The Princeton Companion to Atlantic History

摘要

The Atlantic world is obviously "en vogue" as far as history writing is concerned. Not long ago in these pages, I reviewed (RR 2012/094) The Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic World (Canny and Morgan, 2011). I suppose if you write handbooks and companions about a subject, it is pretty clear the subject has "arrived", a good place to be in the status-conscious world of academic history. Subjects are like people in that regard. But what of the Princeton book itself? The poor reader never quite knows what he is getting with the word "companion": a factual reference work of the "historical dictionary" type or a collection of articles which are thematically linked. This book is more the second than the first. I feel that a true companion should steer the reader around the central themes and issues of a subject rather than providing names and dates.