PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES AND THE ETHNIC PAST

Authors of Their Lives: The Personal Correspondence of British Immigrants to North America in the Nineteenth Century. By David A. Gerber. New York: New York University Press, 2006. x + 421 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $55.00 (cloth).

Private Histories: The Writings of Irish Americans, 1900–1935. By Ron Ebest. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005. xi + 319. Notes and bibliography. $58.00 (cloth); $25.00 (paper).

William W. Giffin
Indiana State University

Writing in 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville predicted that historians in democratic societies would focus their studies on general causes of events which would encompass the histories of many people. This often-quoted French observer of American democracy warned that historians influenced by this tendency would be unlikely to study and write about the roles of individuals. In the present, historians and other scholars often oversimplify themes involving the mass experiences of people in social, cultural, economic, and political contexts. For example, immigration scholars influenced by the New Social History—which bases studies on sizable populations—frequently generalize about group themes such as ethnic identities, assimilation, class structures, or gender roles.