analysis other than the point that barbed wire is indeed rich and varied in meaning. The historical survey of attitudes toward barbed wire examined in the first section of the book provides numerous, rich artifacts that are at times humorous, disturbing, or surprising, but the second literary portion of the book gets deeper into the metaphorical associations that are so telling of our cultural attitudes. The authors make a convincing case that reading for barbed wire is a revealing strategy, finding fascinating parallels, for instance, between Ed Abbey and James Galvin and John Steinbeck and Flannery O’Connor. It is through these literary analyses that the authors’ contention that barbed wire embodies deep and often paradoxical cultural values—freedom and constraint, order and pain, property, and racism—is most powerful. Inevitably, such a survey leaves gaps and has blind spots. For instance, while the authors several times mention military use of barbed wire in the Boer War, World War I, and elsewhere, there is no discussion about how the association of wire and war affected attitudes toward barbed wire on the home front. And in a related matter, while there is brief discussion of barbed wire on the U.S.–Mexico border in the work of Chicana scholar Gloria Anzaldúa, there seemed a missed opportunity to think about how the perfect fence has had a role in shaping our most contentious Southwest borderland. On the whole, Bennett and Abbott provide us with an admirable work of interdisciplinary scholarship that offers readers a great deal to think about and many good leads to follow. Historians and literary scholars of the borderlands, agriculture, the American West, and related topics will value this book.

中文翻译：

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他们辛苦了：大萧条中墨西哥人和移民的报纸代表，Melita M. Garza

分析除了带刺铁丝网确实含义丰富多样。本书第一部分审查的对铁丝网态度的历史调查提供了大量丰富的文物，有时幽默、令人不安或令人惊讶，但本书的第二文学部分更深入地探讨了如此有说服力的隐喻关联我们的文化态度。作者提出了一个令人信服的案例，即阅读带刺铁丝网是一种具有启发性的策略，例如在 Ed Abbey 和 James Galvin 以及 John Steinbeck 和 Flannery O'Connor 之间找到了引人入胜的相似之处。正是通过这些文学分析，作者认为带刺铁丝网体现了深刻且往往是矛盾的文化价值观——自由与约束、秩序与痛苦、财产和种族主义——的论点最为有力。不可避免地，这种调查留下了空白和盲点。例如，虽然作者多次提到在布尔战争、第一次世界大战和其他地方对铁丝网的军事用途，但没有讨论铁丝网和战争的关联如何影响国内对铁丝网的态度。在一个相关的问题中，虽然在奇卡纳学者 Gloria Anzaldúa 的作品中对美墨边境的铁丝网进行了简短的讨论，但似乎错失了思考完美围栏如何在塑造我们最具争议的方面发挥作用的机会西南边陲。总的来说，Bennett 和 Abbott 为我们提供了令人钦佩的跨学科学术著作，为读者提供了大量思考和许多好的线索。边境地区、农业、美国西部的历史学家和文学学者，