| Kenyatta and Britain An Account of Political Transformation, 1929-1963 | Kenyatta and Britain An Account of Political Transformation, 1929-1963 | Maloba, Wunyabari | | Palgrave Macmillan, 2018 | | 2018 | https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783319508948 | <p>This book is the first systematic political history of Jomo Kenyatta,
Kenya’s founding president. The first of two parts, it explores
Kenyatta’s formative years in nationalist activism in Kenya and Britain,
the complex links between colonial and British intelligence services
and Kenyatta’s career and the political compromise he forged between
Kenya and Britain. This book draws on primary sources to analyze this
compromise, which marked his transformation from "leader to darkness and
death" to the most beloved post-colonial African leader in the West.</p> | | |
| Russians in Iran: Diplomacy and Power in the Qajar Era and Beyond | Russians in Iran: Diplomacy and Power in the Qajar Era and Beyond | Matthee, Rudi | Elena Andreeva | I.B. Tauris | | 2018 | https://www.ibtauris.com/Books/Society--social-sciences/Politics--government/International-relations/Diplomacy/Russians-in-Iran-Diplomacy-and-the-Politics-of-Power-in-the-Qajar-Era | <p>Russians in Iran seeks to challenge the traditional narrative regarding
Russian involvement Iran and to show that whilst Russia's historical
involvement in Iran is longstanding it is nonetheless much
misunderstood. Russia's influence in Iran between 1800 and the middle of
the twentieth century is not simply a story of inexorable intrusion and
domination: rather, it is a complex and interactive process of mostly
indirect control and constructive engagement. Drawing on fresh archival
material, the contributors provide a window into the power and
influence wielded in Iran not just by the Russian government through it
traditional representatives but by Russian nationals operating in Iran
in a variety of capacities, including individuals, bankers, and
entrepreneurs. Russians in Iran reveals the multifaceted role that
Russians have played in Iranian history and provides an original and
important contribution to the history and international relations of
Iran, Russia and the Middle East.</p> | | |
| Technocrats and the Politics of Drought and Development in Twentieth-Century Brazil | Technocrats and the Politics of Drought and Development in Twentieth-Century Brazil | Buckley, Eve | | The University of North Carolina Press | North Carolina | 2017 | https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469634302/technocrats-and-the-politics-of-drought-and-development-in-twentieth-century-brazil/ | | | |
| The Anatomy of Neo-Colonialism in Kenya British Imperialism and Kenyatta, 1963–1978 | The Anatomy of Neo-Colonialism in Kenya British Imperialism and Kenyatta, 1963–1978 | Maloba, Wunyabari | | Palgrave Macmillan | | 2017 | https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783319509648#otherversion=9783319509655 | <p>The successor to <em>Kenyatta and Britain: An Account of Political Transformation, 1929-1963</em>,
this book completes the first systematic political history of Jomo
Kenyatta by examining the mechanisms of installing a neo-colonial regime
in Kenya, and how such regimes were duplicated elsewhere in Africa. It
analyzes the nature and extent of the collaboration between Kenyatta,
Britain and Western intelligence services to install and protect his
government in Kenya—a collaboration which is linked to some of Kenya's
most intractable political, social and economic problems. Drawing
heavily on primary sources, it examines the legacy of Kenyatta's regime,
and how this legacy is felt in Kenya today.</p> | | |
| The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America | The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America | Van Horn, Jennifer | | University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture | | 2017 | https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469629568/the-power-of-objects-in-eighteenth-century-british-america/ | <p>
</p><h4>Awards & distinctions</h4><p>
</p><p>Finalist, 2018 George Washington Prize</p><p>
</p><p>Honorable Mention, 2018 Louis Gottschalk Prize, American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies</p><p>
</p><p>
</p><p>Over the course of the eighteenth century, Anglo-Americans purchased an unprecedented number and array of goods.<em> The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America</em> investigates these diverse artifacts—from portraits and city views to
gravestones, dressing furniture, and prosthetic devices—to explore how
elite American consumers assembled objects to form a new civil society
on the margins of the British Empire. In this interdisciplinary
transatlantic study, artifacts emerge as key players in the formation of
Anglo-American communities and eventually of American citizenship.
Deftly interweaving analysis of images with furniture, architecture,
clothing, and literary works, Van Horn reconstructs the networks of
goods that bound together consumers in Boston, New York, Philadelphia,
and Charleston.</p><p>Moving beyond emulation and the desire for
social status as the primary motivators for consumption, Van Horn shows
that Anglo-Americans’ material choices were intimately bound up with
their efforts to distance themselves from Native Americans and African
Americans. She also traces women’s contested place in forging provincial
culture. As encountered through a woman’s application of makeup at her
dressing table or an amputee’s donning of a wooden leg after the
Revolutionary War, material artifacts were far from passive markers of
rank or political identification. They made Anglo-American society.</p> | | |
| 1915 Diary of S. An-sky: A Russian Jewish Writer at the Eastern Front | 1915 Diary of S. An-sky: A Russian Jewish Writer at the Eastern Front | Zavadivker, Polly | | Indiana University Press | | 2016 | http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=807907 | <p>S. An-sky was by the time of the First World War a well-known writer, a
longtime revolutionary, and an ethnographer who pioneered the collection
of Jewish folklore in Russia's Pale of Settlement. In 1915, An-sky took
on the assignment of providing aid and relief to Jewish civilians
trapped under Russian military occupation in Galicia. As he made his way
through the shtetls there, close to the Austrian frontlines, he kept a
diary of his encounters and impressions, written in Russian. His diary
entries present a detailed reflection of his daily experiences. He
describes conversations with wounded soldiers in hospitals, fellow
Russian and Jewish aid workers, Russian military and civilian
authorities, and Jewish civilians in Galicia and parts of the Pale.
Although most of his diaries were lost, two fragments survived and are
preserved in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. Translated
and annotated here by Polly Zavadivker, these fragments convey An-sky's
vivid firsthand descriptions of civilian and military life in wartime.
He recorded the brutality and violence against the civilian population,
the complexities of interethnic relations, the practices and limitations
of philanthropy and medical care, Russification policies, and
antisemitism. In the late 1910s, An-sky used his diaries as raw material
for a lengthy memoir in Yiddish published under the title The
Destruction of Galicia.</p> | | |
| Dalit Studies | Dalit Studies | Rawat, Ramnarayan | K. Satyanarayana | Duke University Press | | 2016 | https://www.dukeupress.edu/dalit-studies?viewby=author&lastname=Rawat&firstname=Ramnarayan%20S.&middlename=&sort=newest | <p>The contributors to this major intervention into Indian historiography
trace the strategies through which Dalits have been marginalized as well
as the ways Dalit intellectuals and leaders have shaped emancipatory
politics in modern India. Moving beyond the anticolonialism/nationalism
binary that dominates the study of India, the contributors assess the
benefits of colonial modernity and place humiliation, dignity, and
spatial exclusion at the center of Indian historiography. Several essays
discuss the ways Dalits used the colonial courts and legislature to
gain minority rights in the early twentieth century, while others
highlight Dalit activism in social and religious spheres. The
contributors also examine the struggle of contemporary middle-class
Dalits to reconcile their caste and class, intercaste tensions among
Sikhs, and the efforts by Dalit writers to challenge dominant
constructions of secular and class-based citizenship while emphasizing
the ongoing destructiveness of caste identity. In recovering the long
history of Dalit struggles against caste violence, exclusion, and
discrimination, <em>Dalit Studies</em> outlines a new agenda for the study
of India, enabling a significant reconsideration of many of the Indian
academy's core assumptions.</p> | | |
| Jerusalem and the Cross in the Life and Writings of Ademar of Chabannes | Jerusalem and the Cross in the Life and Writings of Ademar of Chabannes | Callahan, Daniel | | Brille | | 2016 | https://brill.com/abstract/title/31931 | <p>The tenth and eleventh centuries are pivotal for the history of the West. The writings of Ademar of Chabannes, many of which are still unpublished, offer numerous insights into why these changes were occurring. Because his promotion of the cult of St. Martial of Limoges contains much that is exaggerated or even untrue, his writings have been viewed with suspicion. What this book seeks to do is make clear that such distrust is justified, but that there is much material in those manuscripts throwing light on the origins of the crusades, the rise of heresy, the great feudal warfare and the reality of apocalyptic fear.</p> | | |
| Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food | Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food | Horowitz, Roger | | Columbia University Press | | 2016 | http://cup.columbia.edu/sampler/9780231158329/google-preview | | | |
| Perspectives from the Past: Primary Sources in Western Civilizations, Vol 1 | Perspectives from the Past: Primary Sources in Western Civilizations, Vol 1 | Brophy, James | Joshua Cole, John Robertson, Thomas Max Safley, and Carol Symes | W.W. Norton | | 2016 | http://books.wwnorton.com/books/webad.aspx?id=4294991833 | | | |
| Perspectives from the Past: Primary Sources in Western Civilizations, Vol 2 | Perspectives from the Past: Primary Sources in Western Civilizations, Vol 2 | Brophy, James | Joshua Cole, John Robertson, Thomas Max Safley, and Carol Symes | W.W. Norton | | 2016 | http://books.wwnorton.com/books/webad.aspx?id=4294991834 | <p><em>Perspectives from the Past: Primary Sources in Western Civilizations</em>
features a diverse range of primary sources for analysis, offering a
total of 225 classic and contemporary documents of varying length.</p> | | |
| Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World | Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World | Anishanslin, Zara | | Yale University Press | New Haven | 2016 | https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300197051/portrait-woman-silk | <p>Through the story of a portrait of a woman in a silk dress, historian Zara Anishanslin embarks on a fascinating journey, exploring and refining debates about the cultural history of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world. While most scholarship on commodities focuses either on labor and production or on consumption and use, Anishanslin unifies both, examining the worlds of four identifiable people who produced, wore, and represented this object: a London weaver, one of early modern Britain’s few women silk designers, a Philadelphia merchant’s wife, and a New England painter. Blending macro and micro history with nuanced gender analysis, Anishanslin shows how making, buying, and using goods in the British Atlantic created an object-based community that tied its inhabitants together, while also allowing for different views of the Empire. Investigating a range of subjects including self-fashioning, identity, natural history, politics, and trade, Anishanslin makes major contributions both to the study of material culture and to our ongoing conversation about how to write history.<br></p> | | |
| The Spanish Monarchy and Safavid Persia in the Early Modern Period. Politics, War and Religion | The Spanish Monarchy and Safavid Persia in the Early Modern Period. Politics, War and Religion | Matthee, Rudi | E. García and J. Cutillas | Albatros, Valencia | | 2016 | https://web.ua.es/en/iranian-studies-seminar/news/the-spanish-monarchy-and-safavid-persia-in-the-early-modern-period-politics-war-and-religion.html | <p>Relations between Spain and Persia in the Early Modern Period are often
presented as the story of two bookends-one formed by the mission of Ruy
González de Clavijo to the court of Tamerlane at the turn of the
fifteenth century; the other represented by the embassy Don García de
Silva y Figueroa undertook to the court of the Safavid Shah 'Abbas I on
behalf of King Philip III between 1614 and 1624. The Iberian involvement
with Persia in the two centuries between these two events is mostly
told as a Portuguese, maritime-oriented one. This book is the first to
break out of that mould. It addresses the various ways in which the
Spanish crown sought and maintained contact with Persia, either
independently or, after the creation of the Iberian Union in 1580, in
consort with the Portuguese, in the sixteenth and the seventeenth
centuries. We learn about the motley crew of men who sailed the
Mediterranean or rounded the Cape on their way to the Safavid state, the
diplomats who sought to lure the shah into a joint anti-Ottoman front,
the missionaries who hoped to convert him and his subjects to the 'True
Faith', the adventurers and spies who dreamed of strategic advantage and
commercial control. The essays assembled here also examine the various
initiatives launched by Persia's rulers towards the Spanish court, their
proposals for military cooperation or the sale of silk. Originating as a
conference held in 2013 at the Instituto de Historia del Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas in Madrid, this volume thus
sheds light on many little known aspects of the complex and multifaceted
relationship between these two empires in the Early Modern Period.</p> | | |
| American Apostles: When Evangelicals Entered the World of Islam | American Apostles: When Evangelicals Entered the World of Islam | Heyrman, Christine | | Hill and Wang | | 2015 | https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780809023981 | <p><strong>The surprising tale of the first American Protestant missionaries to proselytize in the Muslim world</strong></p><p>In <em>American Apostles</em>,
the Bancroft Prize-winning historian Christine Leigh Heyrman
brilliantly chronicles the first fateful collision between American
missionaries and the diverse religious cultures of the Levant. Pliny
Fisk, Levi Parsons, Jonas King: though virtually unknown today, these
three young New Englanders commanded attention across the United States
two hundred years ago. Poor boys steeped in the biblical prophecies of
evangelical Protestantism, they became the founding members of the
Palestine mission and ventured to Ottoman Turkey, Egypt, and Syria,
where they sought to expose the falsity of Muhammad's creed and to
restore these bastions of Islam to true Christianity. Not only among the
first Americans to travel throughout the Middle East, the Palestine
missionaries also played a crucial role in shaping their compatriots'
understanding of the Muslim world.As Heyrman shows, the missionaries
thrilled their American readers with tales of crossing the Sinai on
camel, sailing a canal boat up the Nile, and exploring the ancient city
of Jerusalem. But their private journals and letters often tell a story
far removed from the tales they spun for home consumption, revealing
that their missions did not go according to plan. Instead of converting
the Middle East, the members of the Palestine mission themselves
experienced unforeseen spiritual challenges as they debated with
Muslims, Jews, and Eastern Christians and pursued an elusive Bostonian
convert to Islam. As events confounded their expectations, some of the
missionaries developed a cosmopolitan curiosity about-even an
appreciation of-Islam. But others devised images of Muslims for their
American audiences that would both fuel the first wave of Islamophobia
in the United States and forge the future character of evangelical
Protestantism itself.</p><p><em>American Apostles </em>brings to life
evangelicals' first encounters with the Middle East and uncovers their
complicated legacy. The Palestine mission held the promise of
acquainting Americans with a fuller and more accurate understanding of
Islam, but ultimately it bolstered a more militant Christianity, one
that became the unofficial creed of the United States over the course of
the nineteenth century. The political and religious consequences of
that outcome endure to this day.</p> | | |
| Liberated Threads Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul | Liberated Threads Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul | Ford, Tanisha | University of North Carolina Press | | | 2015 | https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469625157/liberated-threads/?title_id=3688 | <p>In this thought-provoking book, Tanisha C. Ford explores how and why
black women in places as far-flung as New York City, Atlanta, London,
and Johannesburg incorporated style and beauty culture into their
activism. Focusing on the emergence of the “soul style”
movement—represented in clothing, jewelry, hairstyles, and
more—Liberated Threads shows that black women’s fashion choices became
galvanizing symbols of gender and political liberation. Drawing from an
eclectic archive, Ford offers a new way of studying how black style and
Soul Power moved beyond national boundaries, sparking a global fashion
phenomenon. Following celebrities, models, college students, and
everyday women as they moved through fashion boutiques, beauty salons,
and record stores, Ford narrates the fascinating intertwining histories
of Black Freedom and fashion.</p> | | |
| Stalin and the Lubianka: A Documentary History of the Political Police and Security Organs in the Soviet Union, 1922–1953 | Stalin and the Lubianka: A Documentary History of the Political Police and Security Organs in the Soviet Union, 1922–1953 | Shearer, David | Vladimir Khaustov | Yale University Press | | 2015 | http://yale.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.12987/yale/9780300171891.001.0001/upso-9780300171891 | <p>This documentary history explores Joseph Stalin's relationship with, and
manipulation of, the Soviet political police. The story follows the
changing functions, organization, and fortunes of the political police
and security organs from the early 1920s until Stalin's death in 1953,
and it provides documented detail about how Stalin used these organs to
achieve and maintain undisputed power. Although written as a narrative,
it includes translations of more than 170 documents from Soviet
archives.</p> | | |
| The First U.S. History Textbooks: Constructing and Disseminating the American Tale in the Nineteenth Century | The First U.S. History Textbooks: Constructing and Disseminating the American Tale in the Nineteenth Century | Joyce, Barry | | Rowman and Littlefield Press | | 2015 | https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498502153/The-First-U.S.-History-Textbooks-Constructing-and-Disseminating-the-American-Tale-in-the-Nineteenth-Century | <p>This book analyzes the common narrative residing in American History textbooks published in the first half of the 19th
century. That story, what the author identifies as the American
“creation” or “origins” narrative, is simultaneously examined as both
historic and “mythic” in composition. It offers a fresh,
multidisciplinary perspective on an enduring aspect of these works. The
book begins with a provocative thesis that proposes the importance of
the relationship between myth and history in the creation of America’s
textbook narrative. It ends with a passionate call for a truly inclusive
story of who Americans are and what Americans aspire to become.
The book is organized into three related sections. The first section
provides the context for the emergence of American History textbooks. It
analyzes the structure and utility of these school histories within the
context of antebellum American society and educational practices. The
second section is the heart of the book. It recounts and scrutinizes the
textbook narrative as it tells the story of America’s emergence from
“prehistory” through the American Revolution—the origins story of
America. This section identifies the recurring themes and images that
together constitute what early educators conceived as a unified cultural
narrative. Section three examines the sectional bifurcation and
eventual re-unification of the American History textbook narrative from
the 1850s into the early 20th
century. The book concludes by revisiting the relationship between
textbooks, the American story, and mythic narratives in light of current
debates and controversies over textbooks, American history curriculum
and a common American narrative.</p> | | |
| Women's Rights in the United States A History in Documents | Women's Rights in the United States A History in Documents | Boylan, Anne | | Oxford University Press | | 2015 | https://global.oup.com/academic/product/womens-rights-in-the-united-states-9780195338294?cc=us&lang=en& | <p><em>Women's Rights in the United States: A History in Documents</em>
uses a diverse collection of documents--including manifestoes, letters,
diaries, cartoons, broadsides, legal and court records, poems, satires,
advertisements, petitions, photographs, leaflets, maps, posters,
autobiographies, and newspapers--to examine major themes in the history
of women's rights and women's rights movements in the U.S. The documents
encompass the experiences of women from a wide range of racial, ethnic,
class, economic, sexual, marital, and social groups. The book covers
such topics as organized social movements; changing definitions of
rights and different women's access to rights; divisions among women
within women's rights movements; global contexts for women's rights
activism; and the question of what it means for women and men to be
"equal." Each chapter includes an introductory essay, and each document
has a headnote or long caption. A picture essay illuminates how both
suffragists and anti-suffragists employed cartooning to articulate their
political positions.</p> | | |
| El surgimiento de la cultura burguesa en la España del siglo XIX | El surgimiento de la cultura burguesa en la España del siglo XIX | Cruz, Jesus | | Siglio XXI | | 2014 | https://www.sigloxxieditores.com/libro/el-surgimiento-de-la-cultura-burguesa_17901/ | | | |
| How the Other Half Ate: A History of Working-Class Meals at the Turn of the Century | How the Other Half Ate: A History of Working-Class Meals at the Turn of the Century | Leonard Turner, Katherine | | | University of California Press | 2014 | https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520277588 | <p>In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, working-class
Americans had eating habits that were distinctly shaped by jobs,
families, neighborhoods, and the tools, utilities, and size of their
kitchens—along with their cultural heritage. How the Other Half Ate is a
deep exploration by historian and lecturer Katherine Turner that
delivers an unprecedented and thoroughly researched study of the
changing food landscape in American working-class families from
industrialization through the 1950s. Relevant to readers across
a range of disciplines—history, economics, sociology, urban studies,
women’s studies, and food studies—this work fills an important gap in
historical literature by illustrating how families experienced food and
cooking during the so-called age of abundance. Turner delivers an
engaging portrait that shows how America’s working class, in a multitude
of ways, has shaped the foods we eat today.</p> | | |
| Odyssey of a Bombardier: The POW Log of Richard M. Mason | Odyssey of a Bombardier: The POW Log of Richard M. Mason | Sidebotham, Steven | John Hurt | University of Delaware Press | | 2014 | https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781611495270/Odyssey-of-a-Bombardier-The-POW-Log-of-Richard-M.-Mason | <p>Odyssey of a Bombardier
is the illustrated Prisoner of War “log” that depicts the experiences
of bombardier Richard M. Mason in German prison camps after his B-17
“Flying Fortress” was shot down by the Germans in France in 1944, the
final year of World War II. The log follows Mason from the day his plane
crashed until his liberation in April, 1945, and his return home to the
United States. Included are such topics as medical treatment and
rehabilitation for wounded prisoners of the Germans, life in Stalag Luft
III, a difficult long march in an arctic winter to another camp, the
travails of prisoners in the overcrowded, filthy camp at Moosburg,
critical food shortages, and the arrival of General George Patton with
the liberating forces. Mason was an amateur artist and illustrated his
journal with moving depictions of prison life and comradeship. This book
shows U.S. airmen demonstrating grace and courage under pressure and
meeting every challenge that their imprisonment presented. </p> | | |
| Odyssey of a Bombardier: The POW Log of Richard M. Mason | Odyssey of a Bombardier: The POW Log of Richard M. Mason | Hurt, John | Steven E. Sidebotham | University of Delaware Press | | 2014 | | | | |
| Armsbearing and the Clergy in the History and Canon Law of Western Christianity | Armsbearing and the Clergy in the History and Canon Law of Western Christianity | Duggan, Lawrence | | Boydell & Brewer | | 2013 | https://boydellandbrewer.com/armsbearing-and-the-clergy-in-the-history-and-canon-law-of-western-christianity.html | <p>The history of the vexed relationship between clergy and warfare is traced through a careful examination of canon law.
In the first millennium the Christian Church forbade its
clergy from bearing arms. </p><p>In the mid-eleventh century the ban was
reiterated many times at the highest levels: all participants in the
battle of Hastings, for example, who had drawn blood were required to do
public penance. Yet over the next two hundred years the canon law of
the Latin Church changed significantly: the pope and bishops came to
authorize and direct wars; military-religious orders, beginning with the
Templars, emerged to defend the faithful and the Faith; and individual
clerics were allowed to bear arms for defensive purposes. This study
examines how these changes developed, ranging widely across Europe and
taking the story right up to the present day; it also considers the
reasons why the original prohibition has never been restored.</p> | | |
| Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy | Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy | May, Gay | | Basic Books | | 2013 | https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/gary-may/bending-toward-justice/9780465018468/ | <p>When the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870 granted African Americans the right
to vote, it seemed as if a new era of political equality was at hand.
Before long, however, white segregationists across the South
counterattacked, driving their black countrymen from the polls through a
combination of sheer terror and insidious devices such as complex
literacy tests and expensive poll taxes. Most African Americans would
remain voiceless for nearly a century more, citizens in name only until
the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act secured their access to the
ballot.In <em>Bending Toward Justice</em>, celebrated historian
Gary May describes how black voters overcame centuries of bigotry to
secure and preserve one of their most important rights as American
citizens. The struggle that culminated in the passage of the Voting
Rights Act was long and torturous, and only succeeded because of the
courageous work of local freedom fighters and national civil rights
leaders—as well as, ironically, the opposition of Southern
segregationists and law enforcement officials, who won public sympathy
for the voting rights movement by brutally attacking peaceful
demonstrators. But while the Voting Rights Act represented an
unqualified victory over such forces of hate, May explains that its
achievements remain in jeopardy. Many argue that the 2008 election of
President Barack Obama rendered the act obsolete, yet recent years have
seen renewed efforts to curb voting rights and deny minorities the act's
hard-won protections. Legal challenges to key sections of the act may
soon lead the Supreme Court to declare those protections
unconstitutional.A vivid, fast-paced history of this landmark piece of civil rights legislation, <em>Bending Toward Justice</em>
offers a dramatic, timely account of the struggle that finally won
African Americans the ballot—although, as May shows, the fight for
voting rights is by no means over.</p> | | |
| In God’s Empire: French Missionaries and the Modern World | In God’s Empire: French Missionaries and the Modern World | White, Owen | J.P. Daughton | Oxford University Press | | 2013 | https://global.oup.com/academic/product/in-gods-empire-9780195396447?cc=us&lang=en& | <p>A collection of original essays by leading scholars in the field, <em>In God's Empire</em>
examines the complex ways in which the spread of Christianity by French
men and women shaped local communities, French national prowess, and
global politics in the two centuries following the French Revolution.
More than a story of religious proselytism, missionary activity was an
essential feature of French contact and interaction with local
populations. In many parts of the world, missionaries were the first
French men and women to work and live among indigenous societies. For
all the celebration of France's secular "civilizing mission," it was
more often than not religious workers who actually fulfilled the daily
tasks of running schools, hospitals, and orphanages. While their work
was often tied to small villages, missionaries' interactions had
geopolitical implications. Focusing on many regions - from the Ottoman
Empire and North America to Indochina and the Pacific Ocean - this book
explores how France used missionaries' long connections with local
communities as a means of political influence and justification for
colonial expansion. <em>In God's Empire</em> offers readers both
an overview of the major historical dimensions of the French
evangelical enterprise, as well as an introduction to the theoretical
and methodological challenges of placing French missionary work within
the context of European, imperial, religious history, and world history.</p> | | |
| Public Law, Private Practice Politics, Profit, and the Legal Profession in Nineteenth-Century Japan | Public Law, Private Practice Politics, Profit, and the Legal Profession in Nineteenth-Century Japan | Flaherty, Darryl | | Harvard University Press | | 2013 | http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674066779 | <p>Long ignored by historians and
repudiated in their time, practitioners of private law opened the way
toward Japan’s legal modernity. From the seventeenth to the turn of the
twentieth century, lawyers and their predecessors changed society in
ways that first samurai and then the state could not. During the Edo
period (1600–1868), they worked from the shadows to bend the shogun’s
law to suit the market needs of merchants and the justice concerns of
peasants. Over the course of the nineteenth century, legal practitioners
changed law from a tool for rule into a new epistemology and laid the
foundation for parliamentary politics during the Meiji era (1868–1912).</p><p>This social and political history argues that legal modernity
sprouted from indigenous roots and helped delineate a budding nation’s
public and private spheres. Tracing the transition of law regimes from
Edo to Meiji, <strong>Darryl E. Flaherty</strong> shows how the legal profession
emerged as a force for change in modern Japan and highlights its lasting
contributions in founding private universities, political parties, and a
national association of lawyers that contributed to legal reform during
the twentieth century.</p> | | |
| Risk: Negotiating Safety in American Society | Risk: Negotiating Safety in American Society | Mohun, Arwen | | Johns Hopkins University Press | | 2013 | https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/risk | <p>Winner, 2014 Ralph Gomory Prize, Business History </p><p>Conference"Risk"
is a capacious term used to describe the uncertainties that arise from
physical, financial, political, and social activities. Practically
everything we do carries some level of risk—threats to our bodies,
property, and animals. How do we determine when the risk is too high? In
considering this question, Arwen P. Mohun offers a thought-provoking
study of danger and how people have managed it from pre-industrial and
industrial America up until today. </p><p>Mohun outlines a vernacular
risk culture in early America, one based on ordinary experience and
common sense. The rise of factories and machinery eventually led to
shocking accidents, which, she explains, risk-management experts and the
"gospel of safety" sought to counter. Finally, she examines the
simultaneous blossoming of risk-taking as fun and the aggressive
regulations that follow from the consumer-products-safety movement. </p><p>Risk
and society, a rapidly growing area of historical research, interests
sociologists, psychologists, and other social scientists. Americans have
learned to tame risk in both the workplace and the home. Yet many of us
still like amusement park rides that scare the devil out of us; they
dare us to take risks.</p> | | |
| The Monetary History of Iran: From the Safavids to the Qajars | The Monetary History of Iran: From the Safavids to the Qajars | Matthee, Rudi | Willem Floor and Patrick Clawson | I.B. Tauris | | 2013 | https://www.ibtauris.com/Books/Economics%20finance%20business%20%20management/Economics/Financial%20crises%20%20disasters/The%20Monetary%20History%20of%20Iran%20From%20the%20Safavids%20to%20the%20Qajars.aspx | <p>The monetary history of a country provides important insights into its
economic development, as well as its political and social history. This
book is the first detailed study of Iran's monetary history from the
advent of the Safavid dynasty in 1501 to the end of Qajar rule in 1925.
Using an array of previously unpublished sources in ten languages, the
authors consider the specific monetary conditions in Iran's modern
history, covering the use of ready money and its circulation, the
changing conditions of the country's mints and the role of the state in
managing money. Throughout the book, the authors also consider the
larger regional and global economic context within which the Iranian
economy operated. As the first study of Iran's monetary history, this
book will be essential reading for researchers of Iranian and economic
history.</p> | | |
| The Rise and Fall of Modern Empires, Volume I: Social Organisation | The Rise and Fall of Modern Empires, Volume I: Social Organisation | White, Owen | | Ashgate | | 2013 | https://www.routledge.com/The-Rise-and-Fall-of-Modern-Empires-Volume-I-Social-Organization/White/p/book/9781409433972 | <p>This collection brings together twenty-one articles that explore the
diverse impact of modern empires on societies around the world since
1800. Colonial expansion changed the lives of colonised peoples in
multiple ways relating to work, the environment, law, health and
religion. Yet empire-builders were never working with a blank slate:
colonial rule involved not just coercion but also forms of cooperation
with elements of local society, while the schemes of the colonisers
often led to unexpected outcomes. Covering not only western European
nations but also the Ottomans, Russians and Japanese, whose empires are
less frequently addressed in collections, this volume provides insight
into a crucial aspect of modern world history.</p> | | |
| Persia in Crisis: Safavid Decline and the Fall of Isfahan | Persia in Crisis: Safavid Decline and the Fall of Isfahan | Matthee, Rudi | | I.B. Tauris | | 2012 | https://www.ibtauris.com/Books/Humanities/History/Regional%20%20national%20history/Asian%20history/Middle%20Eastern%20history/Persia%20in%20Crisis%20Safavid%20Decline%20and%20the%20Fall%20of%20Isfahan.aspx | <p>The decline and fall of Safavid Iran is traditionally
seen as the natural outcome of the unrelieved political stagnation and
moral degeneration which characterised late Safavid Iran. "Persia in
Crisis" challenges this view. In this ground-breaking new book, Rudi
Matthee revisits traditional sources and introduces new ones to take a
fresh look at Safavid Iran in the century preceding the fall of Isfahan
in 1722, which brought down the dynasty and ushered in a long period of
turbulence in Iranian history. Inherently vulnerable because of the
country's physical environment, its tribal makeup and a small economic
base, the Safavid state was fatally weakened over the course of the
seventeenth century. Matthee views Safavid Iran as a network of
precarious alliances subject to perpetual negotiation and the society
they ruled as an uneasy balance between conflicting forces. In the later
seventeenth century this delicate balance shifted from cohesion to
fragmentation.</p><p>An increasingly detached, palace-bound shah; a
weakening link between the capital and the outlying provinces; the
regime's neglect of the military and its shortsighted monetary policies
combined to exacerbate rather than redress existing problems, leaving
the country with a ruler too feeble to hold factionalism and corruption
in check and a military unable to defend its borders against outside
attack by Ottomans and Afghans. The scene was set for the Crisis of
1722. This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of
Iranian history and the period that led to two hundred years of decline
and eclipse for Iran.</p> | | |
| Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon | Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon | Ott, Cindy | | University of Washington Press | | 2012 | http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/OTTPUM.html | <p>Why do so many Americans drive for miles each
autumn to buy a vegetable that they are unlikely to eat? While most
people around the world eat pumpkin throughout the year, North Americans
reserve it for holiday pies and other desserts that celebrate the
harvest season and the rural past. They decorate their houses with
pumpkins every autumn and welcome Halloween trick-or-treaters with
elaborately carved jack-o'-lanterns. Towns hold annual pumpkin festivals
featuring giant pumpkins and carving contests, even though few have any
historic ties to the crop.In this fascinating cultural and
natural history, Cindy Ott tells the story of the pumpkin. Beginning
with the myth of the first Thanksgiving, she shows how Americans have
used the pumpkin to fulfull their desire to maintain connections to
nature and to the family farm of lore, and, ironically, how small farms
and rural communities have been revitalized in the process. And while
the pumpkin has inspired American myths and traditions, the pumpkin
itself has changed because of the ways people have perceived, valued,
and used it. <em>Pumpkin</em> is a smart and lively study of the deep
meanings hidden in common things and their power to make profound
changes in the world around us.</p> | | |
| Reconsidering Untouchability Chamars and Dalit History in North India | Reconsidering Untouchability Chamars and Dalit History in North India | Rawat, Ramnarayan | | Permanent Black and Indiana University Press | | 2012 | http://permanent-black.blogspot.com/2012/05/major-contribution-to-dalit-history.html | <p>
Often
identified as leatherworkers or characterized as a criminal caste, the Chamars
of North India have long been stigmatized as untouchables. In this pathbreaking
study, Ramnarayan S. Rawat shows that in fact the majority of Chamars have
always been agriculturalists, and their association with the ritually impure
occupation of leatherworking has largely been constructed through Hindu,
colonial, and postcolonial representations of untouchability. </p><p>
</p><p>
Rawat
undertakes a comprehensive reconsideration of the history, identity, and
politics of this important Dalit group. Using Dalit vernacular literature,
local-level archival sources, and interviews in Dalit neighborhoods, he reveals
a previously unrecognized Dalit movement which has flourished in North India
from the earliest decades of the twentieth century and which has recently
achieved major political successes. </p> | | |
| Sources and Debates in Modern British History 1714 to the Present | Sources and Debates in Modern British History 1714 to the Present | Wasson, Ellis | | Wiley | | 2012 | https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Sources+and+Debates+in+Modern+British+History%3A+1714+to+the+Present-p-9781444333718 | <p>Designed to complement the author's </p><em>A History of Modern Britain</em><p>,
this collection of primary sources illuminates and augments the study
of modern Britain with coverage of political, imperial, and economic
history as well as class and cultural issues </p><ul><li>Features a
broad range of documents, in a well-structured and easy-to-use format,
including important, well-known documents and lesser-known excerpts
from memoirs and private correspondence</li><li>Provides up-to-date, balanced coverage of political, imperial, social, economic, and cultural history with over 180 documents</li><li>Offers
a thorough rendering of social class and national identity, including
coverage of changes in British society over the last 20 years</li><li>Includes
discussion questions for each document, as well as lists of historical
debates and extensive bibliographies of both on-line and traditional
sources for students' further research</li></ul> | | |
| The Early Medieval World: From the Fall of Rome to the Time of Charlemagne | The Early Medieval World: From the Fall of Rome to the Time of Charlemagne | Frassetto, Michael | | Gale | | 2012 | https://www.cengage.com/search/productOverview.do?N=197%204294904997%204294912463&Ntk=P_EPI&Ntt=151052886468432771476917548426536679&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial | <p>This book examines a pivotal period in ancient human history: the fall
of the Roman Empire and the birth of a new European civilization in the
early Middle Ages.</p> | | |
| Berenike and the Ancient Maritime Spice Route | Berenike and the Ancient Maritime Spice Route | Sidebotham, Steven | | University of California Press | | 2011 | https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520244306 | <p>The legendary overland silk road was not the only way to reach Asia for
ancient travelers from the Mediterranean. During the Roman Empire’s
heyday, equally important maritime routes reached from the Egyptian Red
Sea across the Indian Ocean. The ancient city of Berenike, located
approximately 500 miles south of today’s Suez Canal, was a significant
port among these conduits. In this book, Steven E. Sidebotham, the
archaeologist who excavated Berenike, uncovers the role the city played
in the regional, local, and “global” economies during the eight
centuries of its existence. Sidebotham analyzes many of the artifacts,
botanical and faunal remains, and hundreds of the texts he and his team
found in excavations, providing a profoundly intimate glimpse of the
people who lived, worked, and died in this emporium between the
classical Mediterranean world and Asia.
</p> | | |
| Campy - The Two Lives of Roy Campanella | Campy - The Two Lives of Roy Campanella | Lanctot, Neil | | Simon & Schuster | | 2011 | http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Campy/Neil-Lanctot/9781416547051 | <p><strong>ROY CAMPANELLA </strong>was the backbone of the great Brooklyn Dodgers
teams of the late 1940s and 1950s, alongside such other Hall of Famers
as Jackie Robinson and Duke Snider. An outstanding defensive catcher and
a powerful slugger, Campy won the National League MVP Award three
times. But everything changed on a rainy January night in 1958 when
Campy’s car skidded off the road and he was left paralyzed below the
neck. For the second time in his life, Roy Campanella would become a
pioneer, this time off the field. Neil Lanctot’s <em>Campy </em>is the magnificent, authoritative biography of this exuberant, gifted athlete.</p> | | |
| Reconsidering Untouchability Chamars and Dalit History in North India | Reconsidering Untouchability Chamars and Dalit History in North India | Rawat, Ramnarayan | | Permanent Black and Indiana University Press | | 2011 | http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=481808 | <p>Winner of the Joseph W. Elder Prize in the
Indian Social Sciences, American Institute of Indian StudiesHonorable
Mention, Association for Asian Studies, Bernard S. Cohn Prize</p><p>Often
identified as leatherworkers or characterized as a criminal caste,
Chamars of North India have long been stigmatized as untouchables. In
this pathbreaking study, Ramnarayan S. Rawat shows that in fact the
majority of Chamars have always been agriculturalists, and their
association with the ritually impure occupation of leatherworking has
largely been constructed through Hindu, colonial, and postcolonial
representations of untouchability. Rawat undertakes a comprehensive
reconsideration of the history, identity, and politics of this important
Dalit group. Using Dalit vernacular literature, local-level archival
sources, and interviews in Dalit neighborhoods, he reveals a previously
unrecognized Dalit movement which has flourished in North India from the
earliest decades of the 20th century and which has recently achieved
major political successes.</p> | | |
| The Rise of Middle-Class Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain | The Rise of Middle-Class Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain | Cruz, Jesus | | LSU Press | | 2011 | https://lsupress.org/books/detail/the-rise-of-middle-class-culture-in-nineteenth-century-spain/ | <p>In his stimulating study, Jesus Cruz examines middle-class
lifestyles—generally known as bourgeois culture—in nineteenth-century
Spain. Cruz argues that the middle class ultimately contributed to
Spain’s democratic stability and economic prosperity in the last decades
of the twentieth century.</p> | | |
| The Roots of English Colonialism in Ireland | The Roots of English Colonialism in Ireland | Montaño, John | | Cambridge University Press | | 2011 | https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/british-history-after-1450/roots-english-colonialism-ireland | <p>This is a major new study of the cultural foundations of the Tudor
plantations in Ireland and of early English imperialism more generally.
John Patrick Montaño traces the roots of colonialism in the key
relationship of cultivation and civility in Tudor England and shows the
central role this played in Tudor strategies for settling, civilising
and colonising Ireland. The book ranges from the role of cartography,
surveying and material culture – houses, fences, fields, roads and
bridges – in manifesting the new order to the place of diet, leisure,
language and hairstyles in establishing cultural differences as a site
of conflict between the Irish and the imperialising state and as a
justification for the civilising process. It shows that the ideologies
and strategies of colonisation which would later be applied in the New
World were already apparent in the practices, material culture and
hardening attitude towards barbarous customs of the Tudor regime.</p> | | |
| Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women's Activism in the Beauty Industry | Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women's Activism in the Beauty Industry | Gill, Tiffany | | University of Illinois Press | | 2010 | https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/86hdc8fp9780252035050.html | <h5>Awards and Recognition:</h5><p>Winner of the 2010 Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Award</p><p>A bold reassessment of black beauty salons as vital sites for social change.</p><p>Looking through the lens of black business history, <em>Beauty Shop Politics</em>
shows how black beauticians in the Jim Crow era parlayed their economic
independence and access to a public community space into platforms for
activism. Tiffany M. Gill argues that the beauty industry played a
crucial role in the creation of the modern black female identity and
that the seemingly frivolous space of a beauty salon actually has
stimulated social, political, and economic change. </p><p>From the
founding of the National Negro Business League in 1900 and onward,
African Americans have embraced the entrepreneurial spirit by starting
their own businesses, but black women's forays into the business world
were overshadowed by those of black men. With a broad scope that
encompasses the role of gossip in salons, ethnic beauty products, and
the social meanings of African American hair textures, Gill shows how
African American beauty entrepreneurs built and sustained a vibrant
culture of activism in beauty salons and schools. Enhanced by lucid
portrayals of black beauticians and drawing on archival research and
oral histories, <em>Beauty Shop Politics</em> conveys the everyday operations and rich culture of black beauty salons as well as their role in building community.</p> | | |
| Culture and Comfort: Parlor Making and Middle-Class Identity, 1850-1930 | Culture and Comfort: Parlor Making and Middle-Class Identity, 1850-1930 | Grier, Katherine | | Smithsonian Books | | 2010 | https://www.smithsonianbooks.com/store/history/culture-and-comfort-parlor-making-and-middle-class/ | <p>In <em>Culture and Comfort</em> Katherine C. Grier shows how the design and
furnishings of the mid-nineteenth century parlor reflected the
self-image of the Victorian middle class. Parlors provided public
facades for formal occasions and represented an attempt to resolve the
often opposing ideals of gentility and sincerity to which American
culture aspired. The book traces the fortunes of the parlor and its
upholstery from its early incarnations in “palace” hotels, railroad
cars, steamships, and photographers' studios; through its mid-century
heyday, when even remote frontier homes could boast “suites” of red
plush sofas and chairs; to its slow, uneven metamorphosis into the more
versatile living room. The author argues that even as the home
increasingly was seen as a haven from industralization and
commercialization, its ties to industry and commerce—in the form of more
affordable, machine-made furniture and drapery—became stronger.By
the 1920s the parlor's decline signaled both a blurring of the
Victorian distinctions between public and private manners and the
transfer of middle-class identity from the home to the automobile.
Describing the deportment a parlor required, the activities it
sheltered, and the marketing and manufacturing breakthroughs that made
it available to all, <em>Culture and Comfort</em> reveals the full range of cultural messages conveyed by nineteenth-century parlor materials.</p> | | |
| More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss | More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss | Davis, Rebecca | | Harvard University Press | | 2010 | http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674047969 | <p>The American fixation with marriage, so prevalent in today’s debates
over marriage for same-sex couples, owes much of its intensity to a
small group of reformers who introduced Americans to marriage counseling
in the 1930s. Today, millions of couples seek help to save their
marriages each year. Over the intervening decades, marriage counseling
has powerfully promoted the idea that successful marriages are essential
to both individuals’ and the nation’s well-being.</p><p><strong>Rebecca L. Davis</strong> reveals how couples and counselors
transformed the ideal of the perfect marriage as they debated sexuality,
childcare, mobility, wage earning, and autonomy, exposing both the
fissures and aspirations of American society. From the economic
dislocations of the Great Depression, to more recent debates over
government-funded “Healthy Marriage” programs, counselors have responded
to the shifting needs and goals of American couples. Tensions among
personal fulfillment, career aims, religious identity, and socioeconomic
status have coursed through the history of marriage and explain why the
stakes in the institution are so fraught for the couples involved and
for the communities to which they belong.</p> | | |
| Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music | Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music | Suisman, David | Susan Strasser | Harvard University Press | | 2010 | http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674064041 | <p>From Tin Pan Alley to grand opera, player-pianos to phonograph records, <strong>David Suisman</strong>’s <em>Selling Sounds</em>
explores the rise of music as big business and the creation of a
radically new musical culture. Around the turn of the twentieth century,
music entrepreneurs laid the foundation for today’s vast industry, with
new products, technologies, and commercial strategies to incorporate
music into the daily rhythm of modern life. Popular songs filled the air
with a new kind of musical pleasure, phonographs brought opera into the
parlor, and celebrity performers like Enrico Caruso captivated the
imagination of consumers from coast to coast.</p><p><em>Selling Sounds</em> uncovers the origins of the culture industry in
music and chronicles how music ignited an auditory explosion that
penetrated all aspects of society. It maps the growth of the music
business across the social landscape—in homes, theaters, department
stores, schools—and analyzes the effect of this development on
everything from copyright law to the sensory environment. While music
came to resemble other consumer goods, its distinct properties as sound
ensured that its commercial growth and social impact would remain
unique.</p><p>Today, the music that surrounds us—from iPods to ring tones to
Muzak—accompanies us everywhere from airports to grocery stores. The
roots of this modern culture lie in the business of popular song,
player-pianos, and phonographs of a century ago. Provocative, original,
and lucidly written, <em>Selling Sounds</em> reveals the commercial architecture of America’s musical life.</p> | | |
| The Role of Ruling Class Adaptability in the British Transition from Ancien Regime to Modern State | The Role of Ruling Class Adaptability in the British Transition from Ancien Regime to Modern State | Wasson, Ellis | | Mellen | | 2010 | https://mellenpress.com/book/THE-ROLE-OF-RULING-CLASS-ADAPTABILITY-IN-THE-BRITISH-TRANSITION-FROM-ANCIEN-REGIME-TO-MODERN-STATE-The-Open-Elite-of-Britain-and-Ireland-From-the-Middle-Ages-to-the-Second-World-War/8265/ | <p>Details how the landed elite openly absorbed a regular flow of new
members to the ruling class. It examines the transition of Britain from
aristocratic rule to democracy through a study of the Whig Party.</p> | | |
| A History of Modern Britain: 1714 to the Present | A History of Modern Britain: 1714 to the Present | Wasson, Ellis | | Wiley | | 2009 | https://www.wiley.com/en-us/A+History+of+Modern+Britain%3A+1714+to+the+Present-p-9781405139366 | <em>A History of Modern Britain: 1714 to the Present</em><p> presents a
lively introduction to the history of the modern British Isles from the
Hanoverian succession to the present day. </p><ul><li>Develops themes of tradition and change, the role of the four nations of the British Isles, and Britain in a world context</li><li>Complements
the narrative with descriptions of fascinating personalities from
Britain's past, from the arsonist James Aitken and the female
adventurer Jane Digby, to the celebrity footballer George Best</li><li>Includes
features to help orientate the reader: illustrations, maps, royal
family genealogies, chronology, and glossary; online supplements
include preliminary chapter from 1688</li></ul><p>An accompanying website containing additional support and materials for lecturers and students is available at <a href="http://www.wiley.com/go/wasson">www.wiley.com/go/wasson</a></p> | | |
| Activist Sentiments: Reading Black Women in the Nineteenth Century | Activist Sentiments: Reading Black Women in the Nineteenth Century | Foreman, Gabrielle | | University of Illinois Press | | 2009 | https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/99dnx8yq9780252034749.html | <p>Examining how nineteenth-century Black women writers engaged radical reform, sentiment and their various readerships</p><p><em>Activist Sentiments</em> takes as its subject
women who in fewer than fifty years moved from near literary
invisibility to prolific productivity. Grounded in primary research and
paying close attention to the historical archive, this book offers
against-the-grain readings of the literary and activist work of Harriet
Jacobs, Harriet Wilson, Frances E. W. Harper, Victoria Earle Matthews,
and Amelia E. Johnson. </p><p>Part literary criticism and part cultural history, <em>Activist Sentiments</em>
examines nineteenth-century social, political, and representational
literacies and reading practices. P. Gabrielle Foreman reveals how Black
women's complex and confrontational commentary--often expressed
directly in their journalistic prose and organizational
involvement--emerges in their sentimental, and simultaneously political,
literary production.</p> | | |
| Policing Stalin’s Socialism: Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924-1953 | Policing Stalin’s Socialism: Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924-1953 | Shearer, David | | Yale University Press | | 2009 | https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300149258/policing-stalins-socialism | <p>
</p><p><em>Policing Stalin’s Socialism</em> is one of the first
books to emphasize the importance of social order repression by Stalin’s
Soviet regime in contrast to the traditional emphasis of historians on
political repression. Based on extensive examination of new archival
materials, David Shearer finds that most repression during the Stalinist
dictatorship of the 1930s was against marginal social groups such as
petty criminals, deviant youth, sectarians, and the unemployed and
unproductive.</p><p> </p><p>It was because Soviet leaders regarded
social disorder as more of a danger to the state than political
opposition that they instituted a new form of class war to defend
themselves against this perceived threat. Despite the combined work of
the political and civil police the efforts to cleanse society failed;
this failure set the stage for the massive purges that decimated the
country in the late 1930s.</p> | | |
| Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction | Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction | Suisman, David | Susan Strasser | University of Pennsylvania Press | http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14680.html | 2009 | | <p>During the twentieth century sound underwent a dramatic transformation
as new technologies and social practices challenged conventional aural
experience. As a result, sound functioned as a means to exert social,
cultural, and political power in unprecedented and unexpected ways. The
fleeting nature of sound has long made it a difficult topic for
historical study, but innovative scholars have recently begun to analyze
the sonic traces of the past using innovative approaches. </p><em>Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction</em><p>
investigates sound as part of the social construction of historical
experience and as an element of the sensory relationship people have to
the world, showing how hearing and listening can inform people's
feelings, ideas, decisions, and actions.</p><p>The essays in <em>Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction</em>
uncover the varying dimensions of sound in twentieth-century history.
Together they connect a host of disparate concerns, from issues of
gender and technology to contests over intellectual property and
government regulation. Topics covered range from debates over listening
practices and good citizenship in the 1930s, to Tokyo Rose and Axis
radio propaganda during World War II, to CB-radio culture on the
freeways of Los Angeles in the 1970s. These and other studies reveal the
contingent nature of aural experience and demonstrate how a better
grasp of the culture of sound can enhance our understanding of the past.</p> | | |
| First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama’s Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction | First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama’s Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction | Kolchin, Peter | | The University of Alabama Press | | 2008, rev. ed. 1972 | http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/First-Freedom,2450.aspx | <p>Crucial changes occurred during the years following the Civil War as
blacks manifested their desire to live as independently as possible and
to reject every social relation reminiscent of slavery. This classic
study of the history of post-slave societies helped to initiate
historiographic trends that remain central to the study of emancipation.</p> | | |
| John Tyler in the American Presidents Series | John Tyler in the American Presidents Series | May, Gay | Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and Sean Wilentz | Times Book/Henry Holt and Co. | | 2008 | http://delcat.worldcat.org/title/john-tyler/oclc/226213269&referer=brief_results | <p>Traces the events of the tenth executive leader's presidency from his
unexpected ascent after the premature death of William Henry Harrison
and unpopular veto of a proposed Bank of the United States to his
indirect role in promoting secession.</p> | | |
