| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

American Behavioral History: An Introduction. Ed. by Peter N. Stearns. (New York: New York University Press, 2005. x, 259 pp. Cloth, $65.00, ISBN 0-8147-9843-6. Paper, $21.00, ISBN 0-8147-9844-6.)
Peter N. Stearns and his collaborators have given us a new "behavioral history" that examines present human and social behaviors as they are linked to past behaviors: childhood and aging, dieting and fatness, addiction and disease, leisure and work, to name a few. As these examples indicate, behavioral history can be used effectively to understand ourselves and to examine many of the cultural assumptions and practices that guide today's behaviors. Principally an "American" history, its implications are far-reaching, for its object of study is changing behaviors, belonging to history proper, as well as behaviors whose boundaries are still uncharted, belonging to both nature and culture.	1
Essays on home and homesickness, on the historical roots of oral sex, on beliefs about the sensing and smelling of racial blackness, and on the "cute" child, among others, surely raise questions about what is natural and what is social or, for that matter, what is age old and what is as new as modernity itself. It is also a kind of history that invites comparative approaches, offering challenging perspectives on the how and why of contemporary American behaviors—" behaviors" being both attitudes about actions and actions themselves (p. 10)—showing us that the ways we live and feel today are often constructed by the past. This approach to history is clearly critical and debunking, but it is also constructive and innovative.	. . .

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