REVIEWS OF "PATTERN AND REPERTOIRE IN HISTORY" [excerpts]

I started to write that the authors bring a breath of fresh air into historiography, then realized that their arrival on the scene more closely resembles a tornado. Good ideas, analogies, and illustrations come swirling and densely packed leaving a lot of historical terrain littered with debris.Roehner and Syme concentrate on identifying dynamic similarities by means of valuable comparisons over wide ranges of time and space. Such an analysis exactly reverses the conventional balance. Epistemological skeptics and historians will all find something to disagree with. Yet those who travel with the authors are in for a thrilling ride. They raise great questions and go at them boldly.

Charles Tilly, Columbia University

Many social scientists these days are writing on one or another sort of comparative history. This marvelous book makes an impressively strong case for comparative history of a particular sort. Rather than go directly after big macrogeneralizations the authors propose looking for recurrent patterns in much smaller components. Generalizing about something as complex a the class of, say revolutions, may be foolhardily; looking for repetitive patterns in such components of revolutions as [for instance] how crowds occupy urban space may be far more fruitful. Comparativists often wrestle with how to sort out many variables in relation to few cases; decomposition opens the prospect of larger N's. The authors at a number of points warn that their sort of analytical history may put off many readers because it abandons the pleasure of story-telling. While no doubt some may be put off, there may be others, who like myself, will find the book quite enjoyable. The discovery of unexpected connection and pattern yields its own pleasure. I actually found this book a lot of fun. This is a superb book and I wish it the large audience among social scientists that it deserves.

John Markoff, University of Pittsburgh