College and Research Libraries 302 College & Research Libraries excursion into the history of collecting black materials, Porter unearths the collect- ing activities of such unlikely individuals as antebellum black Philadelphia janitor Joseph Cathcart and Assistant Librarian of Congress Daniel Alexander Murray, as well as today' s younger black collectors. Collector and curator Charles L. Blockson' s "Black Giants in Bindings" is an intriguing autobiographical commentary on his quest as a collector. Likewise, fellow book collector Clarence Holte recounts his experiences in "Incidental Adventures in. Collecting Books." The book's contributors should be urged to expand their essays into full-length books. ''The Robeson Collections: Windows on Black History," by Paul Robeson, Jr., is one of the most significant essays in the collec- tion. The richness and breadth of this im- portant archive are critically assessed in Robeson's astute description of its varied contents. Housed in Howard University's Moorland -Spingarn Research Center, this collection "marks one of the most signifi- cant milestones in the historical documen- tation of black Americans." Black Bibliophiles and Collectors is an im- portant addition to Afro-American bibli- ography and history and American intellectual history. It is unfortunate, how- ever, that this work focuses primarily on collectors and collections in the eastern sec- tion ofthe United States. Among the im- portant black collections hardly mentioned are Tuskegee University's Historical Col- lection, Chicago Public Library's Vivian G. Harsh Collection of Afro-American His- tory and Literature, and Detroit Public Library's Azalia Hackley Collection. Also regrettable is the omission of such collec- tors as Monroe Work, Vivian G. Harsh, Era Bell Thompson, and Claude Barnett- Donald Franklin Joyce, Austin Peay State Uni- versity, Clarksville, Tennessee. The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe. Ed. by Roger Chartier. Trans. by Lydia G. Cochrane. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Pr., 1989. 351p. $45 (ISBN 0-691- 05580-7). LC 89-4043. These nine essays-first published in Paris in 1987 as Les Usages de l' imprime, in May 1991 the series Nouvelles etudes his~oriques­ originat~ in seminars at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Chief responsibility for the collective work lies with Roger Chartier, director of studies at the EHESS, who contributed two of the essays in addition to serving as editor and providing a general introduction to "print culture." Traditionally, print culture-begin- ning with Gutenberg's invention of printing from movable type-has been characterized by the mass production of single texts, often to be read in private by literate individuals. Here, the sixes- sayists expand this culture's boundaries to include printed objects that had pub- lic uses in early modern Europe and, through combination with visual im- ages, brought print culture even to those who could not read. As Chartier ex- plains in his introduction, their method is to favor items that are not books or tracts, to stress "particularity over pre- conceived generalization" by intensive study of single items or well-defined small groups of items, and to investigate thoroughly "the precise, local, specific context that alone gave them meaning." Nine case studies cover text-plus- image in such disparate subjects as Per- rault fairy tales, Books of Hours in the later Middle Ages, heretical writings in eighteenth-century Bohemia, and vari- ous genres from sixteenth- and seven- teenth-century France (including political handbills, religious pamphlets, con- temporary events, marriage charters, and emblem books). These studies achieve unity through their analytical method: the provision of a wealth of evidence as to how texts were tailored for particular publics, how texts were read or otherwise received, and how they relate to the oral traditions out of which many grew. Emphasizing the graphic image as a way into the text, each essay explores the popularization of printed materials and argues that print culture in the fifteenth to early nineteenth centuries was more complex and pervasive-with multiple audi- ences and multiple uses-than had previously been supposed. The Culture of Print may most readily appeal to literary and cultural histori- ans, philosophers, and sociologists- those conversant with the revolution in thinking about the transmission of texts that began in 1958 with the publication of Febvre and Martin's L' Apparition du livre. Those less familiar with the topic might wish first to seek out editor Chartier's synthesis and explication of its evolution in his "Frenchness in the History of the Book: From the History of Publishing to the History of Reading," delivered as the 1987 Wiggins lecture at the American Antiquarian Society and published in the Society's Proceedings 97: 299-329 (1987). Chartier's prolific and provocative scholarship will soon be encountered even more often in the citation indexes-thanks to its being made accessible in English by translator Lydia G. Cochrane and by Princeton University Press in this and in Charter's 1987 collection, The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France. A well-de- signed volume, The Culture of Print includes the twenty-four plates from the French original, although much reduced in size. The subtle arguments and linguistic nu- ances typical of contemporary French scholarship suggest that careful scholars may wish to consult the original text- Elizabeth Swaim, Wesleyan University, Mid- dletown, Connecticut. · Theories of Science in Society. Ed. by Susan E. Cozzens and Thomas F. . Gieryn. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana Univ. Pr., 1990. 264p., acid-free, $25 (ISBN 0-253-31471-2). LC 89-45476. There have been a number of recent changes in the focus of studies on the impact of science on society. The field has moved away from an emphasis on internal aspects of science, in which studies have dealt with the processes of research and the relationships among scientists. There is also a lessening of interest in specialized studies of small scientific groups and individual dis- ciplines. Currently, the field is taking a social constructivist turn and looks at the methods by which knowledge is being produced, leading to an analysis Book Reviews 303 of the social nature of scientific knowl- edge. This collection of essays by a group of established scholars in the sociology of science deals with a number of theoreti- cal questions about the role of science in society. It is aimed at specialists in the sociology of science; at sociologists with interests other than science and technol- ogy; and at readers concerned about the interrelationships among science, tech- nology, society, and government. Cozzens, on the faculty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Gieryn, who teaches at Indiana University, had origi- nally intended that there would be a dis- cussion of the papers and the development of a set of common issues and differences in the various theoretical agendas of the participants. While this never rna terialized, a set of common issues emerges, although there are clearly many disagreements in approach and in the use of core concepts. In their introduction, the editors identify and comment on several sets of conver- gences and divergences in the papers. Al- though no one has attempted to define where science ends and society begins, most of the papers reveal a concern with the boundaries of science. There are ques- tions of borders between science and poli- tics, between pure science and applied science, between social science and natural science, between good and bad science, and between science and its populariza- tion. Another common theme is the rela- tionship among power, patronage, and autonomy. Several authors discuss the "uncheckability" of scientific perfor- mance, which means that patronage rela- tionships are sustained by presumptions of trust between sponsor and scientist. Among the divergent aspects of the sev- eral papers are questions about the appro- priate level of abstraction for theories in the sociology of science; the place of the investigating subject-the author-in in- quiry into science and technology (invisi- ble and detached or vocal and involved?); the problem of whether to view science as structure or action; and, finally, the rela- tionship between the technical content of science and social structure and behavior patterns.