Abstracts

Maurine H. Beasley, Holly C. Shulman, and Henry R. Beasley, eds. The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001. xxviiii + 628 pp. with index and a bibliography following each entry. Foreword by Blanche Wiesen Cook. Introduction by James MacGregor Burns. ISBN 0-313-30181-6 (cl).

This useful encyclopedia includes 237 alphabetical entries of people, places, issues, organizations, and events surrounding the life and times of Eleanor Roosevelt. Over 150 scholars, librarians, archivists, and a few friends and relatives contribute to the effort. Although admittedly not exhaustive, bibliographies and a lengthy index direct the reader to further topics and sources. Other features—a brief chronology of ER's life, photographs, quotations, a list of honorary degrees, and diagrams of the Roosevelt family lineage—bolster the encyclopedia's utility. The comments by Cook and Burns are succinct; they briefly sketch the parameters of ER's life and her importance as a public figure. The editors focus on six main topics: ER as a wife and mother, her role as First Lady, her growth as a humanitarian, her contributions as a diplomat and civic mentor, and the way she personifies the changing role of women in the 20th century. ER's speeches, columns, and efforts to achieve social justice set a standard of "moral leadership," notes Burns, for public officials and leaders to follow.———Richard Dorn

Leonard Blussé. Bitter Bonds: A Colonial Divorce Drama of the Seventeenth-Century. Diane Webb, trans. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2002. viii + 168 pp; illus. No index, selected bibliography only. ISBN 1-55876-252-3 (cl); 1-55876-253-1 (pb).

This book uses a highly documented seventeenth-century divorce case to examine the creole culture of Dutch trading settlements, to analyze the role of marriage as a channel of cultural exchange and colonial property-tranmission, and to illuminate the position of Euro-Asian colonial women in both. Blussé draws largely on the surviving legal records surrounding the divorce proceedings between Cornelia van Nijenroode and her second husband Johan Bitter. These records offer readers a glimpse into the bureaucratic mechanisms, interpersonal politics and overlapping jurisdictions of the Dutch East Indies Company, the Dutch Reformed Church and the Dutch State. Individual chapters address multi-ethnic family relations in the Dutch colonial settlements, the role of the Dutch Reformed Church in colonial society, and the position of Asian and Euro-Asian women in the settlements of the Dutch East Indies Company. The gender dynamics of early modern European marriage and the central restrictions imposed on women's access and control of property are emphasized throughout.———Michelle Wolfe

Caitriona Clear. Women of the House: Women's Household Work in Ireland, 1922-1961, Discourses, Experiences, Memories. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2000. x + 278 pp. 0-71652717-0 (pb).

Clear uses oral history, women's magazines, and relevant government records to explore how Irish politicians, female activists, and writers, as well as the Irish people themselves, regarded the work of housewives between the founding of the Irish Republic in 1922 and the 1961 national census. Clear also traces the impact of government policy on women and the effect of media on the work women did at home. Her main concern is with farm, rural, and urban women who were financially secure enough to not need paying jobs of their own but not well-off enough to have servants to do their household work. She argues that while women's household work earned them the respect of family and community, it was not recognized by politicians who awarded child allowances and set policies that affected maternal and infant health. Clear includes both statistical and discourse analysis in her narrative; some previous knowledge of Irish history would help ground the reader. ———Valerie S. Rake

Francine D'Amico and Laurie Weinstein, eds. Gender Camouflage: Women and the U.S. Military. New York: New York University Press, 1999. ix + 262 pp., ill. ISBN: 0-8147-1906-6 (cl); 0-8147-1907-4 (pb).

The twelve essays in this collection focus on the ways in which the military system operates...