Jacob Soll. The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert's Secret State Intelligence System. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009. 277p. alk. paper, $65 (ISBN 9780472116904). LC 2008-051142

so many interpretations and judgments possible? Is it the fact that OMAM is a play in narrative form, consisting almost entirely of dialogue? Is it because of the range of characters, including the two leads but also the ranch owner, his son Curley, Curley's young wife, a black hand, an idealized cowboy, and others? Certainly the novel allows schoolchildren to study the Great Depression and the plight of the homeless and dispossessed, but there is more to it than that. Of Mice and Men has attained something like the status of folklore, and the characters live outside the text, in the classroom and the imagination. Despite some confusing layout, and proofreading lapses (see p. 7 for missing words), the book could be of practical use to teachers and students, even though abundant material is available through open access on the Web. There is something to be said for the chronological approach , which provides a history not only of Steinbeck criticism, but of American culture.—Jean Alexander, Carnegie Mellon University. In recent years, historians of early modern Europe have increasingly turned to the theme of information in society as a historiographical framework for their research. This " informational turn " has begun to yield a number of studies on how information institutions (such as libraries , archives, museums) and practices (including the collection, organization, communication, and utilization of information) contributed to the social, economic , political, and cultural processes that shaped the contours of life in European societies between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. One topic that has attracted considerable scholarly attention is the administrative and political use of information in early modern European states. The intersection of information practices, governmental administration, and political purposes provides the thematic backdrop for the book under review, in which Jacob Soll, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University and specialist in the political and cultural history of early modern France, presents a wide-ranging and richly documented study of how one of Louis XIV's most prominent ministers, Jean-Baptiste Col-bert (1619–1683), harnessed a number of information institutions and practices into a " state information system " to support the administrative apparatus and absolutist ambitions of the French state under the Sun King. Born into a merchant family and trained in the mercantile arts, Colbert entered into state administration at an early age and rose to prominence in the 1650s as financial manager for, and administrative …