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preceding text, and thus this epic tale concludeson a jarring, discordant note.At its hea rt, Big Trouble is not a story ab ou tthe me anin g of class in American life. Th e ap-proximately 90 percent of American workingpeople who did not then belong to unionsnever appear in th e book, no r do most of thoserelatively fewwho did . R adicals dot thesepa ges,from immigrant Jews in New York to Debs,Danie l DeLeon of th e Socialist Labor party, an dmany others; but, with th e exception of a shorttwo-page discussion, the reader never learnsof working people who distrusted the defen-dants' claim to innocence. Despite having con-sulted more than fifty historians (this reviewerincluded) of the now-old "new" labor a nd so-cial history, Lukas persisted in writing as ifHaywood and his clique can usefully stand forthe American working class in th is era. GivenLukas's commanding presence amon g th e na-tion's most serious writers, this is perhaps anaccurate gauge of the impact these "new" ap-proaches have made in th e broader public cul-ture. Lukas was widely read in the literature,imm ersed in archival sources, and a persistentquestioner of professional historians; yet he toofound w orking people qua workers uninterest-ing, n ot relevant to the story about class andAmerican life he wanted to tell. "Leaders" pre-dominate in this book, and, in a wonderfultwist redolent of some of the m ost misleadingaspects of both t he "old" an d th e "new" laborhistoriography, the more conservative leadersof labor become "labor's sachems," a phrasedripp ing w ith images of Tammany Hall's cor-rupt practices.J. Anthony Lukas was a far better analysttha n his last book indicates. The strained qu al-ity of the text suggests that his very search foran epic might well have underm ined his effort.How to follow Common Ground could nothave been an easy burd en. But more is at issuehere than a professional search for a sequel.Big Trouble simply never fulfills the promiseof its introduction. It neither examines the com -plexity of class feeling am ong working peoplenor explores how race and class might be "in -extricably intertwined." In this reviewer's op in -ion, t he problem with t he book lies in its verypremise: class has simply never occupied thedo mi nan t position that race has in the nationalconsciousness. That is why C o mmo n Ground,

a profound and enduring classic, was an aptvehicle for Lukas's brilliance. Big Trouble, onthe other hand, seeks the majestic but runsaground on the shoals of a far more prosaicreality.Nick SalvatoreCorneK UniversityIthaca, New York

Fat Histoly: Bodies an d Beauty in t he ModernWest. By Peter N. Stearns. (New York: NewYorkUniversity Press, 1997. xvi, 294 pp. $25.95 ,ISBN 0-8147-8069-5.)In n ineteen th-centu ry America, images of th ebeautiful body varied from the frail, waiflikeslenderness associated with antebe llum gentil-ity and spirituality to the voluptuous womanand the stout man celebrated in the decadesafter the Civil War. In fact, from th e 1860s un -til th e 1890s-in popu lar tho ug ht as well asin medical ideology- the thin body was syn-onym ous with awkwardness, poverty, and dis-ease, while fleshiness was assoc iated with socialgrace, prosperity, and health. By the turn ofthe century, however, a new ideal body typeemerged, a long with an obsessive concern withweight loss, which has singularly dominatedthe American imagination throughout thetwentieth century: the plump woman andth e hefty man were replaced by a thi n, ath leticimage for both sexes.The publication of books explaining, anddecrying, the modern preoccupation w ith th in-ness has nearly kept pace with th e nu mb er ofthose toutin g t he latest weight-reduction for-mulas. W hile some autho rs have provided valu-able insights into the social and economic forcesthat have shaped shifts in fashion, ideals ofbeauty, an d images of the body, much of whathas been written has been driven by thinly veiledpolitical agendas that have trivialized the topic.Drawing o n commercialization or medicaliza-tion models, most have portrayed the newcelebration of thinne ss as the creation of fash-ion designers, unscrupulous businessmen, a ndgreedy physicians. In his latest book , Fat His-tory, Peter N. Stearns weighs in o n this subjectand provides an innovative explanation of th emodern preoccupation with dieting that fu n-

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Book Reviews

damentally revises our understanding of thetimin g, intensity, a nd significance of the emer-gence of the modern American culture of weightloss.To begin with , Stearns argues tha t th e newdesire to be thin was not imposed up on a gul-lible public by clothing designers, magazineeditors, diet faddists, and physicians. Whilethey all had a hand in shaping this new atti-tu de toward the body, popular antipa thy towardfat, which had its origins in the U nited Statesin t he 1890s, preceded t he commercializationof weight loss. He writes that instead th e m od-ern anxiety about fat grew out of changes inth e sensibilities-the emotions, desires, an deveryday experiences-of middle-class Ameri-cans in th e tw entieth century. Anxious over th ehedonism and materialism unleashed by mo d-ern consumerism, they sought new ways tomaintain moral boundaries and assuage theguilt incurred by indulging in formerly pro-scribed pleasures. Tha t is, as new d esires werelegitimized and unleashed, weight controlemerged as a compensating form of self-discipline responsible for mainta ining a senseof moral equilibrium in a culture of abundanc e.Cha rged with in tense e mo tions as well as a newethical significance, excess weight came to sym-bolize bad character and moral weakness: fatpeop le were not just un attractive or unhealthy ,they were evil.On e of the best dem onstrations of Stearns'sargu me nt can be foun d in his analysis of a "mi-sogynist phase" (1920s-1950s) in t he develop-ment of the nation's attitude toward fat. Asa consequence of the erosion of Victorian gen -der distinctions by th e 1920s- bot h men an dwom en were encouraged to enjoy sex an d con-trol the expression of intense emotions, suchas anger, jealousy, guilt, and fear -the new"weight morality" fell especially hard onwomen. While Stearns is quick to point outthat the new diet culture had an impact onmen as well, he argues that, in popular andmedical literature, overweight women wereuniquely stigmatized as lazy, self-indulgent,and im moral. Dietin g, then , became a way of"m onitorin g" middle-class wom en who, by th e1920s, had gained a degree of political au ton -omy, sexual freedom, and greater access toth e pleasures of work an d leisure prom ised bythe consumer marketplace. In the new moral

equation, weight control replaced passionless-ness as a sign of feminine virtue.To illustrate th e distinctive cultural sourcesof American a ttitude s toward the body, Stearnsprovides a fascinating comparison of Frenchan d Am erican d iet cultures. They share somecomm on grou nd. T he structural, 'intellectual,and aesthetic shifts that accompanied the de-velopment of the new code of weight loss inth e U nited States occurred in France as well.But there are substantial differences. The Frenchan d t he Americans, for example, have distinc-tive culinary traditions. Also, while th e French

discipline their children's eating habits, theAmericans, ever anxious that their children"clean their plates," are unwilling to do this.Moreover, while there are similarities in thesocial backgrounds of those most likely tosubscribe to the new diet cultur e- the wealthy,the well-educated middle class, urban pro-fessionals-there is greater hom ogen eity inFrench acceptance of modern weight-controlstandards. In France, unlike the United States,weight is not a symbol of class distinctio n, a ndthere are no minority subcultures clinging toolder body images. Finally, while both haveadhered to a comm on image of the beautifulbody as thin, firm, and youthful, the Frenchhave never viewed fa t as a sym bol of moral decay.The ir pursuit of thinness was driven by aesth et-ic rather than ethical concerns. While Amer-icans have associated dieting with life-changing,disciplined patterns of behavior, the Frenchhave not subscribed t o radical regimens of self-denial and have been more receptive to non-dietary means of weight loss.Stearns concludes by noting that modernAmerican attitude s toward the body have hadunintended consequences. Even though morean d more A mericans are on diets, they, unlikethe French, have consistently gained weightthroughout the twentieth century. BecauseAmericans have envisioned th e dieting processas a religious struggle between sin and rede mp -tion, their war against fat has relieved themfrom one form of anxiety only to replace it withanother. T he rigorous dietary regimes they pur -sue often lead to binges of extreme indulgence.Further, while successful weight m ana gem entcan create a sense of moral w ell-being, failureproduces sham e, self-loathing, and, ironically,overeating. This insight leads to much more

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th an a new prescription for effective weight loss.More impo rtant , it demonstrates the complex-ity of mode rn consumer culture. Here, as wellas in his recent work on the history of theemotions, Stearns argues that the demise ofthe "repressive" culture of Victorian Americadid not signal a new freedom from the moralrestrictions of the past. While they may haveaccepted a new acquisitiveness and a freersexuality, Americans compensated for this"liberation" by placing new restrictions on th ebody an d its appetites. Victorian moral restraintswere reformulated, not aban done d. By linkingthe preoccupation w ith weight loss to "widelyfelt anxieties abo ut m eanin g in mo dern life,''Stearns's imaginative and intriguing studythus adds new depth to our understandingof the cultural forces that have shaped ourviews of the body as well as our bodies them-selves an d provides a nuanced view of th e i m -pact of modern consumerism on the em otionallives of middle-class Americans in the twen-tieth century.

Jesse F. BattanCalifornia State UniversityFullerton, California

Uncommon Ground: TowardReinventingNa-ture. Ed. by William Cro non. (New York: No r-ton, 1995. 561pp . $29.95, ISBNO-393-03872-6.)Nature, writes William Cronon, is dynamicrather than balance seeking, historical ratherthan timeless, constructed rather than essen-tial. In other words, nature is messy, is "notnearly so natural as it seems. Instead, it is aprofoundly human construction." In Uncom-mon Ground, fifteen scholars who m et for asemester-long seminar a t th e University of Cali-fornia at I ~ i n e rovide rich elaborations onthe tangled relations among humans and aworld of things we have not ma de an d cannotfully unde rstand bu t are nonetheless implicatedin and accountable to.Anthologies are seldom important books.Uncommon Groundis imp ortan t, for scholar-ly a nd political reasons. The c ontributors in-clude some of the best-known names in envi-ronmental history: Cronon, Donna Haraway,Carolyn Merchant, R ichard Wh ite. They alsoinclude persons from outside th e field of his-

tory who have much to teach historians, no-tably the ecologist Michael Barbour, the ge-ographer James Proctor, and Candace Slater,a professor of Spanish an d Portuguese. The bookalso features the promising junior scholars Gio-vanna d i Chiro and Jennifer Price. All the con-tributors have brought to their collective taska combination of wide erudition and seriouspurpose. Their essays illum inate not only theways in which people have narrated and ma-nipulated and treasured and consumed naturebu t also th e ways in which hum ans un dersta ndthemselves in "natural" terms.

Uncommon Ground questions a cherishedenvironmentalist notion: that nature is a self-ma intainin g, self-evident system to which wecan appeal for moral and practical guidance.The contributors insist that both clear think-ing and good environmental politics demandsuch questioning. They ask how a "more self-critical und erstan ding of what we mean by na-ture" m igh t "enhance our efforts to protect th eenvironmen t in ways that are both sustainableand hu mane." Environm entalist ideology, theseauthors agree, generally assumes a "natural"conflict between human life and the sanctityof the nonhuman. They insist that environ-mentalists cannot claim to speak transparentlyfor natur e because, inevitably, environmental-ists and exploiters alike map their a ll-too-h uma nstories on to other earthly things. Environm en-talism errs, too, in seeing hum ans as an undiffer-entiated species. A useful environmental pol-itics would admit that humans differ amongthemselves and construct n ature in social terms.Having shaped nature, people ought to askhow they did and do so and to what ends,and what the varying and u ninte nde d conse-quences might be.These ideas do no t strike me as either dan -gerous or very surprising, b ut when UncommonGround first appe ared , the book elicited a tor-rent of vitriol from the Earth First! wing ofthe environmental movement. Cronon and hiscolleagues were denounced as pointy-headedcity slickers who had betrayed the movem entby han ding The Enemy a potent argum ent: ifnatur e isn't "natural," why not carry on th e pro-cess of invention by clear-cu tting, min in g, pav-ing, and polluting? Cronon, clearly stung byhis critics' rage, hastened to defend his ownenvironmentalist credentials, and he wrote a