getting beyond the “theoretical abstractions” that often consume debates about the extent of southern industrialization (p. ix). Editors Susanna Delfino and Michele Gillespie offer a contextually rich introduction focusing on the importance of comparative advantage in southern technological development. And the essays, despite differences in place and time, together make clear that industry has a long heritage in the South at the same time that cultural and geographical distinctions have offered important challenges to industrialization. Robert Gudmestad’s essay on the antebellum steamboat industry provides a rich look at the successes and limitations of this technology for the southern economy. First introduced on the Mississippi River by northern companies, Gudmestad finds that steamboat production and transport “provided a measure of economic diversification even as they reinforced the hegemony of the plantation system” (p. 40). However, by viewing investment in steamboat operations as ancillary to staple crop production, planters missed opportunities to expand beyond regional transport and thus limited profits. While steamboats found quick application on the lower reaches of the Mississippi River, Sean Patrick Adams’s essay shows that efforts to transfer coal mining technology from Britain failed. Around Richmond, Virginia, the slave-based plantation economy prevented successful replication of the British system. Planter culture also affected technological development in Louisiana sugar production. Richard Follett finds that although sugar planters were eager to adapt steam-grinding machinery, their reluctance to form associations limited the capital necessary for technological innovations such as vacuum evaporation. Although southern industrialists faced many obstacles in the antebellum era, Michele Gillespie’s study of Henry Merrell reveals the possibilities for the profitability of textile factories. A transplanted northerner, Merrell enjoyed his greatest success in Arkansas by “building networks of knowledge” with both northern and southern mill owners (p. 99). This knowledge sharing enabled Merrell to incorporate the latest technology into his operations. Gillespie argues that he faced crises only when he ignored his networks of knowledge. Intraregional and interregional networks were also important in post–Civil War industrial success. By examining three different postwar textile mill ventures in three different southern communities, Pamela Edwards finds “multiple paths to community industrial development” (p. 128). A Columbia, South Carolina, company began locally, but the dependence on northern technologies ultimately led to a takeover by the northern-based Pacific Mills. In Spartanburg, the Chamber of Commerce lured Pacific Mills with tax incentives and a promise of antiunionism. Finally, the Durham Hosiery Company succeeded by means of the influence exercised by the politically and socially connected Carr family. Importantly, all three firms would be controlled by Pacific Mills by 1920. [End Page 931] The final two essays in the collection take the story of southern industry and technology into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Stephen Taylor writes that the Tennessee Valley Authority became an important promoter of technology and reflected the federal government’s role in industrializing the rural South. Yoneyuki Sugita’s essay on telemedicine in Arizona—though it certainly stretches the bounds of the South as traditionally defined—finds important modern networks of knowledge through broadband, but also concludes that these networks remain uneven in distribution based on regional wealth. Each of these case studies contributes to the rich complexity of our picture of southern economic and technological history and bolsters the recent trend in historiography toward stressing continuity in southern industrial and technological activity and in regional challenges to that activity. The challenge ahead is to produce a synthesis of this valuable scholarship. Bruce Eelman Dr. Eelman is associate professor of history at Siena College in Loudonville, New York. Copyright © 2009 Society...

Freeberg, Democracy's Prisoner - Eugene V. Debs, The Great War And The Right To Dissent

Any citizen, student, or teacher seeking to make sense of the post 9/11 world would do well to consult this volume on the imprisonment of perennial Socialist Party Presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs for his dissent to American participation in the First World War. Relying upon extensive archival research and an exhaustive reading of early twentieth-century periodicals, Ernest Freeberg, Associate Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, constructs a well-written narrative of efforts on behalf of civil libertarians and free speech advocates to obtain the release of Debs and other political prisoners.

New women of the old faith: gender and American Catholicism in the Progressive Era

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. Pp. xvii, 278. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00.) ing nature of these tools; his caution against the “ubiquitous referencing of crime statistics about black criminality today,” given the silence that often surrounds white crime, is both provocative and well-founded (p. 277). Undoubtedly, his book will be a seminal text for historical, as well as contemporary, studies of race, crime, and urbanity. KALI NICOLE GROSS is Associate Professor of History and Director of Africana Studies at Drexel University. She is the author of the award-winning book, Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence, and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880-1910 (2006) and is currently finishing her second book, A Ghastly Find: Mary Hannah Tabbs and the Case of the Disembodied Torso, Philadelphia 1887.

American Communism and Soviet Russia: A View from Chicago's Streets American Historical Association, New York City, 2009

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsRandi Storch∗∗Randi Storch is Associate Professor of History at the State University of New York at Cortland. She is the author of Red Chicago: American Communism at its Grassroots, 1928–35 (2007). ∗Randi Storch is Associate Professor of History at the State University of New York at Cortland. She is the author of Red Chicago: American Communism at its Grassroots, 1928–35 (2007).

:The Atomic Bomb and American Society: New Perspectives

Drawing on the latest research on the atomic bomb and its history, thecontributors to this provocative collection of eighteen essays set out toanswer two key questions: First, how did the atomic bomb, a productof unprecedented technological innovation, rapid industrial-scalemanufacturing, and unparalleled military deployment shape U.S. foreignpolicy, the communities of workers who produced it, and society as awhole? And second, how has American society's perception that thethe bomb is a means of military deterrence in the Cold War eraevolve under the influence of mass media, scientists, public intellectuals, and even the entertainment industry? In answering these questions, The Atomic Bomb and American Society shedslight on the collaboration of science and the military in creating the bomb;the role of women working at Los Alamos; the transformation of nuclearphysicists into public intellectuals as the reality of the bomb came intowidespread consciousness; the revolutionary change in military strategyfollowing the invention of the bomb and the development of Cold Warideology; the image of the bomb that was conveyed in the popular media; andthe connection of the bomb to the commemoration of World War II. As it illuminates the cultural, social, political, environmental, andhistorical effects of the creation of the atomic bomb, this volumecontributes to our understanding of how democratic institutions can coexistwith a technology that affects everyone, even if only a few are empowered tomanage it. Rosemary B. Mariner is formerly Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair and Professor ofMilitary Studies for the National War College. She is currently a lecturerin history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. G. Kurt Piehler is associate professor of history and former director of theCenter for the Study of War and Society at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, which hosted the conference that formed the basis of this volume.He is the author of Remembering War the American Way and World War II in the American Soldiers' Lives Series as well as the coeditor, with John Whiteclay Chambers II, of Major Problems in American Military History.

Europe observed: multiple gazes in early modern encounters

This interdisciplinary work engages with the issue of how Europe and Europeans were perceived by observers from various parts of the world during the early modern period. It seeks thereby to redress the asymmetry in scholarship whereby European views of its others are given importance, but a near-total silence prevails about the reverse scenario. This volume contains nine dazzling contributions by distinguished scholars such as Suzanne Preston Blier, Vincent Carretta, Michael Fisher, Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, Hans-Juergen Luesbrink, Nabil Matar, Nancy Shoemaker, Irene Silverblatt, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam.These essays represent sophisticated and rigorous scholarship that is historically aware and highly nuanced. The findings suggest that early modern perceptions about Europe and Europeans were shaped by complex, contingent factors and cannot be reduced to a simple, single paradigm. Kumkum Chatterjee is as an Associate Professor of History at the Penn State University. Clement Hawes is Professor English at Penn State University.