context of their interventions was new, the role of higher education—and especially the civic uni- versity model at the sector’s heart—as a prominent flashpoint in these broader struggles was not. Whyte’s highly readable study of civic universities fills a significant gap in the history of higher education. One issue I have with the book is the division of its thirteen chapters into six chronologically organized sections, each with its own introduction and conclusion. This structure makes for a choppy read and tends to obscure rather than bring out the threads that run throughout. However, on the whole this is an outstanding book. Histories of educa- tion and architecture suffer from a predilection for narrow, insular, and at times desiccated ac- counts of institutions, policies, and endless iterations on building plans. Redbrick does not suffer from these faults. Rather, it brims with life by meaningfully weaving in the stories of the men and, by the late nineteenth century, the women who attended universities and inhab- ited their buildings. It transcends the history of education to reveal the central place of civic universities in the evolution of the modern state, the making of the middle class, and the mutual tempering of social radicalism and conservatism. Christopher Bischof, University of Richmond JANET POLASKY . Revolutions without Borders: The Call to Liberty in the Atlantic World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015. Pp. 392. $35.00 (cloth). doi: 10.1017/jbr.2015.182 Janet Polasky explicitly connects her book Revolutions without Borders to R. R. Palmer’s land- mark The Age of Democratic Revolution (1959–64), and the comparison is apt. Polasky updates Palmer’s study by drawing on the vast amount of research that has occurred since its publica- tion and by bringing additional lenses of gender analysis and racial concerns to bear, especially in recounting how revolutions played out in Africa and Saint-Domingue (Haiti). Further, Polasky writes as a self-conscious Atlanticist, demonstrating how the field has matured in recent years. The result is an important work that aids all scholars who work on the Atlantic world of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Polasky is most interested in the way the ideals of revolutionary change crossed borders. In narrating these developments, she moves along two axes. The first is chronological. Polasky, despite the challenge of narrating overlapping events, traces successive waves of revolution around the Atlantic. Thus, in her first chapter she focuses on the American Revolution before tracking revolutions in Geneva, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Further waves of revo- lution in France and Poland follow. Polasky weaves into her narrative developments in the Ca- ribbean, especially the revolution on Saint-Domingue, and on the African coast. She also considers domestic revolutions, as men and women ponder and enact the implications of rev- olutionary change for their loves and marriages. The second axis of organization is archival, sorting according to the type of sources that best inform and describe given topics. Chapters trace, in turn, the impact of pamphlets, political journals, newspapers and their connection to political clubs, oral culture and rumors, family correspondence, and novels that wrestled with domestic themes. In this self-conscious way, Polasky helps us think about the many ways sources can be deployed, as well as the practical need for multiple types of sources for anyone attempting to tell an Atlantic story. Polasky also demonstrates the requirement of wide reading in secondary sources, as mastery over so many regions may be too much to ask of any individual. In drawing on this range of sources, Polasky assembles a compelling cast of characters who crossed political borders, transmitted political ideas, and contemplated what they meant on na- tional and personal levels. By grounding her account in the experience of identifiable people, 206 ▪ Book Reviews