| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.4

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 262 words from this article are provided below; about 357 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, 92.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Radikalismus und Exil: Gustav Struve und die Demokratie in Deutschland und Amerika (Radicalism and exile: Gustav Struve and democracy in Germany and America). By Ansgar Reiß. (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2004. 501 pp. €68.00, ISBN 3-515-08371-5.) In German.

Radikalismus und Exil is a revised German doctoral dissertation—very German, one might add, with an outline-style table of contents complete with three levels of subheadings and dozens of pages where single-spaced footnotes take up more room than the text. The object of this study and the main issues addressed are not without interest for specialists in U.S. history: Gustav Struve (1805–1870), a prominent Baden radical of the 1848 revolution, spent a dozen years in American exile as what might be called a political journalist before returning to Germany in 1863. Ansgar Reiß undertakes what he characterizes as a "political and intellectual biography" (p. 11; this and subsequent translations are by the reviewer), focusing above all on the question: "What became of the concepts and behavior patterns that Struve brought with him from Europe in the fundamentally different political system of American democracy?" (p. 15). The author has done a thorough job of tracking down archival material and rare publications on two continents. But he devotes only pages 20–45 to a biographical sketch in the conventional sense, leaving little room for new insights. Most of the book is devoted to a roughly chronological analysis of Struve's political thought and (to a lesser extent) praxis on both sides of the Atlantic. One might question both the excessive depth and the minimal breadth of this work.

. . .

There are about 357 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.