Students, scholars, genealogists, museum docents, and historical society volunteers who seek to investigate the multiplicity of voluntary organizations in America's history will gain considerable guidance from this path-breaking volume. Here are the practical steps, by a seasoned historian, to locate club records, ask appropriate questions of them and make sense of the story from the perspective of the individual members, the community in which the association operates, and the broad historical themes of the past. Fifty book lists steer researchers to classic and recent publications on every type of society, the mainstream as well as the extreme.