Volume 22, Number 20 · December 11, 1975
What the Doctor Ordered
By Christopher Lasch
The Making of Modern Society
by Edward Shorter
Basic Books, 369 pp., $15.00
Edward Shorter's book attempts to explain the transition from the 'traditional' to the 'modern' family in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although most of his evidence comes from France, he tends to generalize his conclusions to all of Europe and even to America. The evidence is partly statistical, partly 'literary.' Unlike those practitioners of the 'new social history' who confine themselves to the study of behavior as inferred from statistics, Shorter reaches out to consider changes in thought and feeling. The recognition that these changes are central to the history of the family is the principal virtue of his work, immediately distinguishing it from studies that limit themselves to changes in family structure and household size.
Review, 4235 words
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