[sans titre]

This book is an excellent example of the current enthusiasm for breaking out of the encrusted national boundaries that have confined historical thinking since the beginnings of our profession. It is also an illustration of how a powerful tradition of national specialization may obstruct that endeavor. Enrico Dal Lago, an Italian historian of the United States trained at London University and now teaching in Galway, Ireland, together with Rick Halpern, an American teaching at London University and now the University of Toronto, seem ideal for the task. Their Commonwealth Conference at London University drew dozens of historians from the United States, Italy, and Britain together to examine the “two Souths”: Dixie and the Mezzogiorno (literally “midday” and usually referring to the area south of Rome). Selected papers from that conference, revised, expanded, and at times connected to one another, constitute this book. Peter Kolchin's essay shows how most efforts to identify what is distinctive about the American South usually assume a comparative basis, and he extols the virtues of cross-national comparison as being “exceptionally fruitful” (p. 37). Like so many virtues, international history is more often prescribed than practiced, and the essays in this book demonstrate the difficulty and reluctance historians experience in actually breaching the national boundaries of their special knowledge. Each essay typically opens with a salute to the comparative purpose of the book, then deals exclusively with Italy or the United States. As a result, the book consists mostly of what Kolchin calls “historical juxtaposition,” wherein case studies are set side by side and “any comparison is left to the reader” (p. 47). That said, Dal Lago and Halpern have done a superb job in juxtaposing the essays, and they do not leave it all to the reader (or the authors) to draw out parallels. Many of the pieces could stand alone as brilliant contributions to their field. Fine essays by Richard Follett, Marta Petrusewicz, Steven Hahn, and Lucy Riall examine the role of landed elites and rural workers first in the United States and then in the Italian South. Two essays on gender by J. William Harris and Giovanna Fiume offer another parallel between the regions.

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