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In this paper, I will discuss three classic problems in economic history. I label them "classic" because they are problems of general interest that share the central characteristic of classic problems: an extensive literature has not led to general agreement. They are taken from the literature on the history of the United States because of the wealth of data and secondary material on this country's history, but they all have their analogues or reflections in European history. They are the problems of labor scarcity in America, the depression of the 1930's (which Americans call the Great Depression), and the deflation of the late nineteenth century (which the British call the Great Depression).

The Institute for Human Sciences (Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen) was founded in Vienna in 1982 by a group of scholars from Eastern Europe and the West. The purpose of the Institute was to overcome the cultural and intellectual division of Europe by promoting conferences, seminars and research programmes. The latest report of the Institute stresses that the disappearance of the Iron Curtain has made the work of the Institute all the more important. As the authors of the report explain, '…the civil society which is reemerging in Eastern Europe will hardly be viable without living connections to the West and, equally, the Western world will be much poorer without the historical experiences of the East. The Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen views itself as a place where the experiences and perspectives of Eastern Europeans can be (re-) introduced into the Western discussion as a means of rousing, changing and broadening Western culture. Europe should be seen as a challenge: as a manifold, but also contradictory, intellectual and cultural unity.'

Review.

Gender is a good place from which to start reflections on European history: gender history deliberately transcends borders and, at the same time, demonstrates the difficulties of writing European, or transnational, history. Focusing on recent syntheses of modern European history, both general works and those specifically devoted to gender, the article asks what kind of Europe emerges from the encounter between gender and history. It suggests that the writing of European history includes either Eastern Europe (and, sometimes, the Ottoman Empire) or a gender perspective, but seldom both. Thus, the projects of integrating a European dimension into gender history and gender into European history remain unfinished. The result is a history of a rather 'small Europe'. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]