,Iournal of Historical Geography, 1, 1 (1975) 129-130

Shorter notices

GRANT HEILMAN (Ed.), Farm Town: A Memoir of the 1930’s. Photographs by J. W. McManigaZ (Brattleboro, Vermont: The Stephen Greene Press, 1974. Pp. 96. $12.95)

Those historical geographers who have not yet discovered the value of photography as a research tool might do well to look at Farm town, a collection of photographs taken between 1935 and 1940 by a local newspaper man in and around his hometown of Horton, Kansas. Supplementary photographs have been supplied by the editor to illustrate the changes in landscape and life style that have occurred in this rural mid- western place since the great depression. Text material is drawn from comments made by Horton people as they recently viewed the photographs of their geographic past.

JOHN F. ROONEY, Geography of American Sport, From Cabin Creek to Anaheim (Reading, Mass. : Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1974. Pp. 320. $6.95)

Although this first attempted geography of American sports deals primarily with con- temporary circumstances, the historical geographer will find much of interest in chapter 3 which is entitled ‘The origin and diffusion of sport in the United States’. This chapter treats the historical antecedents of American spectator sport by focusing on the diffusion of professional major-league baseball, collegiate football, and collegiate wrestling from their centres of origin in the United States. Discussion centres on the changing regional complexities of organised sport activity, a heretofore neglected aspect of American culture in the literature of academic geography.

J. A. J.

M. W. BERESFORD and H. P. R. FINBERG, English medieval Boroughs: A Hand-list (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1973. Pp. 200. g4.50)

The period between A.D. 900 and 1300 is important in the history of English urbanisation because it witnessed the establishment of a pattern of boroughs which, despite early failures (which the French term “aborted”) and later casualties (which we call “rotten”), forms the basis for England’s present-day array of towns and cities. It is also an enig- matic period, because sources relating to town foundation have survived so unevenly, and because we are still not entirely sure what contemporaries implied when they graced a place with the style of borough. Nevertheless, the combined scholarship of Professors Beresford and Finberg has produced a list of English medieval boroughs which super- sedes all previous lists and will be the medievalist’s guidebook to urban places for many years to come. An introductory discussion contains many valuable insights into both spatial and chronological aspects of medieval urbanisation.

D. R. MILLS (Ed.), English Rural Communities: The Impact of a Specialised Economy (London : Macmillan, 1973. Pp. 259. g4.50 and E2.50 softback)

Too many collections of reprinted papers are ill-conceived, poorly edited, badly printed