New Books in History

In One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924–1965 (W. W. Norton & Company, 2020), Jia Lynn Yang recounts the personalities and debates that brought about the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which forms the foundation for modern U.S. immigration policy. Undoing the xenophobic national origins quotas enshrined in the 1924 Immigration Act required an epic, forty-year struggle against nativist concerns about the economy and national security, as well as racist and anti-Semitic impulses that continue to plague American society today.

Drawing on key scholarly monographs as well as her own research in archives like the LBJ Presidential Library and the Library of Congress, Yang’s narrative is full of larger-than-life characters. Some, like Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy, will be familiar with readers. Others, like Congressman Emmanuel Celler of New York and Japanese American Citizens League national secretary Mike Masaoka, are well-known but less well understood. By following their negotiations through the halls of Congress and the White House, Yang captures the contingency that shows how difficult and improbable immigration reform was to achieve. Yang concludes by issuing a call for immigrants and their descendants to “articulate a new vision for the current era, one that embraces rather than elides how far America has drifted from its European roots.”.

Jia Lynn Yang is the deputy national editor at The New York Times.

Ian Shin is assistant professor of History and American Culture at the University of Michigan.

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A century ago it wasn’t a virus whose spread was eliciting reactions around the world, but an idea. As Russia’s 1917 October Revolution distended itself across north Asia and reverberated globally, socialism acted – not unlike today’s pandemic – as a Rorschach test revealing divisions in societies and politics, and to some offering cautious hope for a new world which might be constructed in the aftermath.

Tatiana Linkhoeva’s meticulously detailed Revolution Goes East: Imperial Japan and Soviet Communism (Cornell University Press, 2020) shows that Japanese responses to Soviet socialism during the 1920s and 30s were no exception to this. Indeed given the country’s situation at the time, the diversity of views on the revolution held by various government factions, the military, and society at large was especially diverse. But whether seeing this moment as an ideological or a geopolitical cataclysm, a threat or an opportunity for Japan’s growing imperial domain, or a fillip for the leftist ideas percolating through intellectual circles at this time, every Japanese observer of ‘Red October’ and its aftermath revealed something vital about Japan itself at this pivotal time.

Ed Pulford is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups.

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In The Woman as Slave in Nineteenth-Century American Social Movements (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Ana Stevenson explores the ubiquity of what she terms the “woman-slave analogy” in nineteenth-century US feminist discourse. Using examples from the women’s suffrage, abolition, dress-reform, and labor movements, among others, Steveson reconstructs the creation of this theoretical framework that imagined women’s subjugation as similar to, and sometimes even worse than, the plight of enslaved Americans. Although the women-slave analogy sometimes appeared tone-deaf, Stevenson demonstrates the many different ways that reformers--men and women, black and white--embraced the concept to fight for women’s political, legal, and economic rights. Crucially, Stevenson’s book encourages us to rethink the intellectual foundations of modern feminism and to critically evaluate the legacy of the women-as-slave worldview.

Chelsea Gibson is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Binghamton University. Her research explores the reception of Russian terrorist women in the United States before 1917.    

 

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In The Woman as Slave in Nineteenth-Century American Social Movements (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Ana Stevenson explores the ubiquity of what she terms the “woman-slave analogy” in nineteenth-century US feminist discourse. Using examples from the women’s suffrage, abolition, dress-reform, and labor movements, among others, Steveson reconstructs the creation of this theoretical framework that imagined women’s subjugation as similar to, and sometimes even worse than, the plight of enslaved Americans. Although the women-slave analogy sometimes appeared tone-deaf, Stevenson demonstrates the many different ways that reformers--men and women, black and white--embraced the concept to fight for women’s political, legal, and economic rights. Crucially, Stevenson’s book encourages us to rethink the intellectual foundations of modern feminism and to critically evaluate the legacy of the women-as-slave worldview.

Chelsea Gibson is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Binghamton University. Her research explores the reception of Russian terrorist women in the United States before 1917.    

 

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What do you think about these days when you hear the words, “Supreme Court?” Salacious news coverage of the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh? Gushing profiles of feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg? High school and vaguely recalled lectures about cases the details of which you dutifully read (or didn’t and flunked the test on) like McCulloch v. Maryland or Marbury v. Madison?

Or, in this age on the Coronavirus and the sudden need to determine as a citizen what the respective powers of governors and presidents are in times of crisis, are you suddenly aware that a grasp of seemingly arcane terms like “enumerated powers” is imperative for each and every one of us and not just constitutional scholars?

Are you suddenly out of a job and thinking now of attending law school and are not sure you could master the material? Have you suddenly found yourself homeschooling a bright late adolescent in need of a text and an associated online resource about the key legal cases that have determined our destiny as a nation and affect virtually every aspect of our individual lives? Do you simply want a solid but approachable book that provides vignettes of crucial moments of American legal, social and political history? Want to know under what pretexts a local government can seize your house?

Have I got the book and online study guide for you: An Introduction to Constitutional Law: 100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know (Wolter Kluwer, 2019) by Josh Blackman and Randy E. Barnett—published in 2019. Randy Barnett is one of the leading constitutional scholars of our time. He and his co-author Blackman have boiled down to a handy hundred what they believe are the cases that most matter—some of which are notorious (or what they term, “anti-canonical”). Let’s see if you agree with their picks. Give a listen.

Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher.

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Today I talked to Richard McBride II about Doctrine and Practice in Medieval Korean Buddhism: The Collected Works of Ŭich’ŏn (University of Hawaii Press, 2016). The book is a comprehensive study of the Koryŏ (918-1392) Buddhist exegete, Ŭichŏn, that convey’s his life and work through letters, speeches, memorials, addresses, and poetry, from three epigraphical accounts. During a time of contention between the the doctrinal (敎) and meditation (禪) schools, Ŭich’ŏn traveled to Song (宋), China (960-1270) to study with the Huayan (華嚴) master, Jinshui Jingyuan (晉水淨源) (1011-1088). During his fourteen-month stay in China, he became well-acquainted with monks of the Huayan, Tiantai, Vinaya, Chan, and Consciousness-only schools. Upon his return to Koryŏ, he compiled the "New Catalog of the Teachings of All the Schools," the first comprehensive catalog of essays and commentaries that reflects a pan-East Asian tradition. Ŭich’ŏn has been historically associated with abandoning his affiliation with the Huayan school, and founding the Ch’ŏnt’ae (Tiantai, 天 台) order of Korean Buddhism. Despite this, letters to Master Jinshui Jingyuan, in combination with addresses to novice disciples reveal that Uicheon did not abandon Huayan thought,but advocated that all forms of doctrinal knowledge be thoroughly understood in an age of declining dharma.

Trevor McManis is a student at California State University, Stanislaus, who specializes in cultural geography with an interest in applying geographic thought to the study of East Asian Religions.

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Through a series of provocative case studies on mobility, transgression, and intimacy, David Ambaras’s Japan’s Imperial Underworlds: Intimate Encounters at the Borders of Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2018) interrogates the spatial and ideological formations of modern Japan in its first seven decades or so as a nation-state and empire, especially vis-à-vis China. The slippage between the individual and collective/national (geo)body is a critical theme as Ambaras highlights the roles of both media and government narratives in defining a shared national vision of Japan, and the powerful alchemy of pride and anxieties around the transgression of its borders. With case studies on human trafficking, international marriage, middlebrow literature, and a pirate queen (!), this study of marginalized people on the margins throws new light on Japan and maritime East Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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For much of the last century, ballet class has been a rite of passage for millions of little girls in the United States. Some of these students have gone on to professional careers as dancers, but many more take class for a few years—or many years—before moving on to other pursuits. But the sheer prevalence of the experience has created an educated and appreciative audience that supports dance companies and dance training. It has also created a whole subset of “girl culture”: ballet books and films, pink tutus and sparkly tiaras, an inundation of princesses and swans.

In Ballet Class: An American History (Oxford University Press, 2020), Melissa R. Klapper explores how this phenomenon developed. From the misperception that boys never take ballet class to the racist assumption that members of a corps de ballet need to resemble one another physically, ballet has mirrored the larger society in negative respects as well as positive ones, and it has evolved together with the culture as a whole. For this and many other reasons that Klapper lays out through rich and complex analysis delivered in lively, compelling prose, the history of ballet class really does open a window onto the development of American culture between World War I and the present.

C. P. Lesley, a historian and amateur dancer, hosts New Books in Historical Fiction. Under this pen name, she also writes historical novels. Her latest book, Song of the Shaman, appeared in 2020. Find out more about her at http://www.cplesley.com.

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Kenesha N. Grant, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Howard University, at the beginning of her new book, The Great Migration and the Democratic Party: Black Voters and the Realignment of American Politics in the 20th Century (Temple University Press, 2020), poses a question to consider in context of trying to understand the realignment of voters within American political parties. This question is about the impact of the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to northern cities, and how this changed the political dynamics in many of the places where African Americans settled and built new lives. Grant’s examination focuses specifically on the impact in terms of politics, how and where African American individuals engaged in politics, as voters, and in running for and being elected to office. The Great Migration and the Democratic Party concentrates on three cities where the population changed and shifted given the influx of black citizens; and the political dynamics in Detroit, Chicago, and in New York City all came to reflect, in different ways, the influx of new voters and politically active citizens. The Great Migration and the Democratic Party focuses on the local, state, and national Democratic Party, since these voters were not only politically engaged at the local level, they were also able to contribute to voting blocs within states, at times making the difference in terms of the Electoral College and presidential candidacies.

The Great Migration and the Democratic Party traces the changes in the political parties over the course of the 20th century, exploring the shifts of voters across parties, with specific attention to Black voters’ movement from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party. Grant examines this shift in context of the movement of voters from one part of the United States to other parts of the United States, but also through the lens of how white Democratic elected officials in northern cities approached and engaged Black voters, and how both black and white citizens in these large urban centers participated in politics. Ultimately, Grant positions the Great Migration as a key dimension of some of the shifts and changes that have occurred in the parties over the past century. In tracing the political impact of the great migration, Grant also concludes her work with some analysis of the re-migration of African Americans back to the South, and how active citizens and voters may once again change the dynamics in American politics.

Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

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Through a series of provocative case studies on mobility, transgression, and intimacy, David Ambaras’s Japan’s Imperial Underworlds: Intimate Encounters at the Borders of Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2018) interrogates the spatial and ideological formations of modern Japan in its first seven decades or so as a nation-state and empire, especially vis-à-vis China. The slippage between the individual and collective/national (geo)body is a critical theme as Ambaras highlights the roles of both media and government narratives in defining a shared national vision of Japan, and the powerful alchemy of pride and anxieties around the transgression of its borders. With case studies on human trafficking, international marriage, middlebrow literature, and a pirate queen (!), this study of marginalized people on the margins throws new light on Japan and maritime East Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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