The many thousands of Jews from German-speaking lands who came to the United States throughout the nineteenth century played a major part in laying the foundations of the Jewish community in America. The author considers these immigrants a branch of German Jewry, compelled to seek overseas the political and civil rights denied them at home. In this volume of the Ellis Island Series, the fascinating story of this mass immigration of mostly poor, enterprising, young people is told in vivid detail. Drawing on rare letters, diaries, memoirs, period newspapers, journals, and other firsthand accounts, Barkai traces the process of family-oriented chain migration, resettlement, and acculturation, exploring as well the group's relations with the Jewish community in Germany and with German and Jewish immigrants in the New World. Often starting out as peddlers and storekeepers, the immigrants moved back and forth from East Coast towns and cities to settlements in the South, Midwest, and Far West, helping to expand the American frontier and to develop cities such as Cincinnati St. Louis, Milwaukee, and San Francisco. The narrative chronicles their experiences in the goldfields of California, on Indian reservations, and during the Civil War, in which German-Jewish soldiers in the Union and Confederate armies struggled against bigotry to assert their civil rights. These engaging personal narratives are woven into an account of the formative role played by German-Jewish immigrants in establishing the institutional framework of the American-Jewish community. Their influential network of mutual aid and philanthropic organizations would be challenged, at the turn of the century, by the great mass migration of Jews from Eastern Europe. The author's presentation of the dramatic encounter between these two groups sheds new light not only on this critical period in American-Jewish history but also on the dynamics of cultural change in a pluralist society.

NASA's history is a familiar story, peaking with Neil Armstrong's small step on the Moon in 1969. But America's space agency--and in particular its Apollo lunar-landing program--wasn't created in a vacuum. It was assembled from pre-existing parts, drawing together some of the best minds the non-Soviet world had to offer. In 1930s Germany, rockets were the focus both of scientists hoping to explore space and of the Wehrmacht. These two strands came together in Wernher von Braun, an engineer who designed the rockets that became the devastating V-2. As the war came to its conclusion, von Braun orchestrated a daring escape from the ruins of Nazi Germany to America, where he began developing missiles for the US Army. Ten years later his Redstone rocket was the only one capable of launching a satellite into orbit. Just what that satellite would be was under the remit of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which pioneered a round-bottomed capsule that could also keep men safe returning from space. Meanwhile, US Air Force pilots were riding to the fringes of space in balloons to see how humans handled radiation at high altitude, while test pilots like Neil Armstrong flew cutting-edge, rocket-powered aircraft in the thin upper atmosphere. Amy Shira Teitel tells the story of America's nascent space program, its scientific advances, its personalities and the rivalries it caused between the various arms of the United States military, right up to the launch of Sputnik in 1957, when getting a man into space became a national imperative leading to the creation of NASA.--Adapted from book jacket

"Theodore Draper is one of the two or three most cogent and thoughtful social historians in the United States today. Everything he writes merits close attention." -Irving Howe "Theodore Draper is a historian of today's world in a class by himself-formidably equipped with learning and experience, fearless in attacking the naivet of the left and the cruelty of the right." -Alfred Kazin Theodore Draper is one of America's most trenchant and informed critics. A Present of Things Past gathers together ten of his most recent and most powerful selected essays, in which Draper, with his customary acuity and wit, tackles a host of issues that define America's political culture. A Present of Things Past is concerned with a reexamination of the Second World War in both its military and its political aspects; the trajectory of American conservatism as it manifested itself during the Reagan years; the rise of Gorbachev and the history of "reform" in the Soviet Union; the revisionist debate over the origins and history of American communism; and the persistent mystery of a man named Max Eitingon, who was, depending on one's reading of the sources, either an important figure in the history of psychoanalysis or an agent of the Soviet secret police, or both. In "American Hubris," Draper illuminates the assumptions that have guided American foreign policy in the postwar period, and concludes that our costly misadventures-in Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, and elsewhere-cannot be considered a string of aberrations. They were, he argues, a consequence of the Truman Doctrine. In "Reagan's Junta," Draper observes: "This is supposed to have been the era of the imperial presidency. It has turned out to be the era of presidencies that have tried to make themselves imperial-and failed." Throughout these compelling essays, Draper demonstrates the uses and abuses to which history has been put by ideologues of both the left and the right. He finds unacceptable, for example, the practice of many journalists of fictionalizing their sources. The New York Times has called Draper "one of the clearer-eyed observers of the issues that torment us." A Present of Things Past enhances that reputation. Theodore Draper is the author of numerous books, including Present History: On Nuclear War, Dtente & Other Controversies and American Communism. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and lives in Princeton, New Jersey. "Is especially recommended for students of political science, the Cold War era, and twentieth century American history as a powerful, thought-provoking view of the people and events that shaped nations, and through nations the world."-- Library Bookwatch

"This book is the first to examine the fraught relationship between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a variety of religious groups that have developed in the United States in the century of the FBI's existence. Encompassing religious communities that run the gamut from established religious institutions to violent extremist groups, and covering a period that includes the World Wars, the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement, and 9/11, Truth Faith and Allegiance tackles questions of importance for understanding the history of American religion, the history of law enforcement, and the future of religious liberty"--Provided by publisher.

Autobiography of an Ex-White Man is an intensely personal meditation on the nature of America by a White Philosopher who joined a Black Studies Department and found his understanding of the world transformed by the experience. The book begins with an autobiographical narrative of the events leading up to Wolff's transfer from a Philosophy Department to the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, and his experiences in the Department with his new colleagues, all of whom had come to Academia from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Wolff discovered that the apparently simple act of moving across campus to a new Department in a new building worked a startling change in the way he saw himself, his university, and his country. Reading as widely as possible to bring himself up to speed in his new field of academic responsibility, Wolff realized after a bit that his picture of American history and culture was undergoing an irreversible metamorphosis. America, he realized, has from its inception been a land both of Freedom and of Bondage: Freedom for the few, and then for those who are White; Bondage at first for the many, and then for those who are not White. Slavery is thus not an aberration, an accident, a Peculiar Institution -- it is the essence and core of the American experience. Wolff's optimistic outlook leads him to express the hope that our acknowledging the realities of America's racial history and present will begin to tear down the formidable barrier to change. He sees this refashioning of the American story as a first step toward the crafting of a truly liberatory project. Robert Paul Wolff is Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and the author of numerous books, including Introductory Philosophy and In Defense of Anarchism.

Since he followed it all of his life, Richard Neutra (1892-1970) must have relished the maxim of the Greek philosopher Socrates: "The unexamined life is not worth living." In his books, articles, lectures, correspondence, and even casual conversations, Neutra constantly examined, not only his own life, but the lives of others - present and past - and the human and natural world they inhabited. Nowhere was this truer than in his autobiography Life and Shape, first published in 1962, which now, after years of being out of print, has again happily come back to life. As opposed to Survival Through Design (1954), his superb collection of densely philosophical essays, Neutra took a different tack in Life and Shape, following a lighter and more deliberately relaxed approach. It was as if the usually serious and intense Neutra was giving himself permission to reveal his richly ironic sense of humor and to probe areas in his personal experience which he had not examined as closely before. These included hitherto unrecorded memories of his parents, siblings, and his childhood and education in imperial Vienna, his numbing experiences as an Austrian artillery officer in World War I, and the beginnings of his architectural consciousness in his response to the work of Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Erich Mendelsohn, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright. As in the autobiographies of Sullivan and Wright, Life and Shape concentrates on Neutra's earlier years, both in Europe and America. While he naturally recounts his memories of such well-known commissions as the Lovell Health House (1929), his own Van der Leeuw Research House (1933) and the von Sternberg House (1935), he also muses on such less famous buildings as the small, and now virtually forgotten, Mosk House (1933). Life and Shape also confirms Neutra's obsession with the passage of time and his firm resolution never to waste it. Like Sullivan and Wright, Neutra eschewed writing a factual chronicle, and - at the age of 70 - composed instead a meditation on the aspects of his life and work that seemed, in retrospect, to be the most interesting and significant. He felt no need to try to "include everything" but rather to present an honest recounting of his memory of his life. In writing my own Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture [Oxford University Press, 1982; Rizzoli Press, 2006], I relied on Life and Shape when I wanted an account of Neutra's experiences told in his own authentic voice. For future generations of architects, historian, and readers, it is good to have it back. - Thomas S. Hines, UCLA Professor Emeritus of History and Architecture

Son of pioneer movie producer Harry Rapf, Maurice Rapf grew up in Hollywood in that city's golden age. After moving from independent filmmaking to Warner Bros., in 1924 the senior Rapf joined Louis Mayer and became one of the founding members of MGM. Hence, movies were a huge influence in Maurice Rapf's early life. After graduating from college, Rapf worked as a screenwriter for major Hollywood studios, but, in 1947, he left Hollywood, never to work for a major studio again. On numerous occasions, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee as an alleged communist, although he never made a public confession or denial. As a result he was blacklisted from the industry and forced to begin a new career in the East. He eventually became a movie critic and film studies professor. Maurice Rapf knows movies and the movie business as an insider, from first-hand experience, not from books. His autobiography is the story of one person's interaction with an evolving Hollywood. Rapf witnessed the historical progression of movie production: from silents to sound, from a fun-loving frontier community to a huge and fiercely competitive industry, from an apolitical never-never land to a community very much aware of-and nervous about-its social responsibility in a period of economic depression and in a period of world peace seriously threatened by the aggression of fascism. Of interest to students and teachers of film studies, of American history, and of American popular culture, as well as anyone who loves movies.

The classic history of the muckraking era (1902–1914) has been extended to trace the muckrakers' influence through World War II and McCarthyism, the civil rights movement and the counterculture, Korea and Vietnam, Naderism and women's liberation, and Watergate. (Former editions stopped with the New Deal.) The book that Allan Nevins called, "By all odds the best account in print of a most interesting movement," now embodies the challenge of the muckrakers to Americans of the seventies. Professor Filler has added a new introduction and a new final chapter, "The Anguish of Change." and has updated facts, interpretations, and references throughout the book. He also has updated his chronology and bibliography and has added four newly discovered cartoons and drawings to the twenty-two illustrations appearing in previous editions. Modern heirs of the muckraking tradition—Jack Anderson, Bernstein and Woodward, Dan Ellsberg, James Forman, Abbie Hoffman, Ralph Nader, I.F. Stone, and various TV talk-show personalities—are treated fairly but astringently. So too are revisionist critics of the original muckrakers. Today's journalistic investigators and social critics, in Professor Filler's view, lack the historical perspective and the emphatic sensitivity of their precursors. His opinion on this score will be controversial, but would be understood by Ida Tarbell, who wrote of the first edition, "His liberal sympathies give warmth to his narrative and his honesty as an investigator gives it trustworthiness."

This is Laski's most important book after A Grammar of Politics . It discusses, on a grand scale, every aspect of American public life. Laski surveys American traditions and the American spirit, political institutions, the entire educational, religious, economic and social scene, America as a world power, and Americanism as a principle of civilisation. Laski's unsurpassed knowledge of American constitutional, social and cultural history is set in the perspective of his deep study of comparative constitutional history and political theory. He was one of very few people to see U.S. politics from the inside, as a result of his friendships with Roosevelt, Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

The New York Times hailed John B. Judis's The Emerging Democratic Majority as "indispensable." Now this brilliant political writer compares the failure of American imperialism a century ago with the potential failure of the current administration's imperialistic policies. One hundred years ago, Theodore Roosevelt believed that the only way the United States could achieve peace, prosperity, and national greatness was by joining Europe in a struggle to add colonies. But Roosevelt became disillusioned with this imperialist strategy after a long war in the Philippines. Woodrow Wilson, shocked by nationalist backlash to American intervention in Mexico and by the outbreak of World War I, began to see imperialism not as an instrument of peace and democracy, but of war and tyranny. Wilson advocated that the United States lead the nations of the world in eliminating colonialism and by creating a "community of power" to replace the unstable "balance of power." Wilson's efforts were frustrated, but decades later they led to the creation of the United Nations, NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank. The prosperity and relative peace in the United States of the past fifty years confirmed the wisdom of Wilson's approach. Despite the proven success of Wilson's strategy, George W. Bush has repudiated it. He has revived the narrow nationalism of the Republicans who rejected the League of Nations in the 1920s. And at the urging of his neoconservative supporters, he has revived the old, discredited imperialist strategy of attempting to unilaterally overthrow regimes deemed unfriendly by his administration. Bush rejects the role of international institutions and agreements in curbing terrorists, slowing global pollution, and containing potential threats. In The Folly of Empire, John B. Judis convincingly pits Wilson's arguments against those of George W. Bush and the neoconservatives. Judis draws sharp contrasts between the Bush administration's policies, especially with regard to Iraq, and those of every administration from Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman through George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The result is a concise, thought-provoking look at America's position in the world -- then and now -- and how it has been formed, that will spark debate and controversy in Washington and beyond. The Folly of Empire raises crucial questions about why the Bush administration has embarked on a foreign policy that has been proven unsuccessful and presents damning evidence that its failure is already imminent. The final message is a sobering one: Leaders ignore history's lessons at their peril.

This book provides the first dedicated study of the Evian Conference of July 1938, an international initiative called by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. While on the surface the conference appeared as an attempt to alleviate the distress faced by Jews being forced out of Germany and Austria, in reality it only served to demonstrate that the nations of the world were not willing to accept Jews as refugees. Since the Holocaust, a generally-held assumption has been that the Evian Conference represented a lost opportunity to save Germany’s Jews, and that the conference failed to rescue the Jews of Europe. In this study, Paul Bartrop argues that in fact it did not fail when measured against the original reasons for which it was called. Exposing many of the myths surrounding the meeting, this work addresses a glaring lacuna in the literature of the Holocaust, and places the so-called 'failure' of the Evian Conference into its proper context.

This powerful memoir chronicles the life of one of America’s most celebrated rabbis—Rabbi Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi, or “Reb Zalman” as he is fondly known to friends and followers. The book traces his life from a youth in the shadow of the Nazis through the tumultuous 1960s in America to his position as a renowned religious leader today. Often controversial for his attraction to cultural mavericks and religious rebels, Reb Zalman’s colorful lifetime includes a striking cast of characters across faith traditions, including Timothy Leary, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Thomas Merton, the Dalai Lama, and more. The book traces Reb Zalman’s work creating the vibrant Jewish Renewal movement that emphasizes spiritual experience and continues to touch Jews around the world today. Reb Zalman often illustrates his talks with anecdotes from his life, and My Life in Jewish Renewal brings together the life story of this beloved leader for the first time.

This pioneering study of the interaction of family life and the factory system of industrial production focuses on the largest textile concern in the world at the turn of the twentieth century, the Amoskeag Corporation in Manchester, New Hampshire.

The former head of Neiman-Marcus stores recounts his lifelong pursuit of quality merchandise, examines the greats and not-so-greats of the retail-business world, and applies his rigorous standards to a host of products

" Americans and Europeans are divided by more than an ocean when it comes to designing and carrying out policies toward countries that repress human rights, develop weapons of mass destruction, and/or support terrorism and subversion. Accounting for this divide are distinct interests, domestic politics, and above all profound disagreements between Americans and their counterparts in European capitals and Brussels over what tools of foreign policy--sanctions, engagement, military force--to empty to change the behavior of problem countries. The result is that Americans and Europeans often work at cross purposes--and that disagreements over policy toward problem countries threaten both to undermine efforts that promote desired change and transatlantic cooperation in other areas, be it within Europe or in building an open world trading system. This book examines the ""problem"" countries of Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Nigeria. The authors explain sources of American and European differences, consequences for policies designed to influence problem states, and prospects for bridging transatlantic policy rifts. A conclusion by Richard N. Haass places these differences in perspective and suggests what Europe and the United States need to do to ameliorate this tension--and what could transpire if they do not. "

Since World War II, Hollywood has fought and won that same war many times, won the West even more often--plus got the girl--and laughed like crazy, too. The postwar era in the dream factory was a prosperous time of expansion and wealth through the 1970s, decline in the 1980s, and rebirth in the new century. Vintage photographs from the rare collections of Hollywood Heritage and Bison Archives depict the municipal, business, residential, and entertainment industry growth in Hollywood proper, from 1940 until the beginning of the 21st century. This companion volume to Arcadia Publishing's Early Hollywood completes the pictorial saga of the world's most renowned storytelling capital. These images depict the rise of the television industry, changes along Hollywood Boulevard, and movers and shakers whose visions and influence have made Hollywood the entertainment industry's Mecca.

Way before Rodeo Drive and the "pink palace" of the Beverly Hills Hotel were built, way before the namesake hillbillies, its zip code, and Eddie Murphy's detective techniques reaffirmed its place in popular culture, and way before its 1,001 mansions, Beverly Hills was comprised of wild canyons and ranchlands. Burton Green, one of the three original land developers of the Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas, named this place of severe terrain after Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, a 19th-century spa. Since its establishment in 1907, Beverly Hills, California, has been a crossroads for the great movers and shakers of the entertainment industry as well as the tycoons, world leaders, and flotsam and jetsam magnetized by the limelight. The vintage photographs in this provocative volume illustrate Beverly Hills's early transition from cow pastures to Hollywood's extremely illustrious bedroom community.

"This is an insider's view, and Raskin offers readers insights into a hidden California. The impact of his book is to return culture to agriculture in a state dominated by agribusiness."--Gerald Haslam, author of The Great Central Valley: California's Heartland "Jonah Raskin has lived and taught in this area for well over thirty years and has the credibility to write about the evolution of farming here. His book is a magical mixture of journalism and memoir. I loved his interviews with local farmers and growers. He explores the questions that we all are asking about our relationship to food and what it means to eat locally, who grows it, and will they be able to continue to do so."--Ianthe Brautigan, author of You Can't Catch Death: A Daughter's Memoir "'Think global, buy local' takes on new meaning in this intriguing synthesis of memoir and reportage on the slow and local food movements."--Peter Laufer, author of Wetback Nation and The Dangerous World of Butterflies "Anyone wanting to know what it's like to live in the paradise that is Sonoma County must read Field Days . Jonah Raskin brings this blessed region and its communities of environmental champions vividly to life."--Jeff Cox, author of The Organic Cook's Bible and The Organic Food Shopper's Guide "In Jonah Raskin's wonderfully observant ramble through Sonoma County's farms, orchards, and vineyards, it becomes abundantly clear that American farming has not been killed off by agribusiness, or the Department of Agriculture's call to 'get big or get out'. With Raskin we meet a rich community of amazing people who have stayed on the land, or gone back to it, sharing a new kind of ecologically informed consciousness about our intimate connections to the land and the people who work it. Anybody who reads this book, wherever they live, will gain a new appreciation of this new generation of farmers. Thanks to them, we're learning to eat well--a basic necessity in the hard times ahead."--Ernest Callenbach, author of Ecotopia "In Field Days , Jonah Raskin becomes the George Plimpton of organic farming. Instead of getting out on the playing field to measure his stuff against pro athletes, he toils long days beside farm workers. Soulful and always curious, Raskin traces the tradition of responsible farming practices in Northern California, and explores the meaning of living locally."--Bart Schneider, author of The Man in the Blizzard

From television talk shows to the criminal justice system, from office politics to world politics—a fascinating historical study of how America's obsession with self-fulfillment permeates all aspects of society From self-esteem talk on Oprah to self-help books like Negaholics and Your Sacred Self, from magazine quizzes that test your "happiness quotient" to headlines blaring the supposed deepest emotions of public figures—we live in an age fixated on emotional well-being. Rich or poor, black or white, male or female, straight or gay, Americans share a belief in the therapeutic gospel. Feelings reveal inner truth; salvation lies in self-esteem. We measure success with a psychological yardstick. As Eva Moskowitz argues, Americans today turn to psychological cures as confidently as they once petitioned the Lord with prayer. How did the land of the free become obsessed with self-fulfillment? Has America gained or lost by placing so much emphasis on personal well-being? Taking a historical approach, Moskowitz explores the country's tendency to find psychological explanations—and excuses—for nearly everything. Beginning with the example of a "Mind Cure" developed by mid-nineteenth-century clockmaker Phineas P. Quimby, Moskowitz explains how Americans' growing fascination with therapy led them to adopt new kinds of reform—including, at the turn of the twentieth century, provisions for psychological services in prisons, courts, hospitals, and schools. Depression-era divorce rates prompted colleges and high schools to offer courses on marital happiness and produced a new marriage-counseling industry. During World War II, Moskowitz shows, the army devoted unprecedented energy to a soldier's "psychological readiness for combat." Moskowitz also explores more recent developments, including Cold War-era psychological assumptions of magazine campaigns that targeted unhappy housewives. She confronts the social protest movements in the 60s and the explosion of 70s self-help fads that continue to the present. In a study that encompasses all aspects of American society—from television talk shows to the criminal justice system, from office politics to world politics—Moskowitz identifies a debilitating "sense of self" that is intimately bound up with the major developments of the twentieth century.

"Anybody can become a New Yorker--if you live here for six months and at the end of the six months you find that you walk faster, talk faster, and think faster, then you're a New Yorker." And so Ed Koch--the 105th mayor of the city whose fans would argue is actually the center of the universe--defines the essence of his beloved melting pot in the introduction to New York: A State of Mind. "This electricity comes from a population that is so different than the rest of the United States because we have the sons and daughters of every country, of every state in the Union," he describes, his very words reverberating with the footsteps of thousands of hopeful immigrants. From the Metropolitan Museum of Art (where Koch claims to purchase all of his ties) to the Central Park Zoo and the Statue of Liberty, New York City captures the imagination of all who visit. Complete with hundreds of images culled from the area's finest photographers, New York: A State of Mind tells the story of this metropolis on the move. From the book's pages, buildings glimmer, food entices, and urbanity reaches on, all with the momentum of an eclectic and diverse citizenry. In Chinatown and in Little Italy, in Brooklyn and in the Bronx, a world of cultures meets under a looming skyline. As native son Koch eloquently surmises, "Only in New York."