New Books in History

Carol Faulkner is Professor of History at Syracuse University. Her book Lucretia Mott’s Heresy: Abolition and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) is a beautifully written biography of the abolitionist and Quaker Lucretia Mott. Committed to liberty and equality based on the divine light within, Mott was one the earliest American activist for immediate emancipation and by extension the full rights of women. Faulkner argues that Mott has been cast as a demure religious matron rather than the radical firebrand she was. Partly, this is due to Mott not having left many of her thoughts in writing, expressing herself primarily through long extemporaneous speeches. Faulkner corrects for this by providing vivid details of Mott’s life and takes us through the Nantucket childhood and time at Nine Partners Boarding School where she received the best education of the era; her joining the Hickite movement; collaboration with William Lloyd Garrison and the founding of the interracial Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society; and her connections with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and women’s rights. Mott considered herself a heretic rejecting dogma, church authority, and the preeminence of scripture for an ethic of pacifism, individual liberty, and radical equality. Her theological views are brought into sharp relief against the backdrop of multiple schisms within Quakerism and anti-slavery. Rather than a frail and domestic Mott, Faulkner offers a courageous ideologue unafraid to risk her own safety in defense of principle, committed to moral suasion, immediate emancipation, and vilified for her disruptive outspokenness.

Carol Faulkner is Professor of History at Syracuse University. Her book Lucretia Mott’s Heresy: Abolition and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) is a beautifully written biography of the abolitionist and Quaker Lucretia Mott. Committed to liberty and equality based on the divine light within, Mott was one the earliest American activist for immediate emancipation and by extension the full rights of women. Faulkner argues that Mott has been cast as a demure religious matron rather than the radical firebrand she was. Partly, this is due to Mott not having left many of her thoughts in writing, expressing herself primarily through long extemporaneous speeches. Faulkner corrects for this by providing vivid details of Mott’s life and takes us through the Nantucket childhood and time at Nine Partners Boarding School where she received the best education of the era; her joining the Hickite movement; collaboration with William Lloyd Garrison and the founding of the interracial Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society; and her connections with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and women’s rights. Mott considered herself a heretic rejecting dogma, church authority, and the preeminence of scripture for an ethic of pacifism, individual liberty, and radical equality. Her theological views are brought into sharp relief against the backdrop of multiple schisms within Quakerism and anti-slavery. Rather than a frail and domestic Mott, Faulkner offers a courageous ideologue unafraid to risk her own safety in defense of principle, committed to moral suasion, immediate emancipation, and vilified for her disruptive outspokenness.

[Cross-posted with permission from Who Makes Cents? A History of Capitalism Podcast.] Today we'll focus on the history of resistance to the New Deal. In her book Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal (W. W. Norton, 2010), Kimberly Phillips-Fein details how many of the most prominent elites had their ideas and practices shaped by groups that were part of organized resistance to the New Deal. She argues that this history helps revise common understandings of the rise of conservatism in the 1970s and after.

[Cross-posted with permission from Who Makes Cents? A History of Capitalism Podcast.] Today we'll focus on the history of resistance to the New Deal. In her book Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal (W. W. Norton, 2010), Kimberly Phillips-Fein details how many of the most prominent elites had their ideas and practices shaped by groups that were part of organized resistance to the New Deal. She argues that this history helps revise common understandings of the rise of conservatism in the 1970s and after.

David A. Pietz’s new book argues that China’s water challenges are historically grounded, and that these historical realities are not going to disappear anytime soon. Using a careful history of water and environmental management to inform our understanding of water-related challenges in contemporary China, Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China (Harvard University Press, 2015) asks, how did China reach its current state of water insecurity, and what might it mean for both China and the broader global community that it’s part of? After a helpful introduction to the ecology and natural history of the Plain – a region that has shaped China’s economy and been transformed by human action – Pietz charts a narrative with important anchoring points in the sixteenth century of Pan Jixun (1521-1595), who was later known as the “greatest water hero in Chinese history,” and in the nineteenth century, when a major famine and a course change of the Yellow River occasioned a change in statecraft as well. Yellow River pays special attention to the Maoist period (1949-1979), a time when the struggle to build communism transformed the landscape, and especially the development of water resources on the North China Plain. Though the Maoist technology complex had profound impacts on China’s waterscape that persist today, compounded by the effects of pollution and global warming, Pietz is careful to show that the challenges facing contemporary are not only based in Mao’s “war on nature,” but instead have historical roots that reach much further back in time. This is fascinating reading for anyone interested in modern China, the histories of ecology and environment, and contemporary policy.

David A. Pietz’s new book argues that China’s water challenges are historically grounded, and that these historical realities are not going to disappear anytime soon. Using a careful history of water and environmental management to inform our understanding of water-related challenges in contemporary China, Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China (Harvard University Press, 2015) asks, how did China reach its current state of water insecurity, and what might it mean for both China and the broader global community that it’s part of? After a helpful introduction to the ecology and natural history of the Plain – a region that has shaped China’s economy and been transformed by human action – Pietz charts a narrative with important anchoring points in the sixteenth century of Pan Jixun (1521-1595), who was later known as the “greatest water hero in Chinese history,” and in the nineteenth century, when a major famine and a course change of the Yellow River occasioned a change in statecraft as well. Yellow River pays special attention to the Maoist period (1949-1979), a time when the struggle to build communism transformed the landscape, and especially the development of water resources on the North China Plain. Though the Maoist technology complex had profound impacts on China’s waterscape that persist today, compounded by the effects of pollution and global warming, Pietz is careful to show that the challenges facing contemporary are not only based in Mao’s “war on nature,” but instead have historical roots that reach much further back in time. This is fascinating reading for anyone interested in modern China, the histories of ecology and environment, and contemporary policy.

Leigh Ann Wheeler is professor of history at Binghamton University. Her book How Sex Became a Civil Liberty (Oxford University Press, 2013), examines the role of the American Civil Liberties Union in establishing sexual rights as grounded in the U.S. constitution. Wheeler begins in the bohemian New York with the personal biographies of individuals who established the ACLU for the protection of anti-government speech. Early ACLU leaders displayed sexual proclivities and outlooks outside the mainstream. Beginning with obscenity laws that hampered the distribution of contraceptives and birth control information, the ACLU legally pursued sexual practice, expression, and the right to privacy as civil liberties. Presenting their own clients, building collisions with advocacy groups, providing legal briefs to decision makers, directing activism, and influencing public opinion, the ACLU brought about change in a wide array of laws that restrained and criminalized sexual behavior and expression. This was not a smooth process of advancement. The implications of class, race, and gender created conflicts, contradictions, and ironies in establishing the sexual rights of individuals against the contrary rights of others and communities to unwanted sex and sexual content. As blacks and women entered the ranks of the ACLU in the 1960s and 70s they brought new conflicts within the sexual rights agenda. Reproductive freedom, rape shield laws, homosexual rights, and the rights of profit-seeking pornographers are some of the many issues of ACLU advocacy. While seeking to build a privacy wall around sexual expression and practice, sexual rights advocacy contributed to the current cultural saturation with sexual images and messages blurring the lines between public and private. Wheeler has provided a thoroughly researched, complex, and compelling history of how issues surrounding sexuality became recognized as civil liberties guaranteed by the constitution.

Leigh Ann Wheeler is professor of history at Binghamton University. Her book How Sex Became a Civil Liberty (Oxford University Press, 2013), examines the role of the American Civil Liberties Union in establishing sexual rights as grounded in the U.S. constitution. Wheeler begins in the bohemian New York with the personal biographies of individuals who established the ACLU for the protection of anti-government speech. Early ACLU leaders displayed sexual proclivities and outlooks outside the mainstream. Beginning with obscenity laws that hampered the distribution of contraceptives and birth control information, the ACLU legally pursued sexual practice, expression, and the right to privacy as civil liberties. Presenting their own clients, building collisions with advocacy groups, providing legal briefs to decision makers, directing activism, and influencing public opinion, the ACLU brought about change in a wide array of laws that restrained and criminalized sexual behavior and expression. This was not a smooth process of advancement. The implications of class, race, and gender created conflicts, contradictions, and ironies in establishing the sexual rights of individuals against the contrary rights of others and communities to unwanted sex and sexual content. As blacks and women entered the ranks of the ACLU in the 1960s and 70s they brought new conflicts within the sexual rights agenda. Reproductive freedom, rape shield laws, homosexual rights, and the rights of profit-seeking pornographers are some of the many issues of ACLU advocacy. While seeking to build a privacy wall around sexual expression and practice, sexual rights advocacy contributed to the current cultural saturation with sexual images and messages blurring the lines between public and private. Wheeler has provided a thoroughly researched, complex, and compelling history of how issues surrounding sexuality became recognized as civil liberties guaranteed by the constitution.

Leilah Danielson is an Associate Professor of History at Northern Arizona University and author of American Gandhi: A.J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the Twentieth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). American Gandhi is a political, intellectual and religious biography of the pacifist, labor educator and organizer A.J. Muste whose radical career and influence stretched over the course of the twentieth century. Danielson examines how Muste combined a religious prophetic tradition with pragmatism, and an evolving pacifism, against revolutionary dogma and humanism. Muste, committed to grounding theory in practice and the individual in community, argued that economic democracy was the means toward political democracy. As part of the left, his influence included an American adaptation of Gandhian nonviolence resistance applied to the cause of labor, civil rights, antiwar, anti-nuclear, the authoritarian state and anticolonial movements. Danielson charts the private and personal evolution of a religious radical through the loss and recovery of faith and his role as a vanguard leader of multiple movements. Muste’s pragmatic yet principled and radical approach fostered some of the most creative and remarkable innovations in progressive thought in the twentieth century. Danielson’s research corrects the historical neglect of Muste and recovers an often-unrecognized figure whose influence remains.

Leilah Danielson is an Associate Professor of History at Northern Arizona University and author of American Gandhi: A.J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the Twentieth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). American Gandhi is a political, intellectual and religious biography of the pacifist, labor educator and organizer A.J. Muste whose radical career and influence stretched over the course of the twentieth century. Danielson examines how Muste combined a religious prophetic tradition with pragmatism, and an evolving pacifism, against revolutionary dogma and humanism. Muste, committed to grounding theory in practice and the individual in community, argued that economic democracy was the means toward political democracy. As part of the left, his influence included an American adaptation of Gandhian nonviolence resistance applied to the cause of labor, civil rights, antiwar, anti-nuclear, the authoritarian state and anticolonial movements. Danielson charts the private and personal evolution of a religious radical through the loss and recovery of faith and his role as a vanguard leader of multiple movements. Muste’s pragmatic yet principled and radical approach fostered some of the most creative and remarkable innovations in progressive thought in the twentieth century. Danielson’s research corrects the historical neglect of Muste and recovers an often-unrecognized figure whose influence remains.

In The Verdict of Battle: The Law of Victory and the Making of Modern War (Harvard University Press, 2012),  Yale Law School Professor James Q. Whitman dissects the law behind eighteenth century European land wars. Whitman's impressive attempt to sort out the intellectual path of the laws of war leaves us with a clearer understanding of the factors that narrowed the scope of destructive warfare in the 18th century.  

In The Verdict of Battle: The Law of Victory and the Making of Modern War (Harvard University Press, 2012),  Yale Law School Professor James Q. Whitman dissects the law behind eighteenth century European land wars. Whitman's impressive attempt to sort out the intellectual path of the laws of war leaves us with a clearer understanding of the factors that narrowed the scope of destructive warfare in the 18th century.  

Sister Thorn and Catholic Mysticism in Modern America (UNC Press, 2013) is a detailed journey into the life of Margaret Reilly, an American Irish-Catholic from New York who entered the Convent of the Good Shepherd in 1921, taking the name Sister Crown of Thorns. During the 1920s and 1930s, Sister Thorn became known as a stigmatic who bled the wounds of Christ. In this microhistory of Thorn’s story, Professor Paula Kane immerses readers in a world in transition, where interwar Catholics retained deep mystical devotionalism, yet also began to claim a confident new role as assimilated Americans. She does so through a very provocative question: “How did a stigmatic help ordinary Catholic understand themselves as modern Americans?” In the process, Professor Kane explores religious practice and mysticism through a number of theoretical literatures—including theology, psychology, feminism, sociology, and cultural studies—opening up multiple new avenues for scholars of religion to consider.

Sister Thorn and Catholic Mysticism in Modern America (UNC Press, 2013) is a detailed journey into the life of Margaret Reilly, an American Irish-Catholic from New York who entered the Convent of the Good Shepherd in 1921, taking the name Sister Crown of Thorns. During the 1920s and 1930s, Sister Thorn became known as a stigmatic who bled the wounds of Christ. In this microhistory of Thorn’s story, Professor Paula Kane immerses readers in a world in transition, where interwar Catholics retained deep mystical devotionalism, yet also began to claim a confident new role as assimilated Americans. She does so through a very provocative question: “How did a stigmatic help ordinary Catholic understand themselves as modern Americans?” In the process, Professor Kane explores religious practice and mysticism through a number of theoretical literatures—including theology, psychology, feminism, sociology, and cultural studies—opening up multiple new avenues for scholars of religion to consider.

William James (1842-1910) is one of the United States’ most far-reaching thinkers. His impact on philosophy, psychology, and religious studies is well documented, yet few scholars have considered James’ impact on the area of ethics and political thought. Trygve Throntveit’s new book William James and the Quest for an Ethical Republic (Palgrave, 2014) is a persuasive and innovative look at the Jamesian social and political legacy, especially as played out in the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. Dr. Throntveit leverages the archives of the James family, including novelist Henry James, Jr. and William and Henry’s father, Swedenborgian theologian Henry James, Sr., to show how Henry Sr.’s ambitious but unfocused educational program affected William James’ vocation and intellectual commitments. In committing to a pragmatic ethic that could accommodate varieties of religious experience, James envisioned how a democratic society should regard the individual. Throntveit reads James in light of James’ personal development in relationship to other public intellectuals with whom he corresponded and was personally acquainted. The author keeps a steady eye on how William James developed as a person and as a scholar through his relationships. Throntveit’s innovation lies in tracing the ways in which others applied, and sometimes modified, Jamesian ideas during the Progressive Era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Social critic WEB DuBois, philosopher of public life John Dewey, urban theorist and reformer Jane Addams, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandies, Theodore Roosevelt, and others directly responded to William James’ pragmatism via their policymaking clout. In turn, these public intellectuals had the attention of Woodrow Wilson. The ideals of democracy—the ethical republic—were set in motion for the trials ahead in the Great War and beyond. William James and the Quest for an Ethical Republic contributes to William James studies, American history, history of ideas, and philosophy.