Deaf- World: A Historical Reader and Primary Sourcebook, ed. Lois Bragg (New York: New York University Press, zoos, 2001, 430 pp., cloth, $70.00, paper, $25.95) AS EVEN the back cover makes clear, this volume constitutes major contribution to studies. Sporting endorsements from significant scholars and figures in the contemporary Deafworld-Gallaudet University President I. King Jordan; culture advocate and Northeastern University psycholinguist Harlan Lane; and Yerker Andersson, former chair of Gallaudet University's Studies department-the volume is lauded as marvelous initiative, valuable resource, most welcome contribution, vital service, comprehensive landmark in the history of studies, and an astonishingly balanced selection. Before one even opens to the table of contents, one's expectations run high and anticipation seems significant. These are dampened only slightly by backcover blurb from the publishers (New York University Press) that begins with rather bold ethnographic exoticism-To many who hear, the world is as foreign as country never visited. The blurb goes on to claim, however, quite accurately, that Deaf- World concerns itself less with the perspectives of the hearing and more with what people themselves think and do. Both the arrangement of the book and the list of contributors make this perspective evident. The editor, professor of English at Gallaudet University who specializes in Early German languages, literatures, and mythologies (xxxi), chooses to open the volume with a story, really stories intertwined, as she offers memorial essay to some of her own roots, surdam memoriam: Karl (xi). Bragg's opening essay serves at least important functions. First, it makes manifest her own authority in editing such collection, allowing her to trace her heritage (at least doubly through her Charlie, the Karl Jaekel of the title, and her late-deafened grandmother). It also permits her to editorialize some, in personal and historical space, on efforts, in Uncle Charlie's day, to prevent people from marrying each other. Second, her essay starts the volume in an appropriate Deaf waywith story. What's more, this (or rather the three stories intertwined) serves double rhetorical function as first of all just story that validates the editor's place in culture even as it also serves wider function as kind of fable of that affect many lives. Numerous other pieces in the volume also take up these various institutionalized efforts that influence the lives of (American) people; likewise, many other pieces begin with stories, fables, and allegories. The third function this opening essay serves in its hybrid form (as somewhat personal essay/memoir, biography, and introduction to scholarly volume) is as piece of epideictic discourse. Epideictic, ceremonial form of discourse whose subject was often praise or blame of an individual or attention to the significance of an event itself, is one of the principal forms of rhetorical discourse laid out by Aristotle (along with forensic/judicial deliberation and political discourse); among the Greeks and Romans, where public oratory was the mark of an engaged and competent citizen, epideictic was widely practiced. Bragg's tribute to her Uncle Charlie thus not only celebrates his life but also speaks to the event of this publication. For although this volume is not necessarily the first of its kind, it is unique and certainly worthy of epideictic acknowledgment.' In this memorial then, traditional epideictic genre, Bragg has fashioned fitting introduction. However, like pair of pants that might fit well at the waist but drag the ground or show, unfashionably, the ankles, this unique sort of introduction does not necessarily fit the body of the whole as well as it might. …