Hebrew Marriage: A Sociological Study. by David R. MaceReview by: Ruth Shonle CavanSocial Forces, Vol. 32, No. 4 (May, 1954), p. 393Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2574143 .

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LIBRARY AND WORKSHOP 393

have been dropped, though some of their content has been retained. The new edition is divided into six sec- tions instead of four. The section titles are: "The Family in American Culture," "Courtship and Marriage," "The Relationships of Marriage," "The Family as a Social Institution," "The Family and Personality," and "The Dynamics of the Family." The end product is 200 pages shorter than the original.

The good style of the original edition is continued and excellent use is made of recently published sources. The statistics have been revised upward through 1950. More attention is paid to class variation in family patterns, and the extensive use of the findings of cul- ture and personality students vastly improves the section on "The Family and Personality." The cover- age is almost as encyclopedic as can be achieved in 600 pages, ranging from the relation between capitalism and individual freedom to description of the signs indicating the existence of a pregnancy. The book mentions most everything the instructor could desire but the treatment is often so brief as to be pedagogically perplexing. Over-all, it is up-to-date, sound, and com- prehensive.

GERALD R. LESLIE Purdue University

HEBREW MARRIAGE: A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY. By David R. Mace. New York: Philosophical Library, 1953. 271 pp. $6.00.

This book grew out of Dr. Mace's great interest in the ideals of Christian marriage and his great concern over present confusion in values. Wishing to disen- tangle Christian ideals from non-Christian influences in marriage, he returns to Hebrew marriage, from which the earliest Christian ideals were derived. The book is a carefully documented study of marriage as revealed in the writings of the Old Testament and of various scholars. Unfortunately, many of the footnote refer- ences are undated; the general reader therefore is often unable to judge whether a specific reference represents recent research or whether it comes from an earlier period when objectivity was colored by imaginative conceptions.

Mace pictures Hebrew marriage as essentially mo- nogamous, with deviations only for the purpose of secur- ing the heir who was of paramount importance in a patriarchal society. The Hebrew wife is carefully distinguished from the slave; the wife had status and comradeship with her husband, whereas the slave was a chattel. Sex had a "clean," even sacred, quality, the conception of sex as sinful having been added after the Hebrew period. Mace tends to discount the existence of prostitution and the double standard of morals in the Old Testament period and to regard various devia- tions from strict monogamy as stemming from the great desire of the patriarch for a son to carry on the family line. He points out, also, that the Hebrew family was profoundly religious. In establishing these concep- tions and conclusions, Mace uses sources selectively, discarding those which do not support these conceptions and accepting those which do give support.

Although one would not doubt Dr. Mace's sincerity or the thoroughness of his work, the reviewer cannot

avoid questioning whether he has tended to interpret doubtful phases of Hebrew life according to his own ideals for Christian family life at the present time. For example: believing strongly in monogamy, Mace states, "I concluded my study with the impression that our habitual ascription to the Hebrews of wide- spread polygamy is both inaccurate and unjust. Quite apart from the specific evidence which I have tried to set out in this connection, I found that, after a period in which I tried to place myself inside the Hebrew mind, and to sense the way it felt about these matters, I developed a strong conviction that polygamy was fundamentally alien to the true ideals of the Old Testa- ment." (p. 261)

The book will be of interest to those who wish to delve into the remote antecedents of present conceptions of marriage. This study was planned as the beginning of a complete inquiry into social factors influencing the history of marriage and the family from the Old Testament period to the present. It may be assumed that other publications will appear as the author finds time to complete them.

RUT SHONLE CAVAN Rockford College

AN APPROACH TO MEASURING RESULTS IN SOCIAL WoRK. By David G. French. New York: Columbia University Press, 1952. 178 pp. $3.00.

This study deals with the community's investment in social work, the questions which concern social work, the logic of evaluative research, the relationship between social science and research in social welfare, the ad- ministrative setting for research in social work, and a proposal for an institute for research in social work. It also includes an appendix giving details regarding problems in social work which practicing social workers see as needing evaluative research. A second appendix contains analyses of four evaluative studies in social work: (1) Hunt and Kogan's Measuring Results in Social Case Work, (2) the Festinger-Kelly study, Changing Attitudes Through Social Contact, (3) the Witmer-Powers study, An Experiment in the Preven- tion of Delinquency, (4) the Gluecks' Unravelling Juve- nile Delinquency.

The writer feels that the integrated design and lucid style of the book are admirable. He has used the book as one text in a social work research course and found it to be excellent for relating basic social science con- cepts to meaningful problems in social work.

It is to the chapters on the logic of evaluative re- search and on the relationship between social science and social work research that this review is principally addressed. It is here that an emphasis appears which may tend to deter participation in research by social workers.

The writer's concern about the emphasis in these chapters stems from two convictions: (1) that under- standing of simple but useful research procedures can be communicated to social workers; (2) that professions grow in effectiveness only as there is widespread under- standing of and participation in research relating to the work of the profession. French's emphasis on experi- mental design, the use of control groups, and the need

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