"A close look by social historians at the 'underside' of Costa Rican history, using many legal records as sources. Authors encounter variations of Costa Rican national culture, which seems less unified than previously characterized. Class/race/gender recur as thematics and cleavages in the essays, which cover rape and incest, prostitution, witchcraft charges, labor culture, the reaction to Halley's Comet (1910), and heroin use"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.