New Books in History

[Re-posted with permission from Who Makes Cents?] Today's guest discusses the history of aviation and how this provides a lens to interpret the history of capitalism and U.S. foreign relations across the twentieth century. Amongst other topics, Jenifer Van Vleck tells us how the airline industry helped solve various political and logistical challenges for the U.S. government during World War II and how the airlines relied on the government and vice-versa. Jenifer Van Vleck is Assistant Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University. She is author of Empire of the Air: Aviation and the American Ascendancy (Harvard University Press, 2013).

Readers wanting to learn more about the Great War on the Eastern Front can do no better than David R. Stone's new work, The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 (University Press of Kansas, 2015). The last work to treat this comprehensively was Norman Stone's (no relation), The Eastern Front, 1914-1917, published in 1975. While literature in English has been sparse, the Russian-language literature on the Eastern Front has grown tremendously in recent decades, and so an update was desperately needed. David Stone does more than updated the earlier Stone's work, though. He deftly shifts our perspective not only on the Eastern Front but on the war as a whole by emphasizing commonalities (among empires, operations, home fronts) while appropriately highlighting the many unique challenges faced by the tsarist state. We learn not only about the iconic clashes in East Prussia or the Brusilov Offensive, but see the critical importance of campaigns in Poland, the Caucasus, and Romania to the Russian defeat.

In the past few decades, radical fundamentalists have become a major force in the global world. Or at least that what we often here in media outlets or from politicians and religious figures. But what exactly does 'fundamentalism' mean? Does this category point to something specific and exclude phenomena that falls outside the intended use of the term? In Fundamentalism: Perspectives on a Contested History (University of South Carolina Press, 2014) editors Simon A. Wood, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and David Harrington Watt, Professor of History at Temple University, collect a broad set of essays that address just this. They investigate the origins of the term, various communities that have been classified 'fundamentalist,' and alternative trajectories for the deployment of the label. Most often 'fundamentalism' is used to designate a position that advocates a rejection of modernity, scriptural literalism, militancy, and politicization of religion. However, under further investigation the separate communities or leaders do not always comply with these positions or approaches. Additionally, we frequently find familiar positions advocating for these standpoints without being labeled 'fundamentalist.' While not excluding other voices the editors and most of the collection's authors argue that the term 'fundamentalism' is unanchored from its American Protestant origins, obscure in its designation, and assumes religion is a separate distinct sphere of social life. Therefore, they claim it is inadequate and ineffective to employ the term as an analytical category. In our conversation we discuss early twentieth-century conservative Protestantism, Ayatollah Khomeini, American and Israeli Judaism, Islamic Education, environmental consciousness, Salafism, Sufism, Shiism, and secular societies.

Americans believe they have a number of workplace protections under the law, which are common in other democracies: free speech and privacy rights, defense against arbitrary dismissal, etc. They are wrong. And in her fascinating new book The Workplace Constitution from the New Deal to the New Right (Cambridge University Press, 2014), the legal historian Sophia Z. Lee wants to understand why. She explores two major campaigns, stretching roughly from the 1930's to the 1980's, which sought to establish constitutional workplace protections, recounts their important successes, and ponders their ultimate failures. It is a story of unlikely bedfellows: black, pro-union labor activists like C.W. Rice and Charles Houston fighting–if not quite alongside then at least parallel to–anti-union, right-to-work leaders like Hollywood mogul Cecil B. DeMille and railroad worker William T. Harrison. Both urged the federal judiciary and Supreme Court to grant individual rights under the Constitution, for very different reasons, and for very different ends. Contrary to what many scholars think, Lee finds that major civil rights groups like the NAACP were actively pursuing employment safeguards in the postwar era, using the "exclusive representation" granted by the New Deal to unions to make very creative arguments for "state action." At the same time, conservatives sought to roll back the explosion of unionization that followed the New Deal by arguing that "closed shop" rules, now covering nearly a third of the non-agricultural labor, unconstitutionally forced workers to join unions and pay for such things as lobbying. Initially, the courts rejected these latter claims, upholding New Deal reforms at a time when business still reeled from its reputation during the Great Depression. But in the late 1950's, as Congress uncovered corruption in select unions, conservatives in both parties aligned "right to work" with anti-discrimination cases, putting the growing and pro-labor civil rights movement in a bind. The Supreme Court, for its part, was caught between not wanting to uphold segregation in or free speech violations by labor or to impose constitutional rights on the entire private sector. Free marketeers were also torn over the implications of a workplace Constitution, as were unions; again, for different reasons. The result is a tale of absorbing complexity–thankfully, lucidly and beautifully written.

Americans believe they have a number of workplace protections under the law, which are common in other democracies: free speech and privacy rights, defense against arbitrary dismissal, etc. They are wrong. And in her fascinating new book The Workplace Constitution from the New Deal to the New Right (Cambridge University Press, 2014), the legal historian Sophia Z. Lee wants to understand why. She explores two major campaigns, stretching roughly from the 1930's to the 1980's, which sought to establish constitutional workplace protections, recounts their important successes, and ponders their ultimate failures. It is a story of unlikely bedfellows: black, pro-union labor activists like C.W. Rice and Charles Houston fighting–if not quite alongside then at least parallel to–anti-union, right-to-work leaders like Hollywood mogul Cecil B. DeMille and railroad worker William T. Harrison. Both urged the federal judiciary and Supreme Court to grant individual rights under the Constitution, for very different reasons, and for very different ends. Contrary to what many scholars think, Lee finds that major civil rights groups like the NAACP were actively pursuing employment safeguards in the postwar era, using the "exclusive representation" granted by the New Deal to unions to make very creative arguments for "state action." At the same time, conservatives sought to roll back the explosion of unionization that followed the New Deal by arguing that "closed shop" rules, now covering nearly a third of the non-agricultural labor, unconstitutionally forced workers to join unions and pay for such things as lobbying. Initially, the courts rejected these latter claims, upholding New Deal reforms at a time when business still reeled from its reputation during the Great Depression. But in the late 1950's, as Congress uncovered corruption in select unions, conservatives in both parties aligned "right to work" with anti-discrimination cases, putting the growing and pro-labor civil rights movement in a bind. The Supreme Court, for its part, was caught between not wanting to uphold segregation in or free speech violations by labor or to impose constitutional rights on the entire private sector. Free marketeers were also torn over the implications of a workplace Constitution, as were unions; again, for different reasons. The result is a tale of absorbing complexity–thankfully, lucidly and beautifully written.

Brett Sheehan's new book traces the interwoven histories of capitalism and the Song family under a series of five authoritarian governments in North China. Based on a wide range of sources a range of sources including family papers, missionary archives, corporate records, government documents, newspapers, oral histories, novels, and interviews, Industrial Eden: A Chinese Capitalist Vision (Harvard UP, 2015) explores a family of "capitalists without capitalism." The book follows the development of Song Chuandian and his son Song Feiqing into businessmen in order to inform and transform how we understand the modern history of the Chinese economy in its social and political context. The evidence of the Song family, Sheehan compellingly argues, allows us to understand the impact of European and Japanese imperialism on the Chinese economy and Chinese business practices in a new way. At the same time, there is no single, culturally-determined set of "Chinese business practices": in the example of Song Feiqing, we see a hybrid of Confucian paternalism, Christianity, industrialism, hygiene, discipline, and more. Though the authoritarian governments that ruled China in the twentieth century varied widely, Industrial Eden shows that Chinese states and businesspeople came both to accept a government role in business that became increasingly intrusive, and to expect increasingly more from the state over time. The book also pays careful attention to the ways that this story informs the history of missionary activity, commodities, nationalism, labor, diaspora, and disciplining of the modern subject in nineteenth and twentieth century China.

In this podcast I discuss Profit Motive: The Salary Revolution in American Government, 1780-1940  (Yale University Press, 2013) with author Nicholas R. Parrillo, professor of law at Yale University. Parrillo's book was winner of the 2014 Law and Society Association James Willard Hurst Book Prize and the 2014 Annual Scholarship Award from the American Bar Association's Section on Administrative Law. Per the book jacket, "in America today, a public official's lawful income consists of a salary. But until a century ago, the law frequently provided for officials to make money on a profit-seeking basis. Prosecutors won a fee for each defendant convicted. Tax collectors received a percentage of each evasion uncovered. Naval officers took a reward for each ship sunk. Numerous other officers were likewise paid for 'performance.' This book is the first to document the American government's for-profit past, to discover how profit-seeking defined officialdom's relationship to the citizenry, and to explain how lawmakers–by ultimately banishing the profit motive in favor of the salary–transformed that relationship forever." Parrillo's intricate analysis adds nuance to the American story of government compensation and explains why government officials made money in ways that today would be deemed necessarily corrupt. Some of the topics we cover are: –The ways American lawmakers made the absence of a profit motive a defining feature of government –The two non-salary forms of payment for government officials that initially predominated in the US –How these two forms of payment tended to give rise to very different social relationships between officials and the people with whom they dealt –Why the flight to salaries was an admission of law's weakness and failure

In this podcast I discuss Profit Motive: The Salary Revolution in American Government, 1780-1940  (Yale University Press, 2013) with author Nicholas R. Parrillo, professor of law at Yale University. Parrillo's book was winner of the 2014 Law and Society Association James Willard Hurst Book Prize and the 2014 Annual Scholarship Award from the American Bar Association's Section on Administrative Law. Per the book jacket, "in America today, a public official's lawful income consists of a salary. But until a century ago, the law frequently provided for officials to make money on a profit-seeking basis. Prosecutors won a fee for each defendant convicted. Tax collectors received a percentage of each evasion uncovered. Naval officers took a reward for each ship sunk. Numerous other officers were likewise paid for 'performance.' This book is the first to document the American government's for-profit past, to discover how profit-seeking defined officialdom's relationship to the citizenry, and to explain how lawmakers–by ultimately banishing the profit motive in favor of the salary–transformed that relationship forever." Parrillo's intricate analysis adds nuance to the American story of government compensation and explains why government officials made money in ways that today would be deemed necessarily corrupt. Some of the topics we cover are: –The ways American lawmakers made the absence of a profit motive a defining feature of government –The two non-salary forms of payment for government officials that initially predominated in the US –How these two forms of payment tended to give rise to very different social relationships between officials and the people with whom they dealt –Why the flight to salaries was an admission of law's weakness and failure

In Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship that Shaped the Sixties (W.W. Norton, 2015), Kevin M. Schultz has given us a lively and colorful narrative history that captures the character of two complex men and the times in which they lived. Juxtaposing a conservative William F. Buckley Jr. and the radical Norman Mailer against a liberal establishment brings into sharp relief what the men shared and the source of their conflict. Both men agreed that there was something amiss of about American society and sought to build a movement against the entrenchment of liberal bureaucratic control and the threat of totalitarianism. With clashing visions for a new national politic, they were both surprised by the constituency that they each attracted and grew more alike as they responded to the movements they had fomented. Through their writings, public and private encounters, and an overlapping network of friends and political acquaintances we get a glimpse in the elite power dynamics that shaped the sixties. By attending to a flurry of lectures, debates, parties, letters, and the striking personalities of these two men, Schultz shows us was right and wrong with America at mid-century and the transition from a rules based to a rights based society. The relationship of Buckley and Mailer not only reflected the nation's struggles in the sixties, but also captures the continual conflict over the future of America. Kevin M. Shultz is an associated professor of history at University of Illinois at Chicago.

In Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship that Shaped the Sixties (W.W. Norton, 2015), Kevin M. Schultz has given us a lively and colorful narrative history that captures the character of two complex men and the times in which they lived. Juxtaposing a conservative William F. Buckley Jr. and the radical Norman Mailer against a liberal establishment brings into sharp relief what the men shared and the source of their conflict. Both men agreed that there was something amiss of about American society and sought to build a movement against the entrenchment of liberal bureaucratic control and the threat of totalitarianism. With clashing visions for a new national politic, they were both surprised by the constituency that they each attracted and grew more alike as they responded to the movements they had fomented. Through their writings, public and private encounters, and an overlapping network of friends and political acquaintances we get a glimpse in the elite power dynamics that shaped the sixties. By attending to a flurry of lectures, debates, parties, letters, and the striking personalities of these two men, Schultz shows us was right and wrong with America at mid-century and the transition from a rules based to a rights based society. The relationship of Buckley and Mailer not only reflected the nation's struggles in the sixties, but also captures the continual conflict over the future of America. Kevin M. Shultz is an associated professor of history at University of Illinois at Chicago.

Recently, there have been various debates within the Muslim community over women's mosque attendance. While contemporary questions of modern society structure current conversations, this question, 'may a Muslim woman go to the mosque,' is not a new one. In Women in the Mosque: A History of Legal Thought and Social Practice (Columbia University Press, 2014), Marion Holmes Katz, Professor of Islamic Studies at New York University, traces the juristic debates around women's mosque attendance. Katz outlines the various arguments, caveats, and positions of legal scholars in the major schools of law and demonstrates that despite some differing opinions there was generally a downward progression towards gendered exclusion in mosques.   were engaged in at the mosque, the time of day, the permission of their husbands or guardians, attire, and the multitude of conditions that needed to be met. Later interpreters feared women's presence in the mosque because they argued it stirred sexual temptation. Katz pairs these legal discourses with evidence of women's social practice in the Middle East and North Africa from the earliest historical accounts through the Ottoman period. In our conversation we discuss types of mosque actdivities, Mamluk Cairo, women's educational participation, the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the transmission of knowledge, European travelers accounts of Muslim women, night prayers, mosque construction, debates about the mosque in Mecca, and modern developments in legal discussions during the 20th century.

Recently, there have been various debates within the Muslim community over women's mosque attendance. While contemporary questions of modern society structure current conversations, this question, 'may a Muslim woman go to the mosque,' is not a new one. In Women in the Mosque: A History of Legal Thought and Social Practice (Columbia University Press, 2014), Marion Holmes Katz, Professor of Islamic Studies at New York University, traces the juristic debates around women's mosque attendance. Katz outlines the various arguments, caveats, and positions of legal scholars in the major schools of law and demonstrates that despite some differing opinions there was generally a downward progression towards gendered exclusion in mosques.   were engaged in at the mosque, the time of day, the permission of their husbands or guardians, attire, and the multitude of conditions that needed to be met. Later interpreters feared women's presence in the mosque because they argued it stirred sexual temptation. Katz pairs these legal discourses with evidence of women's social practice in the Middle East and North Africa from the earliest historical accounts through the Ottoman period. In our conversation we discuss types of mosque actdivities, Mamluk Cairo, women's educational participation, the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the transmission of knowledge, European travelers accounts of Muslim women, night prayers, mosque construction, debates about the mosque in Mecca, and modern developments in legal discussions during the 20th century.

Michael Gould-Wartofsky is the author of The Occupiers: The Making of the 99 Percent Movement (Oxford University Press, 2015). He is a PhD candidate in Sociology at New York University. There has been a lot written about the Occupy Wall Street movement, but little with the sophistication and personal touch of Gould-Wartofsky's new book. What emerged in the fall of 2011 in Lower Manhattan had roots in similar protests going on across Europe, but soon spread to over a thousand US cities. As a participant observer from the very earliest days of the movement, Gould-Wartofsky blends writing styles and perspectives as he deepens what we know about social movements, in general. He maps the various tactics, factions, and motivations that drove the movement, but also what it felt like to be in Zuccotti Park.

Michael Gould-Wartofsky is the author of The Occupiers: The Making of the 99 Percent Movement (Oxford University Press, 2015). He is a PhD candidate in Sociology at New York University. There has been a lot written about the Occupy Wall Street movement, but little with the sophistication and personal touch of Gould-Wartofsky's new book. What emerged in the fall of 2011 in Lower Manhattan had roots in similar protests going on across Europe, but soon spread to over a thousand US cities. As a participant observer from the very earliest days of the movement, Gould-Wartofsky blends writing styles and perspectives as he deepens what we know about social movements, in general. He maps the various tactics, factions, and motivations that drove the movement, but also what it felt like to be in Zuccotti Park.

Cesar Chavez founded a labor union. Launched a movement. And inspired a generation. Two Decades after his death, Chavez remains the most significant Latino figure in U.S. history." So reads the inside flap of Miriam Pawel's new biography The Crusades of Cesar Chavez (Bloomsbury Press, 2014). However, while many are acquainted with the iconography of Chavez as the leader of the Farmworker Movement that took on California's powerful grape industry during the mid-to-late 1960s, much less is known about Chavez himself and his personal and organizational background prior to the formation of the National Farm Workers Association (the precursor to the United Farm Workers or UFW) or the internal dynamics and struggles between Chavez and his top brass. With great detail and empathy, Pawel provides a complex portrait of Chavez as a visionary and tireless organizer whose humility, strategic brilliance, and improbable success was matched only by his own arrogance, tactical blunders, and embarrassing defeats. We hope you enjoy listening to our fascinating conversation.