Sokolow, Jayme A. 1946-

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SOKOLOW, Jayme A. 1946-

(Jayme Aaron Sokolow)

PERSONAL: Born October 3, 1946, in Perth Amboy, NJ; son of Carl (a laborer) and Sara (a teacher) Sokolow. Education: Trenton State College, B.A., 1968; New York University, M.A., 1970, Ph.D., 1972. Hobbies and other interests: Soccer, hiking, camping.

ADDRESSES: Office—The Development Source, 4312 Garrett Park Rd., Wheaton, MD 20906. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Social studies teacher at public schools in New York, NY, 1972–76; Texas Tech University, Lubbock, assistant professor of history, 1976–82; National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, DC, member of staff, 1983–89; The Development Source, Inc., Wheaton, MD, founder and president.

MEMBER: American Historical Association, National Historic Communal Societies Association, Society for the Study of the Early Republic.

WRITINGS:

Eros and Modernization: Sylvester Graham, Health Reform, and the Origins of Victorian Sexuality in America, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (Rutherford, NJ), 1983.

(With Pricilla R. Roosevelt) Leo Tolstoi's Christian Pacifism: The American Contribution, University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, PA), 1987.

The Great Encounter: Native Peoples and European Settlers in the Americas, 1492–1800, M. E. Sharpe (Armonk, NY), 2003.

Contributor to Dictionary of Modern British Radicals and to journals and periodicals, including Entrepreneur and Washington Business Journal; Proposal Management (journal of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals), editor and chair of editorial advisory board.

SIDELIGHTS: Jayme A. Sokolow spent twenty years in education and government before forming The Development Source, Inc., a proposal development firm. Sokolow's most recent book, The Great Encounter: Native Peoples and European Settlers in the Americas, 1492–1800, based on secondary sources, is a history of both North and South American indigenous peoples, their cultures and agriculture, societies founded by Europeans, conflicts, and the benefits European gained from trips to the New World, including the introduction of American plant species, like potatoes and maize upon their return. Jeremy Black noted in the Journal of European Studies that Sokolow maintains that "the cultivation of New World plants helped lead Europe to world domination by greatly increasing its population, general health, and standard of living…. Sokolow also argues that indigenous peoples were considerably more pragmatic and intellectually flexible in their response to the invaders than Europeans were to them."

Sokolow once told CA: "For the past decade, I have been happily immersing myself in the study and teaching of the humanities. Along with my avocational interests, these activities have given me some measure of understanding about myself, other people, and the historical origins of our tumultuous times.

"In the mid-1970s I became very interested in the social and cultural history of the decades before the American Civil War. I wondered how the dizzying changes of the era affected patterns of thought and behavior. This curiosity led me to research the period's leading health reformer, Sylvester Graham, and to examine the relatively unstudied topic of sexuality and the modernization process. Since Graham helped formulate many of the antebellum era's popular notions of diet, sexuality, and personal behavior, I decided to concentrate on his publications and on the work of his energetic and entertaining followers.

"With that project completed, I began studying the impact of communitarian experiments on pre-Civil War culture. Because communes played a major role in the vibrant reform crusade of these decades, I feel that a study of intentional communities can provide us with a deeper understanding of the historical processes that shaped the nineteenth century.

"I am not sure that there are any specific or didactic lessons to be learned from research of this kind. Through my studies, however, I have developed a greater appreciation for the incredible richness and complexity of social change in the United States."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Historian, August, 1985, review of Eros and Modernization: Sylvester Graham, Health Reform, and the Origins of Victorian Sexuality in America, p. 596.

History: Review of New Books, winter, 2003, Michael Leroy Oberg, review of The Great Encounter: Native Peoples and European Settlers in the Americas, 1492–1800, p. 63.

Journal of European Studies, December, 2003, Jeremy Black, review of The Great Encounter, p. 351.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, winter, 1986, review of Eros and Modernization, p. 546.

Library Journal, December, 2002, John Burch, review of The Great Encounter, p. 152.