About the Author

James M. Brophy is associate professor of modern European history at the University of Delaware. He received his B.A. from Vassar College and did his graduate training at the Universität Tübingen and Indiana University, where he specialized in the social and political history of nineteenth-century Europe. He is the author of Capitalism, Politics, and Railroads in Prussia, 1830—1870 (1998).

Joshua Cole is an associate professor at the University of Michigan. Specializing in the social and cultural history of France since the Revolution of 1789, he earned his PhD at University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of The Power of Large Numbers: Population, Politics, and Gender in Nineteenth-Century France (2000).

Steven Epstein teaches history at the University of Kansas. He was educated at Swarthmore College, St. John’s College (Cambridge University), and Harvard College, where he developed his interests in medieval social and economic history. He is the author of Speaking of Slavery: Color, Ethnicity, and Human Bondage in Italy (2000), Genoa and the Genoese 958—1528 (1996).

John Robertson received both his M.A. and his Ph.D. in ancient history from the University of Pennsylvania. A specialist in the social and economic history of the ancient Near East, Professor Robertson has published several articles in major scholarly journals and contributed articles to such major reference works as the recently published Civilizations of the Ancient Near East.

Thomas Max Safley is associate professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. A specialist in the economic and social history of early modern Europe, his particular research interests include the history of the Reformation, the family, charity, work, and business. In addition to numerous articles and reviews, Professor Safley is the author of Let No Man Put Asunder: The Control of Marriage in the German Southwest, 1550—1620 (1984) and Charity and Economy in the Orphanages of Early Modern Augsburg (1996).