| 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

Battleground of Desire: The Struggle for Self-Control in Modern America. By Peter N. Stearns. (New York: New York University Press, 1999. xiv, 434 pp. $28.95, isbn 0-8147-8128-4.)

For nearly twenty years Peter N. Stearns has been a pioneer in the history of emotions, writing books on the history of anger, jealousy, and modern emotional "style." More recently he has turned to the history of fat and posture in modern America. His most recent book integrates much of this work in a broader synthesis. By focusing on issues of self-control and making the self, its impulses, and their regulation the center of his study, Stearns is able to examine a wide range of phenomena: not only emotions and the body but sexuality, personal rectitude, and manners as well. Building on the internalization model of the history of manners associated with Norbert Elias and the concerns with forms of the self developed by David Riesman and Warren Susman, Stearns clearly intends Battleground of Desire to be a capstone work. It is the fullest statement to date of his characteristic concerns. For historians of the self, this is an important work, if for nothing else than for the wide territory it covers. . . .

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