Book Reviews : Quantitative Methods for Historians: A Guide to Research,Data,and Statistics Konrad H. Jarausch and Kenneth A. HardyPublisher: University of North Carolina Press,Chapel Hill,NC Year of Publication: 1990 Length: 250 pages Price: $37.50 cloth,$11.95 paper

Abstract

This book represents an effort to provide a contemporary replacement for the pioneering texts of quantitative history published 2 decades ago. The authors address themselves to a number of purposes that are not easily combined in a single volume. Their initial objectives are expostulated in the beginning and ending chapters, apparently revised and translated from the original German work of Jarausch. These objectives are (i) to define the place and improve the practice of quantitative and computer-based approaches in contemporary historical research and (2) to reach out with a message of methodological moderation both to quantifiers and to their traditional opponents who adhere to hermeneutic approaches. To pursue these objectives, the authors find it necessary to defend, in a noncombative way, the integrity of quantitative history in the face of the onslaughts of traditionalists and the newer attacks of deconstructionist, radical, feminist, and other "post- modern" critics of quantification in history and, indeed, in the social sciences at large.