Abstract
The Index is a venerable but still useful tool for the reader to navigate a long and detailed text like "A Privileged Past." There is no need to keyword search everything of interest or, much worse, to guess where in the work it can be found. It's all right here in alphabetical order. But some peculiarities of this traditional practice deserve mention.
Please note that cross-listings of items allow the reader to track one under another name or term, even though each item is generally listed as it first occurs in the text. Married women, for instance, appear under their spouses' family names, where known, followed by the family names of their parents; a keyword search of the index is necessary to find some of these individuals. Sorry.
Page numbers are prefaced by the element where they are located, namely, the Prelude (without prefix), each Act (by number), the Coda (for the last chapter), Comments (in the margins throughout the book), the Dialogues (after each Act), the Epigraphs (at the head of each Act), the Finale (concluding the narrative), the Illustrations (in the margins and in the Intermezzi), the marginal remarks (labelled Nota Bene), the Notes (where there are asides as well as references to sources), and finally, Acknowledgements (after the References). All these elements are italicized to distinguish them from the pagination.
Standard abbreviations for states and countries are provided only when they appear elsewhere in the index. One major exception is for Germany (BRD), whose usual abbreviation (DE) is reserved for Delaware. Another anomaly is Indiana, which has no entry of its own but whose abbreviation (IN) is used after Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis as a matter of formatting convenience. Other parenthetical descriptors, whether or not they are abbreviated, are meant to identify people and terms as well as places.
When in doubt -- thanks to some omission, error, or incapacity of the author -- the reader can always check on related items to see if they suggest where to look in the text for something else. For that reason, the Index's density actually serves a purpose.
Happy sleuthing!
Comments
The following index of people, places, developments, themes, and references, which appear in "A Privileged Past," is intended to complement keyword searches of each chapter. It helps the inquiring reader to locate items not in just one file but throughout the text, including comments in the Notes and in the References.