New JGAPE devoted to intellectual history

I just got my new copy of the most recent (April 2008) Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, which is devoted to intellectual history.  In his introduction to the issue, the editor Alan Lessoff notes that since Morton White’s 1949 book, Social Thought in America, the GA and PE have been fertile periods for the study of intellectual history.  The notion that “American intellectuals [during the GA/PE] moved away from formalism and abstraction toward a pragmatist, social science, and historicist outlook” (p. 147) is still basic to the understanding of many historians.  “While not questioning the basic trajectory,” Lessoff continues, “the articles in this issue renew questions about the wisdom of too quickly discarding formalism” (p. 147).  John Hepp contributes an essay on James Brown Scott and international law.  Rob Schorman offers an article on the beginning of modern advertising.  Kate Sampsell Willmann puts forward an article on Lewis Hine, a realist photographer during the era of Jacob Riis and Alfred Stieglitz.  I just got the issue (they must be running behind schedule), so it should be up on the history cooperative website soon.  Be sure to check it out.   -DS