| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 176 words from this article are provided below; about 372 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, 95.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Many Identities, One Nation: The Revolution and Its Legacy in the Mid-Atlantic. By Liam Riordan. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. xiv, 353 pp. $49.95, ISBN 978-0-8122-4001-6.)

Few historians today invoke community studies of the 1970s as scholarly models, but that is exactly what Liam Riordan does in the introduction to Many Identities, One Nation (p. 10). To be sure, the author cites historical ethnography as a "second methodological model" (p. 11). He also alludes to the inspirational achievements of "constructionist" interpretations of personal and political identities (p. 9). Nonetheless, the reference to older, groundbreaking work by John Demos, Philip Greven, Kenneth Lockridge, and Michael Zuckerman is most useful for understanding the central issues of the book. Indeed, while Riordan points to "cultural identities" (ibid.) as a primary concern in the text, Many Identities, One Nation will not remind anyone of seminal works by Robert Darnton, Lynn Hunt, Karen Halttunen, or T. J. Jackson Lears. Rather, this book is a thoughtful, albeit not entirely successful, attempt to update social history.

. . .

There are about 372 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.