Browse

According to Our Hearts: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family

Angela Onwuachi-Willig

This book looks at what it means to be a multiracial couple in the United States today. It begins with a look back at a 1925 case in which a two-month marriage ends with a man suing his wife for ... More

This book looks at what it means to be a multiracial couple in the United States today. It begins with a look back at a 1925 case in which a two-month marriage ends with a man suing his wife for misrepresentation of her race, and shows how our society has yet to come to terms with interracial marriage. The book examines this issue by drawing from a variety of sources, including personal experiences. It argues that housing law, family law, and employment law fail, in important ways, to protect multiracial couples. In a society in which marriage is used to give, withhold, and take away status—in the workplace and elsewhere—the book says interracial couples are at a disadvantage, which is only exacerbated by current law.Less

The Athenaeum: More Than Just Another London Club

Michael Wheeler

When it was founded in 1824, the Athenæum broke the mold. Unlike in other preeminent clubs, its members were chosen on the basis of their achievements rather than on their background or political ... More

When it was founded in 1824, the Athenæum broke the mold. Unlike in other preeminent clubs, its members were chosen on the basis of their achievements rather than on their background or political affiliation. Public rather than private life dominated the agenda. The club, with its tradition of hospitality to conflicting views, has attracted leading scientists, writers, artists, and intellectuals throughout its history, including Charles Darwin and Matthew Arnold, Edward Burne-Jones and Yehudi Menuhin, Winston Churchill and Gore Vidal. This book is not presented in the traditional, insular style of club histories, but devotes attention to the influence of Athenians on the scientific, creative, and official life of the nation. From the unwitting recruitment of a Cold War spy to the welcome admittance of women, this lively and original account explores the corridors and characters of the club; its wider political, intellectual, and cultural influence; and its recent reinvention.Less

The Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders, and American Expansion

Jay Gitlin

Histories tend to emphasize conquest by Anglo-Americans as the driving force behind the development of the American West. However, this book argues that the activities of the French are crucial to ... More

Histories tend to emphasize conquest by Anglo-Americans as the driving force behind the development of the American West. However, this book argues that the activities of the French are crucial to understanding the phenomenon of westward expansion. The Seven Years War brought an end to the French colonial enterprise in North America, but the French in towns such as New Orleans, St. Louis, and Detroit survived the transition to American rule. French traders from mid-America, such as the Chouteaus and Robidouxs of St. Louis, then became agents of change in the West, perfecting a strategy of “middle grounding” by pursuing alliances within Indian and Mexican communities in advance of American settlement and re-investing fur trade profits in land, town sites, banks, and transportation. This book provides the missing French connection between the urban Midwest and western expansion.Less

Civil Society and Empire: Ireland and Scotland in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World

James Livesey

This book traces the origins of the modern conception of civil society—an ideal of collective life between the family and politics—not to England or France, as many of his predecessors have done, but ... More

This book traces the origins of the modern conception of civil society—an ideal of collective life between the family and politics—not to England or France, as many of his predecessors have done, but to the provincial societies of Ireland and Scotland in the eighteenth century. He shows how civil society was first invented as an idea of renewed community for the provincial and defeated elites in the provinces of the British Empire and how this innovation allowed them to enjoy liberty without directly participating in the empire's governance, until the limits of the concept were revealed. The concept of civil society continues to have direct relevance for contemporary political theory and action. The book demonstrates how Western governments, for example, have appealed to the values of civil society in their projections of power in Bosnia and Iraq. Civil society has become an object central to current ideological debate, and this book offers a thought-provoking discussion of its beginnings, objectives, and current nature.Less

Disorientations: Spanish Colonialism in Africa and the Performance of Identity

Susan Martin-Marquez

This book explores from a new perspective the fraught processes of Spaniards' efforts to formulate a national identity, from the Enlightenment to the present day. Focusing on the nation's ... More

This book explores from a new perspective the fraught processes of Spaniards' efforts to formulate a national identity, from the Enlightenment to the present day. Focusing on the nation's Islamic-African legacy, the book disputes received wisdom that Spain has consistently rejected its historical relationship to Muslims and Africans. Instead, it argues, Spaniards have sometimes denied and sometimes embraced this legacy, and that vacillation has served to destabilize presumably fixed borders between Europe and the Muslim world and between Europe and Africa. The book analyzes a wealth of texts produced by Spaniards as well as by Africans and Afro-Spaniards from the early nineteenth century forward. It illuminates the complexities and disorientations of Spanish identity and shows how its evolution has important implications for current debates not only in Spanish culture but also in other countries involved in negotiating a modern identity.Less

Domestic Subjects

Beth H. Piatote

Ned Blackhawk and Kate Shanley (eds)

Amid the decline of U.S. military campaigns against Native Americans in the late nineteenth century, assimilation policy arose as the new front in the Indian Wars, with its weapons the deployment of ... More

Amid the decline of U.S. military campaigns against Native Americans in the late nineteenth century, assimilation policy arose as the new front in the Indian Wars, with its weapons the deployment of culture and law, and its locus the American Indian home and family. In this interdisciplinary work, the author tracks the double movement of literature and law in the contest over the aims of settler-national domestication and the defense of tribal-national culture, political rights, and territory.Less

Female Alliances: Gender, Identity, and Friendship in Early Modern Britain

Amanda E. Herbert

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, cultural, economic, and political changes, as well as increased geographic mobility, placed strains upon British society. But by cultivating ... More

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, cultural, economic, and political changes, as well as increased geographic mobility, placed strains upon British society. But by cultivating friendships and alliances, women worked to socially cohere Britain and its colonies. Presenting an historical study of female friendship and alliance for the early modern period, this book draws on a series of interlocking microhistorical studies to demonstrate the vitality and importance of bonds formed between British women in the long eighteenth century. It shows that while these alliances were central to women's lives, they were also instrumental in building the British Atlantic world.Less

G.I. Messiahs: Soldiering, War, and American Civil Religion

Jonathan H Ebel

G.I. Messiahs examines soldier veneration in twentieth- and twenty-first century America and argues that soldiers are the theological center of American civil religion. This book also recognizes that ... More

G.I. Messiahs examines soldier veneration in twentieth- and twenty-first century America and argues that soldiers are the theological center of American civil religion. This book also recognizes that soldiers engage with and are shaped by the symbols, rituals, and mythologies of American civil religion and are thus its most committed, consistent practitioners. G.I. Messiahs builds this argument by examining episodes from the long American century in which the nation has interpreted itself through the bodies, words, and deeds of soldiers and by describing and analyzing soldiers’ struggles with the burdens placed on them. The aim of this book is to redirect conversations about American civil religion toward consideration of its contours as a lived tradition focused on the service, suffering, and sacrifice of the American soldier.Less

The Global Spread of Fertility Decline: Population, Fear, and Uncertainty

Jay Winter and Michael Teitelbaum

The world's population has grown by five billion people over the past century, an astounding 300 percent increase. Yet it is actually the decline in family size and population growth that is the ... More

The world's population has grown by five billion people over the past century, an astounding 300 percent increase. Yet it is actually the decline in family size and population growth that is the issue attracting greatest concern in many countries. This book looks at demographic trends in Europe, North America, and Asia—areas that now have low fertility rates—and argues that there is an essential yet often neglected political dimension to a full assessment of these trends. Political decisions that promote or discourage marriage and childbearing, facilitate or discourage contraception and abortion, and stimulate or restrain immigration all have played significant roles in recent trends.Less

Hanging Together: Unity and Diversity in American Culture

John Higham

Carl Guarneri (ed.)

How has America, with its many ethnic, class, and ideological divisions, allowed divergent groups to “hang together” as Americans? This book explores the ways in which Americans have conceived of a ... More

How has America, with its many ethnic, class, and ideological divisions, allowed divergent groups to “hang together” as Americans? This book explores the ways in which Americans have conceived of a national identity and demonstrates that an appreciation of America's kaleidoscopic diversity can be reconciled with an affirmation of its common national culture.Less

Heroic Failure and the British

Stephanie Barczewski

From the Charge of the Light Brigade to Scott of the Antarctic and beyond, it seems as if glorious disaster and valiant defeat have been essential aspects of the British national character for the ... More

From the Charge of the Light Brigade to Scott of the Antarctic and beyond, it seems as if glorious disaster and valiant defeat have been essential aspects of the British national character for the past two centuries. This book examines the evolution of British conceptions of heroism from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, with particular emphasis on the prevalence of heroic failure in British culture. It argues that Britain's embrace of heroic failure initially helped to gloss over the moral ambiguities of imperial expansion. Later, it became a strategy for coming to terms with diminishment and loss. Filled with compelling, moving, and often humorous stories from history, the book offers a fresh way of thinking about the continuing legacy of empire in British culture today.Less

Liberty for All: Reclaiming Individual Privacy in a New Era of Public Morality

Elizabeth Price Foley

In the opening chapter of this book, the author writes, “The slow, steady, and silent subversion of the Constitution has been a revolution that Americans appear to have slept through, unaware that ... More

In the opening chapter of this book, the author writes, “The slow, steady, and silent subversion of the Constitution has been a revolution that Americans appear to have slept through, unaware that the blessings of liberty bestowed upon them by the founding generation were being eroded.” She proceeds to explain how, by abandoning the founding principles of limited government and individual liberty, we have become entangled in a labyrinth of laws that regulate virtually every aspect of behavior and limit what we can say, read, see, consume, and do. The author contends that the United States has become a nation of too many laws, where citizens retain precious few pockets of individual liberty. With a close analysis of urgent constitutional questions—abortion, physician-assisted suicide, medical marijuana, gay marriage, cloning, and drug policy—she shows how current constitutional interpretation has gone astray. Without the bias of any particular political agenda, the author argues that we need to return to original conceptions of the Constitution and restore personal freedoms which have gradually diminished over time.Less

A Past of Possibilities: A History of What Could Have Been

Quentin Deluermoz and Pierre Singaravelou

What if history, as we know it, had run another course? Touching on alternate histories of the future and the past, or uchronias, this book encourages deeper consideration of watershed moments in the ... More

What if history, as we know it, had run another course? Touching on alternate histories of the future and the past, or uchronias, this book encourages deeper consideration of watershed moments in the course of history. Wide-ranging in scope, it examines the Boxer Rebellion in China, the 1848 revolution in France, and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, and integrates science fiction, history, historiography, sociology, anthropology, and film. In probing the genre of literature and history that is fascinated with hypotheticals surrounding key points in history, the book reaches beyond a mere reimagining of history, exploring the limits and potentials of the futures past. From the most bizarre fiction to serious scientific hypothesis, the book provides a survey of the uses of counterfactual histories, methodological issues on the possible in social sciences, and practical proposals for using alternate histories in research and the wider public.Less

Peak Pursuits: The Emergence of Mountaineering in the Nineteenth Century

Caroline Schaumann

European forays to mountain summits began in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with the search for plants and minerals and the study of geology and glaciers. Yet scientists were soon ... More

European forays to mountain summits began in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with the search for plants and minerals and the study of geology and glaciers. Yet scientists were soon captivated by the enterprise of climbing itself, enthralled with the views and the prospect of “conquering” alpine summits. Inspired by Romantic notions of nature, early mountaineers idealized their endeavors as sublime experiences, all the while deliberately measuring what they saw. As increased leisure time and advances in infrastructure and equipment opened up once formidable mountain regions to those seeking adventure and sport, new models of masculinity emerged that were fraught with tensions. This book examines how written and artistic depictions of nineteenth-century exploration and mountaineering in the Andes, the Alps, and the Sierra Nevada shaped cultural understandings of nature and wilderness in the Anthropocene.Less

Return from the Natives

Peter Mandler

Celebrated anthropologist Margaret Mead, who studied sex in Samoa and child-rearing in New Guinea in the 1920s and 1930s, was determined to show that anthropology could tackle the psychology of the ... More

Celebrated anthropologist Margaret Mead, who studied sex in Samoa and child-rearing in New Guinea in the 1920s and 1930s, was determined to show that anthropology could tackle the psychology of the most complex, modern societies in ways useful for waging the Second World War. This book follows Mead and her closest collaborators—her lover and mentor Ruth Benedict, her third husband Gregory Bateson, and her prospective fourth husband Geoffrey Gorer—through their triumphant climax, when she became the cultural ambassador from America to Britain in 1943, to her downfall in the Cold War. Part intellectual biography, part cultural history, and part history of the human sciences, it is a reminder that the Second World War and the Cold War were a clash of cultures, not just ideologies, and asks how far intellectuals should involve themselves in politics, at a time when Mead's example is cited for and against experts' involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.Less

Slavery and the Commerce Power: How the Struggle Against the Interstate Slave Trade Led to the Civil War

David L. Lightner

Despite the United States' ban on slave importation in 1808, profitable interstate slave trading continued. The nineteenth century's great cotton boom required vast human labor to bring new lands ... More

Despite the United States' ban on slave importation in 1808, profitable interstate slave trading continued. The nineteenth century's great cotton boom required vast human labor to bring new lands under cultivation, and many thousands of slaves were torn from their families and sold across state lines in distant markets. Shocked by the cruelty and extent of this practice, abolitionists called upon the federal government to exercise its constitutional authority over interstate commerce and outlaw the interstate selling of slaves. This book tells the complex story of the decades-long debate and legal battle over the federal regulation of the slave trade, exploring a wide range of constitutional, social, and political issues that absorbed antebellum America. It revises accepted interpretations of various historical figures, including James Madison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Abraham Lincoln, and argues convincingly that southern anxiety over the threat to the interstate slave trade was a key precipitant to the secession of the South and the Civil War.Less

Uniting America: Restoring the Vital Center to American Democracy

Norton Garfinkle and Daniel Yankelovich (eds)

This book rejects the myth of polarization. On topics ranging from the war on terrorism, health care, economic policy and Social Security, to religion, diversity and immigration, it argues that there ... More

This book rejects the myth of polarization. On topics ranging from the war on terrorism, health care, economic policy and Social Security, to religion, diversity and immigration, it argues that there are sensible, centrist solutions that are more in keeping with prevailing public sentiment and that would better serve the national interest. On issue after issue, the book shows how the conventional framing of the debate in Washington has misled Americans, creating a series of false dilemmas and forcing choices between two extremes—at the expense of more balanced and pragmatic policy solutions based on enduring American values. The book provides a blueprint for a fresh approach to American politics, grounded in moderation, pragmatism, and the shared values that unite Americans.Less

The Warm South: How the Mediterranean Shaped the British Imagination

Robert Holland

Ever since the age of the Grand Tour in the eighteenth century, the Mediterranean has had a significant pull for Britons — including many painters and poets — who sought from it the inspiration, ... More

Ever since the age of the Grand Tour in the eighteenth century, the Mediterranean has had a significant pull for Britons — including many painters and poets — who sought from it the inspiration, beauty, and fulfilment that evaded them at home. Referred to as ‘Magick Land’ by one traveller, dreams about the Mediterranean, and responses to it, went on to shape the culture of a nation. This book charts how a new sensibility arose from British engagement with the Mediterranean, ancient and modern. Ranging from Byron's poetry to Damien Hirst's installations, the book shows that while idealized visions and aspirations often met with disillusionment and frustration, the Mediterranean also offered a notably insular society the chance to enrich itself through an imagined world of colour, carnival, and sensual self-discovery.Less

Weimar: From Enlightenment to the Present

Michael H Kater

This book chronicles the rise and fall of one of Germany's most iconic cities in this history of Weimar. Weimar was a centre of the arts during the Enlightenment and hence the cradle of German ... More

This book chronicles the rise and fall of one of Germany's most iconic cities in this history of Weimar. Weimar was a centre of the arts during the Enlightenment and hence the cradle of German culture in modern times. Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller made their reputations here, as did Franz Liszt and the young Richard Strauss. In the early twentieth century, the Bauhaus school was founded in Weimar. But from the 1880s on, the city also nurtured a powerful right-wing reactionary movement, and fifty years later, a repressive National Socialist regime dimmed Weimar's creative lights, transforming the one-time artists' utopia into the capital of its first Nazified province and constructing the Buchenwald death camp on its doorstep. This book offers a complete history of Weimar, from its meteoric eighteenth-century rise up from obscurity through its glory days of unbridled creative expression to its dark descent back into artistic insignificance under Nazi rule and, later, Soviet occupation and beyond.Less

Women's Rights and Transatlantic Antislavery in the Era of Emancipation

Kathryn Kish Sklar and James Stewart (eds)

Two epochal developments profoundly influenced the history of the Atlantic world between 1770 and 1870—the rise of women's rights activism and the drive to eliminate chattel slavery. The chapters ... More

Two epochal developments profoundly influenced the history of the Atlantic world between 1770 and 1870—the rise of women's rights activism and the drive to eliminate chattel slavery. The chapters here investigate the intertwining histories of abolitionism and feminism on both sides of the Atlantic during this dynamic century of change. They illuminate the many ways that the two movements developed together and influenced one another. Approaching a wide range of transnational topics, the chapters ask how conceptions of slavery and gendered society differed in the United States, France, Germany, and Britain; how women's activism reached across national boundaries; how racial identities affected the boundaries of women's activism; and what was distinctive about African-American women's participation as activists. The book provides insights into the history of struggles for social justice across the Atlantic world.Less