In a perceptive challenge to longstanding assumptions about Dominican anti-Haitianism, April J. Mayes finds fresh ways to think about the production of race in late 19th and 20th century Dominican Republic. Combining intellectual history with fine-grained social history, The Mulatto Republic: Class, Race and Dominican National Identity (University Press of Florida, 2014) argues that Dominican thinking about race was conditioned by West Indian migration, by considerations about both Spanish and US imperialism, and by shifting understandings of gender and of whiteness. This is an important contribution to the recent rethinking of the history of the island of Hispaniola.

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As an award-winning documentarian and writer, Stephen Most has a great deal of experience in the art of storytelling with non-fiction films. In Stories Make the World: Reflections on Storytelling and the Art of the Documentary (Berghahn Books, 2017), he examines how documentary filmmakers work to present reality and truth using storytelling concepts that stretch back through time.

 

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Marie von Clausewitz: The Woman Behind the Making of On War (Oxford University Press, 2016) is an important and fascinating book that not only tells the story of a remarkable woman’s life during the tumultuous years of the French Revolution and Restoration. Based on a recently discovered cache of letters between Marie von Clausewitz and her renowned husband, Carl, it also dramatically expands our understanding of the process by which Carl’s famous treatise, On War, came to be. Vanya E. Bellinger, currently a visiting professor at the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, argues that Marie was a crucial foil for the development of Carl’s ideas over many years. Marie’s connections to the Prussian court (she was born into the prominent von Bruhl family) also helped to secure her husband’s often precarious position. Bellinger freely acknowledges Carl’s military genius but places Marie alongside her husband as an intellectual partner and political confidante, who played an important role in bringing one of the most famous works of military theory to the world.

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In his new book, Coming of Age: Constructing and Controlling Youth in Munich, 1942-1973 (Berghan Books, 2016), Martin Kalb, Assistant Professor of History at Bridgewater College examines the construction of youth culture in Munich Germany. Kalb describes constructions of Munich youth in three distinct periods, beginning with the years following the conclusion of World War II, followed by the years of economic stability following the Marshal Plan, finally ending with the protest years culminating in 1968. Overall, Kalb convincing shows how authorities used the fears of adult society effectively as a method to strengthen their control over society.

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This is the third in a series of podcasts from Zoe Kontes’ terrific “Looted.”

There’s nothing like a full-bodied ancient Greek bronze nude to get the crowds to a museum. A visitor might even fall in love (speaking from personal experience Riace Bronzes, here’s looking at you). We’ll focus on two of these very rare figures, found in US museums, but currently the subject of great debates of identification and international ownership.

On Looted: The Podcast, we uncover the hidden stories of ancient artifacts and their journeys in the illicit antiquities trade. I’m Zoe Kontes, and I’m an archaeologist. When we archaeologists dig, we carefully record what we find so we can make the best sense of the evidence. But go to any museum, auction house, or dealer with an antiquities collection—Ebay even—and you’ll be sure to find objects that have been removed from the ground without this kind of proper excavation. Looting destroys the context of artifacts, and while they may look beautiful in a display case, we lose any information about their significance or function in the culture that made them. This is a loss of our common human history, and it affects us all.

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The Syrian Revolution, which began in March 2011, has since resulted in what can be described as a civil war, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and the forced migrations of millions of Syrians. This story has been told countless times in news media. However, less known is the story of the Syrian artists who have portrayed the revolution with all of its nuances. miriam cooke’s Dancing in Damascus: Creativity, Resilience and the Syrian Revolution (Routledge, 2017) tells that story, beginning before the revolution and continuing until the present. Through cooke’s work, we see how oppression can beget creativity and how art in the Syrian context can create public memory. cooke brings together different mediums to show how different conversations cut through the Syrian artistic community and how Syrians relate to one another. Dancing in Damascus is comprehensive, provocative, and hopeful.

Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing.

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Middle-agedness is a curious phenomenon. In many ways, one is at one’s peak and also at the early stages of decline. There is much to do, but also dozens of paths irretrievably untaken. Successes, but also regrets. It’s no wonder that the idea of a midlife crisis is so familiar. But midlife is not commonly a subject of explicit philosophical study. In Midlife: A Philosophical Guide (Princeton University Press, 2017), Kieran Setiya develops a philosophical account of the crises associated with midlife that combines the precision of a philosophical treatise with the narrative and advice-giving of a self-help manual. The result is a fascinating exploration of the challenges that come with growing old.

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In their new book Recharging Judaism: How Civic Engagement is Good For Synagogues, Jews and America (Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2017), Rabbi Judith Schindler and Judy Seldin-Cohen argue that social action and Jewish action go hand-in-hand. The book offers both inspiration and guidance, weaving together passages from Torah and Talmud, insights from contemporary Jewish and non-Jewish civic leaders, and practical advice drawn from the authors many years of advocacy, activism, and civic collaboration in their home community of Charlotte, North Carolina.

In this episode, we discuss how the idea of minyan can work as a model for social movements; we discuss the stages congregations can follow to embark on a civic project; and, we discuss how to avoid community division while still encouraging healthy debate — which, along with supporting the needy, is as authentic and ancient a Jewish tradition as one can find.

Daveeda Goldberg is a PhD candidate in the Department of Humanities at York University, in Toronto, Canada.

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Much attention has been drawn to the role of white women in the recent Alabama senate election and the earlier election of Donald J. Trump as president. Today’s racial and gender politics have long historic roots, according to Elizabeth McRae, the author of Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy (Oxford University Press, 2018). Gillespie McRae is an associate professor of history and director of the graduate social science education programs at Western Carolina University.

Examining racial segregation from 1920s to the 1970s, Mothers of Massive Resistance explores the local workers who promoted the system of racial segregation and Jim Crow. In rural communities and cities, white women performed various duties that upheld segregation and racism: rejecting marriage certificates, deciding on the racial identity of neighbors, canvassing communities for votes, and lobbying elected officials. And the work of white women was not restricted to the South. McRae also shows how this politics of Massive Resistance to de-segregation and civil rights plays out in cities in the North.

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Alice Echols is a professor of history and the Barbra Streisand Chair of Contemporary Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. In her book Shortfall: Family Secrets, Financial Collapse and a Hidden History of American Banking (New Press, 2017) Echols offers a narrative and social history of American capitalism in the years of and preceding the Great Depression by focusing not on Wall Street but on Main Street and the men who ran hundreds of small-town building and loan associations across the nation. Situated in Colorado Springs she reconstructs the life of her shrewd and ambitious grandfather Walter Davis, who emerged from virtually nowhere to become a small town finance man running the City Savings Building and Loan Association. He gained and betrayed the trust of hundreds of depositors who invested their life savings to secure the American dream of homeownership and financial security. They found their lives destroyed by an unregulated industry and Davis’s dishonest practices. Shortfall is both the story of American capitalism told from the bottom up and of Echols uncovering her own family secrets of ill-gotten gain, decadence, scandal, loss, and ultimate despair that reflected the lives of millions across the nation. Shortfall offers lessons in the dangers associated with small-town finance men, land speculators, depositors in denial, ill-equipped investigators, inexperienced judges and an unregulated financial marketplace.

Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her current book project is entitled The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology is forthcoming in 2018 from Oxford University Press.

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