New Books in History

In Land, Liberty, and Water: Morelos After Zapata, 1920-1940 (University of Arizona Press, 2018), Salvador Salinas fills an important gap in the history of the Zapatista Revolution in Morelos - namely, what happened after 1920. In this meticulously researched account of everyday life between 1920 and 1940, Salinas shows that many of the democratic and economic gains Zapatistas made only came after the death of their famous general. Using ejidos, municipal authorities and water administration, Mexicans were able to win access to the land and water of the state.

Ethan Fredrick is a graduate student in history at the University of Minnesota.

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Much of the confusion about a central event in United States history begins with the name the "Civil War." In reality, the Civil War was not merely civil--meaning national--and not merely a war, but instead an international conflict of ideas as well as armies. Its implications transformed the U.S. Constitution and reshaped a world order, as political and economic systems grounded in slavery and empire clashed with the democratic process of republican forms of government. And it spilled over national boundaries, tying the United States together with Cuba, Spain, Mexico, Britain, and France in a struggle over the future of slavery and of republics. In The Second American Revolution: The Civil War-Era Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), Gregory P. Downs argues that we can see the Civil War anew by understanding it as a revolution. More than a fight to preserve the Union and end slavery, the conflict refashioned a nation, in part by remaking its Constitution. More than a struggle of brother against brother, it entailed remaking an Atlantic world that centered in surprising ways on Cuba and Spain. Downs introduces a range of actors not often considered as central to the conflict but clearly engaged in broader questions and acts they regarded as revolutionary. This expansive canvas allows Downs to describe a broad and world-shaking war with implications far greater than often recognized.

Ryan Tripp is part-time and full-time adjunct history faculty at California community colleges as well as the College of Online and Continuing Education at Southern New Hampshire University.

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The term ‘Manchuria’ conjures up all manner of evocative associations for people interested in East Asian and world history, from the Manchu founders of China’s last imperial dynasty, to Russian railroads and Japanese empire on the Asian mainland. Up to now, however, there hasn’t really been a particularly obvious place to look for a satisfying source of information about these and other aspects of the region’s fascinating past and present.

Mark Gamsa’s Manchuria: A Concise History (I. B. Tauris, 2020) therefore meets a significant need, deftly weaving together the many diffuse strands which make up the history of what we now call northeast China. Conveniently broken down into easily digestible chunks, each dealing with a key historic juncture and the parties involved, the book sheds light on both known and overlooked aspects of Manchurian life.

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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The so-called Sabermetrics revolution in baseball that began in the 1970s, popularized by the book—and later Hollywood film—Moneyball, was supposed to represent a triumph of observation over intuition. Cash-strapped clubs need not compete for hyped-up prospects when undervalued players provide better price per run scored. Q.E.D., right?

In Scouting and Scoring: How We Know What We Know About Baseball (Princeton University Press, 2019), historian of science Christopher J. Phillips rejects his titular dualism. He shows us that baseball can be, in the words of seminal anthropologist and noted Tampa Bay Rays fan* Claude Lévi-Strauss, “good to think with.” Both traditional amateur scouts and statistically-savvy scorers rely on metrics and bureaucracy to make their judgments count, as it were. Some like to say that baseball is quantitative at its core, but by tracing the co-evolution of the sport’s competing data sciences—with episodes that bear witness to the development of the modern press and digital computers—Phillips crafts a compelling narrative sure to delight baseball fans and historians of the human sciences alike.

*kidding

Mikey McGovern is a PhD candidate in Princeton University’s Program in the History of Science. He is writing a dissertation on how people used discrimination statistics to argue about rights in 1970s America, and what this means for histories of bureaucracy, quantification, law, politics, and race.

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Today we are joined by Andrew R. M. Smith, author of No Way But To Fight: George Foreman and the Business of Boxing (University of Texas Press, 2020). In our conversation, we discussed Foreman’s career, the role of race in American sports, and how boxing helped give rise to athletic mega-events.

In No Way But To Fight, Smith traces the intersections between Foreman’s life, the racial politics of sports during the Civil Rights era, the intensification of boxing’s commercialization, the complexities of black masculinities, and the internationalization of sports mega-events. He shows that from his upbringing in Houston’s Fifth Ward to his role as a spokesman for the Foreman Grill, Foreman always fought to redefine himself along with the times. Smith’s telescoping view showcases a Foreman that played with different personalities - including American patriot, soul man, and evangelical preacher - in order to achieve success at distinct stages of his life.

Although Smiths work proceeds chronologically, it focuses heavily on Foreman’s first boxing career, the period between Foreman’s Gold Medal fight in 1968 to his defeat in 1977 to Jimmy Young. Based on a close reading of newspaper articles, advertising materials, and interviews with the boxer, he paints vivid pictures of the snapshots of Foreman’s life. The pugilist pursued different strategies throughout his career in and outside of the ring – some more sensible than others such as not drinking water the day before a fight. He also showcases the way fighting created pathways for a young man from one of Houston’s roughest neighborhoods to achieve global fame and fortune.

No Way But To Fight will appeal to readers interested in the links between money, race, and prize fighting in the United States.

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Today we are joined by Andrew R. M. Smith, author of No Way But To Fight: George Foreman and the Business of Boxing (University of Texas Press, 2020). In our conversation, we discussed Foreman’s career, the role of race in American sports, and how boxing helped give rise to athletic mega-events.

In No Way But To Fight, Smith traces the intersections between Foreman’s life, the racial politics of sports during the Civil Rights era, the intensification of boxing’s commercialization, the complexities of black masculinities, and the internationalization of sports mega-events. He shows that from his upbringing in Houston’s Fifth Ward to his role as a spokesman for the Foreman Grill, Foreman always fought to redefine himself along with the times. Smith’s telescoping view showcases a Foreman that played with different personalities - including American patriot, soul man, and evangelical preacher - in order to achieve success at distinct stages of his life.

Although Smiths work proceeds chronologically, it focuses heavily on Foreman’s first boxing career, the period between Foreman’s Gold Medal fight in 1968 to his defeat in 1977 to Jimmy Young. Based on a close reading of newspaper articles, advertising materials, and interviews with the boxer, he paints vivid pictures of the snapshots of Foreman’s life. The pugilist pursued different strategies throughout his career in and outside of the ring – some more sensible than others such as not drinking water the day before a fight. He also showcases the way fighting created pathways for a young man from one of Houston’s roughest neighborhoods to achieve global fame and fortune.

No Way But To Fight will appeal to readers interested in the links between money, race, and prize fighting in the United States.

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

Today we are joined by Andrew R. M. Smith, author of No Way But To Fight: George Foreman and the Business of Boxing (University of Texas Press, 2020). In our conversation, we discussed Foreman’s career, the role of race in American sports, and how boxing helped give rise to athletic mega-events.

In No Way But To Fight, Smith traces the intersections between Foreman’s life, the racial politics of sports during the Civil Rights era, the intensification of boxing’s commercialization, the complexities of black masculinities, and the internationalization of sports mega-events. He shows that from his upbringing in Houston’s Fifth Ward to his role as a spokesman for the Foreman Grill, Foreman always fought to redefine himself along with the times. Smith’s telescoping view showcases a Foreman that played with different personalities - including American patriot, soul man, and evangelical preacher - in order to achieve success at distinct stages of his life.

Although Smiths work proceeds chronologically, it focuses heavily on Foreman’s first boxing career, the period between Foreman’s Gold Medal fight in 1968 to his defeat in 1977 to Jimmy Young. Based on a close reading of newspaper articles, advertising materials, and interviews with the boxer, he paints vivid pictures of the snapshots of Foreman’s life. The pugilist pursued different strategies throughout his career in and outside of the ring – some more sensible than others such as not drinking water the day before a fight. He also showcases the way fighting created pathways for a young man from one of Houston’s roughest neighborhoods to achieve global fame and fortune.

No Way But To Fight will appeal to readers interested in the links between money, race, and prize fighting in the United States.

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

Keri Holt is the author of Reading These United States: Federal Literacy in the Early Republic, 1776-1830, published by the University of Georgia Press in 2019. Reading These United States explores how Americans read, saw, and understood the federal structure of the country in its early years. Drawing on a wide array of sources, from almanacs to textbooks, magazines to novels, and much more, Holt illustrates how Americans imagined their country not necessarily as one homogeneous nation, but as a union of states. Forging national character through local differences, Holt’s work sheds new light on the ways in which U.S. nationalism was created, inversely, by drawing lines between and separating Americans from themselves.

Keri Holt is Associate Professor of English and American Studies at Utah State University.

Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland.

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In the mid-twentieth century, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) returned to Nauvoo, Illinois, home to the thriving religious community led by Joseph Smith before his murder in 1844. The quiet farm town became a major Mormon heritage site visited annually by tens of thousands of people. Yet Nauvoo's dramatic restoration proved fraught with conflicts.

Scott C. Esplin's new social history, Return to the City of Joseph: Modern Mormonism’s Contest for the Soul of Nauvoo (University of Illinois Press, 2019), looks at how Nauvoo's different groups have sparred over heritage and historical memory. The Latter-day Saint project brought it into conflict with the Community of Christ, the midwestern branch of Mormonism that had kept a foothold in the town and a claim on its Smith-related sites. Non-Mormon locals, meanwhile, sought to maintain the historic place of ancestors who had settled in Nauvoo after the Latter-day Saints' departure. Examining the recent and present-day struggles to define the town, Esplin probes the values of the local groups while placing Nauvoo at the center of Mormonism's attempt to carve a role for itself within the greater narrative of American history.

Daniel P. Stone holds a PhD in American religious history from Manchester Metropolitan University (United Kingdom) and is the author of William Bickerton: Forgotten Latter Day Prophet (Signature Books, 2018). He has taught history courses at the University of Detroit Mercy and Florida Atlantic University, and currently, he works as a research archivist for a private library/archive in Detroit, Michigan.

 

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Keri Holt is the author of Reading These United States: Federal Literacy in the Early Republic, 1776-1830, published by the University of Georgia Press in 2019. Reading These United States explores how Americans read, saw, and understood the federal structure of the country in its early years. Drawing on a wide array of sources, from almanacs to textbooks, magazines to novels, and much more, Holt illustrates how Americans imagined their country not necessarily as one homogeneous nation, but as a union of states. Forging national character through local differences, Holt’s work sheds new light on the ways in which U.S. nationalism was created, inversely, by drawing lines between and separating Americans from themselves.

Keri Holt is Associate Professor of English and American Studies at Utah State University.

Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland.

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