New Books in History

Federico MarconView on AmazonFederico Marcon's new book opens a fascinating window into the history of Japan's relationship to its natural environment. The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan (University Of Chicago Press, 2015) traces practices and practitioners of natural knowledge from the late-sixteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries, arguing that the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) saw Japan desacralizing the natural environment, and eventually developing a way to systematically study natural objects that was" surprisingly similar to European natural history without being directly influenced by it." Marcon's study traces the objectification of Japan's natural species, showing how plants and animals were transformed into physical and intellectual commodities and leaving a fascinating pictorial archive that developed as part of this commodification. The book charts transformations not only of natural objects and studies of them in Japan, but also of the professional and social identity of scholars, the disciplinary identity of the field, the popular engagement with natural history, and the illustration of the natural world. The chapters are framed by epigraphs from some of the intellectual and philosophical touchstones of Marcon's book – including Horkheimer, Adorno, and others – and the text weaves readings and echoes of these thinkers into inspiring readings of Japanese history. It is a must-read for historians of early modern science, natural history, and Tokugawa studies!

Shelly ClineIs it ok–practically and ethically–to feel sympathetic toward the guards of concentration camps? Today's interview marks the conclusion of my summer-long series of podcasts on the concentration camps and ghettos of Nazi Germany, its satellite states and the regions it controlled.  Earlier this summer I talked with Geoff Megargee about the Holocaust Museums's Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, Sarah Helm about the women's camp of Ravensbruck, Nik Wachsmann about the evolution of the concentration camp system and Dan Stone about the liberation of the camps.  Today I'll conclude the series with an interview with Shelly Cline about female guards in the camps. This is something of a departure for the podcast, which usually focuses on the authors of published books.  But Shelly's dissertation "Women at Work: The SS Aufseherin and the Gendered Perpetration of the Holocaust" (Ph. D. Diss, U of Kansas, 2014) is a perfect conclusion to the series.  It examines carefully and thoughtfully the women who served as guards in concentration camps across Germany and its territories.  In the manuscript, Shelly suggests that we will better understand the guards' experience and perspective if we look at them from the perspective of people working at a job, a job they applied for, trained for, and worked at, one they sometimes liked, but often found stressful and difficult. It's a fascinating notion, one that made me stop and think many times while reading.

Michael L. SatlowView on AmazonIn How the Bible Became Holy (Yale University Press, 2014), Michael L. Satlow, a professor of religious studies and Judaic studies at Brown University, explores how an ancient collection of obscure writing became, over the course of centuries, "holy."  We take for granted that texts have power, but that idea was not always so obvious to people. Satlow traces the story of how the Bible became the foundational, authoritative text of Judaism and Christianity.

Dana SImmonsView on AmazonDana Simmons's marvelous and thoughtful new book takes on a question that many of us likely take for granted: "What is a need; what is a want, a desire, a luxury?" Vital Minimum: Need, Science, and Politics in Modern France (University of Chicago Press, 2015) offers an answer that emerges from and is embedded in the particular historical context of nineteenth century France, but has consequences that range well beyond modern French history. Early in this fascinating study, Simmons articulates an argument that threads through the book: "a science of human needs undergirded the modern wage economy and the welfare state." That science was collaboratively built by a diverse community of agronomists, chemists, doctors, anthropologists, economists, sociologists, amateur data gatherers, trade unions, and others who collectively attempted to define and then measure human needs for the sake of better social organization. How to do this was not at all self-evident, and fierce debates were waged that challenged participants to rethink the most basic elements of a notion of society: What were the "needs" that must be fulfilled in order to keep persons productive? Were those needs physical and/or psychological? What were the characteristics of a model "person," anyway? The chapters of the book narrate the traces that these debates left on the bodies of workers, the pages of history, and the basic notions (like "minimum wage," like "citizen") that make up modern conceptions of civil society. Highly recommended!

Minghui HuView on AmazonMinghui Hu's new book takes Dai Zhen as a case study to look at broader transformations in classical scholarship, technical methodologies, politics, and their relationships in the Qing period. This story of Dai Zhen begins before his birth and ends after his death, extending from a moment in which the Jesuits were denounced as "seditious foreigners" in 1664, to around 1800, when Dai's classical vision was used by the Qing state as a kind of political-scientific legitimation of their rule. Dai Zhen's methodology became the groundwork for a new political philosophy, and China's Transition to Modernity: The New Classical Vision of Dai Zhen (University of Washington Press, 2015) takes that methodology and Dai's technical accomplishments seriously. Hu's book embeds a history of Dai's work and legacy within a broader treatment of the work of European scholars and their legacy in shaping eighteenth and nineteenth century discourse, and it offers a fascinating window into an important aspect of the history of Qing science, scholarship, and politics.

Suzanna ReissView on AmazonThough the conventional history of the U.S.-led "War on Drugs" locates the origins of this conflict in a reaction to the domestic culture of excess of the 1960s, a new book argues that international drug control efforts are actually decades older, and much more imbricated with the history of U.S. access to international markets, than we have previously thought. Suzanna Reiss's We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of US Empire (University of California Press, 2014) uncovers this history by tracing the transnational geography and political economy of coca commodities–stretching from Peru and Bolivia into the United States, and back again. The book examines how economic controls put in place during WWII transformed the power of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry in Latin America and beyond, and gave rise to new definitions of legality and illegality–definitions that were largely premised on who grew, manufactured, distributed, and consumed drugs, and not on the qualities of the drugs themselves. Drug control, she shows, is a powerful tool for ordering international trade, national economies, and society's habits and daily lives.

John McMillianView on AmazonJohn McMillian's Beatles vs. Stones (Simon and Schuster, 2013) presents a compelling composite biography of the two seminal bands of the 1960s, examining both the myth-making and reality behind the great pop rivalry. More than just a history of the bands, Beatles vs. Stones explores the complex role both groups played in popular culture during the tumultuous decade of the 1960s. Although the "feud" was initially fodder for fan magazines and publicity stunts, as the bands and their audiences matured musically and politically, the divide came to reflect many of the key cultural divisions of the age. McMillian charts the makeover of the leather-clad Beatles from their early days in Germany to the "four loveable lads" who became an international sensation, and then that of the Rolling Stones, initially styled similarly to the Beatles, but quickly rebranded as their bad-boy antithesis. Beatles vs. Stones takes a critical look at both the actual artists and the image they portrayed, delving lucidly into the Beatles and the Rolling Stones as business concerns, as cultural phenomena, and as artists often bewildered and at times disturbed by the cultural impact they themselves could not control. A noted scholar of the New Left and the underground papers of the 1960s, McMillian currently serves as Associate Professor of History at Georgia State University. He is also the author of 2011's Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media America, co-editor of two volumes, The Radical Reader and The New Left Revisited, and is the editor of the journal The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture.

Deborah R. VargasView on AmazonIn her transformative text Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldua referred to the U.S.-Mexico border region as "una herida abierta (an open wound) where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country–a border culture." To Anzaldua the "open wound" or new culture of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands resulted from "the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary" (i.e., the imposition of the U.S.-Mexico border in the mid-19th century). Since the establishment of the U.S.-Mexico border, politicians, local officials, businessmen, and residents have competed over the definition, control, and memory of the region. In Dissonant Divas in Chicana Music: The Limits of La Onda (University of Minnesota Press, 2012) Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside, Deborah R. Vargas deconstructs the dominant narrative tropes that have defined the U.S.-Mexico borderlands as a hetero-normative and masculinist frontier space of Anglo American conquest juxtaposed against Tejano/Chicano efforts to resist Anglo dominance through the preservation of "authentic" Mexican culture.  In her fascinating analysis of Tejana/Chicana singers and musicians, Dr. Vargas argues that the lives of these "dissonant divas" resist simple classification as either purveyors of Mexican culture or as accommodating and assimilating Anglo American cultural norms and values. Indeed, through her investigation of the intersection of race, place, gender, music, and memory in the Texas-Mexico borderlands, Professor Vargas provides a new lens into the identities and histories that emerge from the new cultural space Anzaldua referred to as the borderlands.

View on AmazonIn his second book, author Terrance J. Finnegan describes America's early experience fighting the Germans during World War I. Finnegan's A Delicate Affair on the Western Front: America Learns How to Fight a Modern War in the Woevre Trenches (The History Press, 2015) provides in-depth research and a great deal of context to portray the 26th Infantry Division's desperate defense of the Woevre sector in April 1918. Relying on meticulous mining of primary documents, the author describes the leaders, tactical doctrine, weaponry, and intelligence processes of the French, German, and new American forces fighting near Seicheprey in northeastern France. Finnegan also builds on research from his first book, Shooting the Front: Allied Aerial Reconnaissance and Photographic Interpretation on the Western Front–World War I, to carefully explain intelligence collection on both sides of the trenches. In a lively interview, Finnegan explains how the action near Seicheprey–sometimes called a trench raid, sometimes a battle–was vitally important to newly arrived American soldiers learning the craft of trench warfare. It was an extremely dangerous environment, with chemical weapons, artillery duels, small-scale trench raids, and snipers making life miserable for the combatants. At Seicheprey, the Germans decided to test the metal of American National Guard soldiers of the 26th Yankee Division, one of the first four US divisions to arrive in France. Early on 20 April 1918, using Stormtroop tactics perfected in other sectors of the Eastern and Western Fronts, the Germans smothered American positions with high explosive and chemical artillery fire, followed by infantry attacks that bypassed strong points and penetrated the defenses in many areas. The New England Guardsmen gave up some ground in a confused battle, but soon counterattacked and gained back what they had lost. This is a dense book, packed with details about the adversaries that any reader interested in World War I ground combat would appreciate. It is a holistic view of a single engagement that leaves no questions and thoroughly explains the action.

Phil TiermeyerView on Amazon[Cross-posted with permission from Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast.] Today's guest discusses the history of sexuality in the workplace through the lens of male flight attendants. We speak with Phil Tiemeyer about the shifts and changes in the airline industry across the 20th century. Phil steers us through this history and reveals the importance and difficulty of braiding together race, gender, and sexuality in a study of the labor and capitalism. Phil Tiemeyer is Associate Professor of History at Philadelphia University. He is author of Plane Queer: Labor, Sexuality, and AIDS in the History of Male Flight Attendants (University of California Press, 2013). You can read more about his work here.

Liora R. HalperinView on AmazonIn Babel in Zion: Jews, Nationalism, and Language Diversity in Palestine, 1920-1948 (Yale University Press, 2015), Liora R. Halperin, an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and the Program in Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, argues that multilingualism persisted in Palestine after World War I despite the traditional narrative of the swift victory of Hebrew. Halperin looks at the intertwined nature of language, identity, and nationalism, and how language was a key factor in Jews' relationships with Palestinian Arabs, the British, and others.

Chuck WooldridgeView on AmazonNineteenth-century Nanjing was a "city of virtues," the raw material out of which a series of communities in China built the time and space of their utopian visions. Chuck Wooldridge's beautifully written and thoughtfully composed new book City of Virtues: Nanjing in an Age of Utopian Visions (University of Washington Press, 2015) uses Nanjing as a lens with which to explore some critical questions. Why did utopian movements proliferate in the nineteenth century? What tactics did utopians use to make their actions in the city seem to resonate in empire and cosmos? What kinds of urban change resulted? What does this nineteenth century story tell us about the emergence of the ideals of republicanism and citizenship in the twentieth century? Adherents of different utopian visions made aspects of the past available for use in the present through a combination of three practices: construction, writing, and ritual. The first chapter lays a foundation for the rest of the study by helping readers understand the forms of space created by the Qianlong Emperor during his six tours of southern China in the eighteenth century and the ways that those tours helped inaugurate an age of utopian visions in the century that followed. The book then traces utopian projects by literati and others before, during, and after the Taiping occupation of Nanjing. It's a focused, disciplined, clearly argued, and beautifully wrought study of an important topic.

Anna M. ShieldsView on AmazonAnna M. Shields has written a marvelous book on friendship, literature, and history in medieval China. One Who Knows Me: Friendship and Literary Culture in Mid-Tang China (Harvard University Press, 2015) is the first book-length study of friendship in the Chinese tradition. Focusing on the period from the 790s through the 820s, it asks how writing on friendship both reflected & shaped broader transformations in mid-Tang literary culture, and it weaves together historical and literary analyses in offering its answers. Shields begins by laying a foundation for understanding how the changing social & political conditions of the late eighth & early ninth centuries encouraged friendship practices among elite men and the representations of those practices in texts. The chapters that follow are roughly organized according to the life-course of Tang literati, from early writing for patrons and exams to funerary writing that marked the death of friends. It's an exceptionally accomplished study that weaves together compelling argumentation and moving translations from primary source material, and it deserves a wide readership. For more of Anna's work, check out her academia.edu site: http://princeton.academia.edu/AnnaShields

Jeffrey S. ShoulsonView on AmazonIn Fictions of Conversion: Jews, Christians, and Cultures of Change in Early Modern England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), Jeffrey S. Shoulson, the Doris and Simon Konover Chair in Judaic Studies and the Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life at the University of Connecticut, argues that the promise and peril of conversion was projected onto the figure of the Jew, the ultimate religious "other" in English society. Shoulson looks at English writings on religious conversion and how conversion became a means through which other "technologies of transformation" were figured.  His reading of diverse texts, from the translated King James Bible to the poetry of Milton, helps us understand the ways in which the figure of the Jew could serve a variety of purposes in the early modern English imagination.

George H. NashView on AmazonGeorge H. Nash is an independent scholar, historian, and lecturer. As a scholar of American conservative thought and biographer of Herbert Hoover, Nash edited The Crusade Years, 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover's Lost Memoir of the New Deal Era and its Aftermath (Hoover Institution Press, 2013). Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, lost his bid for re-election in 1932 reaching the lowest point of a long productive life. Rather than retreat to a quiet private life, he spent the next three decades writing and speaking, promoting humanitarian projects, addressing the problem of government efficiency, and as a vocal critic of American intervention abroad. He left a voluminous and detailed memoir, which remained unpublished until recently. The Hoover Institution published the first volume Freedom Betrayed, also edited by Nash, in 2011. Nash has provided a thorough introduction of Hoover's life. The second volume of the memoir, The Crusade Years, covers some of Hoover's private life and lays out his views on the threat of collectivism. Hoover was a relentless crusader against Roosevelt's New Deal policies and a champion of a classic liberal philosophy of "properly regulated individualism". He resisted the erosion of American liberty by an encroaching state. His political philosophy was not rooted in an unfettered laissez-faire but in his firm belief in American exceptionalism, ordered liberty, and the possibility of social progress. In contemporary American politics, as noted by Nash, Hoover is both too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals bringing out the American tension in striking a balance between free markets and government regulation.