Description
Book SynopsisFrom 1910 to the end of World War I, American society witnessed a tremendous outpouring of books, pamphlets, and especially newspapers espousing virulently anti-Catholic themes and calling on readers to recognize the danger of Catholicism to the American republic. By 1915 the most popular anti-Catholic newspaper, The Menace, boasted over 1.6 million weekly readers. Justin Nordstrom''s Danger on the Doorstep examines for the first time the rise and abrupt decline of anti-Catholic literature during the Progressive Era, as well as the issues and motivations that informed anti-Catholic writers and their Romanist opponents.
Nordstrom explores the connection between anti-Catholicism and nationalism from 19101919. He argues that the anti-Catholic literature that occupied such a prominent place in the cultural landscape derived its popularity by infusing long-standing anti-Catholic traditions with the emerging themes of progressivism, masculinity, and nationalism. Nordst
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“ . . . this study is a valuable addition to the recent raft of insightful monographs . . . on American Catholics in the Progressive Era. The degree to which the author, emulating historians such as Jay Dolan and John McGreevey, has integrated his topic into the sociopolitical context of the period is noteworthy . . . this volume deserves a readership in university courses and among scholars in the humanities and social sciences.” —The Journal of American History
“While retaining a sharp analytical focus on the 1910s, Nordstrom connects the anti-Catholicism of that decade with earlier outbreaks (antebellum era, 1980s) and later ones (1920s, 1950s). He firmly establishes the surprising extent and popularity of nativism of the decade. He strongly connects it to many disparate strands of scholarship and convincingly explains its 'hiatus' after World War I. Finally, Nordstrom acutely analyzes the Catholic counter-attack. An impressive monograph.” —The Catholic Historical Review
“Nordstrom's study provides a window for understanding an important, long-lived spiritual/militaristic metaphor through its manifestation in a specific context . . . it seeks to explore the macrocosm through a microcosm and to provide a building block for further studies. The book is thought-provoking and diligently researched in primary sources.” —Indiana Magazine of History
“Nordstrom makes a convincing case for his conclusions and does an excellent job of bringing an interesting and previously not well-known period of anti-Catholicism in American history into focus. He also does a good job of connecting his analysis to the larger themes of Progressive-Era culture – muckraking, reform, and national idealism.” —American Catholic Studies
"Justin Nordstrom's study of ten American anti-Catholic periodicals published between the years 910 and 1919 tracks both unexpected and familiar cultural currents. . . . In Nordstrom's analysis, the orientation of these publications was unique in the long history of American anti-Catholicism.” —The New England Quarterly
“In this first major exploration of anti-Catholic print culture in the 1910s, Nordstrom argues that such anti-Catholicism became prominent by its 'critical overlap' with discourses of progressivism, masculinity and nationalism, but later in the decade took backstage to international wartime priorities. Progressive Era anti-Catholicism was distinctive, Nordstrom argues, because it insisted that Roman Catholicism was insufficiently liberal and therefore posed a threat to the nation's political fabric . . . Recommended.” —Choice
“. . . [A] comprehensive and vivid glimpse into the unsettling proclivities of those white, non-Catholic Americans known as nativists, with particular focus on those among their rank who explicated their opposition to Roman Catholicism in the print media. Also included in this fine text are illustrations and cartoons, descriptive of nativist print culture.” —Catholic Worker
“Danger on the Doorstep is a valuable addition to scholarship about the relationship between print and social movements. Its emphasis on anti-Catholicism makes it especially valuable, given how big the movement was and how little scholarship there is on the subject. Readers will especially appreciate the appendix of anti-Catholic cartoons, which powerfully underscores what was at stake in this struggle over citizenship in Progressive Era America.” —The Historian
“It is a contribution to the history of the Progressive Era and is necessary reading for anyone interested in that period. More largely, it is a contribution to the history of anti-Catholicism and anticlericalism, not just in the United States but globally, a topic rich with promise to illuminate important aspects of social, political, cultural, and sexual (dis)order. It is also a field that calls now for a “transnational history” – a history, given current historiographical trends and the state of scholarship on anti-Catholicism at the level of the nation-state whose time has come.” — Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
“Danger on the Doorstep is a balanced, carefully researched study of one important episode in the history of American anti-Catholicism . . . Nordstrom does a fine job of placing his story in the context of Progressivism and of the rapid expansion of print journalism in the early twentieth century.” —Catholic Library World
