Despite its somber title, The Deadly Truth is a very lively account of American disease history from prehistory to the present. So much research is summarized in this comparatively short book, that it becomes the best introduction to the subject currently available. The chapters are chronologically arranged; they focus on those diseases that have been leading causes of sickness or death over the last four centuries. Not surprisingly the epidemic and insect borne diseases receive the lion's share of attention; but the occupational diseases are given a chapter of their own. The chronic diseases, which dominate the twentieth century, are reviewed in chapter nine. The author's general conclusion is that although a certain amount of progress has undoubtedly occurred in the treatment and management of specific diseases, there will never be a “final victory” over disease and death. In the present context few would disagree.

In 1719, French commander Jean-Baptiste Benard, Sieur de la Harpe, together with nine men, ventured into the Prairie Plains, a region previously unvisited by Europeans, to establish trading alliances with the Plains Indians. His journey took him to what is now eastern Oklahoma, where his men spent ten days at an Indian village interacting with peoples of various tribes who later merged into the Wichita tribe. The village was the principal home of the Tawakoni, the most powerful of the Wichita-related tribes. In La Harpe's Post, George H. Odell documents the initial contact between La Harpe's party and these peoples, thereby potentially adding a crucial chapter to the history of the Plains Indians during the early eighteenth century. The information regarding the native population is considered the most significant consequence from this event. Odell takes much of his information from findings obtained during an excavation of the presumed site of the Tawakoni village. Odell ambitiously uses this information to write a reevaluation of the general history of the eastern Plains during this period. The technical aspects of the archeological research, such as the excavation data and statistical analyses, are located in 11 appendixes, as his book is intended for a wide audience.

The “problem” of South Carolina has long fascinated historians of the antebellum period, particularly political historians. Why were Palmetto State politicians always so fiery, confrontational, and eager to come to blows? Many fine scholars have attempted to answer such questions over the years, and, as a result, we know more about the politics of South Carolina than we do about the politics of any other state in the antebellum South.

Each of the 13 essays in this volume considers an aspect of female participation in the paid or unpaid labor force of the antebellum American south. The work of ordinary women is the theme that unites the essays, work the editors in their introduction note was often unacknowledged due to prevailing and evolving attitudes about women's proper work and the role of the male head of household as the family breadwinner. The essays vary widely in their scope, but share a search for ingenious sources of information, a search necessitated by the invisibility of women in official and more conventional sources. The topics range from Native American female makers and sellers of baskets to antebellum female iron manufacturing workers, from coastal Savannah slave women participants in produce markets to western Virginia businesswomen, from Richmond prostitutes to New Orleans nuns.

In this well written book, Mark Barringer provides an interesting and detailed history of commercial enterprises in Yellowstone National Park. The book has great value to scholars concerned with the management of public lands, the roles that interest groups (park employees, concessioners, tourists, and environmentalists) have played in the history of Yellowstone, and the difficulties in designing contracts for the private provision of goods and services on public lands.