Prize-winning author and journalist Norberto Fuentes was once a revolutionary: a writer with privileged access to Fidel Castro s inner circle during some the most challenging years of the revolution. But in the late 1990s, as the regime began sending its oldest comrades to the firing squad, he became A Man Who Knew Too Much. Escaping a death sentence and now living in exile, Fuentes has written a brilliant, satirical, and utterly captivating autobiography of the Cuban leader in Fidel s own arrogant and seductive language discussing everything from Castro s early sexual experiences in Biran to his true feelings about Che Guevara and his philosophy on murder, legacy, and state secrets. Critics have long admired Fuentes s writing; one U.S. article called him Norman Mailer s Cuban pen pal. Akin to Gertrude Stein s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, or Edmund Morris s Dutch, this wickedly entertaining, true-to-life masterpiece is as imaginative and outsized as Castro himself."

Until 1986 any man who, with romance on his mind, traveled with a woman other than his wife across the state lines of America could be guilty of a federal felony. Such was the legacy of the notorious Mann Act of 1910. Spawned by a national wave of "white slave trade" hysteria, the act was created by Congress as a weapon against forced prostitution. It was so loosely worded that the Supreme Court soon extended its coverage: any man who intended to commit an "immoral act" with a woman who had crossed a state line, either with him or to visit him, could be prosecuted. In the 1920s, this sort of amorous behavior could send a man to prison for up to five years. Crossing over the Line is the first history of the Mann Act's often bizarre career, from its passage to the amendment that finally laid it low. In David J. Langum's hands, the story of the act becomes an entertaining cautionary tale about the folly of legislating private morality. Langum recounts the colorful details of numerous court cases to show how enforcement of the act mirrored changes in America's social attitudes. Federal prosecutors became masters in the selective use of the act: against political opponents of the government, like Charlie Chaplin; against individuals who eluded other criminal charges, like the Capone mobster "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn; and against black men, like singer Chuck Berry and boxer Jack Johnson, who dared to consort with white women. The act engendered a thriving blackmail industry and was used by women like Frank Lloyd Wright's wife to extort favorable divorce settlements. The social costs exacted by the Mann Act, Langum argues, send a clear warning about the government's ability to wage "wars"against pornography, drugs, or art considered "obscene". Complete with archival photographs, Crossing over the Line will appeal to anyone interested in American history, popular culture, law enforcement, or the history of sexuality.

The McCarthy era is generally considered the worst period of political repression in recent American history. But while the famous question, "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" resonated in the halls of Congress, security officials were posing another question at least as frequently, if more discreetly: "Information has come to the attention of the Civil Service Commission that you are a homosexual. What comment do you care to make?"
Historian David K. Johnson here relates the frightening, untold story of how, during the Cold War, homosexuals were considered as dangerous a threat to national security as Communists. Charges that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were havens for homosexuals proved a potent political weapon, sparking a "Lavender Scare" more vehement and long-lasting than McCarthy's Red Scare. Relying on newly declassified documents, years of research in the records of the National Archives and the FBI, and interviews with former civil servants, Johnson recreates the vibrant gay subculture that flourished in New Deal-era Washington and takes us inside the security interrogation rooms where thousands of Americans were questioned about their sex lives. The homosexual purges ended promising careers, ruined lives, and pushed many to suicide. But, as Johnson also shows, the purges brought victims together to protest their treatment, helping launch a new civil rights struggle.
"The Lavender Scare" shatters the myth that homosexuality has only recently become a national political issue, changing the way we think about both the McCarthy era and the origins of the gay rights movement. And perhaps just as importantly, this book is acautionary tale, reminding us of how acts taken by the government in the name of "national security" during the Cold War resulted in the infringement of the civil liberties of thousands of Americans.

Steeples topped by crosses still dominate neighbourhood skylines in many American cities, silent markers of local worlds rarely examined by historians. In this study, John McGreevy chronicles the world of Catholic parishes - and connects their place in urban history to the course of American race relations in the 20th century. In portraits of parish life in Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and other cities, McGreevy examines the contacts and conflicts between Euro-American Catholics and their African-American neighbours. He demonstrates how the territorial nature of the parish - more bound by geography than Protestant or Jewish congregations - kept Catholics in their neighbourhoods, and how this commitment to place complicated efforts to integrate urban neighbourhoods. He also shows how the church responded to the growing number of African-American parishioners by condemning racism, and how this teaching was received in communities rocked by racial strife. Taking the story through the Second Vatican Council and the civil rights movement of the 1960s, McGreevy demonstrates how debates about community and racial justice reshaped the character of American Catholicism. Tracing the transformation of a church, its people, and the nation over the course of nearly a century, this work illuminates the impact of religious culture on the course of modern American history.

After World War II, the prevalent self-image among America's white middle class was one of affluence, moral superiority, and contentment. This image is reflected in photographs in both advertising and the media during the late 1940s and 1950s showing perfect citizens and their families at work and at play. Many of these apparently candid photographs were in fact created by professional studio photographers to portray the way most middle-class Americans wanted to present themselves. But what many contemporary artists and intellectuals saw instead of this idyllic picture was widespread complacency and conformity, as well as racism, poverty, political witch hunts, and alienation. Their writings are excerpted here, juxtaposed with images depicting domestic bliss and wealth. This dissonance between the words of the social critics who emphasized our problems and discontents and the photographic images of how we wanted to see ourselves make the subsequent upheavals of the 1960s understandable."

A history of the struggle of black women to attain equality and break away from exploitation. At the turn of the century, when African-Americans faced lyching, mob violence, segregation, and disenfranchisement, African-American women stepped forward with a plan of organized resistance. Thus began a century of black women organizing on behalf of their race and themselves. This work explores the efforts of black women to define and explain themselves as well as race and gender issues to white and black men. This history highlights their persistent struggle against racism, male chauvinism and negative stereotypes; it also brings to light and celebrates early 20th-century African-American women's unlauded support for women's rights, civil rights, and civil liberties.