Welsh Journals

SHORT NOTICES J. H. Hexter is among the outstanding transatlantic authorities on the history and the historiography of Tudor and Stuart England. His new volume, Doing History (Allen and Unwin, 1972: pp. 182: £ 2.90) consists of five disparate articles mainly concerned with the rhetoric and the methodology of history, and its relationship to the social sciences. Professor Hexter makes several shrewd observations on, for instance, the assumptions about knowledge and understanding implied in the rhetoric of the historian. There is a devastating critique of Theodore Rabb to illustrate the limits to historical quantification as provided by the com- puter. A moving personal appreciation of the late Garrett Mattingley also includes some sound judgements on the interrelationship between narrative and analysis. Nevertheless, the book as a whole is rather disappointing. It is too disjointed in structure and too colloquial in style to provide a satisfactory guide to historical method. For instance, an attack on E. H. Carr's view of the relationship of the historian to his own society is far too cursory to do justice to that writer's account. A discus- sion of historical explanation is tiresomely complicated by a long digression on recent events in American baseball. It is, incidentally notable that Professor Hexter's strictures on the historian's need for precision and accuracy do not prevent his mis-spelling the names of Mommsen and of Macaulay on consecutive pages (pp. 78, 79). The Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire's Report for 1971 (H.M.S.O., 1972: pp. 8) is an admirable survey of recent field and industrial investigations. There is also a detailed account of archive material compiled by the National Monument Record, while the Report is adorned by fourteen superb illustrations. The following volumes have also been received: Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest. (Yale University Press paperback, 1972. Pp. 667. £ 2.75). William B. Willcox (ed.), The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 15. (Yale University Press, Newhaven and London, 1972. Pp. 327. $17.50 and Vol. 16 ibid., Pp. 359. £ 7.85).