| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Transatlantic Images and Perceptions: Germany and America since 1776. Ed. by David E. Barclay and Elisabeth Glaser-Schmidt. (Washington and Cambridge: German Historical Institute and Cambridge University Press, 1997. viii, 373 pp. $64.95, isbn 0-521-58091-9.)

The essays in this volume are the products of a conference held in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in April 1993. A group of scholars (mostly historians) from both Germany and the United States were assembled to contemplate the various "images and perceptions" that affected the relationships between those two countries over their three-hundred-year history. The particular essays were defined in many ways according to the interests, inclinations, and methodologies of the individual scholars. 1

The editors, David E. Barclay and Elisabeth Glaser-Schmidt, argue for both the coherence and the relevance of the collection in an introductory essay. Their technique is to ring all possible changes on the keywords "image," "perception," and "stereotype" by ransacking all available theoretical discussions from the fields of literature, history, psychology, and even neurology. The somewhat overdone results of this exercise are probably unnecessary to persuade readers of the volume's value. Most historians, at least, accept out of commonsense experience that "perceptions" inform "motives," which then shape historical actions, either individual or collective. . . .

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