Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (1980) by William H. Sewell, Jr. is a qualitative analysis of the French labor movement, spanning three radical revolutionary eras: 1790s, 1830s, and 1850s. Sewell's strategy involves “aggregation and analysis” (1980: 5) of events that would generally be considered trivial factional struggles and meetings of individual French workers. He accumulates these facts into a macro-history of the plight of workers with respect to class consciousness from the ancien regime to the repressive post-revolutionary era of the 1850s. Sewell frames his historical analysis in the context of how the labor movement has used evolving rhetoric to support its pro-rights agenda. It performs a rigorous investigation into the progression and determination of the use of specific terminology, focusing its lens on how concepts of culture (i.e. ideas, beliefs and behaviors) aid in changes to existing structures. Sewell's theoretical perspective is certainly self-constructed. He “borrowed shamelessly from sources such as 'new history', intellectual history, cultural anthropology and some new currents of Marxism” (1980: 5). I find borrowing from cultural anthropology to be the most influential of these theoretical views, and Sewell highlights the importance of ethnographic field methods in his work. However, he is quick to acknowledge that, from a historical perspective, conventional ethnography, as we understand it, is not sufficient in this context. While traditional ethnography tends to focus on non-Western, “relatively small and homogeneous” societies (Sewell 1980: 12), Sewell's initiative is to “analyze the complex society that has been torn apart by all kinds of co. .. half of the article ....... broadening his scope could further strengthen his argument. He does this in the conclusion of chapter 11 to show how and why the movement was sometimes, and ultimately, unsuccessful. Furthermore, while he suggests the reasons why the bourgeoisie never truly accepted and the peasants never felt validated by the movement, he could strengthen his argument by further showing other elements of cultural value outside of language, i.e. the symbolic gestures used by the movement. In addition to symbols, I also believe that Sewell could have provided more definition of artisan “culture” (Hanagan 1981). Given the extent of the numerous professions and the variety of companies, clubs, associations within them: where and what are the cultural margins between the different commercial corporations? There is a united culture or multitude within the different factions?