The rich correspondence that preceded the publication of Monopoly Capital Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy were two of the leading Marxist economists of the twentieth century. Their seminal work, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order, published in 1966, two years after Baran's death, was in many respects the culmination of fifteen years of correspondence between the two, from 1949 to 1964. During those years, Baran, a professor of economics at Stanford, and Sweezy, a former professor of economics at Harvard, then co-editing Monthly Review in New York City, were separated by three thousand miles. Their intellectual collaboration required that they write letters to one another frequently and, in the years closer to 1964, almost daily. Their surviving correspondence consists of some one thousand letters. The letters selected for this volume illuminate not only the development of the political economy that was to form the basis of Monopoly Capital, but also the historical context—the McCarthy Era, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis—in which these thinkers were forced to struggle. Not since Marx and Engels carried on their epistolary correspondence has there has been a collection of letters offering such a detailed look at the making of a prescient critique of political economy—and at the historical conditions from which that critique was formed.

Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860—1920 draws on a wealth of archival material, much of which has never been published—or even read—to illuminate the ways in which Jewish girls’ adolescent experiences reflected larger issues relating to gender, ethnicity, religion, and education. Klapper explores the dual roles girls played as agents of acculturation and guardians of tradition. Their search for an identity as American girls that would not require the abandonment of Jewish tradition and culture mirrored the struggle of their families and communities for integration into American society. While focusing on their lives as girls, not the adults they would later become, Klapper draws on the papers of such figures as Henrietta Szold, founder of Hadassah; Edna Ferber, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Showboat ; and Marie Syrkin, literary critic and Zionist. Klapper also analyzes the diaries, memoirs, and letters of hundreds of other girls whose later lives and experiences have been lost to history. Told in an engaging style and filled with colorful quotes, the book brings to life a neglected group of fascinating historical figures during a pivotal moment in the development of gender roles, adolescence, and the modern American Jewish community.

"Martha Shelley didn't start out in life wanting to become a gay activist, or an activist of any kind. The daughter of Jewish refugees and undocumented immigrants in New York City, she grew up during the Red Scare of the late 1940s and 1950s, was inspired by the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements that followed, and struggled with coming out as a lesbian at a time when being gay made her a criminal. Shelley rose to become a public speaker for the New York chapter of the lesbian rights group the Daughters of Bilitis, organized the first gay march in response to the Stonewall Riots of 1969, and then cofounded the Gay Liberation Front. She coproduced the newspaper Come Out!, worked on the women's takeover of the RAT Subterranean News, and took a central role in the Lavender Menace action to confront homophobia in the women's movement. Martha Shelley's story is a feminist and lesbian document that gives context and adds necessary humanity to the historical record"--Dust jacket flap.

Government's ever-increasing participation in communication processes, Mark Yudof argues, threatens key democratic values that the First Amendment was designed to protect. Government control over the exchange of ideas and information would be inconsistent with citizen autonomy, informed consent, and a balanced and mutually responsive relationship between citizens and their government. Yet the danger of government dominance must be weighed against the necessary role of government in furthering democratic values by proposing and promotion policies and by disseminating information and educating citizens. Restraints on government's ability to control communications processes are desirable, but excessive or inappropriate restrictions threaten democracy. Professor Yudof identifies a number of formal and informal checks on government as disseminator, withholder, and controller of ideas and information. Where more controls are needed, the strengthening of pluralism and legislative oversight is generally the answer. Constitutional redress in the courts should be sought only in extreme instances, he cautions, to avoid judicial interference with legitimate policy objectives.

It was early one morning in October 1983 in Beirut, Lebanon. Terrorists drove a truck loaded with 12,000 pounds of explosives into the atrium of a building housing the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit. The explosives were detonated, razing the four-story steel and concrete building, killing 241 Americans, and injuring many more. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. pulled its forces out of Beruit. Within months of the attack, author Eric Hammel was granted an historic opportunity to interview survivors of the bombing and those who came to their rescue. This book is their story and captures the Marines' mission in Lebanon, including largely unreported battles fought in and around Beirut. Using recollections from the nearly 200 people interviewed, the book recounts in vivid detail the terrorist attack on unit headquarters, and how the survivors came out alive.

It was 1950, a brutally cold November in North Korea, and the war seemed all but over. And then a force of nearly 70,000 Chinese "volunteers" crossed the Yalu River, encircling the 30,000 United Nations troops at the Chosin Reservoir. The epic story of what followed--one of the iconic battles in Marine history--is told for the first time in gut-level detail in this book. From the point of view of the men in the foxholes and tanks, outposts and command posts, Chosin offers a harrowing, firsthand account of the 1st Marine Divisions breakout battle against overwhelming Chinese forces in the bitter North Korean winter. Seasoned military historian Eric Hammel describes the errors and miscalculations by American higher-ups that left the division strung out at the end of a narrow road scores of miles from the sea. Then he plunges into the action: the massing of Chinese forces; the punishing climate and terrain; the high-level over-confidence that crippled the American command; and the onset of the overpowering Chinese assault. His account provides a wealth of tactical and human detail and small unit action: from an intelligence officers efforts to make sense of conflicting reports, to engineers improvising a bridge from logs and snow, from Marines marching to POW camps, to a battle-weary messengers discovery of headquarter staff safely ensconced behind friendly lines, settling down in formal dress to a full-course dinner. The result is the most complete book ever written on this heroic battle, a masterful narrative from the perspective of those who fought. Previously published under the same title by Vanguard Press, 1981, ISBN - 081490856X; and by Presidio Press, 1990, ISBN - 089141782.

Provides an overview of lesbian fiction, and analyzes the ways in which it has both mirrored and shaped the lesbian movement and lesbian culture.

Discusses social and political conditions bearing on antisemitism and philosemitism in France, Russia, and the American South as background for the Dreyfus Affair, the Beilis ritual murder trial, and the trial and lynching of Leo Frank. Declares that comparison helps to understand each of these affairs. Antisemitism is based on realities enhanced by fantasy: in the 19th century it increased because of the growth in the number and influence of Jews, as well as domestic and international political conditions. In all three trials, official antisemitism played little part either in directing suspicion at the particular defendants or in the prosecution: in all three, there was circumstantial evidence that at first seemed credible. Public debate, however, turned on antisemitism and philosemitism. also describes massive Jewish defense efforts, especially in the USA, in connection with all three trials.

Jews and the American Public Square is a study of how Jews have grappled with the presence of religion, both their own and others, in American public life. It surveys historical Jewish approaches to church-state relations and analyzes Jewish responses to the religion clauses of the First Amendment. The book also explores how the contemporary sociological and political characteristics of American Jews bear on their understanding of the public dimensions of American religion. In addition to a descriptive and analytic approach. the volume is also critical and polemical. Its contributors attack and defend prevailing views, raise critical questions about the political and intellectual positions favored by American Jews, and propose new syntheses. This book captures the current mood of the Jewish community: both committed to the separation of church and state and perplexed about its scope and application. It provides the necessary background for a principled reconsideration of the problem of religion in the public square.

In September 1952, John Lukacs, then a young and unknown historian, wrote George Kennan (1904-2005), the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, asking one of the nation's best-known diplomats what he thought of Lukacs's own views on Kennan's widely debated idea of containing rather than militarily confronting the Soviet Union. A month later, to Lukacs's surprise, he received a personal reply from Kennan.So began an exchange of letters that would continue for more than fifty years. Lukacs would go on to become one of America's most distinguished and prolific diplomatic historians, while Kennan, who would retire from public life to begin a new career as Pulitzer Prize-winning author, would become revered as the man whose strategy of containment led to a peaceful end to the Cold War. Their letters, collected here for the first time, capture the writing and thinking of two of the country's most important voices on America's role and place in world affairs. From the division of Europe into East and West after World War II to its unification as the Soviet Union disintegrated, and from the war in Vietnam to the threat of nuclear annihilation and the fate of democracy in America and the world, this book provides an insider's tour of the issues and pivotal events that defined the Cold War.The correspondence also charts the growth and development of an intellectual and personal friendship that was intense, devoted, and honest. As Kennan later wrote Lukacs in letter, "perceptive, understanding, and constructive criticism is . . . as I see it, in itself a form of creative philosophical thought." It is a belief to which both men subscribed and that they both practiced.Presented with an introduction by Lukacs, the letters in Through the History of the Cold War reveal new dimensions to Kennan's thinking about America and its future, and illuminate the political-and spiritual-philosophies that the two authors shared as they wrote about a world transformed by war and by the clash of ideologies that defined the twentieth century.

Book by Lukacs, John

"A Cornelia & Michael Bessie book."Includes index.

In this eloquent and thought-provoking "autohistory," John Lukacs, distinguished historian and writer, describes the history of his own convictions and beliefs. The journey takes us from the Hungary of the 1930s and the ravaged Budapest of World War II to Lukacs’s discovery of the New World, his forays into the intellectual life of New York City, and finally his settling in Philadelphia. Along the way, Lukacs examines many of the major currents of our period, including fascism, communism, democracy, anti-Semitism, and the Christian realism from which springs the book’s title. What emerges is a mind that brings to bear on the conflicts of the twentieth century the erudition of the European heritage and the independence of the American. In prose as elegant as it is supple, Confessions of an Original Sinner is at once the vivid account of one man’s voyage and an important contribution to that small library that brings into sharp focus the major intellectual developments of our time.

This reference book by well-known Reconstruction expert Trefousse will be of great use to scholars and general readers. Pithy, readable articles, spanning the years 1862-96, reflect current scholarship on the period and thus focus heavily on race relations, the freed slaves, and restoration of the states. There are entries on court cases, terms (blacks, labor, etc.), organziations, states, laws, miscellaneous events, and major individuals. . . . As the only reference work of its type, it should find widespread applicability in libraries of any size. Library Journal This new reference book reflects the latest scholarship regarding the Reconstruction of the American South following the Civil War. In the past four decades, the guidelines set forth by William D. Dunning and his students, which portrayed the period as a time of horror for suffering Southerners over whom radicals, scalawags, and carpetbaggers rode roughshod, has been amended. Since World War II, the appearance of revised versions of the period, as well as favorable biographies of such major figures as Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, Benjamin F. Wade, Edwin M. Stanton, and George W. Julian, have transformed the historiography of Reconstruction. While many unresolved issues still remain, the field has benefited greatly from this reassessment. Hence, this outstanding single-volume reference, containing the most recent thinking on the period, will be of great help to scholars and the general public. No other reference focusing exclusively on Reconstruction exists. The dictionary stresses race relations, emancipation, the main participants in the struggle, and the restoration of the Southern states into the Union. Those states involved in some way or other in the process, including the border commonwealths, will be found here, as are the major Supreme Court decisions handed down during Reconstruction. Readable articles at each entry convey the principle information in an economical style and are followed in each case by a listing of the latest available literature, principally monographs and books rather than articles, in order to facilitate further research. Covering a time period from 1862 to 1896, the dictionary focuses on matters pertaining to the integration of freedmen and the restoration of the states. The preface and chronology of events preceed the conveniently organized dictionary section, which contains entries whose lengths vary depending on the relative importance of the concept or personality treated. Generally, the importance of individuals in reference to Reconstruction, rather than their general significance, has determined their inclusion. Each entry is followed by its own bibliography. The volume closes with a select bibliography and index. This outstanding reference belongs in every college and university library as well as in public libraries, and is eminently suitable for courses dealing with the Civil War and Reconstruction and for Civil War Roundtables. Civil War buffs and historians interested in nineteenth-century America will refer to it again and again.

"Having observed earlier periods of determined, persistent, creative and wise American diplomacy on the Arab-Israeli conflict, we are left to ponder whether that kind of American leadership and diplomatic wisdom can be recaptured. We also are left to wonder whether the supportive domestic environment in which previous administrations operated will recur, or whether Congressional and public support for Israel has limited administration options and thus changed the very nature of the American role in the peace process. Our overall conclusions in this volume represent a mix of process, politics, and substantive lessons learned, offered in the hope that a better understanding of the past can inform future policy."-from The Peace Puzzle Each phase of Arab-Israeli peacemaking has been inordinately difficult in its own right, and every critical juncture and decision point in the long process has been shaped by U.S. politics and the U.S. leaders of the moment. The Peace Puzzle tracks the American determination to articulate policy, develop strategy and tactics, and see through negotiations to agreements on an issue that has been of singular importance to U.S. interests for more than forty years. In 2006, the authors of The Peace Puzzle formed the Study Group on Arab-Israeli Peacemaking, a project supported by the United States Institute of Peace, to develop a set of "best practices" for American diplomacy. The Study Group conducted in-depth interviews with more than 120 policymakers, diplomats, academics, and civil society figures and developed performance assessments of the various U.S. administrations of the post-Cold War period. This book, an objective account of the role of the United States in attempting to achieve a lasting Arab-Israeli peace, is informed by the authors' access to key individuals and official archives.