June 11, 1999

History Journal Seeks to Publish Unusually Brief Essays; UCLA Anthropologist Produces a Scholarly Guide to Gang Graffiti

You might flip right past them while perusing the new issue of the journal Rethinking History. If so, you'd be missing an experiment in brevity: scholarly essays of no more than 1,500 words.

"Is it inevitable that historical ideas come in 7,500-10,000 word segments?" writes Robert A. Rosenstone, the journal's co-editor. "Of course not." Readers seem to have agreed, submitting or suggesting more than 70 ideas