The following essays illustrate the rich sources that exist for studies oflabor, military, and political history.Novel insights, as well as fresh sources, have helped keep traditional problems of historiography timely and lively. Ellen W. Schrecker's essay on sources for the study of anticommunism, for example, proposes a conception of McCarthyism that has attracted widespread attention both within the profession and without. It generated debate at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in December 1987, and it received a more public examination in an article on McCarthyism in the January 1988 issue of Commentary.The other three essays all advance proposals for creative uses of sources by the historians in expanding fields. Kathryn Kish Sklar directs us to sources about women's reform activities in the Progressive Era, suggesting that imaginative use of such sources should produce new insights into women's mobilization and management of power. Ronald H. Spector's essay on Vietnam and Robert H. Zieger's essay on labor and the state report on sources for fields that have become substantial scholarly industries, and ones in which the burgeoning studies have an increasingly close relationship to popular culture and public discourse.Each author observes that the changing character of primary sources and the procedures for administering them have had a noticeable impact on scholarship. Spector remarks on the novel problems Vietnam-era records pose for the military historian; Zieger describes the inverse relationship between the expansion of laborrelated materials in government records and the value of the data; Schrecker demonstrates how agency practices can complicate the operation of the Freedom of Information Act; and Sklar points out that women's history sources are sometimes hidden in anomalous locations. All agree, however, that easily accessible materials for current historiographical issues exist in abundance, and they advise historians that, in Zieger's words, "splendid materials, thus far barely used, await sustained examination."Readers of these essays will also be struck by the interrelatedness of the sources that have hitherto sustained disparate historical scholarship. Zieger outlines the opportunities political historians have missed in neglecting labor-related materials, Schrecker shows how labor union records can advance our understanding of McCarthyism, and it is likely that the George Meany Memorial Archives will ultimately demonstrate how the AFL-CIO provided support for the war in Vietnam. Much ink has been spilled recently about the absence of unifying fields in contemporary 174 at
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