New Books in History

In her new book In the Vortex of Violence: Lynching, Extralegal Justice, and the State in Post-Revolutionary Mexico (University of California Press), Gema Kloppe-Santamaría examines the history of violence enacted by groups against alleged transgressors who claimed to bring justice while acting beyond the rule of law.

Focusing on the 1930s to 1950s, this book explores the roots of a phenomenon often mistakenly assumed to be a result of neoliberalism in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. Kloppe-Santamaría finds that extralegal violence was not a response to the absence of the state nor to increased crime levels, nor is it connected to traditional practices. Instead, lynching is a complex, political act that commonly occurred in urban and rural communities in Mexico.

In these locales, the state was not absent, but some citizens rejected its forms of justice and deplored modernization programs that sought to remake their everyday practices. But state officials could condone or even participate in lynchings. Communities also used extralegal justice to correct perceived crimes against the Church and Catholic values, or to target threatening individuals who could be accused of witchcraft or other mythical offenses.

The Mexican press avidly covered lynchings as spectacles, but the press did not always decry lynching and often suggested it was a necessary, moral act in the absence of speedy, fair legal justice from the state. This book is in dialogue with scholarship on lynching in the United States and illustrates the relevance of the Mexican case for scholars of extralegal violence in other places.

Gema Kloppe-Santamaría is Assistant Professor of Latin American History at Loyola University Chicago.

Rachel Grace Newman is Lecturer in the History of the Global South at Smith College. She has a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University. Her book manuscript in progress is titled Study Abroad, Transnational Youth, and the Politics of Modernization in Mexico. She is also the author of a book on a binational education program for Mexican migrant children. She is on Twitter (@rachelgnew).

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According to the influential French commentator and scholar, Raymond Aron, one the great un-answered questions of the post-1945 period is how and why the British went from being ‘Romans to Italians’. In an endeavor to answer this question and much more is Professor of History Emeritus at Exeter University Jeremy Black’s book A History of Britain: 1945 to Brexit (Indiana UP, 2017)

Spanning the period from Attlee’s surprise victory over Winston Churchill in 1945, to the equally surprising decision to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum, Black’s book is a masterpiece of informed scholarly analysis and opinion. Coming from one of the historical profession’s great polymath. Black’s book is a treasure to behold for both the professional historian and the lay educated reader. Black not only deals expertly with the high politics of the period but also with the social changes, economic strains, and cultural and political upheavals that brought Britain to Brexit. This sweeping and engaging book traces Britain's path through the destruction left behind by World War II, Thatcherism, the threats of the IRA, the Scottish referendum, and on to the impact of waves of immigration from the European Union. Black overturns many conventional interpretations of significant historical events, provides context for current developments, and encourages the reader to question why we think the way we do about Britain's past.

Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written recently for Chatham House’s International Affairs.

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Isabella Cosse’s Mafalda: A Social And Political History of a Global Comic (Duke University Press) is the definitive account of the most famous comic from Latin America, the Argentine strip Mafalda (1964-1973).

Mafalda, a four-year-old girl living in a Buenos Aires apartment with her middle-class family, became an international symbol of dissent through her humorous, yet pointed critiques of authoritarianism. Cosse’s work of cultural history carefully situates the comic in the context of social modernization and political polarization in Argentina.

Cosse reveals that the various characters reflect the heterogeneity of the Argentine middle classes during the years prior to the military dictatorship, when censorship was on the rise and standards of living grew more precarious for social sectors accustomed to modern comforts. Gender roles and generational change were also central themes in the comic, which used humor to explore the ways that middle-class families grappled with shifting configurations of power within the family and society more broadly.

Cosse analyzes the processes by which Mafalda has acquired new meanings in a changing Argentina before, during, and after the military dictatorship. But this book is also transnational in scope, for Cosse follows Mafalda to the other countries where the comic found great success and resonated politically: Spain, Italy, and Mexico. Cosse’s award-winning work was first published in Spanish in 2014, and the English translation with Duke is part of the press’s series Latin America in Translation/En Traducción/Em Tradução.

Isabella Cosse is an independent researcher for the National Science and Technology Research Council and the University of Buenos Aires.

Rachel Grace Newman is Lecturer in the History of the Global South at Smith College. She has a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University, and she writes about youth, higher education, transnationalism, and social class in twentieth-century Mexico. She is also the author of a book on a binational program for Mexican migrant children. She is on Twitter (@rachelgnew).

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In an accessible and timely work of scholarship, celebrated historian Joshua B. Freeman's Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World (W. W. Norton) tells the story of the factory and examines how it has reflected both our dreams and our nightmares of industrialization and social change. He whisks readers from the early textile mills that powered the Industrial Revolution to the factory towns of New England to today’s behemoths making sneakers, toys, and cellphones in China and Vietnam. Behemoth offers a piercing perspective on how factories have shaped our societies and the challenges we face now.

Joshua B. Freeman is a Distinguished Professor of History at Queens College and the Graduate Center of CUNY. His previous books include American Empire and Working-Class New York, among others. He lives in New York City.

Mark Molloy is the reviews editor at MAKE: A Literary Magazine.

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In 20 years of studying the Holocaust, it didn’t occurr to me that German officials might, when petitioned by German Jews or by Germans advocating for German Jews, change their minds. But it turns out that, sometimes, they did. And even when they didn’t, petitioning local, regional or national officials (often all at the same time) could delay deportations or punishments or even function as a form of resistance.

Resisting Persecution: Jews and Their Petitions during the Holocaust (Berghahn Books) looks at these petitions from a variety of perspectives. As editors Thomas Kaplan and Wolf Gruner argue, this is a topic that is surprisingly undercovered. And it’s a topic rich in insight and importance. The book shows clearly that petitioning was a common practice. It shows clearly that petitions were sometimes granted. It shows clearly that petitions sometimes led to unexpected and unusual outcomes. And it shows us that studying petitions sometimes opens our eyes to new ways of understanding old topics.

The book isn’t the last word on petitions, nor does it pretend to be. Rather, Kaplan and Gruner open up a new avenue of investigation, one that offers researchers topics to work on for many years to come.

Thomas Pegelow Kaplan is the Leon Levine Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies at Appalachian State University.

Wolf Gruner is the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies, Professor of History and Founding Director of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research at the University of Southern California.

Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. He’s the author of four modules in the Reacting to the Past series, including The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations and Intervention in Rwanda, 1994, published by W. W. Norton Press.

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In 20 years of studying the Holocaust, it didn’t occurr to me that German officials might, when petitioned by German Jews or by Germans advocating for German Jews, change their minds. But it turns out that, sometimes, they did. And even when they didn’t, petitioning local, regional or national officials (often all at the same time) could delay deportations or punishments or even function as a form of resistance.

Resisting Persecution: Jews and Their Petitions during the Holocaust (Berghahn Books) looks at these petitions from a variety of perspectives. As editors Thomas Kaplan and Wolf Gruner argue, this is a topic that is surprisingly undercovered. And it’s a topic rich in insight and importance. The book shows clearly that petitioning was a common practice. It shows clearly that petitions were sometimes granted. It shows clearly that petitions sometimes led to unexpected and unusual outcomes. And it shows us that studying petitions sometimes opens our eyes to new ways of understanding old topics.

The book isn’t the last word on petitions, nor does it pretend to be. Rather, Kaplan and Gruner open up a new avenue of investigation, one that offers researchers topics to work on for many years to come.

Thomas Pegelow Kaplan is the Leon Levine Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies at Appalachian State University.

Wolf Gruner is the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies, Professor of History and Founding Director of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research at the University of Southern California.

Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. He’s the author of four modules in the Reacting to the Past series, including The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations and Intervention in Rwanda, 1994, published by W. W. Norton Press.

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Isabella Cosse’s Mafalda: A Social And Political History of a Global Comic (Duke University Press) is the definitive account of the most famous comic from Latin America, the Argentine strip Mafalda (1964-1973).

Mafalda, a four-year-old girl living in a Buenos Aires apartment with her middle-class family, became an international symbol of dissent through her humorous, yet pointed critiques of authoritarianism. Cosse’s work of cultural history carefully situates the comic in the context of social modernization and political polarization in Argentina.

Cosse reveals that the various characters reflect the heterogeneity of the Argentine middle classes during the years prior to the military dictatorship, when censorship was on the rise and standards of living grew more precarious for social sectors accustomed to modern comforts. Gender roles and generational change were also central themes in the comic, which used humor to explore the ways that middle-class families grappled with shifting configurations of power within the family and society more broadly.

Cosse analyzes the processes by which Mafalda has acquired new meanings in a changing Argentina before, during, and after the military dictatorship. But this book is also transnational in scope, for Cosse follows Mafalda to the other countries where the comic found great success and resonated politically: Spain, Italy, and Mexico. Cosse’s award-winning work was first published in Spanish in 2014, and the English translation with Duke is part of the press’s series Latin America in Translation/En Traducción/Em Tradução.

Isabella Cosse is an independent researcher for the National Science and Technology Research Council and the University of Buenos Aires.

Rachel Grace Newman is Lecturer in the History of the Global South at Smith College. She has a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University, and she writes about youth, higher education, transnationalism, and social class in twentieth-century Mexico. She is also the author of a book on a binational program for Mexican migrant children. She is on Twitter (@rachelgnew).

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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

The fact that the vast border between China and Russia is often overlooked goes hand-in-hand with a lack of understanding of the ordinary citizens in these much-discussed places, who often lose out to larger-than-life figures like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. A book that combines a look at the history of the Sino-Russian border with a focus on the experiences of everyday borderlanders is thus very valuable, and this is exactly what is offered by Sören Urbansky’s Beyond the Steppe Frontier: A History of the Sino-Russian Border (Princeton University Press).

Meticulously researched and lucidly written, Urbansky’s book draws most of its insights from a particular region of steppe – the Argun river basin – around the point where today Russia and China also converge with the eastern end of Mongolia. As well as giving a sense of the border’s formation over 300 years, Urbansky’s biperspectival look from both Russian and Chinese sides shows how the inter-state boundary took shape as a result of actions by local people, whose lives have in turn been transformed by existence next to a geopolitical faultline.

Sören Urbansky is a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC.

Ed Pulford is a Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups.

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According to the influential French commentator and scholar, Raymond Aron, one the great un-answered questions of the post-1945 period is how and why the British went from being ‘Romans to Italians’. In an endeavor to answer this question and much more is Professor of History Emeritus at Exeter University Jeremy Black’s book A History of Britain: 1945 to Brexit (Indiana UP, 2017)

Spanning the period from Attlee’s surprise victory over Winston Churchill in 1945, to the equally surprising decision to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum, Black’s book is a masterpiece of informed scholarly analysis and opinion. Coming from one of the historical profession’s great polymath. Black’s book is a treasure to behold for both the professional historian and the lay educated reader. Black not only deals expertly with the high politics of the period but also with the social changes, economic strains, and cultural and political upheavals that brought Britain to Brexit. This sweeping and engaging book traces Britain's path through the destruction left behind by World War II, Thatcherism, the threats of the IRA, the Scottish referendum, and on to the impact of waves of immigration from the European Union. Black overturns many conventional interpretations of significant historical events, provides context for current developments, and encourages the reader to question why we think the way we do about Britain's past.

Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written recently for Chatham House’s International Affairs.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In an accessible and timely work of scholarship, celebrated historian Joshua B. Freeman's Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World (W. W. Norton) tells the story of the factory and examines how it has reflected both our dreams and our nightmares of industrialization and social change. He whisks readers from the early textile mills that powered the Industrial Revolution to the factory towns of New England to today’s behemoths making sneakers, toys, and cellphones in China and Vietnam. Behemoth offers a piercing perspective on how factories have shaped our societies and the challenges we face now.

Joshua B. Freeman is a Distinguished Professor of History at Queens College and the Graduate Center of CUNY. His previous books include American Empire and Working-Class New York, among others. He lives in New York City.

Mark Molloy is the reviews editor at MAKE: A Literary Magazine.

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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history