Title: Splendid monarchy: power and pageantry in modern Japan
Author: Fujitani, Takashi
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: History | Cultural Anthropology | Asian Studies | Japan
Publisher's Description: Using ceremonials such as imperial weddings and funerals as models, T. Fujitani illustrates what visual symbols and rituals reveal about monarchy, nationalism, city planning, discipline, gender, memory, and modernity. Focusing on the Meiji Period (1868-1912), Fujitani brings recent methods of cultur . . . [more]
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Title: There's something happening here: the New Left, the Klan, and FBI counterintelligence
Author: Cunningham, David 1970-
Published: University of California Press,  2004
Subjects: American Studies | History | Politics | Sociology | Law
Publisher's Description: Using over twelve thousand previously classified documents made available through the Freedom of Information Act, David Cunningham uncovers the riveting inside story of the FBI's attempts to neutralize political targets on both the Right and the Left during the 1960s. Examining the FBI's infamous counterintelligence programs (COINTELPROs) against suspected communists, civil rights and black power advocates, Klan adherents, and antiwar activists, he questions whether such actions were aberrations or are evidence of the bureau's ongoing mission to restrict citizens' right to engage in legal forms of political dissent. At a time of heightened concerns about domestic security, with the FBI's license to spy on U.S. citizens expanded to a historic degree, the question becomes an urgent one. This book supplies readers with insights and information vital to a meaningful assessment of the current situation. There's Something Happening Here looks inside the FBI's COINTELPROs against white hate groups and the New Left to explore how agents dealt with the hundreds of individuals and organizations labeled as subversive threats. Rather than reducing these activities to a product of the idiosyncratic concerns of longtime director J. Edgar Hoover, Cunningham focuses on the complex organizational dynamics that generated literally thousands of COINTELPRO actions. His account shows how--and why--the inner workings of the programs led to outcomes that often seemed to lack any overriding logic; it also examines the impact the bureau's massive campaign of repression had on its targets. The lessons of this era have considerable relevance today, and Cunningham extends his analysis to the FBI's often controversial recent actions to map the influence of the COINTELPRO legacy on contemporary debates over national security and civil liberties.   [brief]
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Title: The making of revolutionary Paris
Author: Garrioch, David
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: History | European History | European Studies | French Studies
Publisher's Description: The sights, sounds, and smells of life on the streets and in the houses of eighteenth-century Paris rise from the pages of this marvelously anecdotal chronicle of a perpetually alluring city during one hundred years of extraordinary social and cultural change. An excellent general history as well as an innovative synthesis of new research, The Making of Revolutionary Paris combines vivid portraits of individual lives, accounts of social trends, and analyses of significant events as it explores the evolution of Parisian society during the eighteenth century and reveals the city's pivotal role in shaping the French Revolution. David Garrioch rewrites the origins of the Parisian Revolution as the story of an urban metamorphosis stimulated by factors such as the spread of the Enlightenment, the growth of consumerism, and new ideas about urban space. With an eye on the broad social trends emerging during the century, he focuses his narrative on such humble but fascinating aspects of daily life as traffic congestion, a controversy over the renumbering of houses, and the ever-present dilemma of where to bury the dead. He describes changes in family life and women's social status, in religion, in the literary imagination, and in politics. Paris played a significant role in sparking the French Revolution, and in turn, the Revolution changed the city, not only its political structures but also its social organization, gender ideologies, and cultural practices. This book is the first to look comprehensively at the effect of the Revolution on city life. Based on the author's own research in Paris and on the most current scholarship, this absorbing book takes French history in new directions, providing a new understanding of the Parisian and the European past.   [brief]
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Title: Althusser and the renewal of Marxist social theory 
Author: Resch, Robert Paul
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: History | Political Theory | Social and Political Thought
Publisher's Description: The writings of the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser and his associates have figured prominently in the development of contemporary social theory. The Althusserian school of Structural Marxism is a startlingly original synthesis of Marxism and Modernism, which has produced a large body of work that extends across the human sciences and the humanities to engage a wide variety of cultures, theoretical problems, and political issues. Despite the fact that Althusser himself is widely recognized as a major figure, the breadth, coherence, and achievements of Structural Marxism as a whole have gone largely unrecognized.In this, the most systematic and wide-ranging assessment of Structural Marxism in any language, Resch provides a comprehensive and thematic introduction to the work of Althusser, Nicos Poulantzas, Pierre Macherey, Etienne Balibar, Emmanuel Terray, Terry Eagleton, Göran Therborn, Renée Balibar, Perry Anderson, Pierre-Philippe Rey, Michel Pêchaux, Guy Bois, and others. Resch's sympathetic and critical study demonstrates the enormous significance of Althusser's modernist renewal of Marxist social theory and its ongoing challenge to post-Marxist movements such as postmodernism and neo-liberalism.   [brief]
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Title: Moral vision in the Histories of Polybius
Author: Eckstein, Arthur M
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: Classics | History | Classical Politics | Political Theory | Ancient History
Publisher's Description: Arthur Eckstein's fresh and stimulating interpretation challenges the way Polybius' Histories have long been viewed. He argues that Polybius evaluates people and events as much from a moral viewpoint as from a pragmatic, utilitarian, or even "Machiavellian" one. Polybius particularly asks for "improvement" in his audience, hoping that those who study his writings will emerge with a firm determination to live their lives nobly. Teaching by the use of moral exemplars, Polybius also tries to prove that success is not the sole standard by which human action should be judged.   [brief]
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Title: The Antislavery debate: capitalism and abolitionism as a problem in historical interpretation
Author: Bender, Thomas
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: History | United States History | American Studies
Publisher's Description: This volume brings together one of the most provocative debates among historians in recent years. The center of controversy is the emergence of the antislavery movement in the United States and Britain and the relation of capitalism to this development.The essays delve beyond these issues, however, to raise a deeper question of historical interpretation: What are the relations between consciousness, moral action, and social change? The debate illustrates that concepts common in historical practice are not so stable as we have thought them to be. It is about concepts as much as evidence, about the need for clarity in using the tools of contemporary historical practice.The participating historians are scholars of great distinction. Beginning with an essay published in the American Historical Review ( AHR ), Thomas L. Haskell challenged the interpretive framework of David Brion Davis's celebrated study, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution . The AHR subsequently published responses by Davis and by John Ashworth, as well as a rejoinder by Haskell. The AHR essays and the relevant portions of Davis's book are reprinted here. In addition, there are two new essays by Davis and Ashworth and a general consideration of the subject by Thomas Bender.This is a highly disciplined, insightful presentation of a major controversy in historical interpretation that will expand the debate into new realms.   [brief]
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Title: Everyday things in premodern Japan: the hidden legacy of material culture
Author: Hanley, Susan B 1939-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: History | Japan | Asian History | Women's Studies
Publisher's Description: Japan was the only non-Western nation to industrialize before 1900 and its leap into the modern era has stimulated vigorous debates among historians and social scientists. In an innovative discussion that posits the importance of physical well-being as a key indicator of living standards, Susan B. Hanley considers daily life in the three centuries leading up to the modern era in Japan. She concludes that people lived much better than has been previously understood - at levels equal or superior to their Western contemporaries. She goes on to illustrate how this high level of physical well-being had important consequences for Japan's ability to industrialize rapidly and for the comparatively smooth transition to a modern, industrial society.While others have used income levels to conclude that the Japanese household was relatively poor in those centuries, Hanley examines the material culture - food, sanitation, housing, and transportation. How did ordinary people conserve the limited resources available in this small island country? What foods made up the daily diet and how were they prepared? How were human wastes disposed of? How long did people live? Hanley answers all these questions and more in an accessible style and with frequent comparisons with Western lifestyles. Her methods allow for cross-cultural comparisons between Japan and the West as well as Japan and the rest of Asia. They will be useful to anyone interested in the effects of modernization on daily life.   [brief]
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Title: A place in the sun: Africa in Italian colonial culture from post-unification to the present
Author: Palumbo, Patrizia
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: History | Postcolonial Studies | European History | African History | Immigration
Publisher's Description: Given the centrality of Africa to Italy's national identity, a thorough study of Italian colonial history and culture has been long overdue. Two important developments, the growth of postcolonial studies and the controversy surrounding immigration from Africa to the Italian peninsula, have made it clear that the discussion of Italy's colonial past is essential to any understanding of the history and construction of the nation. This collection, the first to gather articles by the most-respected scholars in Italian colonial studies, highlights the ways in which colonial discourse has pervaded Italian culture from the post-unification period to the present. During the Risorgimento, Africa was invoked as a limb of a proudly resuscitated Imperial Rome. During the Fascist era, imperialistic politics were crucial in shaping both domestic and international perceptions of the Italian nation. These contributors offer compelling essays on decolonization, exoticism, fascist and liberal politics, anthropology, and historiography, not to mention popular literature, feminist studies, cinema, and children's literature. Because the Italian colonial past has had huge repercussions, not only in Italy and in the former colonies but also in other countries not directly involved, scholars in many areas will welcome this broad and insightful panorama of Italian colonial culture.   [brief]
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Title: Battling the inland sea: American political culture, public policy, and the Sacramento Valley, 1850-1986
Author: Kelley, Robert Lloyd 1925-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: History | Californian and Western History | Politics
Publisher's Description: In its natural condition the Sacramento Valley was a flood-ravaged region where an inland sea a hundred miles long regularly formed during the rainy season, to drain slowly away by the summer months. Today the Valley is marvelously productive, with a great capital city at its center, but only after a seventy-year struggle to devise and build an intricate thousand miles of levees and drains. Robert Kelley sets that battle within the encompassing national political culture, which produced, through the Republican and Democratic parties, widely diverging ideas about how best to reclaim the Valley from flood. He draws on approaches developed in the field of policy analysis to examine the relationship between American political culture and environmental policy-making. We find that the prolonged controversy over the Sacramento Valley illuminates American decision-making, then and now.   [brief]
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Title: When abortion was a crime: women, medicine, and law in the United States, 1867-1973 
Author: Reagan, Leslie J
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: History | Women's Studies | United States History | Medicine
Publisher's Description: As we approach the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade , it's crucial to look back to the time when abortion was illegal. Leslie Reagan traces the practice and policing of abortion, which although illegal was nonetheless widely available, but always with threats for both doctor and patient. In a time when many young women don't even know that there was a period when abortion was a crime, this work offers chilling and vital lessons of importance to everyone.The linking of the words "abortion" and "crime" emphasizes the difficult and painful history that is the focus of Leslie J. Reagan's important book. Her study is the first to examine the entire period during which abortion was illegal in the United States, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and ending with Roe v. Wade in 1973. Although illegal, millions of abortions were provided during these years to women of every class, race, and marital status. The experiences and perspectives of these women, as well as their physicians and midwives, are movingly portrayed here.Reagan traces the practice and policing of abortion. While abortions have been typically portrayed as grim "back alley" operations, she finds that abortion providers often practiced openly and safely. Moreover, numerous physicians performed abortions, despite prohibitions by the state and the American Medical Association. Women often found cooperative practioners, but prosecution, public humiliation, loss of privacy, and inferior medical care were a constant threat.Reagan's analysis of previously untapped sources, including inquest records and trial transcripts, shows the fragility of patient rights and raises provocative questions about the relationship between medicine and law. With the right to abortion again under attack in the United States, this book offers vital lessons for every American concerned with health care, civil liberties, and personal and sexual freedom.   [brief]
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Title: Seeds of the sixties
Author: Jamison, Andrew
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: History | United States History | American Studies | Social Theory
Publisher's Description: "The Sixties." The powerful images conveyed by those two words have become an enduring part of American cultural and political history. But where did Sixties radicalism come from? Who planted the intellectual seeds that brought it into being? These questions are answered with striking clarity in Andrew Jamison and Ron Eyerman's book. The result is a combination of history and biography that vividly portrays an entire culture in transition.The authors focus on specific individuals, each of whom in his or her distinctive way carried the ideas of the 1930s into the decades after World War II, and each of whom shared in inventing a new kind of intellectual partisanship. They begin with C. Wright Mills, Hannah Arendt, and Erich Fromm and show how their work linked the "old left" of the Thirties to the "new left" of the Sixties. Lewis Mumford, Rachel Carson, and Fairfield Osborn laid the groundwork for environmental activism; Herbert Marcuse, Margaret Mead, and Leo Szilard articulated opposition to the postwar "scientific-technological state." Alternatives to mass culture were proposed by Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, and Mary McCarthy; and Saul Alinsky, Dorothy Day, and Martin Luther King, Jr., made politics personal.This is an unusual book, written with an intimacy that brings to life both intellect and emotion. The portraits featured here clearly demonstrate that the transforming radicalism of the Sixties grew from the legacy of an earlier generation of thinkers. With a deep awareness of the historical trends in American culture, the authors show us the continuing relevance these partisan intellectuals have for our own age. "In a time colored by 'political correctness' and the ascendancy of market liberalism, it is well to remember the partisan intellectuals of the 1950s. They took sides and dissented without becoming dogmatic. May we be able to say the same about ourselves." - from Chapter 7   [brief]
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Title: Emigrants and society: Extremadura and America in the sixteenth century 
Author: Altman, Ida
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: History | European History | United States History
Publisher's Description: The opening of the New World to Spanish settlement had more than the limited impact on individuals and society which scholars have traditionally granted it. Many families and young single people left the neighboring cities of Cáceres and Trujillo in the Extremadura region of southwestern Spain for the Indies. By maintaining ties with home and one another, and sometimes returning, these emigrants developed patterns of involvement that on one level were linked directly to place of origin and on another would come to characterize the emigration movement as a whole. Ida Altman shows that the Indies could and did have a substantial and perceptible effect on local society in Spain, as the New World quickly became an important arena of activity for people seeking new and better opportunities. Her findings suggest interesting conclusions regarding the relationship of sixteenth-century Spanish emigration to the larger movement of people from Europe to the Western Hemisphere in modern times.   [brief]
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Title: America becomes urban: the development of U.S. cities & towns, 1780-1980 
Author: Monkkonen, Eric H 1942-
Published: University of California Press,  1988
Subjects: History | United States History | Urban Studies
Publisher's Description: America's cities: celebrated by poets, courted by politicians, castigated by social reformers. In their numbers and complexity they challenge comprehension. Why is urban America the way it is? Eric Monkkonen offers a fresh approach to the myths and the history of US urban development, giving us an unexpected and welcome sense of our urban origins. His historically anchored vision of our cities places topics of finance, housing, social mobility, transportation, crime, planning, and growth into a perspective which explains the present in terms of the past and ofers a point from which to plan for the future.   [brief]
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Title: A very social time: crafting community in antebellum New England 
Author: Hansen, Karen V
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: History | United States History | Gender Studies | Social Theory
Publisher's Description: Karen Hansen's richly anecdotal narrative explores the textured community lives of New England's working women and men - both white and black - n the half century before the Civil War. Her use of diaries, letters, and autobiographies brings their voices to life, making this study an extraordinary combination of historical research and sociological interpretation.Hansen challenges conventional notions that women were largely relegated to a private realm and men to a public one. A third dimension - the social sphere - also existed and was a critical meeting ground for both genders. In the social worlds of love, livelihood, gossip, friendship, and mutual assistance, working people crossed ideological gender boundaries.The book's rare collection of original writings reinforces Hansen's arguments and also provides an intimate glimpse into antebellum New England life.   [brief]
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Title: One king, one faith: the Parlement of Paris and the religious reformations of the sixteenth century 
Author: Roelker, Nancy L. (Nancy Lyman)
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: History | European History | Christianity | European Studies | French Studies
Publisher's Description: This book, the culmination of a lifelong career in French history, tackles head-on the central question of the French Religious Wars: Why did France prove so consistently hostile and resistant to Protestantism? Distinguished scholar Nancy Lyman Roelker claims that what ultimately motivated the passion and violence of the civil wars was religion. She demonstrates that not only the body politic but also the body social was defined by Gallican Catholicism.Roelker underscores the role the Parlement played in shaping and safeguarding the social, as well as the political, order. Her study is based on extensive research in the correspondence, memoirs, and tracts of mainstream Catholic magistrates as well as dissenters. It creates an overview of the mentalitè s of the Parlement, analyzes religious attitudes toward major events of the period, and examines the Parlement's role in the triumph of Henri IV. Along the way, it sheds light on the inner workings of the Parlement and other political institutions, on social structures, and on collective ideas. And above all, this distinguished work brilliantly illuminates the role of religion in society and the state. It will be the definitive work on the subject for many years to come.   [brief]
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Title: Deep politics and the death of JFK
Author: Scott, Peter Dale
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: History | Politics | Popular Culture | United States History | American Studies | Sociology
Publisher's Description: Peter Dale Scott's meticulously documented investigation uncovers the secrets surrounding John F. Kennedy's assassination. Offering a wholly new perspective - that JFK's death was not just an isolated case, but rather a symptom of hidden processes - Scott examines the deep politics of early 1960s American international and domestic policies.Scott offers a disturbing analysis of the events surrounding Kennedy's death, and of the "structural defects" within the American government that allowed such a crime to occur and to go unpunished. In nuanced readings of both previously examined and newly available materials, he finds ample reason to doubt the prevailing interpretations of the assassination. He questions the lone assassin theory and the investigations undertaken by the House Committee on Assassinations, and unearths new connections between Oswald, Ruby, and corporate and law enforcement forces.Revisiting the controversy popularized in Oliver Stone's movie JFK, Scott probes the link between Kennedy's assassination and the escalation of the U.S. commitment in Vietnam that followed two days later. He contends that Kennedy's plans to withdraw troops from Vietnam - offensive to a powerful anti-Kennedy military and political coalition - were secretly annulled when Johnson came to power. The split between JFK and his Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the collaboration between Army Intelligence and the Dallas Police in 1963, are two of the several missing pieces Scott adds to the puzzle of who killed Kennedy and why.Scott presses for a new investigation of the Kennedy assassination, not as an external conspiracy but as a power shift within the subterranean world of American politics. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK shatters our notions of one of the central events of the twentieth century.   [brief]
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Title: Chinese capitalists in Japan's new order: the occupied lower Yangzi, 1937-1945
Author: Coble, Parks M 1946-
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: History | Asian History | China | Japan | Economics and Business
Publisher's Description: In this probing and original study, Parks M. Coble examines the devastating impact of Japan's invasion and occupation of the lower Yangzi on China's emerging modern business community. Arguing that the war gravely weakened Chinese capitalists, Coble demonstrates that in occupied areas the activities of businessmen were closer to collaboration than to heroic resistance. He shows how the war left an important imprint on the structure and culture of Chinese business enterprise by encouraging those traits that had allowed it to survive in uncertain and dangerous times. Although historical memory emphasizes the entrepreneurs who followed the Nationalists armies to the interior, most Chinese businessmen remained in the lower Yangzi area. If they wished to retain any ownership of their enterprises, they were forced to collaborate with the Japanese and the Wang Jingwei regime in Nanjing. Characteristics of business in the decades prior to the war, including a preference for family firms and reluctance to become public corporations, distrust of government, opaqueness of business practices, and reliance of personal connections (guanxi) were critical to the survival of enterprises during the war and were reinforced by the war experience. Through consideration of the broader implications of the many responses to this complex era, Chinese Capitalists in Japan's New Order makes a substantial contribution to larger discussions of the dynamics of World War II and of Chinese business culture.   [brief]
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Title: Battling for American labor: wobblies, craft workers, and the making of the union movement
Author: Kimeldorf, Howard
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: American Studies | Sociology | History | United States History | Labor Studies
Publisher's Description: In this incisive reinterpretation of the history of the American labor movement, Howard Kimeldorf challenges received thinking about rank-and-file workers and the character of their unions. Battling for American Labor answers the baffling question of how, while mounting some of the most aggressive challenges to employing classes anywhere in the world, organized labor in the United States has warmly embraced the capitalist system of which they are a part. Rejecting conventional understandings of American unionism, Kimeldorf argues that what has long been the hallmark of organized labor in the United States - its distinctive reliance on worker self-organization and direct economic action - can be seen as a particular kind of syndicalism.Kimeldorf brings this syndicalism to life through two rich and compelling case studies of unionization efforts by Philadelphia longshoremen and New York City culinary workers during the opening decades of the twentieth century. He shows how these workers, initially affiliated with the radical IWW and later the conservative AFL, pursued a common logic of collective action at the point of production that largely dictated their choice of unions. Elegantly written and deeply engaging, Battling for American Labor offers insights not only into how the American labor movement got to where it is today, but how it might possibly reinvent itself in the years ahead.   [brief]
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Title: Adventures of a mathematician
Author: Ulam, Stanislaw M
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: History | History and Philosophy of Science | Mathematics | United States History
Publisher's Description: The autobiography of mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, one of the great scientific minds of the twentieth century, tells a story rich with amazingly prophetic speculations and peppered with lively anecdotes. As a member of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1944 on, Ulam helped to precipitate some of the most dramatic changes of the postwar world. He was among the first to use and advocate computers for scientific research, originated ideas for the nuclear propulsion of space vehicles, and made fundamental contributions to many of today's most challenging mathematical projects.With his wide-ranging interests, Ulam never emphasized the importance of his contributions to the research that resulted in the hydrogen bomb. Now Daniel Hirsch and William Mathews reveal the true story of Ulam's pivotal role in the making of the "Super," in their historical introduction to this behind-the-scenes look at the minds and ideas that ushered in the nuclear age. An epilogue by Françoise Ulam and Jan Mycielski sheds new light on Ulam's character and mathematical originality.   [brief]
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Title: A scientist's voice in American culture: Simon Newcomb and the rhetoric of scientific method
Author: Moyer, Albert E 1945-
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: History | History and Philosophy of Science | United States History
Publisher's Description: In late nineteenth-century America, Simon Newcomb was the nation's most celebrated scientist and - irascibly, doggedly, tirelessly - he made the most of it. Officially a mathematical astronomer heading a government agency, Newcomb spent as much of his life out of the observatory as in it, acting as a spokesman for the nascent but restive scientific community of his time.Newcomb saw the "scientific method" as a potential guide for all disciplines and a basis for all practical action, and argued passionately that it was of as much use in the halls of Congress as in the laboratory. In so doing, he not only sparked popular support for American science but also confronted a wide spectrum of social, cultural, and intellectual issues. This first full-length study of Newcomb traces the development of his faith in science and ranges over topics of great public debate in the Gilded Age, from the reform of economic theory to the recasting of the debate between science and religion. Moyer's portrait of a restless, eager mind also illuminates the bustle of late nineteenth-century America.   [brief]
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