Abstract

Four anthologies covering the modern period are reviewed here and assessed with respect to whether anthologized selections and supplementary materials are useful to teachers and undergraduate students. With the exception of one anthology, each volume makes conservative choices in representing the modern period. Such choices reinforce a history of the modern period increasingly out of step with current scholarship and discourage scholarly teachers from presenting a history deeply embedded in science, psychology, education, economics, religion, mathematics, and social, political and moral philosophy. Each of the volumes has significant strengths when used in a curriculum guided by this more conservative canon, but the canon itself is problematic as an organizing principle for anthologies and curricula covering the modern period.