Alain Corbin Harvard, 1986 307 pp. $25
WQ SPRING 1987

164
educator Charles Willie: "By idolizing those whom we honor, we fail to realize that we could go and do likewise."
In eight crisp essays, Demos, a Yale historian, looks back at difficulties that continue to beset the American family. This perspective allows him to dismiss a number of popular notions. One is that child abuse is an enduring problem in our society. In truth, he finds, it was rare in Colonial New England; when i...