In sum the essays in this volume promise that the series that it introduces will make an extremely useful contribution to our understanding of agricultural history. Economic historians have already used their special skills to make invaluable contributions to this field and the Advances in Agricultural Economic History series will be a factor in insuring that this trend continues. As a devoted fan of the genre, however, this reviewer hopes that this breed of researcher will always remember that many historians, including some who are interested in agricultural history, do not fully understand econometric methods and that an additional two or three sentences or a short appendix explaining the analytical methods in use or careful definition of terms may considerably increase the potential audience of a piece of research. For example, Thomas Weiss's publications in his major field of research have been exemplary and the Craig and Weiss essay in this collection is an important one. However, the uninitiated reader will find no clear definition of total factor productivity until that person penetrates the explanatory material of Table 3 on the seventeenth page of the chapter.
Care also is required in providing background in text and bibliography.
Standing by itself, however, that paper leaves a reader with a much-distorted understanding of the way in which the reaper entered Midwestern grain technology. Alan L. Olmstead's essential corrective does not appear in the Craig and Weiss bibliography. Although frequently used by historians the term, yeoman, is less often defined and definition in this case would have been appropriate. Surprisingly too these authors ignore a rather obvious tentative hypothesis. In this research also we find the results of logit regression described so parsimoniously as to bewilder the uninitiated.