“A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.” This axiom encapsulates both the approach and dedication exhibited by Fred Ross during the five decades he spent organizing impoverished and disenfranchised communities throughout the country. In America’s Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century (University of California Press, 2016), Gabriel Thompson provides the first biography of Ross, one of the most influential, albeit virtually unknown, activists and organizers in American history. Radicalized by his experiences working with impoverished Dust Bowl migrants during the Great Depression and interned Japanese Americans during World War II, Ross developed an insatiable desire to stand up for those “kept out” of mainstream society. He spent the majority of his career building Latino political power across the state of California aiding in the establishment of the Community Services Organization (CSO) and the United Farm Workers Union (UFW), two of the most progressive Mexican American organizations of the post-war and Civil Rights eras. Harnessing a distrust for established institutional structures and middle-class do-gooders, Ross sought to empower communities by developing community leadership from the bottom-up. Above all, Ross believed in the power of ordinary people working together to make democracy work for them. Preferring to work behind the scenes, Ross indelibly shaped the trajectory of American history as his philosophy and tactics continue to be used by community organizations, labor unions, and political campaigns to the present day.

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In her stunning new book The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant (Stanford University Press, 2012), Dana Sajdi, Associate Professor of History at Boston College, presents a riveting narrative of the intersection of literature, religion, and history in early modern Muslim societies. She does so by focusing on the chronicle of a common Barber in 18th-century Damascus Shihab al-Din Ahmad Ibn Budayr. Through a close reading of the intellectual and political conditions that gave rise to such forms of nouveau literature and by carefully interrogating the themes, tensions, and reception of this text, Sajdis analysis provides a fascinating window into the complexity and diversity of knowledge traditions in the early modern context. Most importantly, this book serves the immensely important task of bringing into central view non-Ulama archives and imaginaries of history and history writing. In our conversation we discussed the key themes of this book such as the concept of nouveau literacy, the literary and political disorders in 18th century Damascus, Ibn Budayr’s biography and intellectual milieu, the emergence of non-‘ulama’ chronicle writers, and the later reception and reworking of Ibn Budayr’s chronicle. This nicely paced book should work very well in undergraduate and graduate courses on Muslim intellectual history, historiography, early modern Islam, and in surveys of Middle Eastern history.

SherAli Tareen is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available here. He can be reached at ([email protected]). Listener feedback is most welcome.

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Lester K. Spence is the author of Knocking the Hustle: Against the Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics (Punctum Books, 2016). Spence is associate professor of political science and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

In Knocking the Hustle, Spence links the rising prominence of neoliberal ideas to the transformation of African American communities. The book, a combination of political history and policy analysis, argues that the Nixon and Reagan administrations advanced the neoliberal policy-making agenda and contributed to the associated rise in economic inequality, especially for African Americans. At the same time, African American communities and institutions are transformed by this neoliberal turn and its underlying, and surprising compatibility, with hustle.

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In The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan (Indiana University Press, 2013), Mel Scult, professor emeritus at Brooklyn College, explores the ways in which Mordecai Kaplan, the only rabbi to have been excommunicated by the Orthodox rabbinical establishment in America, was a radical. Using Kaplan’s 27-volume diary, Scult places Kaplan’s thought in conversation with other thinkers like Spinoza, Emerson, Ahad Ha-Am, John Dewey, and Abraham Joshua Heschel.

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Mary M. Steedly‘s book, Rifle Reports: A Story of Indonesian Independence, is “one of a kind and will continue to be so,” writes Benedict Anderson. This is high praise from one of the greats of Southeast Asian studies. A reading of Rifle Reports reveals why it is praise that is so well deserved. Steedly deftly weaves the stories of Indonesian independence told to her on “the outskirts of the nation” together with thought-provoking discussions of memory practice and the writing of history via ethnography. Concentrating on the accounts of Karo women about their struggle against Dutch colonizers and Japanese invaders, Steedly situates the fight for independence in the day-to-day activities of North Sumatra’s entire population. In so doing, she offers a much more richly textured account than conventional histories concentrated on male-dominated politics, military strategies and moments of combat provide, one that “moves toward difficulty rather than simplification, one that compels as well as enacts the strategies of patient and engaged reading”.

Mary Steedly joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss Karoland, buried guns, the language of “struggle” rather than “revolution”, Sinek’s song, the importance of narrative, and what it means to do ethnographic history.

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One of the important ways we use language is to make assertions – roughly, to pass on information we believe to be true to others. Insofar as we need to learn by means of what others they tell us, assertion is a speech act that addresses this need. It also follows norms – ordinarily, we shouldn’t assert things that we believe to be false, and when we do we have violated a norm of assertion. In The Norms of Assertion: Truth, Lies, and Warrant (Palgrave Macmillan 2015), Rachel McKinnon argues against the prevailing idea that you need to know what you assert, and holds that we can even blamelessly assert something that we know to be false. McKinnon, an assistant professor of philosophy at the College of Charleston, defends a reasons-based norm in which the end goal of transmitting knowledge to others can be fulfilled by asserting falsehoods, and in which whether we have satisfied the norm depends heavily on the conventional and pragmatic contexts in which we make our assertions.

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Most biographers writing about the life and achievements of Napoleon Bonaparte have focused on his dramatic personality or his military campaigns. In Napoleon: Soldier of Destiny (Pegasus, 2015) the inaugural volume of a projected three-volume biography of the French ruler Michael Broers’ takes a different approach. Drawing upon a new and vastly expanded collection of Napoleons letters to chronicle his subjects life from his early years in Corsica to the eve of his 1805 campaign, Broers focuses on his achievements in politics and state-building. He sees Napoleon’s time as conqueror and ruler of Italy as key both to his emergence as a prospective leader and to the development of his ideas of governance. Though applied bluntly in Egypt, their legacy in Napoleons development of the French state during his subsequent years as First Consul and as emperor are made clear by the author, who details how they created not just the structure of administration France uses to this day but more modern and uniform states throughout much of Europe as well.

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In book his new book The Democracy Promotion Paradox (Brookings Institution Press, 2015), Lincoln A. Mitchell (Political Correspondent for the New York Observer) raises difficult but critically important issues by probing the numerous inconsistencies and paradoxes that lie at the heart of the theory and practice of democracy promotion. For example, the United States frequently crafts policies to promote democracy that rely on cooperation with undemocratic governments; democracy promoters view their work as minor yet also of critical importance to the United States and the countries where they work; and many who work in the field of democracy promotion have an incomplete understanding of democracy. Similarly, in the domestic political context, both left and right critiques of democracy promotion are internally inconsistent.

Mitchell also provides readers with an overview of the origins of U.S. democracy promotion, analyzes its development and evolution over the last decades, and discusses how it came to be an unquestioned assumption at the core of U.S. foreign policy. His discussion of the bureaucratic logic that underlies democracy promotion offers important insights into how it can be adapted to remain effective. Mitchell also examines the future of democracy promotion in the context of evolving U.S. domestic policy and politics and in a changed global environment in which the United States is no longer the hegemon. With easy-to-follow and engaging prose, The Democracy Promotion Paradox is well suited for general readers interested in U.S. foreign policy; it would also work well in upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses.

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Resistance to the industrial food system has, over the past decades, led to the rise of alternative food movements. Debate about genetically modified food, sugar consumption, fast food and the obesity crisis (to name a few) is pervasive. Most often, this focuses on individual consumer choice. Garrett M.Broad argues, however, for the importance of community level initiative. He maintains that the vote with your fork movement obscures the structural foundation of the corporate food system. The alternative food movements, as a whole, fail to recognize that the inequities in the food system are connected to histories of racial and economic discrimination.

Broad’s book More Than Just Food: Food Justice and Community Change (University of California Press, 2016) examines the work of community-based food justice groups operating in South Los Angeles, like Community Services Unlimited (CSU). Founded as an arm of the South California Black Panther Party, CSU organizes at a grassroots level to provide community access to food, while using food as a means to foster consciousness and promote a broader movement for social justice. More Than Just Food narrates the stories of these organizations, evaluates the pitfalls and possibilities of community-level initiative, and highlights the problematic position of local groups working with national non-profit organizations, and governmental and corporate agencies. Through his engaged scholarship and nuanced analysis, Broad offers us a study of specific movements in their local context and makes recommendations to help future movements organize and act effectively.

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Timothy Stewart-Winter is an assistant professor of history and women and gender studies at Rutgers University. Newark. His book Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) traces the rise of gay urban politics from the silence of the closet in the 1950s to the halls of power in the late 1980s. The city of Chicago, with its machine politics and Richard J. Daley’s breadwinner liberalism, reflects the national movement toward gay and lesbian rights. In post-war America, homosexuals flocked to urban centers seeking anonymity forming gay enclaves and creating a system of mutual aid. Regarded as deviants and associated with crime and political subversion they were under constant threat of harassment by police. Exposure meant the loss of jobs, family rejection, and vulnerability to extortion and blackmail. In the 1950s, a limited homophile movement formed to educate and advocate for the de-criminalization of same-sex intimacy. After Stonewall in 1969, gay pride parades and the process of coming out fueled gay liberation. An ethnic group strategy of a self-identified gay community found common cause with the black civil rights movement. Black politicians courted the gay vote in a progressive coalition. The passing of gay rights ordinances and the election of the first black mayor Harold Washington in 1983 cemented the inclusion of gays in Chicago politics. Yet the gay community suffered divisions of gender, class, and race. Lesbian women, emerging from the ranks of radical feminism, experienced greater job and pay discrimination due to traditional gender expectations. Blacks suffered multiple forms of discrimination escaped by white males. The devastation of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s accelerated the professionalization of gay advocacy and fund-raising. By the 1990s, gay politics resembled the politics of previous ethnic groups and white gay men became respected symbols of economic and social privilege.

Lilian Calles Barger, www.lilianbarger.com, is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her current book project is entitled The World Come of Age: Religion, Intellectuals and the Challenge of Human Liberation.

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