Acknowledgments

I owe many people a great deal of thanks for help in the completion of this book. Friends and acquaintances who helped with source material and other encouragements include Robert W. Baldwin, Lisa Bitel, Leslie Choquette, Sarah Fishman, Caroline Ford, Leonard Groopman, David Harvey, Margaret Higonnet, Steve Jaffe, Peter Mancall, Susan Pederson, Mary Picketing, Marie-Claire Rohinsky, and Margaret Talbot. Fran-çoise Mathieu provided friendship, knowledge, and a place to stay during research trips to Paris. I also want to thank Mary Lou and Nancy Kete.

The Department of History at Harvard and the French government provided support for a year's research in Paris during the academic year 1984-85. As an exchange student at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris, I benefited from participation in a seminar on methodology that explored the problems of post -annaliste history. Pierre Milza, especially, was supportive of my research project.

Maurice Agulhon guided me toward essential source material. Alain Corbin read most of an early draft of the manuscript and suggested ways of recasting the argument in stronger forms. Harriet Ritvo, whose subject is close to my own work, helped me clarify my ideas. She has also been a friend.

Generous suggestions came from Thomas Laqueur and an anonymous reader of the manuscript for the University of California Press, and from the comments of the editorial board of Representations, which published chapter six, " La Rage and the Bourgeoisie: The Cultural Context of Rabies in the French Nineteenth Century" (Representations, no. 22 [Spring 1988]: 89—107), guided the argument of the book as a whole to its final form, and gave me permission to reprint the article.

I would also like to thank the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University for giving me a congenial atmo-

sphere in 1988-89 to complete the manuscript in dissertation form and in 1989-90 to work on turning the dissertation into a book. Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, has been very supportive of the final stages of the project.

I am grateful to Simon Schama, who first encouraged me in the study of history and remains a valued adviser. His own work in cultural history taught me to look at the ordinary in extraordinary ways. Patrice Higon-net sustained and strongly influenced my work for many years. His contribution is incalculable.

My husband, Daniel McGrath, most of all, has shared the project's burdens and its joys. His friendship makes writing worthwhile.

This book is dedicated to Dan and to our daughter, Julia.