| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Transatlantic Encounters: Public Uses and Misuses of History in Europe and the United States. Ed. by David K. Adams and Maurizio Vaudagna. (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2000. 222 pp. Paper, $46.50, ISBN 90-5383-719-1.)

This book gathers twelve papers from European historians; the two editors, David K. Adams from England and Maurizio Vaudagna from Italy, are well known. Others came from many countries but none from France in spite of her historical importance. An introduction explains the purpose of the book: uses of the past are as old as history itself, and historians, proud of their knowledge, have been lured to the public sphere more than other scholars have. Vaudagna is quite right on that. It is a pity that the introduction has not been reread carefully, as there are many typographical errors; more, the book lacks an index, and the summary is a bit short.

The first three chapters provide a general approach to transatlantic ways of doing history. G. Ricuperati in the "Universalism of History" explains how history in Europe, as in America, arose from a nation-centered approach to multiculturalism and fragmented identity. In order to understand gender and community problems, a new history is needed. A.-M. Martellone gives a European view in "American Historians and the Discourse on the American Nation," and she is excellent on the importance of a foreign perspective in ethnic studies. Niels Thorsen in "The Frontier as Public History: European Origins of Woodrow Wilson's Concept of the American Frontier" sheds new light on the German influence on Wilson as a young scholar in building his conception of the state. The concept of the frontier for Wilson, a friend of Frederick Jackson Turner, was collective and state-oriented rather than promoting individual rights.

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