| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Michael O'Brien. Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810–1860. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2004. Pp. xvii, 587; xi, 591–1354. $95.00 the set.
The past few decades have witnessed a dramatic increase of interest in the intellectual history of the Old South, and Michael O'Brien has figured prominently in that resurgence. These volumes embody the fruit of more than twenty years' dedication to the works and lives of antebellum southern intellectuals. Their more than 1,200 pages testify both to his immersion in the sources and to his analytic virtuosity. And the book's publication obliges anyone who pretends to an interest in southern—or American—intellectual history to grapple with their arguments. Not all will agree with O'Brien's interpretations either of specific texts or of the nature of southern society and culture. But even those who disagree with specific points or the broad interpretations will learn much from this often brilliant and always provocative book.	1
O'Brien divides his study into two parts, each with a distinct purpose. Volume one is, in O'Brien's words, "partly social history, in which intellectuals are implicated in the broader patterns of society and it is presumed that their thoughts are explicable by what went on around them" (p. 7). This volume includes some of O'Brien's strongest passages, notably his engaging depictions of southerners' observations while traveling abroad. Focusing on the ways they embraced the "modern passion for classification, both natural and social," he reflects on the roles of race, sex, ethnicity, class, and place in their sense of personal and social location (p. 8). The ensuing chapters, which attend less to content than the form of intellectual activity, explore southern society's ordering of intellectual interactions "from the most informal of discourses (conversation) to the semiformal (letters, diaries) to the most formal (the printed word as it was read, then as it was written)" (p. 9).	. . .

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