Jacob's Well: A Case for Rethinking Family History by Joseph A. Amato (review)

Book Reviews Joseph A. Amato. Jacob's Well: A Case for Rethinking Family History. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007. Pp. 268. Index. Notes. Photographs. Cloth, $32.95. In this marvelous book, Joseph A. Amato introduces us to his parents Joe and Ethel, Grandmas Rosalia and Frances, Aunt May, Great-grandfather Jacob of the book's tide, and a tree full of Boodrys, Linsdaus, and O'Briens. The reader travels to Italy, Detroit, Acadia, Maine, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The relatives Amato knew are the most vividly represented, but all of his kin receive thoughtful, probing, treatment that is both analytic and loving. Amato uses the perspective and tools of both the professional historian and the genealogist in this work. As he tells us, he is exploring a past that has both personal and historical meanings. Amato faces fully the emotion of family, recognizing it as both the "bed of our sleep and pillow of our dreams" (p. 4). It is also "an object of nostalgia, a source of inner discord and bitter feelings" (p. 5). He avoids both the genealogist's tendency toward seeing people as heroes or demons and the historian's bent toward impersonal abstraction. In what is a mixture of genealogy and history, Jacob's Well vibrates with connections, meaning, nuance, and leaps of imagination. The author contextualizes and turns every fact this way and that until he has squeezed out its full meaning. Amato's basic story tells, first, of people who were part of some of the great streams of European and American social history and, second, of the way they carried that history within themselves and passed it on to their descendants. Part of the history about which Amato feels most strongly is his ancestors' poverty. Rarely at the front of a trend, his relatives consistendy missed the boom times and repeatedly reaped the busts. Amato's focus on his ancestors' poverty is my only issue with his perspective. Poor they certainly were, but the label seems anachronistic. If everyone is poor, is anyone poor? Is poor a fact or a social comment, and if it is a comment, is it his or his protagonists' and to what end? This book is admirably written. Amato's prose is so lovely and his metaphors so well turned that they often forced me to stop and marvel. One example: "We must forever take care lest, in our desire to magnify and monumentalize, we trade real persons for abstractions 140 Michigan Historical Review and clich?s, which empty the family of true individuals and make of it a canister of hollow servants and callow ideologies" (p. 15). Amato invites all of us to explore the role of the personal in the historical. It is not only genealogists who are studying themselves in and through their work. Annette Atkins Saint John's University/College of Saint Benedict Collegeville, Minn. David Barber. A Hard Rain Fell: SDS and Why It Failed. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Pp. 286. Bibliography. Index. Notes. Cloth, $50.00. Books about the New Left seem to portray radical movements of the sixties as either a success or a failure. David Barber's A Hard Rain Fell: SDS and Why It Failed obviously fits in the latter category. Barber argues that the New Left's adherence to established perceptions of race, gender, class, and nation ultimately led to its demise. He contends that the perspective of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) on race, more than any other factor, was the reason for its downfall. As a result of internal racism, the organization failed to acknowledge blacks' crucial involvement in the movement, Black Power's ability to lead the revolution, and the connections between imperialism abroad and capitalism at home. The organization's refusal to eliminate "white supremacy" within its ranks prevented any substantial social or political improvements. Referencing this conservatism, Barber writes, "The New Left failed not because itwas too radical in its support of the black nationalist movement but because itwas not radical enough" (p. 15). To demonstrate the racist undertones that prevented the organization from supporting the Black Power Movement, Barber examines SDS speeches, newsletters, and ideological developments from the organization...