"In Fireweed, Gerda Lerner, a pioneer and leading scholar in women's history, tells her story of moral courage and commitment to social change with a novelist's skill and a historian's command of context. Lerner's memoir focuses on the formative experiences that made her an activist for social justice before her academic career began. The child of a well-to-do Viennese Jewish family, she was still a teenager when a fascist regime came to power in 1934, and she became involved in the underground resistance movement. The Nazi takeover of Austria cast her into prison, then forced her and her family into exile; she alone was able to leave Europe. Once in the United States, she experienced the harshness of the Depression and despair over the fate of her family. Still, she persisted in adapting to the new culture and to becoming a writer. Here she met and married her life-long partner, Carl Lerner, a film editor and director. Together they become deeply involved in left-wing activities, from struggling to unionize the film industry and resisting the blacklist in Hollywood to community organizing for peace, for an interracial civil rights movement, and for better schools in New York City. Lerner insists that her decades of grassroots organizing largely account for the theoretical insights she was later able to bring to the development of women's history." -- Publisher's description.

Nearly a century and a half after his death, Abraham Lincoln remains an intrinsic part of the American consciousness, yet his intentions as president and his personal character continue to stir debate.Now, in The Lincoln Enigma, Gabor Boritt invites renowned Lincoln scholars, and rising new voices, to take a look at much-debated aspects of Lincoln's life, including his possible gay relationships, his plan to send blacks back to Africa, and his high-handed treatment of the Constitution. Boritt explores Lincoln's proposals that looked to a lily-white America. Jean Baker marvels at Lincoln's loves and marriage. David Herbert Donald highlights the similarities and differences of the Union and Confederate presidents' roles as commanders-in-chief. Douglas Wilson shows us the young Lincoln--not the strong leader of popular history, but a young man who questions his own identity and struggles to find his purpose. Gerald Prokopowicz searches for the military leader, William C. Harris for the peacemaker, and Robert Bruce meditates on Lincoln and death. In a final chapter Boritt and Harold Holzer offer a fascinating portfolio of Lincoln images in modern art.Acute and thought-provoking in their observations, this all-star cast of historians--including two Pulitzer and three Lincoln Prize winners--questions our assumptions of Lincoln, and provides a new vitality to our ongoing reflections on his life and legacy.

"Emma Lazarus's most famous poem gave a voice to the Statue of Liberty, but her remarkable life has remained a mystery until now. She was a woman so far ahead of her time that we are still scrambling to catch up with her-a feminist, a Zionist, and an internationally famous Jewish American writer before thse categories even existed. Drawing upon a cache of personal letters undiscovered until the 1980, Esther Schor brings this vital woman to life in all her complexity. Born into a wealthy Sephardic family in 1849, Lazarus published her first volume of verse at seventeen and gained entree into New York's elite literary circles. Although she once referred to her family as "outlaw" Jews, she felt a deep attachment to Jewish history and peoplehood. Her compassion for the downtrodden Jews of Eastern Europe-refugees whose lives had little in common with her own-helped redefine the meaning of America itself. In this groundbreaking biography, Schor argues persuasively for Lazarus's place in history as a poet, an activist, and a prophet of the world we all inhabit today-a world that she helped to invent."--Publisher's website. A portrait of the iconoclastic poet and activist whose words are are set on the Statue of Liberty follows the complex life and times of Emma Lazarus, from her early literary success, to her roles as a feminist, Zionist, and renowned Jewish-American writer.

Hirsch shows why American students perform less well than students in other industrialized countries. Drawing on classroom observation, the history of ideas, and current scientific understanding of the patterns of intellectual growth, he builds the case that our schools have indeed made progress in teaching the mechanics of reading, but do not convey the more complex and essential content needed for reading comprehension. Hirsch reasons that literacy depends less on formal reading 'skills' and more on exposure to rich knowledge. His argument gives parents specific tools for enhancing their child's ability to read with comprehension; shows how No-Child-Left-Behind tests and SATs are measuring a kind of knowledge that is not being taught in our schools; and maps out how American schools can become a strong antidote to poverty and to the race-based achievement gap, and thus fulfill our democratic ideal for our children.--From publisher description.

Racial Subjects heralds the next wave of writing about race and moves discussions about race forward as few other books recently have. Arguing that racism is best understood as exclusionary relations of power rather than simply as hateful expressions, David Theo Goldberg analyzes contemporary expressions of race and racism. He engages political economy, culture, and everyday material life against a background analysis of profound demographic shifts and changing class formation and relations. Issues covered in Racial Subjects include the history of changing racial categories over the last two hundred years of U.S. census taking, multiculturalism, the experience of being racially mixed, the rise of new black public intellectuals, race and the law in the wake of the O. J. Simpson verdict, relations between blacks and Jews, and affirmative action.

There are almost as many works about intellectuals as there are intellectuals. Perhaps this is because intellectuals are masters of the word and their mastery is often used to write about themselves. Indeed, with the possible exceptions of sports figures and film actors, intellectuals may be the most overpublicized people in America. In this classic study, originally published in 1974, Charles Kadushin examines the attitudes of that class of people known as the American intellectual elite. While most works on intellectuals first establish who should be included under the title "intellectual," and debate their characteristics, Kadushin instead sets forth a sociological history of leading American intellectuals of the late 1960s. The book's concern, however, is primarily with time and place. While The American Intellectual Elite is very much about social circles and the networked "small world" of intellectuals defined by the institutions such as the journals and magazines around which they gathered, the uniqueness of this volume is the recognition that fact must come before theory. Thus, the collective attitude of leading intellectuals of the sixties are presented in a straightforward and dispassionate manner on topics as diverse as the Vietnam War, race relations, foreign and domestic policy, and the place of intellectuals in the resolution of such issues. Now in paperback with a new introduction by the author, The American Intellectual Elite is an influential work that will be valued by students of sociology, members of the intellectual elite, and professionals and students of contemporary American history. "What a boon to sociologists of knowledge, and, in fact, to anyone who cares about the role and future of intellectuals to have THE AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL ELITE back and print and with a thoughtful new essay by the author that places the work in the context of thirty years of social and cultural change that have transpired since its publication. Professor Kadushin not only recognized that intellectuals populate an intellectual field that is, to a far greater extent than others, constituted and sustained by the networks of relationships among them but he pioneered in the application of social network analysis to identify both players and links using concrete social data. In a conversation too frequently dominated by the empirically undisciplined claims of those with the greatest stakes in the debate, THE AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL ELITE stands out as a beacon of careful research and clear thinking. One hopes that social scientists and other interested in modern intellectual life will read it carefully, and even that republication may inspire replication." -Professor Paul DiMaggio, Princeton University Charles Kadushin is professor emeritus of sociology at the Graduate Center of CUNY and Distinguished Scholar at Brandeis University, and has also taught at Columbia University and Yale University's School of Management. He is the author of Why People Go to Psychiatrists.

Arthur Schwartz knows how Jewish food warms the heart and delights the soul, whether it's talking about it, shopping for it, cooking it, or, above all, eating it. Jewish Home Cooking presents authentic yet contemporary versions of traditional Ashkenazi foods-rugulach, matzoh brei, challah, brisket, and even challenging classics like kreplach (dumplings) and gefilte fish-that are approachable to make and revelatory to eat. Chapters on appetizers, soups, dairy (meatless) and meat entrees, Passover meals, breads, and desserts are filled with lore about individual dishes and the people who nurtured them in America. Light-filled food and location photographs of delis, butcher shops, and specialty grocery stores paint a vibrant picture of America's touchstone Jewish food culture. The book includes stories, culinary history, and nearly 100 recipes for Jewish home cooking from the heart of American Jewish culture, New York City. It was written by one of the country's foremost experts on traditional and contemporary Jewish food, cooking, and culinary culture. - Publisher.

From Lakota warrior Crazy Horse to legendary Geronimo of the Apache Wars, this sweeping history of the American West tells the story of those who defended Native American lands-and the Native American way of life-from the 1850s through the end of the nineteenth century. This majestic narrative reveals little-known tales of Native American history, setting each event in the larger historical context of the transformation of the West. In elegant National Geographic style, hundreds of illustrations, maps, photographs, and artwork lay bare the bloody conflicts between Native Americans and European encroachment. Five stirring chapters reveal the five major types of conflicts involving Native Americans- the wars of resistance, the wars between empires, the wars betweeen the tribes, the wars of conquest, and the wars of survival. Within each chapter, vivid accounts of each battle tell the gripping stories of the major players, the point of combustion, and the tragic results. Readers will also get to know each tribe as distinct people, ranging from the so-called "civilized tribes" to the more aggressive warrior cultures. Rarely seen photographs and illustrations paint a vivid portrait of the time, featuring such notable figures as Kit Carson and Sitting Bull. Filled with original National Geographic maps, informative timelines, and a complete index, this extraordinary book captures one of the most significant moments in American history.

"A broad panorama in brilliant prose." -- American Historical Review In this groundbreaking work of labor history, Irving Bernstein uncovers a period when industrial trade unionism, working-class power, and socialism became the rallying cry for millions of workers in the fields, mills, mines, and factories of America. With an introduction by Frances Fox Piven.

"To confront American culture is to feel oneself encircled by a thin but strong presence. I call it Emersonian, an imprecise term but one that directs us to a dominant spirit in the national experience." Thus Irving Howe, America's distinguished social critic and a longtime reader of the Sage of Concord, begins this illuminating discussion of Emerson and his disciples and doubters. What is the Emersonian spirit? What inspired it, what propelled it? And what does it mean to us today? History gave Emerson his opportunity and then took it away. Coming to manhood during the 1830s and 1840s, the time of "the newness" when Americans beheld the world with unbounded expectations, Emerson became the spokesman for the self-reliant new man he believed had arisen, ready to thrust aside mossy traditions and launch a new revolution of freewheeling thought. But the rapid pace of the American experience overtook the Emersonian vision; in the 1850s, the rising problems of slavery, a boom-and-bust economy, the vulgarity of mass culture overwhelmed the idealist. His satellite spirits wavered and shrouded the Emersonian optimism: Hawthorne, with his stories of moral breakdown; Thoreau, rooted in nature yet inclined to the cranky and fanatical; Melville, his fathomless blackness waiting beneath archetypal fables of innocence and evil also Walt Whitman, Orestes Brownson, Twain--all were influenced by, yet reacted against, the Emersonian "newness." Howe identifies three kinds of response: the literature of work (Melville and Mark Twain), the literature of Edenic fraternity (James Fenimore Cooper, Whitman, Twain again), and the literature of loss (all the post-Civil War writers). He lays before us the intellectual and personal tragedy of the first great American man of letters, yet also shows that Emerson's belief in the untapped power of free men pervades not only the lives and works of his contemporaries but is also a permanent part of the American psyche.

Here for the first time ever... JFK Assassination evidence suppressed for 12 years...The actual documents and pictures! - The end of the cover-up - official lies exposed - The actual official documents the Warren Commission did not have and did not want - reproduced here. - The actual scientific proof that Oswald could not have killed JFK - suppressed to now. - The actual TOP SECRET Commissioner deliberations when they learned Hoover and the FBI had them boxed in to prevent real investigation and their decision to destroy that record - reproduced here. - The actual suppressed proof of a conspiracy and how it was hidden by both the Commission and the FBI. - The autopsy evidence, medical evidence, ballistics evidence, not previously known - officially suppressed. - This is the report of a decade-long investigation like no other, giving the real documentary proofs, telling how they were obtained and where. - It must - it will - cause a new investigation for which it provides hundreds of pages of evidence suppressed until now. It will go to the Congress. - Never in history such proofs as here for the first time are reproduced - the documents themselves!

A collection of essays published previously. The following deal with antisemitism and with the Holocaust:

In humorous verse Plymouth Rock tells the story of itself, from glacial erratic to national icon--with historical asides and corrections by the fact checker.

The slave-hire system of Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1700s and the 1800s produced a curious object--the slave badge. The badges were intended to legislate the practice of hiring a slave from one master to another, and slaves were required by law to wear them. Slave badges have become quite collectible and have excited both scholarly and popular interest in recent years. This work documents how the slave-hire system in Charleston came about, how it worked, who was in charge of it, and who enforced the laws regarding slave badges. Numerous badge makers are identified, and photographs of badges, with commentary on what the data stamped on them mean, are included. The authors located income and expense statements for Charleston from 1783 to 1865, and deduced how many slaves were hired out in the city every year from 1800 on. The work also discusses forgeries of slave badges, now quite common. There is a section of 20 color plates.

"For many citizens, black nationalist movements appear to be insurgent forces without precedent in American history. In this provocative analysis, Theodore Draper shows that, on the contrary, they have been with us since the founding of the republic. Mr. Draper traces the complicated and often tragic development of black nationalist themes from their realy beginnings to provide an authoritative and fair-minded account of America's most intransigent political problem"--Back cover.

After Capitalism is the apex of the life’s work of one of the most respected scholars of the American workplace. For nearly half a century, Seymour Melman has been an influential commentatoron capitalism, militarism and their discontents. In After Capitalism he explores a growing trend in capitalist systems worldwide: workplace democracy. The end of the Cold War in 1991 inspired an unprecedented outburst of triumphalist rhetoric among proponents of unfettered capitalism. Free-marketeers believed that we were witnessing “the end of history,” and proclaimed that the market economy was here to stay, that all alternatives had been proven inferior. Melman, in dissent, tracks the increasing social and economic inequities and the resulting cries for workplace reform. He points out the ominous parallels between the Soviet Union’s planned economy and the relentless onward march of American capitalism. Just as the Soviet planned economy venerated “the State” above all else, American capitalism views the health and eternal expansion of the free market as the ultimate goal: both propagate vast and harmful income gaps, both rely on and promote militarism—and neither leaves much room for consideration of workers’ well-being. Melman analyzes the adverse economic impact of these flaws and oversights, which have led to “grave production weaknesses in the U.S. economy,” and he suggests an alternative to current economic organization that holds out the promise of both greater fairness and equity and more soundly balanced production. “Workplace democracy,” in which workers actively participate in the management of their workplace, is gaining ground in venues as diverse as Israeli kibbutzim and Basque factories. Melman explains how workplace democracy can, and why it should, be implemented in America. After Capitalism is the new century’s first essential book about labor: thoughtful, humane, at once commonsensical and revolutionary, Melman’s prescriptions can inspire changes in the way the world works.

Who should decide what is constitutional? The Supreme Court, of course, both liberal and conservative voices say—but in a bracing critique of the “judicial engagement” that is ascendant on the legal right, Greg Weiner makes a cogent case to the contrary. His book, The Political Constitution, is an eloquent political argument for the restraint of judicial authority and the return of the proper portion of constitutional authority to the people and their elected representatives. What Weiner calls for, in short, is a reconstitution of the political commons upon which a republic stands. At the root of the word “republic” is what Romans called the res publica, or the public thing. And it is precisely this—the sense of a political community engaging in decisions about common things as a coherent whole—that Weiner fears is lost when all constitutional authority is ceded to the judiciary. His book calls instead for a form of republican constitutionalism that rests on an understanding that arguments about constitutional meaning are, ultimately, political arguments. What this requires is an enlargement of the res publica, the space allocated to political conversation and a shared pursuit of common things. Tracing the political and judicial history through which this critical political space has been impoverished, The Political Constitution seeks to recover the sense of political community on which the health of the republic, and the true working meaning of the Constitution, depends.

New England's economy has a history as dramatic as any in the world. From an inauspicious beginning--as immigration ground to a halt in the eighteenth century--New England went on to lead the United States in its transformation from an agrarian to an industrial economy. And when the rest of the country caught up in the mid-twentieth century, New England reinvented itself as a leader in the complex economy of the information society. Engines of Enterprise tells this dramatic story in a sequence of narrative essays written by preeminent historians and economists. These essays chart the changing fortunes of entrepreneurs and venturers, businessmen and inventors, and common folk toiling in fields, in factories, and in air-conditioned offices. The authors describe how, short of staple crops, colonial New Englanders turned to the sea and built an empire; and how the region became the earliest home of the textile industry as commercial fortunes underwrote new industries in the nineteenth century. They show us the region as it grew ahead of the rest of the country and as the rest of the United States caught up. And they trace the transformation of New England's products and exports from cotton textiles and machine tools to such intangible goods as education and software. Concluding short essays also put forward surprising but persuasive arguments--for instance, that slavery, while not prominent in colonial New England, was a critical part of the economy; and that the federal government played a crucial role in the development of the region's industrial skills.