Review

Textbooks, Readers, and References

This is a special and outstanding collection of source materials that would foster debate among classroom practitioners of Clio whether they are secondary school teachers or college educators. Copeland's introduction is a brief history of newspapers in Colonial America that contains a wealth of information especially useful for a first time researcher. In this section, the author discusses topics such as length, cost, frequency of publication, spelling and grammar, layout types of news to be found, and the importance of colonial newspapers in molding the thoughts of eighteenth-century America. Interestingly, Copeland has chosen to organize his nearly three hundred excerpts both chronologically and conceptually by issue. For example, the first chapter, "Censorship, Printing Control, and Freedom of the Press," begins with a historical overview of the topic. The editor then divides the theme into two sections, a pro and a con. One section has materials in favor of censorship and press limitation, while the other defends freedom of the press. This format, of course, can establish a foundation for a debate and classroom discussion. Copeland also uses introductory head notes to establish the setting for the event and then allows the excerpts from the newspapers to tell the story. All of the materials that are presented in each section of a chapter are arranged chronologically. For example, the section on "Defending Freedom of the Press" begins with Andrew Hamilton's "A Principal Pillar of a Free Government" that appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1737 and ends with Robert Fowle's "A Sacred Right" that appeared in the New Hampshire Gazette, May 25, 1776.	1
In total, Debating the Issues examines thirty-one key issues including abolition of slavery, freedom of religion, women's rights, education, medical discoveries, and specific events such as the trial of John Peter Zenger, the Stono Rebellion, the Great Awakening, the French and Indian war, the Stamp Act crisis, and the Boston Tea Party. Copeland uses news articles, letters, essays, poetry and an occasional editorial cartoon including Benjamin Franklin's "Join or Die" 1754 woodcut to enhance the topic under investigation. In the brief Chapter on "Massachusetts Legalizes Lotteries, 1744," letters, poetry, editorials, and charts are used as illustrations. Besides the historical overview and introductory head notes, each chapter topic contains several thought-provoking extension questions that will be of use for both the student and the teacher. Footnotes are included that allow further explanation of some of the material that appears in the essays or the documents presented. These features of each chapter could be used for the development of Document Based Questions lesson plan activities. The format is similar to the National History Standards Project Document in the Classroom series.	2
Debating the Issues is well indexed. A quick glance as its contents provides a reader with both the topics and events discussed and also a complete listing of the newspapers utilized, in case the researcher wants to focus on one city, state, or newspaper for study. For example, the Maryland Gazette appears in ten citations while New-York Evening Post appears only twice. Debating the Issues also contains a selected bibliography that includes general references and broader sources both for the history of newspapers and the topics and issues of the thirty-one themes examined throughout the work. Missing, however, is a reference to newspaper collections, especially the ones heavily cited in Debating the Issues, and where a researcher might go to find additional information. However, in keeping up with technology proliferation, websites are referenced. The bibliography could very easily be placed on the web and made available electronically or on a CD-ROM, something the editor and publisher may want to think about in the future. Although a chronological time-line of historical events from 1607 to 1776 appears near the end of the book, it is very general, and the editor would have done better to place more emphasis on the role of the newspapers and, possibly, editors in colonial America rather than some of the general historical topics presented. Women's roles as editors, such as that of Anne Catherine Green, wife of Jonas Green of the Maryland Gazette, could have been cited. This collection of primary source documents from colonial newspapers can serve the user well in three capacities: as a valuable instructional tool, as a source for classroom discussion and debate, and as a compendium of information for a researcher. For these reasons, Debating the Issues makes a welcome addition to the fields of history and pedagogy.	3
James F. Adomanis Maryland Center for the Study of History

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