New Books in History

In the middle of the twentieth century, a newspaper photographer who went by the name of Weegee took memorable pictures of New York City’s street life that appeared everywhere from tabloid newspapers to seminars on the history of photography. Christopher Bonanos’ book Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous (Henry Holt and Company, 2018), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, tells the story of his life from his childhood as an immigrant street kid on the Lower East Side to his years photographing murder scenes to his experiments with caricatures of celebrities. As Bonanos observes, Weegee “very early on grasped that the distinction between high culture and low culture was growing blurry.” Out of that insight he made a career and a body of work that tell us a lot about New York City, its journalism, and photography.

Robert W. Snyder, professor emeritus of American Studies and Journalism at Rutgers-University-Newark and Manhattan Borough Historian, is the author of Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York and co-author of All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants and the Making of New York. He can be reached at [email protected].

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

Ismael Garcia-Colon, Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire: Puerto Rican Workers on U.S. Farms (University of California Press, 2020) is the first in-depth look at the experiences of Puerto Rican migrant workers in continental U.S. agriculture in the twentieth century. The Farm Labor Program, established by the government of Puerto Rico in 1947, placed hundreds of thousands of migrant workers on U.S. farms and fostered the emergence of many stateside Puerto Rican communities. Ismael Garcia-Colon investigates the origins and development of this program and uncovers the unique challenges faced by its participants.

A labor history and an ethnography, Colonial Migrants evokes the violence, fieldwork, food, lodging, surveillance, and coercion that these workers experienced on farms and conveys their hopes and struggles to overcome poverty. Island farmworkers encountered a unique form of prejudice and racism arising from their dual status as both U.S. citizens and as “foreign others,” and their experiences were further shaped by evolving immigration policies. Despite these challenges, many Puerto Rican farmworkers ultimately chose to settle in rural U.S. communities, contributing to the production of food and the Latinization of the U.S. farm labor force.

Beth A. English is director of the Liechtenstein Institute’s Project on Gender in the Global Community at Princeton University. She also is a past president of the Southern Labor History Association.

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

What does the 1964 presidential election have to teach us about party dynamics, civil rights and polarization? While many scholars have treated the dramatic candidates and characters such as Lyndon B. Johnson and Barry Goldwater, Nancy Beck Young’s Two Suns of the Southwest: Lyndon Johnson, Barry Goldwater, and the 1964 Battle between Liberalism and Conservatism (University of Kansas Press, 2019) is the first comprehensive political history of the 1964 election. Y

oung (Professor of History, University of Houston) interrogates the Eisenhower 1950s to understand both Goldwater and Johnson as she focuses on internationalism, human rights, and fiscal conservatism. For her, 1964 was not what it seemed. The LBJ landslide was not the ascendance of liberalism or the death of conservatism: “Johnson’s frontlash strategy was not initially the preferred choice of either party liberals, who wanted him to coordinate with congressional races and run a campaign based on leftist policy agenda, or moderate democrats, who wanted him to focus on keeping the diverse in the party united, including the southerners who were threatening to abandon the party.” The Great Society would unite Eisenhower’s moderate Republicans with independents and Democrats (except the Southern Dixiecrats). In the long term, a version of that conservatism would succeed in the hands of Ronald Reagan: “Reagan had much to do with explaining how Johnson and Goldwater practiced the politics of ideology.”

The chapters follow both sets of primaries in chronological order highlighting personal foibles (e.g. the insecurity of LBJ felt about filling the JFK legacy), the importance of Civil Rights Acts of 1964, 1965, and 1968. The Sunbelt functions as a character in this political history. She sees both candidates as “sons of the Old West” but each imagining disparate narratives of what defined the South West.

The book was written during the 2016 election and, in the podcast, Young reflects on similarities and differences between 1968 and our contemporary elections. Despite the ideological splits in 1968, Young believes that the parties and the public shared a faith in the US as a country: successful and moving forward despite differences over civil rights. She sees Biden and LBJ as similar: never the first choice of more liberal members of their parties and creatures of the Senate who know its internal politics. But she notes how LBJ’s legislative success in passing elements of the Great Society depended upon the huge majorities in the 89th Congress (the “Great 89th”) -- something any president elected in 2020 will be unlikely to have.

Eli Levitas-Goren assisted with this podcast.

Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013) and, most recently, “Retreat from the Rule of Law: Locke and the Perils of Stand Your Ground” in the Journal of Politics (August 2020).

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

Though not as well known today as many of his contemporaries, few American mob bosses were as feared as Albert Anastasia. As head of “Murder Inc.”, Anastasia presided over the contract killing of hundreds of people, some of whom he murdered with his own hands. In Lord High Executioner: The Legendary Mafia Boss Albert Anastasia (Citadel, 2020), Frank DiMatteo and Michael Benson draw upon DiMatteo’s firsthand experiences with several of Anastasia’s contemporaries to recount the tale of Anastasia’s bloody career. Born Umberto Anastasio, the young Anastasia went AWOL from the Italian Navy in order to start his life in America. During the 1920s Anastasia rose rapidly in the ranks of the New York mob in the thanks to his organizing abilities and his willingness to do dangerous work. When “Lucky” Luciano organized the five families in 1931, Anastasia became the underboss of Vincent Mangano and was placed in charge of their enforcement arm. Over the next quarter of a century Anastasia ruled through intimidation and bloodshed, until his growing public infamy and a series of missteps on his part led to his own execution in a Manhattan barbershop in 1957.

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

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

In the middle of the twentieth century, a newspaper photographer who went by the name of Weegee took memorable pictures of New York City’s street life that appeared everywhere from tabloid newspapers to seminars on the history of photography. Christopher Bonanos’ book Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous (Henry Holt and Company, 2018), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, tells the story of his life from his childhood as an immigrant street kid on the Lower East Side to his years photographing murder scenes to his experiments with caricatures of celebrities. As Bonanos observes, Weegee “very early on grasped that the distinction between high culture and low culture was growing blurry.” Out of that insight he made a career and a body of work that tell us a lot about New York City, its journalism, and photography.

Robert W. Snyder, professor emeritus of American Studies and Journalism at Rutgers-University-Newark and Manhattan Borough Historian, is the author of Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York and co-author of All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants and the Making of New York. He can be reached at [email protected].

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

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

What does the 1964 presidential election have to teach us about party dynamics, civil rights and polarization? While many scholars have treated the dramatic candidates and characters such as Lyndon B. Johnson and Barry Goldwater, Nancy Beck Young’s Two Suns of the Southwest: Lyndon Johnson, Barry Goldwater, and the 1964 Battle between Liberalism and Conservatism (University of Kansas Press, 2019) is the first comprehensive political history of the 1964 election. Y

oung (Professor of History, University of Houston) interrogates the Eisenhower 1950s to understand both Goldwater and Johnson as she focuses on internationalism, human rights, and fiscal conservatism. For her, 1964 was not what it seemed. The LBJ landslide was not the ascendance of liberalism or the death of conservatism: “Johnson’s frontlash strategy was not initially the preferred choice of either party liberals, who wanted him to coordinate with congressional races and run a campaign based on leftist policy agenda, or moderate democrats, who wanted him to focus on keeping the diverse in the party united, including the southerners who were threatening to abandon the party.” The Great Society would unite Eisenhower’s moderate Republicans with independents and Democrats (except the Southern Dixiecrats). In the long term, a version of that conservatism would succeed in the hands of Ronald Reagan: “Reagan had much to do with explaining how Johnson and Goldwater practiced the politics of ideology.”

The chapters follow both sets of primaries in chronological order highlighting personal foibles (e.g. the insecurity of LBJ felt about filling the JFK legacy), the importance of Civil Rights Acts of 1964, 1965, and 1968. The Sunbelt functions as a character in this political history. She sees both candidates as “sons of the Old West” but each imagining disparate narratives of what defined the South West.

The book was written during the 2016 election and, in the podcast, Young reflects on similarities and differences between 1968 and our contemporary elections. Despite the ideological splits in 1968, Young believes that the parties and the public shared a faith in the US as a country: successful and moving forward despite differences over civil rights. She sees Biden and LBJ as similar: never the first choice of more liberal members of their parties and creatures of the Senate who know its internal politics. But she notes how LBJ’s legislative success in passing elements of the Great Society depended upon the huge majorities in the 89th Congress (the “Great 89th”) -- something any president elected in 2020 will be unlikely to have.

Eli Levitas-Goren assisted with this podcast.

Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013) and, most recently, “Retreat from the Rule of Law: Locke and the Perils of Stand Your Ground” in the Journal of Politics (August 2020).

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

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

War in Europe: 1450 to the Present (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) is a masterful overview of war and military development in Europe since 1450, bringing together the work of a renowned historian of modern European and military history in a single authoritative volume. Beginning with the impact of the Reformation and continuing up to the present day, Professor Emeritus at Exeter University, Jeremy Black discusses the following key theme in this truly splendid book:long-term military developments, notably in the way war is waged and battle conducted; the relationship between war and transformations in the European international system; the linkage between military requirements and state developments, the consequences of these requirements, and of the experience of war, for the nature of society

Adopting a clear chronological approach, Professor Black weaves a rich and detailed narrative of the development of war in relation to transformations in the European international system, demonstrating the links between its causes and consequences in the military, political and social spheres. Assimilating decades of important research as well as bringing new perspectives to the topic, War in Europe is a key text for students taking courses in European history, international relations and war studies and the lay educated public interested in early-modern and modern European history and military history.

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

Ismael Garcia-Colon, Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire: Puerto Rican Workers on U.S. Farms (University of California Press, 2020) is the first in-depth look at the experiences of Puerto Rican migrant workers in continental U.S. agriculture in the twentieth century. The Farm Labor Program, established by the government of Puerto Rico in 1947, placed hundreds of thousands of migrant workers on U.S. farms and fostered the emergence of many stateside Puerto Rican communities. Ismael Garcia-Colon investigates the origins and development of this program and uncovers the unique challenges faced by its participants.

A labor history and an ethnography, Colonial Migrants evokes the violence, fieldwork, food, lodging, surveillance, and coercion that these workers experienced on farms and conveys their hopes and struggles to overcome poverty. Island farmworkers encountered a unique form of prejudice and racism arising from their dual status as both U.S. citizens and as “foreign others,” and their experiences were further shaped by evolving immigration policies. Despite these challenges, many Puerto Rican farmworkers ultimately chose to settle in rural U.S. communities, contributing to the production of food and the Latinization of the U.S. farm labor force.

Beth A. English is director of the Liechtenstein Institute’s Project on Gender in the Global Community at Princeton University. She also is a past president of the Southern Labor History Association.

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

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

How did an authoritarian regime help lay the cornerstones of human rights and international law? Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal  (Oxford University Press, 2020) argues that Anglo-American dominated histories capture the moment while missing the story.

Drawing upon secret archives open for a few brief years during Russia’s liberalization, Francine Hirsch takes readers behind the scenes to private parties and late-night deliberations where the Nuremberg Principles took shape. A vital corrective told through the messy and all too human negotiations behind a trial that changed everything and almost never happened.

Francine Hirsch is the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of History at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her first book Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Cornell UP, 2005) received the Herbert Baxter Adams, Wayne S. Vucinich, and Council for European Studies book prizes. She specializes in Russian and Soviet History, Modern European History, Comparative Empires, Russian-American Engagement, and the History of Human Rights.

Ryan Stackhouse is a historian of Europe specializing in modern Germany and political policing under dictatorship. His forthcoming book Enemies of the People: Hitler’s Critics and the Gestapo explores enforcement practices toward different social groups under Nazism. He also cohosts the Third Reich History Podcast and can be reached at [email protected] or @Staxomatix.

 

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

How do the political afterlives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. continue to shape American democracy? How does a common myth of opposition distort our understanding of civil rights?

In his dual biography, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. (Basic Books, 2020), Peniel E. Joseph (Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and Professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin) interrogates the lives and philosophies of both Dr. King and Malcolm X. Although the two leaders were often depicted as advocating rival visions, Joseph unpacks the false binaries to reveal the many ways they influenced and persuaded one another. For Joseph, they shared a revolutionary path in search of black dignity, citizenship, and human rights.

Using the metaphor of the sword and the shield, Joseph contrasts Malcolm X’s belief in self-defense with Dr. King’s adherence to non-violence. Joseph reveals the manner in which King – as an insider raised in black Christianity – articulated the dream of equal citizenship as black America’s chief defense attorney. In contrast, Malcolm X – an outsider who reimagined himself while in prison using tenets from black nationalism and Islam – acted at the prosecuting attorney who unflinchingly accused white America of creating a cultural, political, and legal nightmare that deprived black citizens of their dignity.

But Joseph cautions against overstating familiar binaries. Based on nuanced, archival research, Joseph rejects Dr. King as a primarily conciliatory figure and Malcolm X as his “evil twin.” Both were radical figures who increasingly came to share a political vision. Rather than symbolizing a divided America, King and X’s strategies often furthered or clarified the other’s message: radical black citizenship as inextricably connected to radical black dignity. Joseph reveals both leaders as complex individuals who cannot be fully or accurately understood through simple binaries. Both were black revolutionaries and “kindred spirits whose very presence helped them fulfill their respective roles.”

In the podcast, Joseph emphasizes the role of women in the fight for civil rights, the disparate messages of the white and black press, and the profound effect the assassination of Malcolm X had on Dr. King. Reflecting on the 2020 national protests, Joseph sees the visions of both men in the Black Lives Matter movement – as well as concern with how police brutality reflects the racial caste system in the U.S.

Bernadette Crehan assisted with this podcast.

Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013) and, most recently, “Retreat from the Rule of Law: Locke and the Perils of Stand Your Ground” in the Journal of Politics (August 2020).

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