Book Reviews: The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics, Age of Industrial Violence 1910–15: The Activities and Findings of the United States Commission on Industrial Relations, The Psychology of Union-Management Relations, Culture, Health and Disease, Professional Men: The Rise of the Professional Classes in Nineteenth Century England, Comparative Functionalism, Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification, Psychological Statistics: An Introduction, Slums and Community Development: Experiments in Self Help, Dilemmas of Urban America, Urban Renewal and American Cities, Plenty and Want: A Social History of Diet in England from 1815 to the Present Day, The Captive Wife, Parents, Children and Adoption: A Handbook for Adoption Workers, Identification and Child Rearing, Children in Need, Absent: School Refusal as an Expression of Disturbed Family Relationships, Studies of Troublesome Children, Theories in Social Psychology, The Compassionate Society, Work, Age and Leisure, The Social Needs of the Over-80's, Promoting Mental Health of Older People through Group Methods: A Pactical Guide

This introductory chapter provides an overview of legal history research. An attorney might conduct legal history research if the law at question in a legal dispute is very old: the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights are well over two hundred years old. Historical research also comes into play when the question at issue is what the law was at a certain time in the past. Ultimately, law plays an important part in the political and social history of the United States. As such, researchers interested in almost every aspect of American life will have occasion to use legal materials. The chapter then describes the U.S. legal system and legal authority, and offers six points to consider in approaching a historical legal research project.

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Mapping a Nation: Daniel Carter Beard’s Time as a Surveyor for the Sanborn Map Company

Abstracts of the ICA ◽

10.5194/ica-abs-1-359-2019 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 1 ◽

pp. 1-1

Author(s):

John J. Swab

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Lived Experience ◽

The United States ◽

Early Years ◽

Urban America ◽

Fire Insurance ◽

History Of ◽

The 19Th Century ◽

The City ◽

Eastern Half

Abstract. Fire insurance maps produced by the American firm the Sanborn Map Company have long served as cartographic guides to understanding the history of urban America. Primarily used by cultural and historical geographers, historians, historic preservationists, and environmental consultants; historians of cartography have little explored the history of this company. While this scholarship has addressed various facets of Sanborn’s history (Ristow, 1968), no scholarly piece has explored the lived experience of being a Sanborn surveyor. This lack of scholarship comes not from any significant oversight but rather from the fact that the contributions of most Sanborn surveyors were anonymous and little recorded on the maps themselves. Moreover, the company itself has done little to save its own history, thus little is known of their individual stories and experiences. The exception to this is perhaps the most famous Sanborn surveyor of all: Daniel Carter Beard.Over the course of his nine-decade life, Daniel Carter Beard held several prominent positions including the co-founder of the Boy Scouts of America and the lead illustrator for many of Mark Twain’s novels. However, he got his start as a surveyor for the Sanborn Map Company in the 1870s, just a few years after its founding. His papers, housed at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, includes a variety of ephemera from his time with the Sanborn Map Company.Trained in civil engineering, Beard got his start as a surveyor for the Cincinnati (Ohio) Office of Platting Commission, creating the first official plat map for the city. He was hired by Sanborn in 1874 and served as a surveyor until 1878, traveling extensively over the eastern half of the United States, parlaying his skills into creating fire insurance maps for Sanborn. Thus, this paper speaks to two main themes. The first theme traces the route of Beard during his early years with the company across the eastern half of the United States, documenting both the places he visited and the challenges he faced as a Sanborn surveyor. The second theme, interwoven through the paper, is an analysis of the innerworkings of Sanborn’s administrative structure and its relationship with the larger fire insurance market during the 1870s. Altogether, these documents present unique insight into the organization of the Sanborn Map Company and how it produced its maps during the second-half of the 19th century.

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Beyond quarantine: a history of leprosy in Puerto Rico, 1898-1930s

História Ciências Saúde-Manguinhos ◽

10.1590/s0104-59702003000400011 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 10 (suppl 1) ◽

pp. 225-245 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Julie H. Levison

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

United States ◽

Puerto Rico ◽

Social History ◽

The United States ◽

Primary Sources ◽

Political Events ◽

The Social ◽

History Of ◽

The Individual

From biblical times to the modern period, leprosy has been a disease associated with stigma. This mark of disgrace, physically present in the sufferers' sores and disfigured limbs, and embodied in the identity of a 'leper', has cast leprosy into the shadows of society. This paper draws on primary sources, written in Spanish, to reconstruct the social history of leprosy in Puerto Rico when the United States annexed this island in 1898. The public health policies that developed over the period of 1898 to the 1930s were unique to Puerto Rico because of the interplay between political events, scientific developments and popular concerns. Puerto Rico was influenced by the United States' priorities for public health, and the leprosy control policies that developed were superimposed on vestiges of the colonial Spanish public health system. During the United States' initial occupation, extreme segregation sacrificed the individual rights and liberties of these patients for the benefit of society. The lives of these leprosy sufferers were irrevocably changed as a result.

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No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States since 1880. Allan M. Brandt

Isis ◽

10.1086/354174 ◽

1986 ◽

Vol 77 (2) ◽

pp. 362-363

Author(s):

James H. Jones

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Social History ◽

Venereal Disease ◽

The United States ◽

Magic Bullet ◽

History Of

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Counting Americans

10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199917853.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Paul Schor

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

World War Ii ◽

Social History ◽

The United States ◽

The State ◽

Social Scientists ◽

Political Actors ◽

Racial Ideologies ◽

Conflicting Demands ◽

History Of

By telling how the US census classified and divided Americans by race and origin from the founding of the United States to World War II, this book shows how public statistics have been used to create an unequal representation of the nation. From the beginning, the census was a political undertaking, torn between the conflicting demands of the state, political actors, social scientists, businesses, and interest groups. Through the extensive archives of the Bureau of the Census, it traces the interactions that led to the adoption or rejection of changes in the ways different Americans were classified, as well as the changing meaning of seemingly stable categories over time. Census workers and directors by necessity constantly interpreted official categories in the field and in the offices. The difficulties they encountered, the mobilization and resistance of actors, the negotiations with the census, all tell a social history of the relation of the state to the population. Focusing in detail on slaves and their descendants, on racialized groups, and on immigrants, as well as on the troubled imposition of US racial categories upon the population of newly acquired territories, the book demonstrates that census-taking in the United States has been at its core a political undertaking shaped by racial ideologies that reflect its violent history of colonization, enslavement, segregation, and discrimination.

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