| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 150 words from this article are provided below; about 479 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Measure of Merit: Talents, Intelligence, and Inequality in the French and American Republics, 1750–1940. By John Carson. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. xx, 401 pp. $39.50, ISBN 978-0-691-01715-0.)

The Measure of Merit is a detailed comparative history of ideas about individual ability among French and American intellectual elites. It offers nearly thirteen hundred substantive endnotes spanning three centuries and two languages in the published works and archived papers of prominent writers who grappled with the capacity of the individual under liberalism. This book must be read by anyone interested in the historical construction of the idea of individual intelligence and should become a standard in the history of psychology. Although the comparative analysis of French and American political cultures is not always persuasive, the book offers analysis important for those studying a range of topics, including educational theory, standardized testing, disability, eugenics, and racial science.

. . .

There are about 479 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.