From: Journal of Social History | Date: June 22, 1998| Author: Martin, Scott C. | COPYRIGHT 1998 Journal of Social History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Edited by Rosemarie Garland Thomson (New York: New York University Press, 1996. xviii plus 400pp. $65.00/cloth $24.95/paperback).

Rosemarie Garland Thomson's Freakery offers a varied and sophisticated collection of articles on a subject that academics have too often dismissed as sensational, trivial, or grotesque. Perhaps the collection's greatest strength is its recognition and insistence that "the extraordinary body is fundamental to the narratives by which we make sense o...