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New and Noteworthy Books in the History of the Human Sciences

Michael Pettit, The Science of Deception: Psychology and Commerce in America, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Americans were fascinated with fraud. P. T. Barnum artfully exploited the American yen for deception, and even Mark Twain championed it, arguing that lying was virtuous insofar as it provided the glue … Continue reading →

Mark Solovey, Shaky Foundations: The Politics-Patronage-Social Science Nexus in Cold War America, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2013).

Numerous popular and scholarly accounts have exposed the deep impact of patrons on the production of scientific knowledge and its applications. Shaky Foundations provides the first extensive examination of a new patronage system for the social sciences that emerged in … Continue reading →

Marga Vicedo, The Nature and Nurture of Love: From Imprinting to Attachment in Cold War America, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).

The notion that maternal care and love will determine a child’s emotional well-being and future personality has become ubiquitous. In countless stories and movies we find that the problems of the protagonists—anything from the fear of romantic commitment to serial … Continue reading →

Andrew Jewett, Science, Democracy, and the American University: From the Civil War to the Cold War, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

This book reinterprets the rise of the natural and social sciences as sources of political authority in modern America. Andrew Jewett demonstrates the remarkable persistence of a belief that the scientific enterprise carried with it a set of ethical values … Continue reading →

Mark Solovey and Hamilton Cravens, eds., Cold War Social Science: Knowledge Production, Liberal Democracy, and Human Nature, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

From World War II to the early 1970s, American social science research expanded in dramatic and unprecedented fashion. This volume offers fascinating perspectives on the rise of U.S. practitioners as global leaders in the field, exploring how, why, and with … Continue reading →

Joel Isaac, Working Knowledge: Making the Human Sciences from Parsons to Kuhn, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012).

The human sciences in the English-speaking world have been in a state of crisis since the Second World War. The battle between champions of hard-core scientific standards and supporters of a more humanistic, interpretive approach has been fought to a … Continue reading →

Alexandra Rutherford, Beyond the Box: B.F. Skinner’s Technology of Behaviour from Laboratory to Life, 1950s-1970s, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009).

B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) is one of the most famous and influential figures in twentieth century psychology. A best-selling author, inventor, and social commentator, Skinner was both a renowned scientist and a public intellectual known for his controversial theories of human … Continue reading →

Book cover for Marking the Mind

Kurt Danziger, Marking the Mind: A History of Memory, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Memory is one of the few psychological concepts with a truly ancient lineage. Presenting a history of the interrelated changes in memory tasks, memory technology and ideas about memory from antiquity to the late twentieth century, this book confronts psychology’s … Continue reading →

Book cover of Averaged Americans

Sarah E. Igo, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007).

Sarah Igo is the winner of the 2004 FHHS Dissertation Award and the 2004 FHHS/JHBS Early Career Award. This book received the 2006 President’s Book Award of the Social Science History Association. Americans today “know” that a majority of the … Continue reading →