Social and cultural history Books

Book SynopsisDetails the televising of the revolution in American civil rightsTrade Review "Acute insight into the complex interaction between social change and television programming during the 1960s."--American Journalism"Equal Time goes beyond news coverage and explores the portrayal of black and white characters in television dramas and comedies. . . . A readable and enjoyable book."--The Ottawa Citizen"Thoughtful, provocative, and well-researched. . . . This is an important book."--Journalism History"A thoroughly researched analysis of the intersection between race, social change, and network television in the 1960s. Bodroghkozy shows in vivid detail how television served as a powerful tool of moral persuasion that played a key role in turning the tide toward the passage of historic civil rights legislation."--S. Craig Watkins, author of The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future "Bodroghkozy's well-written, smart, and nuanced analysis makes us think about the relationship between the media and the Civil Rights Movement in fresh and interesting ways." --Susan J. Douglas, author of The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us from Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild "A valuable addition to the maturing scholarship on connections between the African American freedom struggle and the media. A compelling and thoughtful book of equal interest to students of the media and the freedom struggle."--The Journal of Southern History

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Book SynopsisDiscusses how race and blackness play out in operaTrade Review"Fascinating details from behind the scenes are uncovered. . . . . Recommended."--Choice "A treasury of historical information long unrelated or unknown. . . . This is a most valuable addition to anyone's operatic experience."--American Record Guide "An intriguing blend of different methodologies that all coalesce at the examination of how "blackness" is constructed in both canonical and lesser-known operas. This monograph will no doubt be viewed as one of the hallmarks of musicological scholarship in the years to come."--Women & Music"Absolutely riveting, full of new information and giving much food for thought."--Opera"Blackness in Opera provides an engrossing look into issues that have not been well documented by scholars."--Journal of the Society for American Music"A highly readable collection of interesting essays that come to terms with the deeply problematic treatment of black characters by opera composers and librettists and with the exceptional challenges facing black singers on the operatic stage. The volume will appeal to opera lovers and scholars alike."--Michael V. Pisani, author of Imagining Native America in Music

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Book SynopsisDiscusses evolving strategies against rape in Chicago courtsTrade Review"Rape in Chicago challenges scholars and activities to rethink their assumptions about rape, race, and the law. The work provides essential revisions to our historical understanding of sexual violence and is a much-needed addition to the literature."--Journal of Illinois History "Rape in Chicago contributes new arguments to emerging scholarship on the history of rape. It also provides a detailed analysis of how rape convictions were appealed over time in one major city."--American Historical Review "Rape in Chicago is a very significant book and Flood has done a masterful job of demonstrating how myths, once created, wind their way through history, reshaping themselves--or being reshaped--to conform to different historical exigencies."--H-Net Review / H-Law “With its holistic focus, and thorough analysis, this book has an insightful and novel perspective, and is a beneficial read for anyone attempting to understand the modern underpinnings of rape myths and the potential for the power of the individual agency to create change.”--Contemporary Sociology

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Book SynopsisArgues persuasively that the size, scope, and intensity of black resistance in the Second Seminole War makes it the largest sustained slave insurrection in American history.Trade ReviewHarry T. and Harriette V. Moore Award, Florida Historical Society, 2013. Bronze Medal, Florida Book Awards Nonfiction Category, 2013. "Offered new insightful research on Florida's unique role in slave resistance. . . . Recommended."--Choice"While discussing the nature of slave resistance in antebellum Florida, Rivers offers a convincing argument for unique conditions for rebellion in Florida. A fine analysis of slavery and resistance in Florida."--Journal of Social History"A masterful, comprehensive, and captivating analysis of resistance and absconding in Florida. Rivers fluidly and movingly examines the complex and highly differentiated experiences of the enslaved in Florida, and their variable reactions to that condition. A must read for those interested in their sweeping and compelling story."--Michael A. Gomez, author of Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora"A sweepingly impressive and admirably provocative study, Rebels and Runaways illuminates changes and meanings of slave resistance and armed rebellion. This important contribution offers a significantly sophisticated understanding of the complexities of resistance and rebellion to the tyranny of slavery."--Darlene Clark Hine, coeditor of Black Europe and the African Diaspora and The Black Chicago Renaissance"Most studies of antebellum slavery have either ignored or forgotten the bold actions of hundreds of enslaved Africans in Florida. Rivers's poignant study makes a strong case that this thrilling human drama--played out over many generations--constitutes perhaps the largest slave rebellion in American history. After reading this splendid book, historians and others interested in America's history will never look at slave resistance in the same way again."--James M. Denham, author of A Rogue's Paradise: Crime and Punishment in Antebellum Florida, 1821–1861"A satisfying and significant study, a model for other state-centered studies of runaway slaves."--American Historical Review"Rebels and Runaways: Slaves Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Florida provides a detailed account of three levels of slave defiance--typically nonviolent 'day-to-day' resistance, running away, and violent resistance. . . . Rebels and Runaways adds to the overwhelming evidence that slaves were not passive and continued to resist and run away despite the efforts of their owners to ensure that the slaves remained docile and at home."--The Journal of Southern History "Rivers's often insightful investigation of evolving forms and patterns of slave resistance underscores the gross imbalance of forces that slaves, individually and collectively, confronted in trying to acquire the space necessary to even think freedom a remote possibility."--Civil War History "A valuable--indeed indispensable--account that profoundly alters our understanding of slave protests and rebellion. Rivers offers perspectives that reach beyond Florida to embrace a regional and global context for a new understanding of freedom and unfreedom. Steeped in remarkable research, this is a must read book for anyone who studies slavery."--Orville Vernon Burton, author of The Age of Lincoln "Rebels and Runaways: Slave Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Florida is a marvelous history of the complex ways enslaved blacks resisted slavery and how their determined efforts impacted the larger American experience. Rivers is to be commended for telling the complicated and compelling story of the fight enslaved blacks faced against terrorism over their bodies, minds, and souls in America."--Martin Luther King, III, President and Chief Executive Officer, The King Center, Atlanta, Georgia "In this masterful undertaking, Larry E. Rivers fulfills a promise to illuminate the humanity of enslaved Floridians and argues convincingly that the Second Seminole War was 'a Negro, not an Indian War.' Rebels and Runaways makes it impossible for scholars to ignore the level of discontent among slaves in Florida."--Wilma King, Arvarh E. Strickland Distinguished Professor of History, University of Missouri, Columbia "Rebels and Runaways is the most important study of African American slave rebellions since the publication of Herbert Aptheker's Negro Slave Revolts. Larry E. Rivers does for the history of slave resistance in the United States what C. L. R. James's Black Jacobins did for the Haitian Revolution. Rivers faithfully portrays the aspirations of enslaved Africans in Florida with sensitivity, and he opens a new chapter on the history of slave revolution and race war in the Americas. This book will have a profound impact on the field for generations to come."--Paul Ortiz, associate professor of history, University of Florida "Rebels and Runaways is groundbreaking because, unlike other similar studies to date, it analytically addresses the Atlantic worldview held by some rebels and runaways and their impact on the multi-level patterns of slave resistance that developed over time in Florida. It focuses also on what these various levels of slave resistance meant to the overall expansion and development of the country as a whole. This is a solid and engaging study."--Freddie L. Parker, professor and chair of history, North Carolina Central University

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Book SynopsisOrganizing the "unorganizable"Trade Review"Lisa Phillips has written a first-rate account exploring the history of District 65 (originally Wholesale and Dry Good Workers, or WDGW). From the union's early days during the Depression in the 1930s, District 65 sought to navigate the complexities of American politics and provide a voice for low wage workers. Activists and students of labor history and politics should definitely read this book!"--American Historical Review"An interesting case study of Local 65 in New York from the Depression years through the 1960s. This 'renegade union' attempted to organize and improve the lives of low-wage workers (often African American and Jewish men and women). The book is meticulously researched, offers a unique case study, and is very well worth a close reading."--The Historian"A Renegade Union presents a much needed perspective on an array of topics that have received scant attention by scholars. With great flair and insightful details Philips places the history of District 65 and several other radical unions at the center of this analysis of the Civil Right Movement. . . . lucidly written and path-breaking. . . . Phillips makes a valuable contribution to the growing literature on labor organizing, civil rights campaigns, and community activism."--The Journal of African American History"The book is meticulously researched, offers a unique case study, and is very well worth a close reading."--The Historian"Phillips has presented a crucial study on how left-wing unionism not only survived the Cold War but also rebuilt momentum during the 1960s and 1970s to maintain their relevance in an increasingly hostile economic environment."--The Journal of American History"A Renegade Union deepens our understanding of how left-led unions in the mid-twentieth century distinguished themselves from other unions, and helps us see the possibilities for social movement unionism. Lisa Phillips's well-told story of District 65 will be welcomed by labor historians, civil rights scholars, labor activists, and interested general readers."--Rosemary Feurer, author of Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900–1950Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix List of Acronyms xiii Introduction 1 1. Community-Based, "Catch-All" Organizing on New York's Lower East Side 15 2. Getting beyond Racial, Ethnic, Religious, and Skill-Based Divisions 42 3. "Like a Scab over an Infected Sore": Full and Fair Employment during and after World War II 66 4. Attached from the Right and the Left: Community-Organizing, Civic Unionism during the Early Years of the Cold War 91 5. A Third Labor Federation? The Distributive, Processing, and Office Workers of America (DPO) 114 6. Community Organizing under the AFL-CIO Umbrella 137 Conclusion 167 Abbreviated Chronology 187 Notes 189 Index 221

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Book SynopsisOffers a sophisticated interrogation and reinterpretation of minstrelsy, significantly broadening historical views of black-white musical exchange.Trade ReviewIrving Lowens Book Award, Society for American Music (SAM), 2015. "The book is a fascinating journey from the waterways and barns of 19th-century America to the parchment and canvases of Mount and his depictions of our ever-changing landscape. Mr. Smith combines those observations with deep historical and archival research, illuminating the vast multi-ethnic cultural exchange that lies at the heart of what it means to be American." --Rhiannon Giddens, Wall Street Journal "This books provides a new set of roots for minstrelsy, an intriguing look at popular culture in early American among non-elites, and an innovative method of using multiple disciplines and sources, which in many ways should be a model for historians to think about the past from different angles."--Register of the Kentucky Historical Society "This erudite, extensively researched, and persuasively argued study sheds important new lights on the origins (especially music and movement) of American blackface minstrelsy. Highly Recommended."--Choice"The Creolization of American Culture is heavily dependent on extensive archival research, and. . . . will be invaluable to researchers. . . .It is a pleasure to read a work grounded in primary sources."--Art Libraries Society of North America"A dazzling addition to the literature on American popular music and its history. The Creolization of American Culture is fresh, vital, compelling, and deeply pertinent to understanding a world in which we yet live."--Dale Cockrell, author of Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World"More than just a book about the artist William Sidney Mount, this study is also an interrogation and reinterpretation of the scholarship on minstrelsy, a topic of increasing importance in interpreting American cultural history. This outstanding piece of work advances our understanding of the black-white vernacular music and dance that took place in colonial America and the early republic."--Jeff Todd Titon, author of Early Downhome Blues"Smith broadens an understanding of a vital stage in the development of American vernacular and popular culture and continues 'minstrelsy's rehabilitation' in scholarly research."--Volume !"Inspired by the work of Lott, Lhamon, and Cockrell, Smith advances an exciting vein of scholarship seeking to recuperate, theorize and historicize one of America's more curious and enduringly relevant cultural moments."--Journal of Folklore Research "In this thoroughly researched and well-documented study, Christopher J. Smith. . . incorporates a dialogue of scholarship on the history of blackface minstrelsy, biographical information on early blackface performers, and musicology and iconography research to offer not only the story of one man, but also a reinterpretation of American culture."--History: Reviews of New Books "The thesis of this book is refreshing, the analysis sparkling, and the argument grounded in the most exacting and superbly supported research. . . . A major contribution to the scholarship."--The Journal of American Culture "An important piece of scholarship that . . . offers significant insights into the development and meaning of blackface minstrelsy."--JWPM

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Book SynopsisClass turmoil, labor, and law and order in Chicago In this book, Sam Mitrani cogently examines the making of the police department in Chicago, which by the late 1800s had grown into the most violent, turbulent city in America. Chicago was roiling with political and economic conflict, much of it rooted in class tensions, and the city''s lawmakers and business elite fostered the growth of a professional municipal police force to protect capitalism, its assets, and their own positions in society. Together with city policymakers, the business elite united behind an ideology of order that would simultaneously justify the police force''s existence and dictate its functions. Tracing the Chicago police department''s growth through events such as the 1855 Lager Beer riot, the Civil War, the May Day strikes, the 1877 railroad workers strike and riot, and the Haymarket violence in 1886, Mitrani demonstrates that this ideology of order both succeeded and failed in its aims. RecasTrade Review"A fine contribution to police history. Recommended."--Choice "The author tells a compelling story. Richly researched and nicely written it can be recommended to all interested in Chicago political labor history. It shows how the police were created and developed due to immigrant workers and new ideologies finding their way in America."--Journal of Illinois History"A valuable, well-informed examination of the formative period in the development of the American police."--The Journal of American History "Sam Mitrani's excellent book, The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850-1894 provides a very timely analysis of the growth of the professional police force in the United States. . . . Mitrani's analysis provides a crucial view into the 'messiness and contradictory nature of state building' and highlights how such institutions are shaped, and reshaped by specific interest in order to meet their needs. This book is a must for students of organized labor, police power, and urban development alike."--Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society"Sam Mitrani's The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850-1894 offers a timely consideration of the relationship between democracy, industrial capitalism, and state building. . . . The result is a well-argued and researched analysis with important insights for those interested in questions related to the late nineteenth-century capitalism, the rise of the state, and the diminishing of democracy."--Labor"This excellent book leaves no doubt that in Chicago, 'a military-style police department' emerged not as a general manifestation of the modernization of urban services but 'to keep order in the face of the threats posed by a mobile class of wage workers.'"--The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era"A compelling story. Richly researched and nicely written it can be recommended to all interested in Chicago political and labor history. . . . Thanks to Sam Mitrani, we have a better understanding of the rise of the Chicago Police Department in nineteenth-century America."--Journal of Illinois History

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Book SynopsisWith the biography of Anna Howard Shaw (1847-1919), this book focuses on an important woman suffrage leader who has too often been overlooked and misunderstood. It shows how circumstances and choices both impacted Shaw's role in the woman suffrage movement and set her apart from her native-born, middle- and upper-class colleagues.Trade ReviewA Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2014. "A thoughtful addition to our understanding of an important figure in the suffrage movement. It will do what its author intends: force all students of women's history to reevaluate Anna Howard Shaw as well as the clichéd doldrums of the movement."--American Historical Review"While this is a scholarly work of remarkable academic acumen, its polished, passionate prose and intellectually stimulating content make it an accessible and thoroughly compelling read for anyone. Essential."--Choice"Trisha Franzen has compiled two decade's worth of research to restore Shaw to her proper place in history. Franzen's work is well rounded, intriguing, and appeals to both a scholarly and a general audience. The author accomplishes her goal of blending the political with the personal, depicting Shaw's reality with a critical eye."--The Michigan Historical Review"Anna Howard Shaw's story is remarkable. Trisha Franzen has combined impressive access to sources with judicious use of evidence to produce a compelling book."--Kathryn Kish Sklar, author of Women's Rights Emerges Within the Anti-Slavery Movement"A welcome and long-overdue shift in focus… Shaw led an important life and, as Franzen notes, certainly deserves a prominent place in the United States and women's history."--Journal of American Studies

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Book SynopsisExplores US women's sport through historical "points of change": particular products or trends that dramatically influenced both women's participation in sport and cultural responses to women athletes.Trade ReviewHonorable Mention in U.S. History, PROSE Awards, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers, 2015. "Qualifying Times continues and deepens important discussions among scholars in recent decades concerning power, gender and athleticism. . . . a germinal text in the sense that it will certainly have influence, in myriad ways, on future work in sport history."--Journal of Sport History"Schultz has written an engaging and readable book detailing the points of change that she hopes will call into question the traditional 'eras' of sports history. Should be considered by all sports fans."--Library Journal"Spirited and thought-provoking."--Women's Review of Books "Schultz examines the persistent divide between athleticism and feminism. Recommended."--Choice"Qualifying Times provides a compelling read for everyone interested in the U.S. sporting past and present. Not only is Schultz's writing rich in source materials, small case studies and illustrative media images, it is also clear, to the point, and (appropriately) witty. While Schultz identifies common themes throughout all parts of the book, each chapter is a study in its own right. For this reason, as well as its clear and contextually rich character, the individual chapters make for perfect teaching material for classes in sport sociology, history, and/or women's studies."--Sport in American History"The next seminal work in the history of women's sport, beautifully written and cogently argued. Schultz builds on existing scholarship while also adding to it--no one else has examined the history of commonplace but important items and their role in the gendering of sport."--Sarah K. Fields, author of Female Gladiators: Gender, Law, and Contact Sport in America

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Book SynopsisExamines the conceptualization and staging of race through the performance, sometimes coerced, of black dance from the slave ship to the minstrel stage.Trade ReviewA Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2014. "Thompson forces readers to rethink the place and meaning of performance in early America. ...Ring Shout stands as one of the more intriguing new works on slavery and performance."--Civil War Book Review"Provides a thorough examination of the "complex and conflicting roles" of music and dance in the lives of the enslaved, arguing that double consciousness was one result of the "paradoxical dynamic of agency, masquerade, and subjugation" found in black performances."--The Journal of Southern History"Thompson's extraordinary book relates the story behind the story of the genesis of blackface minstrelsy as the first entertainment form in the new US. Essential."--Choice"Thompson has written a powerful study whose implications reach beyond distant American history or the preconceptions of ‘black studies’ to ask urgent questions about African American identity.”--Times Literary Supplement"Thompson offers the first cultural history of how music and dance shaped Euro-American and African American identities and how these American culture producers manipulated the performing arts to mold public perception. . . . On virtually every page of Ring Shout, Wheel About, Thompson perceptively deconstructs this complicated quartet of music, dance, slavery, and American culture, and she brilliantly organizes her argument around a 'page to stage' metaphor of theatrical production. . . . Ring Shout, Wheel About succeeds tremendously in historicizing racial stereotyping well before blackface and in explicating the many uses Europeans, Africans, African Americans, Euro-Americans, southerners, and northerners found for music and dance."--Register of the Kentucky Historical Society"Katrina Dyonne Thompson makes an important contribution to our understanding of slavery and racial formation. An engaging, well-argued book that uses the contested areas of dance and music to explore the many worlds of slavery and the cultural development of both blacks and whites. Ring Shout, Wheel About will take its rightful place alongside its academic forbearers, and should be the standard to follow for years to come."--Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society"Northern antebellum minstrel shows were ugly enough, clearly indebted to the economics and racist hierarchies of slavery, however politically ambiguous they sometimes were. But reaching back centuries before them, Thompson brings into view a variety of scenes and situations, as brutal as they were familiar, involving the coercion of music and dance from enslaved persons by white slavers and masters."--American Historical Review"A compelling and important contribution to the study of slavery, race, and American entertainment. . . . Thompson's argument is clear and convincing: the performances demanded of slaves were central to white 'attempts to define blackness and slavery."--Ohio Valley History "A vital read for those seeking to understand the complicated legacy of race and bondage in popular culture."--H-Net Reviews "Ring Shout, Wheel About is more than a study of slave music and dance. Katrina Dyonne Thompson provides a sophisticated analysis of how slave dance and musical performances contributed to historical and contemporary stereotypes of African Americans. . . . The book's insights on the African American experience from the time of enslavement to present-day performances of and by African Americans on radio, television, and film should generate considerable discussion into the construction and persistence of racial stereotypes in the United States."--Journal of the Early Republic "Thompson enhances the depth of scholarly knowledge on enslaved Africans' resistance and cultural retentions. . . . Ring Shout, Wheel About demonstrates emphatically that African people directed their own entertainment behind the scenes, outside the gaze of white oppressors."--The Journal of African American History "Important reading for anyone who wants to understand the history of the performing arts and race in America. What is seemingly a simple topic--enslaved people's performance of music and dance--achieves great complexity and delivers tremendous returns in Katrina Thompson's able hands."--Diane Mutti-Burke, author of On Slavery's Border: Missouri's Small Slaveholding Households, 1815-1865

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Book SynopsisFocusing on institutional history, this book explores the Pekin Theater's philosophy of hiring only African American staff, its embrace of multi-racial upper class audiences, and its ready assumption of roles as diverse as community center, social club, and fundraising instrument.Trade Review"The Pekin's heretofore neglected background and setting are amply supplied in this superb book. . . . [It] makes a truly important statement about how theaters were embedded in their communities and how the impact of a place such as the Pekin could affect the reputation and business prospects of its neighbors in extraordinary ways." --Thomas Riis, author of Frank Loesser"Impressive. . . . Anyone who is interested in African-American theater, or even in the history of social consciousness and art in Chicago, can benefit from this clearly written and well-researched exploration of a nearly forgotten playhouse."--South Side Weekly"Fascinating and enlightening."--Nick Digilio, WGN Chicago"An important contribution to the field. . . . Bauman's research is remarkable. Highly recommended."--Choice"Musicologist Thomas Bauman directs his prodigious research skills to reconstruct the rise and fall of a single (and singular) institution: Chicago's first black-owned theater, the Pekin. . . . Bauman painstakingly recreates a timeline of performances and offers a sense of the theater's critical reception in black and white newspapers, and understanding of its financial challenges, and a grasp of the role it played within the community." American Music"The Pekin is a comprehensive work that provides important insights into a lesser known period of African American theater history in Chicago. . . . This book is an important addition to the historical narratives on African American theater in the early twentieth century."--The Journal of African American History"It's clear from first glance that Bauman has done something extraordinary in filling in and out one of the biggest gaps in American theater history by narrating the social, cultural, and political biography of both Robert T. Motts himself and of his Pekin Theater of Chicago."--Vershawn Ashanti Young, author of From Bourgeois to Boojie: Black Middle-Class Performances

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Book SynopsisCritics often characterize white consumption of African American culture as a form of theft that echoes the fantasies of 1950s-era bohemians, or "White Negroes," who romanticized black culture as anarchic and sexually potent. The author claims such a view fails to describe the varied politics of racial crossover over the years.Trade ReviewLois P. Rudnick Book Prize, New England American Studies Association, 2014. "[Davis's] readings are astute and innovative. Her study of the cross-racial empathy of white rappers and her comparison/contrast of Do the Right Thing and Crash are especially effective. With a solid scholarly foundation, she takes real risks in her thinking about race." --Cecilia Konchar Farr, author of Reading Oprah: How Oprah's Book Club Changed the Way America Reads"Davis’s book is a timely analysis of the relationship between audience reception and antiracist action. . . . Davis’s argument goes beyond the claim that educating whites in African American history and culture can lead to antiracist reading practices to say that antiracist reading is one part of white engagement with African American culture more broadly."--Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History

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Book SynopsisThe first African American to head a branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL), Regina Andrews led an extraordinary life. Allied with W E B Du Bois, she fought for promotion and equal pay against entrenched sexism and racism. This book offers the portrait of Andrews' activism.Trade ReviewOutstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation, Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA), 2015. Wheatley Book Award for First Nonfiction, Harlem Book Fair and QBR: The Black Book Review, 2015. "[A] much-needed, essential study. By placing Regina Andrews' life and work in historical and familial context, the author provides insight into Andrews' significant contributions to the twentieth century and the Harlem Renaissance."--Verner Mitchell, coauthor of Literary Sisters: Dorothy West and Her Circle, A Biography of the Harlem Renaissance“Andrews was a fascinating librarian. . . . Fans of the Harlem Renaissance will enjoy this book.”--Library Journal"Students of the Harlem Renaissance have long known of Regina Anderson Andrews' significance. What was missing, however, was a book-length study. Ethelene Whitmire has filled that need with her prize-winning biography."--Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society"An essential read for anyone looking to understand the role of public librarianship, library science’s relationship to activism, and diversity within the profession." --BookRiot

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Book SynopsisFrom work songs to skiffle, from the Weavers in Greenwich Village to Burl Ives on the BBC, this book offers a wide-ranging consideration of a time, a movement, and a transformative period in American and British pop culture.Trade Review"Much has been written about the folk revival, but this book is unusual in examining its progression in both the US and Britain. Folk-music fans might be unaware that there was strong interest in American and British folk music before the highly publicized revival, and Cohen and Donaldson have done that important research. Highly Recommended."--Choice“The hugely engaging tome focuses its attention primarily on 1950 to 1958 or what you can think of as the period between the blacklisting of the Weavers and the rise of the Kingston Trio. . . . What Cohen and Donaldson’s book does so effectively is it maps the development chronologically, so it’s easy to see how we got from the Weavers to skiffle via the ‘Rock Island Line’ and finally to Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village. . . . Roots of the Revival is accessible and, for anyone with even a passing interest in folk music, absolutely fascinating.”— Shire Folk"Roots of the Revival is an indispensable text for scholars interested in the relationship between 'folk' and 'pop' at midcentury. It is more than simply a prehistory of 1960s folk activities, instead demonstrating how musicians, folklorists, and audiences navigated the concerns and events particular to the decade."--Notes"Although there are other books and memoirs about the American folk revival, and some treatment of the revival in England, no one has thought to compare and analyze both of them together."--Richard Weissman, author of Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution: Music and Social Change in America"A detailed account of the revival's factual history and many revealing anecdotes about its participants… Roots of the Revival is a significant addition to the scholarship on the 1950s folk music revival."--Journal of Folklore Research"A solidly researched, well-written account of a significant decade in American and English vernacular music history."--Western Folklore

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Book SynopsisConsider the usual view of film noir: endless rainy nights populated by down-at-the-heel boxers, writers, and private eyes stumbling toward inescapable doom while stalked by crooked cops and cheating wives in a neon-lit urban jungle. This book offers a collection of essays that reassesses the genre's iconic style, history, and themes.Trade ReviewNominee for Edgar® Award, Best Critical/Biographical category, 2015. A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2015. "A thrilling example of the possibilities of renewed scholarly attention to the classic noir period. Its broad range of novel topics and uniformly astute analyses reframe and open up the field of film noir study in provocative and insightful ways that herald a new phase in scholarship not only of the genre but of Classic Hollywood itself."--David Greven, author of Psycho-Sexual: Male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese, and Friedkin"An invaluable resource for anyone interested in film noir. Essential."-Choice“The essays in Kiss the Blood off My Hands seek fresh angles on a genre that has attracted so much scholarship that the academic field has its own worn tropes: German Expressionism, post-war ambience, gender politics. Several essays in Robert Miklitch’s edited collection advance the study of film noir by attending to previously neglected aspects of style.”--Times Literary Supplement

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Book SynopsisFocusing on dominant tendencies in box office hits and Oscar-recognized classics, the author breaks down the so-called classic period into six distinct phases that follow Hollywood's diverse offerings from the emancipated females of the "Transition Era" and the traditional men and women of the conservative 1930s.Trade Review“Panoramic overviews alternate with convincing close readings of dozens of well-known films. . . . In confronting and developing these classic film texts, Pravadelli has produced her own outstanding reading of Hollywood classical style. Highly Recommended.”--Choice "Veronica Pravadelli looks back at the classical Hollywood cinema with a powerful magnifying glass. What comes into full view are not only new details, but an entire new geography. Trends, dividing lines, stylistic choices, plots, questions of gender, become much clearer. The result is a cutting edge analysis, surprising and convincing." --Francesco Casetti, author of Eye of the Century: Film, Experience, Modernity"Pravadelli's examination and contextualization of on-screen gender dynamics of the 1930s-1960s makes a valuable contribution to film studies."--Journalism History"Exceptionally well-argued and absorbing." --Screen"[An] exceptionally well-argued and absorbing book." --Screen"Pravadelli has surprising and provocative things to say about genres, and she makes interesting arguments about how certain genres or film cycles can be periodized. Another important aspect of her ambitious book is the feminist perspective she brings to Hollywood history."--James Naremore, author of More than Night: Film Noir and Its Contexts"One of those books that makes big claims that stretch over time. Pravadelli has read and absorbed a huge archive of feminist film theory. The degree of her knowledge of this archive from the 1980s through the millennium is impressive. What she has done, and is also impressive, is to offer a certain slant on this research. Another virtue is the way in which she incorporates interdisciplinary work in feminist studies giving more attention than is often given to changes in women's lives."--E. Ann Kaplan, author of Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewC. Calvin Smith Award, Southern Conference on African American Studies (SCAASI), 2016. "Guzmán adroitly opens a window onto the relations between African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Anglos while illuminating the challenges and barriers Dr. Nixon confronted as he labored to keep bodies well and hope alive." --Darlene Clark Hine, author of Black Victory: The Rise and Fall of the Texas White Primary "This book breaks new ground in an area scholars have seldom tackled. Highly recommended."--Choice "An ambitious and courageous professional and activist, Nixon's life and works rightfully deserve scholarly attention. With his exploration of archival and oral history sources, Will Guzman has undertaken an important subject."--Southern Spaces "A much-needed addition to borderlands, U.S. West, and African American scholarship."--West Texas Historical Review"Guzmán's engaging and accessible writing style really brings this story to life, making it a perfect fit for undergraduate and graduate students as well as general audiences. --Civil Rights in the Texas Borderlands is a must read for anyone interested in Texas history, African American history, and the Southwest borderlands." --Western Historical Quarterly"This worthwhile study contributes to borderlands history and the literature on black physicians in the civil rights movement, and it shifts the Jim Crow terrain to the American Southwest."--Journal of Southern History"Will Guzmán has written an excellent, thorough life story of one of the twentieth century's most influential civil rights activists."--Southwestern Historical Quarterly"Guzmán's narrative establishes Nixon's importance for the equal rights campaigns in El Paso and explains convincingly how his actions, decisions, and legal battles influenced the national movement."--Journal of African American History "Will Guzmán's gracefully written biography of Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon is a valuable addition to studies of the borderlands and the political and civil rights struggles of residents in underserved communities. Guzmán adroitly opens a window onto the relations between African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Anglos while illuminating the challenges and barriers Dr. Nixon confronted as he labored to keep bodies well and hope alive."--Darlene Clark Hine, author of Black Victory: The Rise and Fall of the Texas White Primary "Will Guzmán restores Lawrence A. Nixon to his proper place as one of the borderland's leading African American physicians and a pioneering opponent of Jim Crow."--Karl Jacoby, author of Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History "More than a biography, Will Guzmán's book offers a fresh window onto the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Guzmán skillfully brings together African American history, western history, Chicana/o history, and the history of medicine into a fascinating and lively account of civil rights pioneer Lawrence Nixon."--Pablo Mitchell, author of Coyote Nation: Sexuality, Race, and Conquest in Modernizing New Mexico, 1880–1920 "This well-researched book makes a major contribution to multiple fields including Black studies, Chicano studies, the civil rights movement, and the history of medicine."--Gerald Horne, author of Black and Brown: African Americans and the Mexican Revolution, 1910–1920

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Exploratory and rich in its investigation of multi-sensory critical methods as well as in its pursuit of the aural flaneur."--French Studies"In an innovative effort to provide an auditory history of Paris, Boutin mined the works of 19th-century writers, poets, composers, and painters for descriptions of or images evoking the cris de Paris. Recommended."--Choice"Boutin convinces us both of the possibility and the value in probing the sounds of the city of light in the nineteenth century."--Nineteenth Century Contexts "Boutin does not shy away from the inevitable tensions between text and context arising from the analysis of literary, journalistic or visual discourse." --Transposition"Readers from all disciplines will appreciate Boutin's elegant prose and her convincing argument that the City of Light has always been a city of sound."--Canadian Journal of History"This richly documented and timely book makes an important contribution to studies in sensory history and enriches our understanding of the context in which nineteenth-century French poetry developed, illuminating the visceral shocks of modernity which writers placed at the heart of their work."--Nineteenth Century French Studies"Boutin provides a particular perspective on comprehending nineteenth-century Paris as a "city of noise," and it is a rich one."--H-France Review"In City of Noise, Aimée Boutin raises fresh critical questions about the status of sound, music, and noise that transform our understanding of nineteenth-century Parisian soundscapes. Starting with a familiar nineteenth-century Parisian figure--the flâneur--Boutin turns our attention to an under-explored facet of the flâneur: the sounds and noises encountered on a stroll through the city. Boutin offers lively discussions of rarely considered first-hand accounts of the different types of street music and street cries heard in the Parisian cityscape. By taking the unique perspective of the peddler, City of Noise brings that world to life in a way that has never been tackled before. Boutin offers a real sense of how noisy Paris was and how these noises affected its citizens and their way of going about their daily business. The vast array of multimedia materials considered here (from poetry to music criticism, to guidebooks and visual sketches) means that City of Noise will be of interest to scholars, students and amateurs of nineteenth-century Paris alike."--Helen Abbott, University of Sheffield "City of Noise treats a timely, original, and intellectually rich topic: the street sounds of Paris in the nineteenth century and, no less essential, the experience, meaning, and depiction of those sounds."--James H. Johnson, author of Listening in Paris: A Cultural History "City of Noise provides a fascinating perspective on the evolution of aural modernity in France. This is an important contribution to the interconnected fields of literary studies and history of the senses. Boutin's analysis compels us to tune in the sounds of the past, listen to the music and noise of texts, and hear the streets around us in new ways."--Cheryl Krueger, author of The Art of Procrastination: Baudelaire's Poetry in Prose "This is an excellent and important piece of work, engaging and lucid while still being scholarly."--Richard Cullen Rath, author of How Early America Sounded

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Book SynopsisA daughter of freed African American slaves, Daisy Turner became a living repository of history. The family narrative entrusted to her--a well-polished artifact, an heirloom that had been carefully preserved--began among the Yoruba in West Africa and continued with her own century and more of life. In 1983, folklorist Jane Beck began a series of interviews with Turner, then one hundred years old and still relating four generations of oral history. Beck uses Turner's storytelling to build the Turner family saga, using at its foundation the oft-repeated touchstone stories at the heart of their experiences: the abduction into slavery of Turner's African ancestors; Daisy's father Alec Turner learning to read; his return as a soldier to his former plantation to kill his former overseer; and Daisy's childhood stand against racism. Other stories re-create enslavement and her father's life in Vermont--in short, the range of life events large and small, transmitted by means so alive as to iTrade ReviewChicago Folklore Prize, American Folklore Society, 2016 Wayland D. Hand Prize, History and Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society, 2016 A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2016. "Folklorist Beck's story of the Turner family's transition from freedom to slavery to freedom again is a marvel of scholarly storytelling. . . . An engrossing American tale."--Publisher's Weekly"This book belongs in every academic and public library. Essential."--Choice"If you are interested in learning how oral history can lead to discovery and help chronicle a family legacy, then you will find Daisy Turner's Kin: An African American Family Saga a necessary guidebook."--Oral History Review"Jane Beck has done a masterful job in illustrating how long-term in-depth interviews, wide-ranging and meticulous research, and a wonderful writing style can produce, at once, a highly readable and deeply informative book."--Journal of American Folklore"I met and filmed Daisy Turner for my Civil War series and was struck by her vibrancy and the power of her voice. How fortunate we are that Jane Beck was able to both record and authenticate her family narrative. It allows us new insights into the experience of four generations of a family who maintained their identity and self-respect in spite of the dehumanizing circumstances they lived through. What an engaging and powerful story!"--Ken Burns, filmmaker"Turner's recollections are interwoven with Beck's research to provide an astonishing saga of a single African American family, an example of the oral history tradition across two continents, and an amazing woman who bridges generations of her family."--Booklist "A deeply, patiently researched journey into the unusual English-African roots of a long-lived Grafton, Vermont, storyteller. . . . A well-excavated biography of a 'custodian of a multigenerational American family saga.'"--Kirkus Reviews"A well presented and evocative account of the Turner family's journey from slavery to prosperity in Grafton, Vermont. . . . Daisy Turner and her family's life stories are richly presented as Beck keeps her promise to write a book that will preserve the Turner family narrative."--Western Folklore "Daisy Turner's Kin triumphs in demonstrating the importance of oral history. . . . A compelling story of a family that gives insights into a tumultuous period of transition in American History."--Journal of American Studies "This amazing true story should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand American history. Jane Beck's seminal book, built upon decades of rare historical research combined with rich oral narratives, reads like a vivid novel. The central narrative portrays three generations of Turner men and women whose . . . creativity, resilience, and spiritual strength are at the root of their survival. Drawing upon letters, photos, local records, and oral recollection, the author has woven this compelling, necessary tale that in praise of Daisy Turner's determined truth-telling, encourages a reconsideration of traditional African American histories."--Ronne Hartfield, author of Another Way Home: The Tangled Roots of Race in One Chicago Family "Beck has done an impeccable job of verifying the memories of Daisy Turner, clarifying what in her oral history is simply part of family lore and what is historically significant and accurate."--W. Ralph Eubanks, author of The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South "A powerful vindication and thoughtful explication of the power and persistence of an oral tradition. Anchoring her work in long-term relationships and stellar research both in the library and in the field, Jane Beck shows how folk traditions, and the past, live on and shape our lives."--Debora Kodish, founder and former director of the Philadelphia Folklore Project

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Book SynopsisDuring the 1950s and 1960s, labor leaders Harold Gibbons and Ernest Calloway championed a new kind of labor movement that regarded workers as total persons interested in both workplace affairs and the exercise of effective citizenship in their communities. Working through Teamsters Local 688 and viewing the city of St. Louis as their laboratory, this remarkable interracial duo forged a dynamic political alliance that placed their citizen members on the front lines of epic battles for urban revitalization, improved public services, and the advancement of racial and economic justice. Parallel to their political partnership, Gibbons functioned as a top Teamsters Union leader and Calloway as an influential figure in St. Louis''s civil rights movement. Their pioneering efforts not only altered St. Louis''s social and political landscape but also raised fundamental questions about the fate of the post-industrial city, the meaning of citizenship, and the role of unions in shaping AmericaTrade Review"A captivating must-read for historians of postwar labor and civil rights movements as well as for present-day union officials and community organizers."--Journal of Southern History"Advocates of a powerful vision of what unions could and should do, Ernest Calloway and Harold Gibbons of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters pioneered a “total person unionism” that engaged rank-and-file energies in the workplace and broader community. In this important and highly readable joint biography, Robert Bussel breaks new ground that helps us rethink the politics of postwar labor at the local level.--Eric Arnesen, editor of The Black Worker: Race, Labor, and Civil Rights since Emancipation "The collaborative work of Calloway and Gibbons provides insight into labor at its post war best, and the path we must reclaim today. Total Person Unionism is a wonderful effort to reclaim that ground not only for historians but for all of us committed to economic justice and democracy today."--Larry Cohen, former president, Communications Workers of America"Bussel's careful and caring effort with Gibbons and Calloway deserves a much larger audience than labor historians alone; Fighting for Total Person Unionism is a must read for union leadership and staff and, especially, labor educators."--Labor Studies Journal"Robert Bussel makes a signal contribution to this emerging historiography in his dual biography of Harold Gibbons and Ernest Calloway, St. Louis labor leaders, one white and one black, who struggled against employer power, organized crime, and the city's culture of white supremacy."-Missouri Historical Review"As Robert Bussel's important recent book Fighting for Total Person Unionism: Harold Gibbons, Ernest Calloway, and Working-Class Citizenship (2015) reminds us, this tradition carried into postwar St. Louis where the Teamsters developed an innovative community steward program."--Dissent"Bussel paints a vivid portrait of two very complex--and often contradictory--union leaders. Fighting For Total Unionism: Harold Gibbons, Ernest Calloway, and Working Class Citizenship holds many important lessons for unionists today, and deserves to be read widely."--People's World"Bussel makes an important contribution to scholarship on the intersections of the labor and civil rights movements-- it challenges a postwar labor declension narrative by showcasing how progressive unionism transcended narrow conceptualization."--Pacific Historical Review"The book is a significant contribution to the history of the postwar labor movement."--Journal of American History "Bussel does a remarkable job researching and reporting on these men and their union, and his language is likely meant to inspire readers with the promise of old ideas that might have fresh relevance for the challenges of today."--Labour/Le Travail "Bussel's Fighting for Total Person Unionism is a fine addition to the growing scholarly and historical literature on St. Louis as well as the historiography of labor and civil rights history."--American Historical Review "Fighting for Total Person Unionism is a thoroughly researched, elegantly constructed, and marvelously engaging study of two long-time labor activists. But it’s more than that, really. Through the braided story of Harold Gibbons and Ernest Calloway, Bob Bussel recreates the social vision that animated much of the post-World War II labor movement--and reminds us how much we’ve lost in our age of rampant individualism."--Kevin Boyle, author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age "The collaborative work of Calloway and Gibbons provides insight into labor at its post war best, and the path we must reclaim today. Total Person Unionism is a wonderful effort to reclaim that ground not only for historians but for all of us committed to economic justice and democracy today."--Larry Cohen, former president, Communications Workers of America "Bussel is offering us a unique perspective on the nation's largest union in an era when it was at its peak of influence. He also asserts that the careers of these two men offer important lessons to organized labor today, of tactics and approaches that would help the movement regain its lost relevance."--David Witwer, author of Shadow of the Racketeer: Scandal in Organized Labor

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewJan Garton Prairie Heritage Book Award, Prairie Heritage, Inc., 2017 A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2016 "Brent M. S. Campney's Hostile Heartland: Racism, Repression, and Resistance in the Midwest is a timely exploration of the role of anti-black violence in the making of the modern Midwest." --Journal of American Ethnic History"A compelling and exhaustive work that examines the long history of anti-black violence and racism in Kansas, as well as the myriad efforts of African Americans to resist white supremacy."--H-Net"A significant contribution to the field of racial violence and the understanding of the history of Kansas in the post–Civil War period…This Is Not Dixie secures the University of Illinois Press’s dominance as a publisher of scholarship on racial violence in the post–Civil War era. Highly recommended.”--Choice"Campney exposes the shameful extent of violence in our past and also highlights the episodes of actions against such violence by law enforcement officers and by the African American community. Others should follow his lead to rediscover the world of law, race, and violence that shaped the past and continues to shape the present."--American Historical Review"A potent portrait of dramatically unequal but also complicated, highly contested, and geographically fragmented racial power relations in one Midwestern state during the rise and consolidation of the Jim Crow era." --Journal of African American History"When discussing lynching, race riots, and other forms of racist violence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the emphasis often turns southward. Brent Campney's This Is Not Dixie builds on current historiography by challenging these assumptions… This work provides timely insights into racist violence in the North."--Civil War Book Review"Campney has written an amazing and profound book that challenges many assumptions regarding racist violence in America, putting both the Midwest and the South in a deeper, richer context. This Is Not Dixie will no doubt inspire similar state-level studies."--Journal of Southern History"Campney's book is an important corrective to the still prevailing belief that racial violence was a uniquely southern problem."--The Annals of Iowa "A groundbreaking book, its extensive Kansas data and its inclusion of "threatened" lynching as a potent factor being important contributions to the study of racist violence in America."--Middle West Review "This book is essential reading for those interested in the history of Kansas or of race relations in the Great Plains, as well as for scholars of racial violence and the black freedom struggle in the United States."--Great Plains Quarterly "Campney has written a persuasive and important book that rewrites the racial narrative of Kansas and challenges the periodization of numerous eras. Additionally he makes a compelling case that a broad paradigm of racial violence is preferable to a narrow focus on lynching." --Reviews in American History "This is Not Dixie exponentially expands our understanding of racist violence in the Midwest and in so doing fills out the national picture and puts the South in greater context. Deeply attentive to African American resistance to white violence, this landmark book is required reading for all interested in the sadly pivotal role of racist violence in America's past."--Michael J. Pfeifer, author of The Roots of Rough Justice: Origins of American Lynching "Part of a new wave of scholarship that broadens our examination of racial violence. This book is an important contribution to lynching studies and African American history and to the history of the Midwest. The scholarship is top notch."--William D. Carrigan, author of The Making of a Lynching Culture: Violence and Vigilantism in Central Texas, 1836-1916 "Campney's focus on Kansas provides new and important evidence of the extent of racist violence in a non-Southern state. This is the rare book that does far more than add to the cumulative knowledge in an area of study. It challenges underlying assumptions, takes new perspectives on the material, and opens new lines of inquiry in several areas."--Margaret Vandiver, author of Lethal Punishment: Lynchings and Legal Executions in the South

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Jermaine Singleton's Cultural Melancholy is a provocative book that will be well-received in the field of racial melancholia studies, and there is no doubt in my mind that it makes an excellent contribution to performance studies."--Abdul R. JanMohamed, University of California, Berkeley"Interesting, fluid, and compelling. Singleton marshals the relevant research on racial mourning and historical trauma to focus specifically on how performance affects the process of working through."--Gwen Bergner, author of Taboo Subjects: Race, Sex, and Psychoanalysis

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A wonderful addition to dramatic literature, this important volume brings the talents of these remarkable playwrights to a broader audience. With this anthology of plays we see the larger conversations--loud voices of a new, unsatisfied generation. These women join their foremothers taking on form and content to take on the most pressing issues of our day. They relentlessly ensure that by reading this collection your beliefs will be tested and you will come to a better understanding about the world."--Nadine George-Graves, author of Urban Bush Women: Twenty Years of African American Dance Theater, Community Engagement, and Working It OutA fascinating collection that brings important but rarely presented perspectives on African American life to the stage. I have a hard time imagining aspiring actresses not having a copy of this book on their bookshelves and mining it for audition material.--Harvey Young, author of Theatre and Race"Adell's compendium offers an opportunity for new scholarly inquiries in theatre history and puts, at the fingertips of educators and students, a dramatic sampling of the best and freshest African American women playwrights of the twenty-first century."--Artisia Green, College of William and Mary"Dr. Adell's book is a refreshingly contemporary collection of plays by both newer, and some more prominent, African-American female playwrights. It is an essential anthology for scholars and practitioners interested in reading, discovering, and collecting early twenty-first-century plays by these artists and a great complement to other anthologies that feature the work of African-American female playwrights."--Martine Kei Green-Rogers, University of Utah

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Book SynopsisPosthumously inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2007, Richard Durham creatively chronicled and brought to life the significant events of his times. Durham''s trademark narrative style engaged listeners with fascinating characters, compelling details, and sharp images of pivotal moments in American and African American history and culture. In Word Warrior, award-winning radio producer Sonja D. Williams draws on archives and hard-to-access family records, as well as interviews with family and colleagues like Studs Terkel and Toni Morrison, to illuminate Durham''s astounding career. Durham paved the way for black journalists as a dramatist and a star investigative reporter and editor for the pioneering black newspapers the Chicago Defender and Muhammed Speaks. Talented and versatile, he also created the acclaimed radio series Destination Freedom and Here Comes Tomorrow and wrote for popular radio fare like The Lone Ranger. IncrediTrade Review"Sonja Williams has written a book about Durham's life and work, cementing the brilliant journalist and activist's legacy."--Uprising Radio "Thanks to this biography by Sonja D. Williams, a professor of communications at Howard University, Durham's contributions to our country's dramatic arts, journalism, trade unionism and African American political power will begin to earn the appreciation and admiration they deserve."--Against the Current"This admirable and engaging study of Durham's life and work fills a huge gap in American history, and it comes at a time where we are in desperate need of reminders that do more than give us hope, but also provide us with the examples of the ways in which agency can be infused into our racially contentious social landscape."--Radio Journal"In briskly energetic prose, Sonja D. Williams reveals the life of an important, but little-known, figure in twentieth century African American cultural and political history. From the Great Migration to the Black Power Movement, Richard Durham's story illuminates movements and events of momentous scope and significance."--Richard A. Courage, co-author of The Muse in Bronzeville: African American Creative Expression in Chicago, 1932–1950"Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom is a remarkable contribution to the historical narrative, to our understanding of the long civil rights revolution.--People's World"With this book, Williams . . . rescues a forgotten but important voice in the Civil Rights Movement. [A] well-written analytical profile of this important, versatile writer. Recommended."--Choice"Williams' book is a major contribution to media studies and provides one model for future media-history work grappling with the current dominant paradigms of media industry and production culture studies. . . . Williams' description of multiple social phenomena, packaged as a biography of an important civil rights figure in Chicago, will pack a strong enough punch to set a precedent for similar work."--Journal of Radio & Audio Media"Williams's Word Warrior is an engrossing, at times poetic excavation of one man's dealing with life and learning as an African American man." --H-Net Reviews "The enigmatic life of writer and radio [dramatist] Richard Durham has, for years, cried out for probing and understanding. Sonja D. Williams has answered the call with this fiercely smart and important book. It is an important achievement."--Wil Haygood, author of The Butler: A Witness to History "Sonja Williams' exhaustively researched biography of Richard Durham sheds valuable light on an inexcusably neglected historical figure. Throughout his many lives, including activism, writing, and broadcasting, Durham demonstrated the importance of narrative in the struggle for justice. As Williams proves, the right to tell the story is a critical part of the quest for equality and power--and those who fought for that right should be remembered with gratitude."--Jabari Asim, author of What Obama Means "Sonja Williams artfully links broadcasting pioneer Richard Durham to the key social, cultural, and political movements of mid-Twentieth-century America. In Word Warrior, Durham's fierce spirit, strategic mind, and creative genius leap to life as he navigates the streets, boardrooms, and radio studios of Chicago. Without this book, this very important story surely would have been lost."--A'Lelia Bundles, author of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker "Williams' book does smart and invaluable work not only about Durham and his particular talents and contributions, but about the black political and cultural left in Chicago during the span of his career."--Barbara D. Savage, author of Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938–1948

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Music in the Age of Anxiety offers an engaging, lively, and thought-provoking examination of a diverse range of musical styles prevalent in 1950s America. This fascinating book is accessible for students and general readers, even as Wierzbicki offers new insights that will be of interest to specialists as well."--Gayle Sherwood Magee, author of Charles Ives Reconsidered"Provides a fresh view of the socially and politically complex decade of the 1950s. Wierzbicki's sense of humor supplements a concise writing style that is easy to read but authoritative. The quality of research and annotations are remarkable, and his work provides invaluable sources for scholars who would like to dig deeper into the wide range of subjects covered. His breadth of research and topics should be of interest to musicians and non-musicians alike."--Notes "Music in the Age of Anxiety is a book for both general interest and scholarly study."--Journal of American Culture "Wierzbicki takes on the the difficult task of linking all musical genres from 1945 to 1960 to the neurosis of the era. . . . The author successfully demonstrates the impact of social change upon Fifties music in a well-written and engaging way. Recommended."--Library Journal"It's unbelievable, looking back now almost sixty years, that there was once a time that so many different kinds of music could thrive, even claim priority status, at the center of the American musical mainstream. The “fifties” were extraordinary years of conformity and rebellion, a contradiction reflected in nearly every genre of music. Not everyone might analyze these contradictions the same way, or emphasize the same causes or trends. But whether or not you always agree with the analysis you will marvel at the vast landscape that James Wierzbicki masterfully surveys here. I defy anyone to read this book without coming away with a greater sense of the issues surrounding music’s production and consumption during this decade, its staggering array of now timeless treasures in every genre, its immense boldness and variety, and its lasting effects." --Michael V. Pisani, Vassar College"This very readable book is filled with many perceptive connections between music and cultural, social, and political activities of the 1950s. Wierzbicki is to be especially commended for his mastery of many sources and the way he has woven them together."--Michael Broyles, author of Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewBest Blues Book of 2016, Readers Poll in Living Blues magazine, 2017 ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award in the Pop category, ASCAP Foundation, 2017 "Harper’s book, packed with interviews with club owners, musicians and magazine editors, and illuminated throughout by his own thoughtful and sensitive reactions to the many gigs he attends all over the city, is as enlightening as it is racy, as much an unblinking (and often engagingly self-deprecating) eyewitness account, full of telling detail, as an intriguing social history, dealing with such burning issues as authenticity, racial politics, music-industry practices, the difficulties of making a living as a blues player in an increasingly rock-dominated world."-- London Jazz News"Part memoir, part history and part. . . bluesological lament for a time and place that we will never see again."--Goldmine"Harper's memoir is beautifully wrought, and populated with an array of vivid and memorable characters… Flecked with insight, wit and warmth, it proves to be an evocative portrait of a bygone era."--MOJO"Like a great concert that makes you want the owner to leave the bar open for one more round, one more encore. A tip of the pork pie hat to Alan Harper."--American Blues Scene"Waiting for Buddy Guy, Harper's journal of three visits to Chicago, provides a vivid illustration of the 1980s music scene in a city which has fostered the urban blues like no other."--Times Literary Supplement"Harper absorbed Chicago blues utterly and wholly, and in this gem of a book, he imparts his passion and knowledge in a witty, intelligent, revealing and honest manner. It's a real page-turner."--Record Collector"A terrific book. Being from Chicago, it brought back a lot of memories."--Nick Digilio, WGN radio"Harper shares his stories of searching for the blues in Chicago in his crisply told, energetic, and vibrant memoir."--No Depression "The author has captured many encounters with black bluesmen and club owners which give the reader a good sense of the ambiance of the time. This book is a good primer on the modern evolution of blues in America.--Blues News "A page-turning memoir."--Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society "The author has provided a painstakingly detailed glimpse into an almost forgotten era of the Chicago Blues scene. Reading this book filled in some personal lapses of memory, reminding me of the wonderful musical moments that I shared with some of the greatest musicians that I've ever known."--Billy Branch "An absorbing book, combining narrative flair with expertise lightly worn. Alan Harper deals with important subjects, such as the question of authenticity, in a highly readable style."--Dave Gelly, jazz critic, The Observer "It captures an era . . . when the blues scene was about midway through its descent. He profiles the players, the promoters, the clubs, the record labels, the disc jockeys, and much more that went into the early 1980s Chicago Blues scene."--Steve Cushing, author of Pioneers of the Blues Revival "There is a kind of Kerouacian feel to the storytelling. . . . The stories are vivid and well-drawn . . . and they inevitably generate a feeling of nostalgia in a reader, such as myself, who was on that scene at the time."--David Whiteis, author of Chicago Blues: Portraits and Stories

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Trade ReviewWilliam Sanders Scarborough Prize, Modern Language Association (MLA), 2017 "This book participates in a flourishing of renewed scholarly interest in the Black Arts Movement. Avilez enters this cluster of work with a distinctive agenda influenced by this recent scholarship while advancing it in an innovative direction. Bringing much-needed attention to visual and narrative arts, Avilez reminds us how, even despite the rhetorical emphasis on musicality as the urtext of black performance, painting, film, and the novel were just as crucial sites of radical experimentation." --Marlon Ross, author of Manning the Race: Reforming Black Men in the Jim Crow Era "Significantly advances the current scholarly reconsideration of the Black Power era's ongoing impact on African American culture. GerShun Avilez does the important work of bringing Queer of Color Critique to bear on an array of literary, visual, and performance-based art created during the Black Arts Movement and through subsequent decades. This critical lens enables him to demonstrate that a wide range of late-twentieth- and early twenty-first-century African American artists--whether sympathetic to or critical of Black Nationalist thought--have engaged it with nuance in their work, producing not only incisive cultural analysis, but also powerful aesthetic experimentation. Radical Aesthetics is a timely and necessary volume."--Evie Shockley, author of Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry "In this beautifully written and finely argued work, GerShun Avilez lucidly demonstrates the many ways in which twentieth century black nationalists paired radical forms of aesthetic experimentation with trenchant political and social critique. The book will thrill anyone interested in the practice and politics of modern American culture." --Robert F. Reid-Pharr, author of Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual"This text masterfully does several things at once as it urges for a careful reconsideration of the theories that undergird the Black Arts Movement while instructively showing that these theories exceed themselves and the time period in which they were created when they are revised by artists today. . . . Radical Aesthetics is more than timely, it is essential, required reading."--NewBlackMan (In Exile)"GerShun Avilez's Radical Aesthetics and Modern Black Nationalism is a timely and innovative reinvestigation--or, perhaps more accurately, a reimaging--of intellectual rhetorics around black nationalism" --Journal of American Studies

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewASFS Book Award, Association for the Study of Food and Society, 2017 "A fascinating archive on how American eating shifted during the years of the Depression. It provides a kind of hidden history of early-twentieth-century eating, documenting the role of different non-white middle class groups in shaping the American palate in ways that continue to resonate." --David E. Sutton, author of The Restaurants Book: Ethnographies of Where We Eat"Who knew that modern food writing originated in the New Deal's Federal Writers' Project? Camille Begin convincingly shows how the FWP ™s sensory concerns linked food to race and place. Her lively account recognizes the importance of food writing in drawing the boundaries that transform modern culinary nationalism, ethnicity and regionalism into 'sensory economies.'"--Donna Gabaccia, author of We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans"Taste of the Nation offers fascinating insights into how regional culinary traditions were incorporated into the New Deal's nation-building project."--Journal of Southern History"Her five chapters do read like a gourmet five course meal within a sensory archive with no detail too small, beginning with her wonderful introductory courses of 'Romance of the Homemade' and 'Tasting Place, Sensing Race' and concluding with a thoughtful and well-placed chapter titled 'A Well-Filled Melting Pot'. Bon Appetit!"--Journal of Contemporary History"Taste of the Nation is a valuable addition to the literature: a sophisticated reading of the sources that shows the importance of race, gender, and ethnicity in shaping our attitudes toward food."--Journal of American History"Recommended."--Choice"An astute sensory history rooted in a firm theoretical base. . . . Bégin's lively account, complemented with striking photographs, captures a moment when the nation pioneered a new understanding of its culinary heritage. Bégin offers scholars and general readers much to savor."--Agricultural History"Taste of the Nation is most useful--and it is very useful--as a model for ways to apply sensory history in the realm of food studies. It offers theoretical ways of bridging ideas and flavors, the work that seems often unfinished in food studies."--H-Net "Gives us the best of both worlds: sharp, scholarly, critique, essential to solid research and good teaching; and rich, sensory, description, conveyed with exquisite writing, where you can smell the acrid smoke from the wood stove, hear the clatter of the cutlery and the screeching of the dining room chairs. It is a text I relished and learned much from, about American gustatory nationalism, and its relationship to race and gender in New Deal food writing."--Krishnendu Ray, author of The Ethnic Restaurateur

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Book SynopsisAfter 1850, Americans swarmed to take in a raft of new illustrated journals and papers. Engravings and drawings of buckskinned braves and Indian princesses proved an immensely popular attraction for consumers of publications like Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper and Harper's Weekly . In Indians Illustrated , John M. Coward charts a social and cultural history of Native American illustrations--romantic, violent, racist, peaceful, and otherwise--in the heyday of the American pictorial press. These woodblock engravings and ink drawings placed Native Americans into categories that drew from venerable good Indian and bad Indian stereotypes already threaded through the culture. Coward's examples show how the genre cemented white ideas about how Indians should look and behave--ideas that diminished Native Americans' cultural values and political influence. His powerful analysis of themes and visual tropes unlocks the racial codes and visual cues that whites used to represent--and marginalTrade Review"Indians Illustrated is a good read that strongly contributes to our knowledge of American Indians' depictions and stereotyping while bringing the world of nineteenth-century printed press into our own homes." --American Indian Quarterly "In Indians Illustrated, Coward not only has written a book that clearly and decisively achieves the primary objective of providing a history of the development and consequences of Native American stereotypes, but he also provides a framework useful for anyone who seeks to understand stereotyping of any group in American media."--Journalism History "Coward provides a fascinating look at how powerful the visual image can be on the development of cultural attitudes."--Jhistory "The author's work is a revelation, and with its many illustrations, a journey in time. Read enough of it, and you will be questioning the historical veracity of any illustration you see from the late 19th century."--Journalism and Mass Communication Education"The book charts new territory, offers important new insights on a topic that deserves further examination, and opens doors to subsequent research for scholars and graduate students."--American Indian Culture and Research Journal"Coward provides a fascinating look at how powerful the visual image can be on the development of cultural attitudes. Indians Illustrated not only provides a crucial study for scholars of Native American culture but is also very useful as a text for scholars of race, anthropology, popular culture, and visual studies."--H-Net Reviews"Indians Illustrated is a good introduction to the concept that images of Native Americans in the nineteenth century popular press were constructed, framed, and viewed through Anglo-European American eyes and that the imagery has much less to do with real Native American life, history, or people than it has to do with the self-perception and self-ideation of its mainstream colonial counterpart."--Journal of American Culture"[Coward] makes a compelling case for the importance of these pictures as primary sources for cultural history." --The Journal of American History "This helpful book makes a major contribution to the field of communication and media history, laying a stronger foundation for helping the media, scholars, and society to understand, confront, and heal from how the media had been complicit in the conquest and genocide of the indigenous peoples of the Americas." --CBQ: Communication Booknotes Quarterly "Impressive. This book is an engaging example of 'visual history' done well." --South Dakota History "Rich in context and beautifully written. Other scholars have considered the stereotyping of Native Americans, but this book links the phenomenon to journalism/media history and explores the cultural significance of these widely circulated images."--Janice Hume, author of Popular Media and the American Revolution: Shaping Collective Memory "John Coward provides a comprehensive, well-documented overview of the development of the visual clues that support Manifest Destiny and racial stereotypes of American Indians. No one has provided more insight or made such a detailed study of Native American images in the press. This is a one-of-a-kind book."--William E. Huntzicker, author of The Popular Press, 1833–1865 "If there is any story in the narrative of American history that exemplifies our reliance on stereotypes, it must be pictorial representations of Native Americans in the late 19th century press. In Indians Illustrated, John Coward explores this story with thoroughness, insight, and grace. By also including a wealth of well-chosen images, he helps explain not only the details of cultural production but a larger rendering of 'otherness' in America."--David Abrahamson, Northwestern University

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Calling on an impressive range of sources including weekly journals, essays, letters, and various organizational reports, Lause clearly demonstrates the wealth of evidence supporting the influence of spiritualists… Recommended."--Choice "Opens a door between works that consider spiritualism as a purely religious phenomenon and works that deal with the history of the reform movements of the time in purely political or economic terms. By developing this thesis, Lause shows how limited previous treatments of progressive reform have been."--John B. Buescher, author of The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear: Agitator for the Spirit Land "Historians of religion, culture, and politics will all learn something new. . . . Free Spirits is filled with fascinating material."--The Journal of Southern History "There is virtually no scholarship on the influence and counter-influence of spiritualism and politics. The fresh insights on Lincoln, who is generally protected from any real alliance with spiritualism by virtue of his 'difficult' wife, is a great contribution, as are the messages from the southern dead."--Cathy Gutierrez, author of Plato's Ghost: Spiritualism in the American Renaissance"Opens a door between works that consider spiritualism as a purely religious phenomenon and works that deal with the history of the reform movements of the time in purely political or economic terms. By developing this thesis, Lause shows how limited previous treatments of progressive reform have been."--John B. Buescher, author of The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear: Agitator for the Spirit Land

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Book SynopsisBehind the iconic jazz orchestras, vocalists, and stage productions of the Swing Era lay the talents of popular music''s unsung heroes: the arrangers. John Wriggle takes you behind the scenes of New York City''s vibrant entertainment industry of the 1930s and 1940s to uncover the lives and work of jazz arrangers, both black and white, who left an indelible mark on American music and culture. Blue Rhythm Fantasy traces the extraordinary career of arranger Chappie Willet--a collaborator of Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa, and many others--to revisit legendary Swing Era venues and performers from Harlem to Times Square. Wriggle''s insightful music analyses of big band arranging techniques explore representations of cultural modernism, discourses on art and commercialism, conceptions of race and cultural identity, music industry marketing strategies, and stage entertainment variety genres. Drawing on archives, obscure recordings, untapped sources in tTrade ReviewCertificate of Merit for Best Historical Research in Recorded Jazz, Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC), 2017. "Recommended." --Choice"A fascinating study of an overlooked aspect of the musical world that allows us to view artistic development with a greater understanding of other forces: economic, social, racial, and historical."--ARSC Journal "Wriggle's work is well-researched, well-structured, and gives a great overview of the Swing Era career of Chappie Willet, which is further complemented by a thorough examination of his stylistic 'idiolect.'"--Journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music"Illuminating, and entertaining. . . . This is a book that any lover of jazz, swing or theater music would find accessible and rewarding."--The Arts Fuse"[T]he authorial tone is far from dry, and his historical analysis is genuinely valuable . . . and the greatest value in this unusual book is allowing to see inside Willet's world and the place he occupied within it and belatedly, perhaps, to pay tribute to his prowess and that of his peers."--Jazzwise"Blue Rhythm Fantasy is a wonderfully enlightening experience. . . .A splendidly-documented exploration of an artist and his musical world that will both answer and raise many questions. "--Jazz Lives"Meticulously researched and elegantly written." --Music References Services Quarterly"Writers have always been quick to heap praise on the soloists, vocalists and composers of the Swing Era but John Wriggle's Blue Rhythm Fantasy finally shines the spotlight on the craftsmen who really made the Swing Era swing: the arrangers. Having done a monumental amount of research, Wriggle invites the reader to listen to the music of the big bands with a fresh set of ears and a fresh amount of appreciation for many of the unsung heroes of that era, most notably the great Chappie Willet. An important book not just for jazz studies but for anyone interested in the entire popular music spectrum of the 1930s and 40s."--Ricky Riccardi, author of What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong's Later Years and Director of Research Collections, Louis Armstrong House Museum "The unsung artists and business people who were the backbone and lifeblood of the popular music business in NYC in the 1930s and '40s are finally the heroes in this excellent and extremely well-researched book. This exciting new teaching tool brings to the fore those crucial musicians who kept all types of popular entertainment flowing by creatively and professionally combining such diverse job titles as composer, arranger, orchestrator, and copyist."--Benjamin Bierman, author of Listening to Jazz

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Walker-McWilliam's book is very well researched, clearly written, and extremely well organized. . . . Reverend Addie Wyatt is an important piece of scholarship that will appeal to both scholars and nonscholars interested in social movements in history."--The Journal of Southern History "Walker-McWilliams masterfully weaves the influences of the Great Migration from Mississippi to segregated Chicago, the vibrant religious culture of the Church of God, Chicago's meatpacking industry and labor movements, the emergence of the Civil Rights and women's movements, and her enduring marriage to Rev. Claude Wyatt to create a fascinating portrait of a historical activist icon."--Chicago Review of Books"[A] compelling, well-written, definitive biography. . . . This biography of Addie Wyatt is a valuable treatment of an activist who should be better known and whose life provides an important window into the organized labor, feminist, and civil rights movements."--Indiana Magazine of History "This highly readable biography by historian Marcia Walker-McWilliams gives this influential figure the attention she deserves."--Newcity "Marcia Walker-McWilliams' Reverend Addie Wyatt: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equality engages readers in an enlightening examination of Addie Wyatt's professional trials and personal tribulations. . . . Another must read in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in American History series."--Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society "Richly detailed and well-researched. . . . Wyatt's work speaks directly to the ways the social movements of which she was a part unquestionably advanced America's still unfinished struggles for democracy."--Labour/Le Travail "Walker-McWilliams skillfully captures through a wide array of primary and secondary sources another view of a working-class black women activist in the life and times of Reverent Addie Wyatt as well as often underresearched aspects of labor history, black women's history, and civil rights activism." --Journal of African American History

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewWesley-Logan Prize, American Historical Association (AHA), 2017Dred Scott Freedom Award in the category Historical Literary Excellence, Dred Scott Heritage Foundation, 2020"Mustakeem's command of sources and methodology is remarkable. . . . Slavery at Sea is an outstanding intervention in the history of slavery." --Journal of African American History"This excellent work illustrates the paradoxical significance of U.S. slavery studies in relation to the larger African Diaspora."--Register of the Kentucky Historical Society"A compelling and original argument that makes a fundamental contribution to the history of slavery in colonial British America."--William and Mary Quarterly"Mustakeem's groundbreaking study. . . . offers provocative new insights into how gender, health, age, illness, and medical treatment intersected with trauma and violence and transformed human beings into the world's most commercially sought commodity for over four centuries."--Huffington Post"Essential."--Choice"Slavery at Sea does an excellent job describing the importance of the Middle Passage, as well as forcefully rejecting the notion that slave subjugation began upon arrival in America. . . . Excellent research, a clear and engaging literary style, and an appropriate use of primary source material recommend this book for the student of the Atlantic slave trade or the historian who desires new insights into the manufacturing process of slavery."--Civil War News"An intensely social history of the transatlantic slave trade . . . Mustakeem consciously centers her narrative on the very young and old, women, and the infirm to demonstrate the ways in which there was no one Middle Passage."--The Junto"Slavery at Sea is a welcome book because it provides a more sustained account of the deprivations and indignities inflicted upon enslaved Africans by European capitalists and their collaborators in Africa. . . than virtually any other book."--Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Book Reviews"In Slavery at Sea, Mustakeem writes with power and heart, offering a deeply intimate narrative of the experience of dehumanization and the undeniable awareness that nothing good came from this history."--Journal of American Culture "Mustakeem does a remarkable job exploring the untold and overlooked stories of the most marginalized of the Africans. . . . Her work challenges many prevailing assumptions and offers an insightful, alternative contribution to our understanding of slavery at sea." --The Journal of American History "A tremendously important contribution to understandings of the Middle Passage. This work will shift the ways scholars frame the history of slavery in the Americas by extending the terrain of enslavement across the Atlantic and centering the lives and deaths of enslaved African women and men in the Middle Passage."--Barbara Krauthamer, author of Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South "It is not easy to say new things about the slave trade, but Mustakeem does so, again and again. She strikes a mighty blow against the 'violence of abstraction' that has long governed the study of the subject. She makes us understand the slave trade in a new, visceral way."--Marcus Rediker, author of The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom "Slavery at Sea includes heartbreaking stories of capture, breathtaking vignettes of torture, and harrowing tales of the Middle Passage that bring to life the terror that many enslaved people experienced at sea. This well-researched study also pays critical attention to how age, gender, and health informed the economic development of the international slave trade."--Jim Downs, author of Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Exemplary. Boddice demonstrates that the culture of Victorian science changed irreversibly what sympathy could mean, and how it could be felt. The book will be at the top of my list when people ask, 'What does it look like when you do the history of emotions?' This is what it looks like."--Daniel M. Gross, author of The Secret History of Emotion: From Aristotle's Rhetoric to Modern Brain Science "Stimulating and interesting. Boddice has taken some of the most important topics in nineteenth-century history and made them his own."--Joanna Bourke, author of The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers "A landmark work in the history of science and the emotions."--Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences "Rob Boddice has provided an engaging exploration of three issues that were the source of much debate in the later Victorian period: vivisection, vaccination, and eugenics. . . . The Science of Sympathy is a welcome contribution to this still-emerging body of scholarship that has brought real illumination to the scientific cultures of the nineteenth century in particular."--Annals of Science"Boddice offer[s] challenging departures from Victorian evolutionary thought that reflect in rich and complex ways on the intellectual crosscurrents of Victorian culture and society, as well as the emerging contingencies of modernism." --Isis"The Science of Sympathy is an impressive achievement, stimulating, interesting, and well-written."--British Journal for the History of Science"A well-written and accessible book that clearly explains complex ideas while introducing the reader to the novel insights yielded by the study of the history of emotions . . . challenging and stimulating." --Victorian Studies

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[An] engaging history of a neglected sense." --French Studies: A Quarterly Review"Hoffmann's volume takes us on a great journey that, ultimately, explores that which makes us human. An impressive and nuanced study, it is, above all, a worthy addition to the expanding menu of sensory studies."--Social History "Von Hoffman writes with crossdisciplinary dexterity, fusing history, sociology, theology, philosophy, and economics in her scrupulously researched monograph."--Santa Fe New Mexican "A satisfyingly balanced investigation of the evolution of taste between about 1500 and 1800. Hoffmann masterfully synthesizes over two hundred different primary sources to show, rather convincingly, that gastronomy was part and parcel of broader cultural shifts." --Fides Et Historia"Von Hoffmann's study gives a comprehensive overview of writings on early modern taste from the standpoint of cuisine, medicine, religion, and philosophy. Rich and thoroughly researched."--Emma C. Spary, author of Eating the Enlightenment: Food and the Sciences in Paris, 1670–1760"A highly intelligent and well-documented intellectual history of taste in the early modern period. It gave me dozens of topics to consider writing about."--James McWilliams, author of The Pecan: A History of America's Native Nut"A fascinating read. . . . Recommended."--Choice

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Book SynopsisMay Irwin reigned as America's queen of comedy and song from the 1880s through the 1920s. A genuine pop culture phenomenon, Irwin conquered the legitimate stage, composed song lyrics, and parlayed her celebrity into success as a cookbook author, suffragette, and real estate mogul. Sharon Ammen's in-depth study traces Irwin's hurly-burly life. Irwin gained fame when, layering aspects of minstrelsy over ragtime, she popularized a racist Negro song genre. Ammen examines this forgotten music, the society it both reflected and entertained, and the ways white and black audiences received Irwin's performances. She also delves into Irwin's hands-on management of her image and career, revealing how Irwin carefully built a public persona as a nurturing housewife whose maternal skills and performing acumen reinforced one another. Irwin's act, soaked in racist song and humor, built a fortune she never relinquished. Yet her career's legacy led to a posthumous obscurity as the nation that once adoreTrade ReviewThis is a valuable biographical study that assesses May Irwin's contributions to comedy while also forging a path that avoided some of the grotesque and low comic traditions associated with female characters. Ammen reassesses Irwin's work in vaudeville and musical comedy, discussing her in relation to both race and gender, and this is a welcome and much needed work on a remarkable comedienne.--Gillian M. Rodger, author of Champagne Charlie and Pretty Jemima: Variety Theater in the Nineteenth Century"Lovingly rendered and well researched without being simplistic or missing the larger cultural and political context in which May Irwin lived and produced."--Andrew L. Erdman, author of Queen of Vaudeville: The Story of Eva Tanguay

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"In this intriguing study, James Mansell engages with interactions between noise, modernity, and the construction of the self in interwar Britain. . . . It is an exemplary piece of work." --Technology and Culture"James Mansell's remarkably clear, wonderfully detailed, even occasionally droll examination of the sensing self in industrial modernity makes a substantial, important contribution to historical sound studies and British studies."--John M. Picker, author of Victorian Soundscapes"In sum, Mansell's work successfully unlocks the sensory world of the past and demonstrates how one might decode the meanings of sound for those who experienced it."--Fides et Historia"Mansell has given us an exhilarating and highly original way of understanding early twentieth century Britain. He ranges confidently across a dazzlingly wide terrain--attitudes towards neurasthenia, the occult thinking of Theosophists, technocrats designing quieter homes, those aghast at the sonic assaults of the wartime Blitz--and shows how noise was more than a symbol of modern life or the bane of the highly-strung. It was regarded by a whole gamut of experts and pseudo-experts as an irritating, mysterious, troubling force dramatically reshaping the relationship between the individual and society. The Age of Noise in Britain allows us to eavesdrop on this loud and disputatious period--indeed, to question our understanding of modernity itself. It is unsettling in the very best of ways." ​--David Hendy, author of Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Possesses the potential to alter the entire field. An unimpeachable reference book to be dipped into at need and taken in toto as a substantial, sustained, and original interpretation of its subject. Miklitsch is profoundly (and charmingly) collegial, but his scrupulous tone should not obscure the challenge to received wisdom his book poses."--Ann Douglas, author of Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s"Miklitsch's extended mediation on 1950s noir will entertain and intrigue both film scholars and movie fans." --Journal of American Culture"An interesting piece of work that highlights a commonly neglected period of American film noir."--Pop Culture Shelf “In this recommended read, [Miklitsch] finds something fresh to say about a familiar film topic.”--Library Journal"Highly Recommended."--Choice"Robert Miklitsch shows once again why he is one of the most interesting and knowledgeable critics of film noir. These readings of key '50s releases sparkle with insight, wit, and the enthusiasm of the committed cinephile."--R. Barton Palmer, author of Hollywood's Dark Cinema: The American Film Noir?

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"The Civil War transformed the Southern Midwest's cultural and political affinity with the border South into a strong Unionist (but not emancipationist) loyalty that helped the North win the war. As Matthew Stanley makes clear in this intriguing study, however, the Ohio Valley region led the Northern retreat from Reconstruction and the reconciliationist movement of the 1890s that partially restored that antebellum cultural affinity and pushed the historical issues of slavery and abolition into the background."--James M. McPherson"Stanley expertly demonstrates how emancipation and the postwar struggles over the precise meanings of freedom and equality ultimately made white political culture in 'middle America' as anti-Reconstruction and pro-segregation as one might have found in the South."--The Annals of Iowa"Stanley's study serves as a welcome addition to the growing field of borderland studies and the Civil War."--Journal of Southern History"The Loyal West deserves to be required reading for scholars of midwestern history, nineteenth-century politics, and collective memory."--Register of the Kentucky Historical Society"An excellent addition to the ever-growing historiography of the intersection of memory, region, and national politics. . . . Highly Recommended."--Choice"The Loyal West, overall, constitutes an excellent addition to the growing canon of sectional reconciliation studies. . . . Stanley deserves praise for thoughtfully-rendered findings, indicative of a scholar who is deeply engaged with and excited about his work."--Civil War Book Review"[Stanley's] His book is bold and deserves a wide reading among scholars of all American sections and regions." --The Journal of American History"The Loyal West is a smartly written, well-researched monograph, ambitious yet nuanced. Readers will enjoy Stanley's impressive use of language, clipped narrative style, and new approach to a seemingly familiar topic." --Civil War History "Stanley's work is an illuminating addition to the scholarship of the era." --Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society "In a richly detailed and evocative story, Stanley traces the threads of slavery, race, war, and memory in a crucial part of the United States. He shows us that “the North” in the Civil War era struggled to contain enormous differences and tensions, an understanding essential to any full understanding of that conflict.--Edward L. Ayers, author of In the Presence of Mine Enemies: Civil War in the Heart of America "Well researched and well argued, The Loyal West offers new insights into the underexplored mind of the Lower Middle West and the Ohio River Valley--and through that into the mind of America. As part of the fresh series of regional studies that go beyond artificial boundaries and look at the mind of a region, The Loyal West provides a broad, readable, and sweeping look at the conflicting identities of a place that at different times saw the river as connector or divider." --James C. Klotter, State Historian of Kentucky

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Nationwide memorials to Booker T. Washington added him to the impressive roster of civil saints in American society. Yankee Protestant values energized him with a religious fervor to lift African Americans to economic freedom and self-sufficiency. No wonder the memorials and tributes to the Tuskegeean assumed sacred significance to his mourners. Scholars in history, religion, and related disciplines will find Professor Hamilton's book an indispensable addition to their libraries and syllabi."--Dennis C. Dickerson, Vanderbilt University "Recommended."--Choice "Those particularly intrigued by Washington and the historiography on him will be most interested in Booker T. Washington in American Memory."--History "Hamilton's work is well done and highly readable. . . . Hamilton is most effective in getting readers to appreciate Washington via the lived experiences of the people who witnessed his life and death."--Journal of Southern History "Hamilton's meticulous attention to the public and private memories of Washington offers a fascinating window into his complex life and times." --Journal of American Ethnic History

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A beautiful book and a very important one. By addressing a key dimension of mass protest that has received too little attention from historians, White forces us to shift the questions we ask of protest movements."--Annelise Orleck, author of Rethinking American Women's Activism "Exceedingly well written, nuanced, and refreshing."--The Journal of Southern History "Understanding the relation between the turn-of-the-century public sphere and its contested margins seems more important than ever, and Lost in the USA is an excellent introduction."--Journal of American History "Lost in the USA is a timely and important contribution to the scholarship of social movements and mass marches." --Journal of African American History"White has written a provocative and important book that deserves to be read and discussed. It demonstrates not only exceptional scholarship but also exceptional insight, complexity, and historical acuity. It should be the starting point for the analysis of a period that has profoundly shaped contemporary America." --H-Net Reviews"With Lost in the USA, Deborah Gray White makes an important contribution to the scholarship of the 1990s. Instead of presenting the marches as a string of isolated political issues to be resolved through legislation, White effectively shows their cultural significance to an American public navigating the transition between modernity and postmodernity." --Register of the Kentucky Historical Society"A beautiful book and a very important one. By addressing a key dimension of mass protest that has received too little attention from historians, White forces us to shift the questions we ask of protest movements."--Annelise Orleck, author of Rethinking American Women's Activism

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"This book illuminates a rarely seen side of contemporary immigration to the U.S., whose prevailing image is of non-Europeans, coming from Africa, Asia, and Latin America--yet also among the immigrants are hundreds of thousands of Italians. The authors of the volume show how the new immigrants ' presence alters our understanding of the white ethnic story as viewed through the lenses of families, communities, and politics. The book represents an indispensable contribution to ethnic and immigration studies."--Richard Alba, co-author of Strangers No More: The Challenges of Integration in North America and Western Europe"An exceptionally good volume that is innovative and will change the game in Italian American studies. This magnificent collection has no competition. "--Graziella Parati, author of Migration Italy: The Art of Talking Back in a Destination Culture"New Italian Migrations to the United States, Vol. 1, provides distinctive and significant insights into recent Italian immigrants while also offering instructive comparisons with other migrant populations." --Italian American Review "The innovative and sometimes counterintuitive discussions in New Migrations produce fresh insights."--Brooklyn Rail"Worthwhile reading for anyone interested in learning more about Italian immigration to the U.S. after WWII."--Voce Italiana"New Italian Migrations to the United States contributes to the growth of academic knowledge regarding the general knowledge of Italian-Americans." --i-Italy“By focusing on those who crossed the Atlantic after World War II, scholars from many disciplines expand the customary periodization of the Italian experience in the United States. This important collection fills a major gap in the history of Italian Americans.”--Fraser Ottanelli, co-editor of Italian Workers of the World: Labor Migration and the Formation of Multiethnic States

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Book Synopsis Beyond Respectability charts the development of African American women as public intellectuals and the evolution of their thought from the end of the 1800s through the Black Power era of the 1970s. Eschewing the Great Race Man paradigm so prominent in contemporary discourse, Brittney C. Cooper looks at the far-reaching intellectual achievements of female thinkers and activists like Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, Fannie Barrier Williams, Pauli Murray, and Toni Cade Bambara. Cooper delves into the processes that transformed these women and others into racial leadership figures, including long-overdue discussions of their theoretical output and personal experiences. As Cooper shows, their body of work critically reshaped our understandings of race and gender discourse. It also confronted entrenched ideas of how--and who--produced racial knowledge.Trade ReviewMerle Curti Intellectual History Award, Organization of American Historians (OAH), 2018 A Choice Outstanding Title, 2018 One of Zora Magazine's 100 Best Books by African American Women Authors "A work of crucial cultural study. . . . [Beyond Respectability] lays out the complicated history of black woman as intellectual force, making clear how much work she has done simply to bring that category into existence."--NPR "Cooper's study demands that we dive deeper into the intellectual artifacts left by black women thinkers as a means of supporting the evolution of black feminist discourse and political action."--Public Books"Beyond Respectability is an intricate temporal and spatial tapestry that weaves together the development and evolution of black feminist thought. Cooper's sophisticated analysis not only recovers the intellectual proficiency of race women, but also emphasizes the embodied nature of public intellectualism."--Antipode"If black women's history is your thing, Beyond Respectability should definitely be on your reading list."--Bitch"Beyond Respectability is one small part of a much larger picture. This is a valuable contribution to the whole."--Journal of American History"Beyond Respectability is an invigorating testament to the pivotal legacies of changemakers like Pauli Murray, Anna Julia Cooper, and Mary Church Terrell and why the intellectual work of black women cannot and will not be forgotten."--Signature"Beyond Respectability is a multifaceted and robust record of women's important work. . . . There's something in Beyond Respectability for every race woman-- and for the activist, the herstorian, the public intellectual, and the student, and all guardians of our nation's honest history."--Women's Review of Books"By moving 'beyond respectability,' Cooper's black feminist thought takes us into the constructive possibility that has marked so many black women's lives."--Christian Century "Beyond Respectability is a memorable narrative of struggle and triumph. Its lasting impact is Brittney C. Cooper's willingness to share how race women intellectuals are the reason why scholars can write of Black women thinkers' contributions today."--Women's History Review "One of the best books written on black women's intellectual traditions thus far. This book is an intellectually stimulating must-read for individuals interested in, but not limited to, black feminism and black intellectual thought. It should be a required text in African American studies, gender studies, feminist philosophy, and literary studies, among others."--Hypatia Reviews "Beyond Respectability can be read as a brilliant critique to academia's superficial engagements with gender and race theory." --Women's Studies International Forum "At the cutting edge of black women's intellectual history, Brittney Cooper weaves together the ideas and lived experiences of women heretofore known as activists rather than thinkers. Through exacting analysis, a feminist lens, and her signature verve, Cooper establishes the centrality of black women's ideas to twentieth century political thought. This is a pathbreaking history of ideas."--Martha S. Jones, author of All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830–1900 "Brittney Cooper's Beyond Respectability. . . .makes an important contribution to a large body of scholarship that analyzes the long history of Black women's intellectual discourse. Focusing on the feminist theorizing of selected 'race women,' especially Fannie Barrier Williams, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, Pauli Murray, and Toni Cade Bambara, Cooper probes their interior lives in new ways and makes more visible the complexities of their public stances. Her brilliant analysis and queer reading of Murray's life is perhaps its most compelling revisionist intervention."--Beverly Guy-Sheftall, coeditor of Words of Fire: An Anthology of African Feminist Thought

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Black Post-Blackness moves rigorously with and against the grain of the most important work in black studies and performance studies, thereby joining it. In showing how blackness is unexhausted by the question of identity, Margo Natalie Crawford keeps its study on new, constantly renewed, persistently renewable footing."--Fred Moten, author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition"An original and very important contribution to African American Studies, American literature, and African American thought. Eloquent, exciting to read, as energetic as its subject matter."--Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II"In our putatively post-racial America, nothing can bring race racing back more quickly than a discussion of post-blackness. 'Your post-black ain't like mine' isn't the title of any song, but perhaps should be. Margo Crawford coins the term, then assays the coinage. With a deep, scholarly assurance, she revisits misunderstood moments of the Black Aesthetic Movement, limning a poetics of anticipation that tells us so much about our present."--Aldon Lynn Nielsen, author of Integral Music: Languages of African American Innovation "Margo Natalie Crawford's titular concept in Black Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics is oceanic: it is multifaceted and much encompassing." --CAA Reviews"Highly recommended."--Choice"The book itself reads as a thoughtfully conceived and researched love letter to the BAM that looks hopefully to the possibilities of a relationship with black post-blackness in our contemporary moment." --MELUS"Margo Natalie Crawford's titular concept in Black Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics is oceanic: it is multifaceted and much encompassing." --CAA Reviews"In our putatively post-racial America, nothing can bring race racing back more quickly than a discussion of post-blackness. 'Your post-black ain't like mine' isn't the title of any song, but perhaps should be. Margo Crawford coins the term, then assays the coinage. With a deep, scholarly assurance, she revisits misunderstood moments of the Black Aesthetic Movement, limning a poetics of anticipation that tells us so much about our present."--Aldon Lynn Nielsen, author of Integral Music: Languages of African American Innovation

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Book SynopsisHome to established African American institutions and communities, Washington, D.C., offered women in the New Negro movement a unique setting for the fight against racial and gender oppression. Colored No More traces how African American women of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century made significant strides toward making the nation''s capital a more equal and dynamic urban center. Treva B. Lindsey presents New Negro womanhood as a multidimensional space that included race women, blues women, mothers, white collar professionals, beauticians, fortune tellers, sex workers, same-gender couples, artists, activists, and innovators. Drawing from these differing but interconnected African American women''s spaces, Lindsey excavates a multifaceted urban and cultural history of struggle toward a vision of equality that could emerge and sustain itself. Upward mobility to equal citizenship for African American women encompassed challenging racial, gender, class, Trade ReviewA Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2017 "Treva Lindsey, in Colored No More, is as bold as the women about whom she writes. Fresh research, illuminated by feminist theory, reveals how 'New Negro Womanhood' became a framework through which African American women developed modern identities. The politics of respectability confront the politics of pleasure in this outstanding study."--Martha S. Jones, author of All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900"Colored No More provokes important questions for African American historiography and should inform historians' telling of urban black history after the Civil War. . . . Lindsey is precise and explicit in her interpretation of sources but seems also to recognize the present-day consequences of that interpretation."--H-Net Review [H-SHGAPE]"Lindsey's Colored No More succeeds in changing the way we see African American women in the nation's capital from the 1890s through the 1920s. She innovatively and provocatively brings together histories of black women in higher education, beauty culture, the suffrage movement, and literary salons to prove that Washington was a site of New Negro ideology."--Journal of Southern History"A major contribution to African American women's history that demonstrates urban black women's important political work. . . . Highly recommended."--Choice"Lindsay successfully demonstrates that New Negro womanhood was a complex and capacious category accommodating a range of social, political, and sexual beliefs. . . . Colored No More is essential to the historiography of Washington, D.C."--Washington History"Lindsey’s brilliantly researched book adds to black culture by mapping out the intersections of various identities of African-American women who shaped black life on a local and national scale."--Vibe"Lindsey's book is an ambitious and creative undertaking of documenting African American women's activism in the nation's capital." --Journal of American Ethnic History"An insightful book theoretically framed around ideas of 'Colored' and New Negro Womanhood. Lindsey demonstrates how Black women in Washington, D.C., labored and managed under the strains of Jim and Jane Crow, navigating structural disadvantages and persistent sexist exclusion in the nation's capital. Lindsey makes abundantly clear that the diverse efforts of Black Washingtonian women, from political organizing to cultural productions, pushed the boundaries of culturally accepted norms and laid a foundation for latter liberationist movements led by Black women within their communities both locally and nationally."--Randal Maurice Jelks, author of Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement: A Biography "A timely and important book that centers black women in the New Negro era--a long overdue addition to the history and historiography."--Danielle L. McGuire, author of At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A useful addition to any syllabus for students of American politics or of journalism and in particular sports journalism."--Irish Independent"A must read for all scholars, activists, athletes, and sport enthusiasts. . . . Edwards commandingly expresses how the collective voices and unified actions of Black athletes can evoke institutional change. The Revolt of the Black Athlete uncovers the axiom by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that, 'a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,' even at institutions of higher education."--Billy D. Hawkins, author of The New Plantation: Black Athletes, College Sports, and Predominantly White NCAA Institutions"When whites respond to black protests with anger and resentment, unable to see the experiences of those who don't enjoy white privilege, that indicates that we have a lot of work yet to do. The re-printing of The Revolt of the Black Athlete comes at a perfect time to help us do that work and Dr. Edwards gives us an amazing example of someone who has spent his life not just talking the talk, but walking the walk."--Theresa Walton-Fisette, President of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport"What The Revolt of the Black Athlete is about, at its heart, is organizing: the slow, laborious, never-complete process of working to constitute a collectivity that can seek to contest and overthrow the conditions of its subjection." --Los Angeles Review of Books"Edward's essential position in the movement, his memory of the events, and his ability to connect them to present-day activism make this book a must-read."--Journal of Sport History"The book remains highly relevant to the current climate of athletic activism and stands out as an important piece of sport history as well as a road map for critical discussions of sport." --idrottsforum.org"If there's a book that synthesizes and gives historical context to the wave of social activism that's swept through modern sports, it's this one. . . .Through Edwards' eyes, we see the awakening of black athletes to their own power not as a surprise but as an inevitability." --The Undefeated"The book remains highly relevant to the current climate of athletic activism and stands out as an important piece of sport history as well as a road map for critical discussions of sport." --idrottsforum.org "The legendary Harry Edwards illuminates this edition with a deeply probing and personal half-century of perspectives, reflections, and wisdom. Edwards must have written this masterpiece with the assistance of a crystal ball. A generation later, it remains relevant to the current climate of athletic activism, and cannot be read without profit."--Al-Tony Gilmore, Historian and Archivist Emeritus, National Education Association "There could not be a more timely moment in history to offer a new release of this classic. This was the work, by the man, that was the most influential in leading me to do the work that I do. No other work, particularly at the time of publication, ventured to either explain or provide guidance to the athlete and society on the black athlete. La plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The name changes and subtle progress over 50 years are admitted differences, but this work remains indispensable for us all."--Kenneth L. Shropshire, author of In Black and White: Race and Sports in America "Edwards provides a unique insight and a compelling depiction of the critical race issues that generally had been ignored. This classic provocative and seminal book contributes significantly in addressing current issues facing the Black Athlete. A classic read!"--Fritz G. Polite, author of Sport, Race, Activism, and Social Change: The Impact of Dr. Harry Edwards' Scholarship and Service "The reissue of Harry Edwards's groundbreaking The Revolt of the Black Athlete is right on time. Relevant as ever, necessary reading for all, it remains a classic, a game-changer, and a roadmap for critical discussions of sport. It is a clarion call for those that straddle the difficult line between sports fan and freedom dreamer."--David J. Leonard, author of After Artest: The NBA and the Assault on Blackness

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"The Reader offers something for everyone. . . . The research disrupts narratives that remove Latinos from history and from the region. . . . Current activists and allies can look to the volume for a history of resistance and a people's determination to live with dignity." --Middle West Review"This key book expands understanding of Latina/os outside of the traditional areas of the US. . . . A major addition to the histories of Latina/os and future Latina/o studies scholarship on the Midwest. . . . Recommended."--Choice"The Latina/o Midwest Reader certainly contributes to this nascent literature by bringing much needed attention to the struggles and contributions of Latinos in the Midwest."--Journal of Folklore Research"The Latina/o Midwest Reader makes a valuable contribution to Latina/o studies by pushing the field to look beyond the East and West Coast model for the experiences of Latina/o communities. . . . Every educator in the Midwest, from pre-K to college, should read the book in order to understand the region in more of its complexity."--Missouri Historical Review"The Latina/o Midwest Reader is an engaging and much-needed collection of essays that examines historical and contemporary Latina and Latino place-making in the U.S. heartland. Valerio-Jiménez, Vaquera-Vásquez, and Fox have assembled a wide-ranging regional study of the field that is distinct in its cross-disciplinary scope with contributions from the social sciences, the humanities, and interdisciplinary studies. A valuable introduction to the old and new Midwest."—Mérida Rúa, editor of Latino Urban Ethnography and the Work of Elena Padilla"The Latina/o Midwest Reader makes a vital contribution to Latina/o Studies in the United States, not merely by filing a proverbial gap in the literature, but by demonstrating that the multi-layered, multi-textured intersection of diverse historical and socio-political formations of Latinidad in this region supplies some of the necessary conceptual keys for understanding Latino identity, historicity, and place-making anywhere in the United States."—Nicholas De Genova, author of Working the Boundaries: Race, Space, and “Illegality” in Mexican Chicago

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewGeorge C. Rogers Jr. Award, South Carolina Historical Society, 2018 "This work is a valuable contribution that expresses how the minute can explain the whole and civil rights began as a grassroots movement, propagated by the influence of African American newspapers, and expanded in several places concomitantly as African Americans began to reclaim the rights that had been denied to them for so long." --Journal of African American History"Newspaper Wars is a timely book that brings traditionally marginal figures to the fore." --American Historical Review "This well-written, deeply contextualized book is as much a political history of South Carolina as it is an examination of race and journalism. . . . A commendable study that advances knowledge of the southern press in the civil rights era."--American Journalism"Sid Bedingfield offers a brilliantly fresh account of the peak decades of the civil rights movement--a time when newspapers shaped the contours of civic discourse and political debate. More than an essential history of the civil rights movement in South Carolina, Newspaper Wars recasts our understanding of the civil rights era and the enduring struggles around race and citizenship."--Patricia Sullivan, author of Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement"The narrative strength of Newspaper Wars rests on Bedingfield's thorough research. . . . The result is a commendable study that advances knowledge of the southern press in the civil rights era."--American Journalism"Newspaper Wars: Civil Rights and White Resistance in South Carolina, 1935-1965 not only remedies a lack of scholarship on the press in South Carolina but also shows how newspapers shaped the course of social and political change." --The Journal of Southern History"Newspaper Wars is a timely book that brings traditionally marginal figures to the fore." --American Historical Review"Newspaper Wars is a strong, important study of black journalism, state-level organizing, and the role that journalists play in shaping the assumptions of the public sphere, assumptions that conditioned the discussions that created civil rights success in South Carolina." --The Journal of American History "Very well written and enjoyable to read. Journalists, Sid Bedingfield persuasively demonstrates, did not just document the civil rights movement in South Carolina, but rather they actively influenced its course and outcomes."--Michael Stamm, author of Sound Business: Newspapers, Radio, and the Politics of New Media

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