Whether writing about the Beat Generation or Umberto Eco, Picasso's Guernica or the massacre at Tiananmen Square, Marcus uncovers the histories embedded in our cultural moments and acts, and shows how, through our reading of the truths our culture tells and those it twists and conceals, we situate ourselves in that history and in the world.

"A great American sport and Native American history come together in this true story of how Jim Thorpe and Pop Warner created the legendary Carlisle Indians football team"--

In 1904, New York nuns brought forty Irish orphans to a remote Arizona mining camp, to be placed with Catholic families. The Catholic families were Mexican, as was the majority of the population. Soon the town's Anglos, furious at this "interracial" transgression, formed a vigilante squad that kidnapped the children and nearly lynched the nuns and the local priest. The Catholic Church sued to get its wards back, but all the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled in favor of the vigilantes. The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction tells this disturbing and dramatic tale to illuminate the creation of racial boundaries along the Mexican border. Clifton/Morenci, Arizona, was a "wild West" boomtown, where the mines and smelters pulled in thousands of Mexican immigrant workers. Racial walls hardened as the mines became big business and whiteness became a marker of superiority. These already volatile race and class relations produced passions that erupted in the "orphan incident." To the Anglos of Clifton/Morenci, placing a white child with a Mexican family was tantamount to child abuse, and they saw their kidnapping as a rescue. Women initiated both sides of this confrontation. Mexican women agreed to take in these orphans, both serving their church and asserting a maternal prerogative; Anglo women believed they had to "save" the orphans, and they organized a vigilante squad to do it. In retelling this nearly forgotten piece of American history, Linda Gordon brilliantly recreates and dissects the tangled intersection of family and racial values, in a gripping story that resonates with today's conflicts over the "best interests of the child."

Unusual book

This scathing critique of U.S. political culture is a brilliant analysis of the Iran-Contra scandal. Chomsky offers a message of hope, reminding us resistance is possible.

Jeffrey Herf, a leading scholar in the field, offers the most extensive examination to date of Nazi propaganda activities targeting Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East during World War II and the Holocaust. He draws extensively on previously unused and little-known archival resources, including the shocking transcriptions of the "Axis Broadcasts in Arabic" radio programs, which convey a strongly anti-Semitic message.

The work of the great literary and cultural critic Walter Benjamin is an audacious plotting of history, art and thought; a reservoir of texts, commentaries, scraps and fragments of everyday life, art and dreams. It comprises myriad smaller archives, in which Benjamin gathered together all kinds of artefacts, assortments of images, texts and signs, themselves representing experiences, ideas and hopes, each of which was enthusiastically logged, systematized and analyzed by their author. In them, Benjamin laid the groundwork for the salvaging of his own legacy. This unique book, produced in association with the Benjamin Archive, delves into these archives. They include carefully laid-out manuscripts; photograps of a home with luxurious furniture, arcades, Russian toys; picture postcards from Tuscany and the Balearics; meticulous and unconventional registers, card indexes and catalogs; notebooks, in which every single square centimeter is covered; a collation of his son’s first words and sentences; riddles and enigmatic Sibyls. Everything here is subtly interlinked with everything else. Intricate and intimate, Walter Benjamin’s Archive leads right into the core of his work, yielding a rich and detailed portrait of its author.

"The years following 1945 witnessed a massive change in American intellectual thought and in the life of American universities. The vast effort to mobilize intellectual talent during the war established new links between the government and the academy. After the war, many of those who had worked with the military or the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) took jobs in the burgeoning postwar structure of university-based military research and the intelligence agencies, bringing infusions of government money into many fields." "Little has been written about the long-term impact of this close association, despite considerable study of the McCarthy period's destructive impact on academic careers. The Cold War and the University is a groundbreaking collection of newly commissioned essays that takes a bold first step toward the reconstruction of this history. In it, some of the country's most prominent intellectuals use their own experiences to explore what happened to the university in the postwar years and why." "In wide-ranging and revealing essays, these writers show the many ways existing disciplines, such as anthropology, were affected by the Cold War ethos; they discuss the rise of new fields, such as area studies; and they explore the changing nature of dissent and academic freedom during and since the Cold War."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Presenting a new perspective on the Russian Revolution, a noted historian traces three generational phases to show how the revolution, while it changed in form and character, retained the same idealistic goals throughout

Questions about the future of war are a regular feature of political debate, strategic analysis, and popular fiction. Where should we look for new dangers? What cunning plans might an aggressor have in mind? What are the best forms of defense? How might peace be preserved or conflict resolved? From the French rout at Sedan in 1870 to the relentless contemporary insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lawrence Freedman, a world-renowned military thinker, reveals how most claims from the military futurists are wrong. But they remain influential nonetheless. Freedman shows how those who have imagined future war have often had an idealized notion of it as confined, brief, and decisive, and have regularly taken insufficient account of the possibility of long wars--hence the stubborn persistence of the idea of a knockout blow, whether through a dashing land offensive, nuclear first strike, or cyberattack. He also notes the lack of attention paid to civil wars until the West began to intervene in them during the 1990s, and how the boundaries between peace and war, between the military, the civilian, and the criminal are becoming increasingly blurred. Freedman's account of a century and a half of warfare and the (often misconceived) thinking that precedes war is a challenge to hawks and doves alike, and puts current strategic thinking into a bracing historical perspective.

One Discipline, Four Ways offers the first book-length introduction to the history of each of the four major traditions in anthropology—British, German, French, and American. The result of lectures given by distinguished anthropologists Fredrik Barth, Andre Gingrich, Robert Parkin, and Sydel Silverman to mark the foundation of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, this volume not only traces the development of each tradition but considers their impact on one another and assesses their future potentials. Moving from E. B. Taylor all the way through the development of modern fieldwork, Barth reveals the repressive tendencies that prevented Britain from developing a variety of anthropological practices until the late 1960s. Gingrich, meanwhile, articulates the development of German anthropology, paying particular attention to the Nazi period, of which surprisingly little analysis has been offered until now. Parkin then assesses the French tradition and, in particular, its separation of theory and ethnographic practice. Finally, Silverman traces the formative influence of Franz Boas, the expansion of the discipline after World War II, and the "fault lines" and promises of contemporary anthropology in the United States.

"The untold story of the movement that came close to keeping the United States out of the First World War. This book is about the Americans who tried to stop their nation from fighting in one of history's most destructive wars and then were hounded by the government when they refused to back down. In the riveting War Against War, Michael Kazin brings us into the ranks of the largest, most diverse, and most sophisticated peace coalition up to that point in US history. They came from a variety of backgrounds: wealthy and middle and working class, urban and rural, white and black, Christian and Jewish and atheist. They mounted street demonstrations and popular exhibitions, attracted prominent leaders from the labor and suffrage movements, ran peace candidates for local and federal office, and founded new organizations that endured beyond the cause. For almost three years, they helped prevent Congress from authorizing a massive increase in the size of the US army--a step advocated by ex-president Theodore Roosevelt. Soon after the end of the Great War, most Americans believed it had not been worth fighting. And when its bitter legacy led to the next world war, the warnings of these peace activists turned into a tragic prophecy--and the beginning of a surveillance state that still endures today. War Against War is a dramatic account of a major turning point in the history of the United States and the world"--

NOW AN ACCLAIMED DOCUMENTARY, Winter Journey Set amid the growing tyranny of Germany's Third Reich, here is the riveting and emotional tale of Günther Goldschmidt and Rosemarie Gumpert, two courageous Jewish musicians who struggled to perform under unimaginable circumstances--and found themselves falling in love in a country bent on destroying them. In the spring of 1933, as the full weight of Germany's National Socialism was brought to bear against Germany's Jews, more than 8,000 Jewish musicians, actors, and other artists found themselves expelled from their positions with German orchestras, opera companies, and theater groups, and Jews were forbidden even to attend "Aryan" theaters. Later that year, the Jüdische Kulturbund, or Jewish Culture Association, was created under the auspices of Joseph Goebbels's Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Providing for Jewish artists to perform for Jewish audiences, the Kulturbund, which included an orchestra, an opera company, and an acting troupe, became an unlikely haven for Jewish artists and offered much-needed spiritual enrichment for a besieged people--while at the same time providing the Nazis with a powerful propaganda tool for showing the rest of the world how well Jews were ostensibly being treated under the Third Reich. It was during this period that twenty-two-year-old flutist Günther Goldschmidt was expelled from music school because of his Jewish roots. While preparing to flee the ever-tightening grip of Nazi Germany for Sweden, Günther was invited to fill in for an ailing flutist with the Frankfurt Kulturbund Orchestra. It was there, during rehearsals, that he met the dazzling nineteen-year-old violist Rosemarie Gumpert--a woman who would change the course of his life. Despite their strong attraction, Günther eventually embarked for the safety of Sweden as planned, only to risk his life six months later returning to the woman he could not forget--and to the perilous country where hatred and brutality had begun to flourish. Here is Günther and Rosemarie's story, a deeply moving tale of love and the remarkable resilience of the human spirit in the face of terror and persecution. Beautifully and simply told by their son, National Public Radio commentator Martin Goldsmith, The Inextinguishable Symphony takes us from the cafés of Frankfurt, where Rosemarie and Günther fell in love, to the concert halls that offered solace and hope for the beleaguered Jews, to the United States, where the two made a new life for themselves that would nevertheless remain shadowed by the fate of their families. Along with the fate of Günther and Rosemarie's families, this rare memoir also illuminates the Kulturbund and the lives of other fascinating figures associated with it, including Kubu director Kurt Singer--a man so committed to the organization that he objected to his artists' plans for flight, fearing that his productions would suffer. The Kubu, which included some of the most prominent artists of the day and young performers who would gain international fame after the war, became the sole source of culture and entertainment for Germany's Jews. A poignant testament to the enduring vitality of music and love even in the harshest times, The Inextinguishable Symphony gives us a compelling look at an important piece of Holocaust history that has heretofore gone largely untold.

Magda Herzberger is a force of nature. To meet Magda is to encounter a bundle of energy whose indefatigable spirit and beauty both inside and out belies her being witness to one of the darkest chapters in human history. From her riveting autobiography "Survival" to the published collections of her captivating poetry, she has guided us into a world that seems almost unimaginable-its highs, its lows, its mysteries, its contradictions. And in the process she provides us with insights that make all us all richer. Now she takes those life experiences and provides us with a compelling blueprint, both spiritual and practical, in how to tackle life's unpredictable and at times tortuous challenges. In the stress of our twentieth century world, we face a drug culture that seeks escapism because the pain of reality is just too great or the high of a dangerous, temporary fix is too irresistible to pass up. Even among the more mainstream population, we have become accustomed to treatments and medications that promise to help us tackle physical and mental challenges and often a sense of hopelessness and being overwhelmed by the challenges of life. In America alone it is estimated that we spend close to half a trillion dollars each year to find ways to treat our psychological frailties. In "Surviving Hard Times," Magda shares with us the lessons of an extraordinary life that combines her story of hard grit and her relentless sense of purpose. The hard times she experienced are raw and unvarnished, and now she wants to pass on her insights to all of us.

A leading authority's panoramic history compares the experiences of immigrant-ethnic groups, African-Americans, and Native Americans to each other and in relation to the national political culture. Winner of the John Hope Franklin Prize (1991) Winner of the Theodore Saloutos Award from the Immigration History Society (1993) Do recent changes in American law and politics mean that our national motto — e pluribus unum — is at last becoming a reality? Lawrence H. Fuchs searches for answers to this question by examining the historical patterns of American ethnicity and the ways in which a national political culture has evolved to accommodate ethnic diversity. Fuchs looks first at white European immigrants, showing how most of them and especially their children became part of a unifying political culture. He also describes the ways in which systems of coercive pluralism kept persons of color from fully participating in the civic culture. He documents the dismantling of those systems and the emergence of a more inclusive and stronger civic culture in which voluntary pluralism flourishes. In comparing past patterns of ethnicity in America with those of today, Fuchs finds reasons for optimism. Diversity itself has become a unifying principle, and Americans now celebrate ethnicity. One encouraging result is the acculturation of recent immigrants from Third World countries. But Fuchs also examines the tough issues of racial and ethnic conflict and the problems of the ethno-underclass, the new outsiders. The American Kaleidoscope ends with a searching analysis of public policies that protect individual rights and enable ethnic diversity to prosper. Because of his lifelong involvement with issues of race relations and ethnicity, Lawrence H. Fuchs is singularly qualified to write on a grand scale about the interdependence in the United States of the unum and the pluribus. His book helps to clarify some difficult issues that policymakers will surely face in the future, such as those dealing with immigration, language, and affirmative action.

Divided into five discrete sections, this book examines the issue of Holocaust denial, and in some cases "Holocaust inversion" in North America, Europe, and the Middle East and its relationship to the history of antisemitism before and since the Holocaust. It thus offers both a historical and contemporary perspective. This volume includes observations by leading scholars, delivering powerful, even controversial essays by scholars who are reporting from the ‘frontline.’ It offers a discussion on the relationship between Christianity and Islam, as well as the historical and contemporary issues of antisemitism in the USA, Europe, and the Middle East. This book explores how all of these issues contribute consciously or otherwise to contemporary antisemitism. The chapters of this volume do not necessarily provide a unity of argument – nor should they. Instead, they expose the plurality of positions within the academy and reflect the robust discussions that occur on the subject.

Both the artistic and political vanguards were spellbound by the Communist promise of a new human era so much so that its political terrors were rationalized as a form of applied evolution and its collapse hailed as the end of history. This work argues that Communism produced a complex culture with a dialectical relation to modernism and itself.

A history of American liberalism since the Great Depression traces the pivotal roles of leading contributors, describing how their ambitions, flaws, and successes have shaped the nation's government, media, and culture.

Victor S. Navasky is the renowned editor, writer, and teacher who has been at the helm of "The Nation" for almost thirty years. "A Matter of Opinion," a scintillating reflection on his journalistic experiences, is also an extraordinary political document-a spirited, provocative argument for independent journals of opinion as vital to the health of democracy. Whether at the satirical magazine "Monocle" (which he founded when he was in law school), or at "The New York Times," or finally at "The Nation," Navasky's commitment to political engagement and to the social and intellectual values of independent cultural activity has always been front and center. In a wonderfully entertaining narrative, he tells of his innovative efforts to find money to keep "The Nation" afloat and to keep its pages lively, honest, and relevant, and he embellishes it with unforgettable stories-about his colleagues and opponents, from E. L. Doctorow to Bill Buckley; his heroes, from I. F. Stone to Jurgen Habermas; and his precedessors, from Daniel Defoe to Carey McWilliams. Navasky's accomplishments have been legion, despite the threats of revenue-driven multinational media corporations, and despite the sometimes ugly, sometimes hilarious problems that fearless muckrakers face in any culture. "A Matter of Opinion" is a passionately written, irresistibly charming account of a great journalistic tradition.

"As World War II comes to a close, the United States and the Soviet Union emerge as the two greatest world powers on extreme opposites of the political spectrum. After the United States showed its hand with the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, the Soviets refuse to be left behind. With communism sweeping the globe, the two nations begin a neck-and-neck competition to build even more destructive bombs and conquer the Space Race. In their battle for dominance, spy planes fly above, armed submarines swim deep below, and undercover agents meet in the dead of night. The Cold War game grows more precarious as weapons are pointed towards each other, with fingers literally on the trigger. The decades-long showdown culminates in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world's close call with the third-and final-world war"--