The "sequel" to his best-selling Classes and Cultures, Ross McKibbin's latest book is a powerful reinterpretation of British politics in the first decades of universal suffrage. What did it mean to be a "democratic society?" To what extent did voters make up their own minds on politics or allow elites to do it for them?
Exploring the political culture of these extraordinary years, Parties and People shows that class became one of the principal determinants of political behaviour, although its influence was often surprisingly weak.
McKibbin argues that the kind of democracy that emerged in Britain was far from inevitable-as much historical accident as design-and was in many ways highly flawed.

Until recently, scholars assumed that women "stopped speaking" after they won the vote in 1920 and did not reenter political life until the second wave of feminism began in the 1960s. Nothing could be further from the truth. While national attention did dissipate after 1920, women did not retreat from political and civic life. Rather, after winning the vote, women's public activism shifted from a single-issue agenda to the myriad social problems and public issues that faced the nation. As such, women began to take their place in the public square as political actors in their own rights rather than strictly campaigning for a "women's issue." This anthology documents women's activism during this period by introducing heretofore unpublished public speeches that address a wide array of debated topics including child labor, international relations, nuclear disarmament, consumerism, feminism and anti-feminism, social welfare, family life, war, and the environment. Some speeches were delivered in legislative forums, others at schools, churches, business meetings, and media events; still others before national political organizations. To ensure diversity, the volume features speakers of different ages, races, classes, ethnicities, geographic regions, and political persuasions. The volume editors include short biographical introductions as well as historical context for each selection.

"During the first three months of 1972 a trial took place in the middle district of Pennsylvania: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA versus Eqbal Ahmad, Philip Berrigan, Elizabeth McAlister, Neil McLaughlin, Anthony Scoblick, Mary Cain Scoblick, Joseph Wenderoth. The defendants stood accused of conspiring to raid federal offices, to bomb government property, and to kidnap presidential advisor Henry Kissinger. Six of those seven individuals are, or were, Roman Catholic clergy-priests and nuns. Members of the new 'Catholic Left.'" -from the introduction When The Harrisburg 7 and the New Catholic Left was originally published in 1972, it remained on The New York Times Book Review "New and Recommended" list for six weeks and was selected as one of the Notable Books of the Year. Now, forty years later, William O'Rourke's book eloquently speaks to a new generation of readers interested in American history and the religious anti-war protest movements of the Vietnam era. O'Rourke brings to life the seven anti-war activists, who were vigorously prosecuted for alleged criminal plots, filling in the drama of the case, the trial, the events, the demonstrations, the panels, and the people. O'Rourke includes a new afterword that presents a sketch of the evolution of protest groups from the 1960s and 1970s, including the history of the New Catholic Left for the past four decades, claiming that "[a]fter the Harrisburg trial, the New Catholic Left became the New Catholic Right."

For Russia, it was a time of troubles: war, famine, and social upheaval the likes of which the world had never seen before. World War I, two revolutions in 1917, and the subsequent civil war and Allied intervention completely eradicated one regime and replaced it with a radically new one. Now an award-winning diplomatic historian ties these events together to reveal their far-reaching consequences for the future of not only the new Soviet Union but of the United States as well.

In War and Revolution, Norman Saul offers a fresh analysis of this troubled era in Russia and of the American reaction to it. Tracing the events surrounding America's entry into the European conflict and its encouragement of continued Russian participation even in the face of domestic unrest, he shows how those circumstances adversely affected relations between two nations and shaped their futures in the century ahead.

Drawing on rarely accessed military and diplomatic archives in both countries, Saul reaches beyond official actions to give readers a vivid sense of those times. He surveys the vast panorama of events while providing not only detailed accounts of the activities of consular, diplomatic, and military staffs but also colorful vignettes of ordinary Americans in Russia involved in humanitarian relief and other activities. Businessmen and artists, Red Cross volunteers and journalists -- all were caught up in the immediacy of war and revolution, and all contributed to the shifting sentiments of two nations.

War and Revolution is the third volume in Saul's sweeping history of U.S.-Russian relations, already hailed for setting "a new standard for how the history of international relations ought to bewritten" (TLS). Here he further develops the theme of "mirror-imaging", describing ways in which Americans and Russians saw themselves as having a common relationship distinguished from other European or Asian nations. Despite the turmoil of this era, he explains, Russians continued to look to America for ideas and models while Americans expected Russians to follow their lead in developing resources and reforming institutions.

By 1921, Americans were in a quandary about Russia as its former friend pursued a hostile course beyond U.S. control. Saul's account of those years clearly shows how this parting of the ways came about -- and how it set the stage for a cold war that would test both country's wills later in the century.

"Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War" discusses the participation of volunteers of Jewish descent in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. It focuses in particular on the establishment of the Naftali Botwin Company, a Jewish military unit that was created in the Polish Dombrowski Brigade. Its formation and short-lived history on the battlefield were closely connected to the activities and propaganda of Yiddish-speaking Jewish migrant communists in Paris who described Jewish volunteers as 'Chosen Fighters of the Jewish People' in their daily newspaper "Naye Prese."Gerben Zaagsma analyses the symbolic meaning of the participation of Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company both during and after the civil war. He puts this participation in the broader context of Jewish involvement in the left and Jewish/non-Jewish relations in the communist movement and beyond. To this end, the book examines representations of Jewish volunteers in the Parisian Yiddish press (both communist and non-communist). In addition it analyses the various ways in which Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company have been commemorated after WWII, tracing how discourses about Jewish volunteers became decisively shaped by post-Holocaust debates on Jewish responses to fascism and Nazism, and discusses claims that Jewish volunteers can be seen as 'the first Jews to resist Hitler with arms'.

The ten essays in this volume explore the vast diversity of religions in the United States, from Judaic, Catholic, and African American to Asian, Muslim, and Native American traditions. Chapters on religion and the South, religion and gender, indigenous sectarian religious movements, and the metaphysical tradition round out the collection. The contributors examine the past, present, and future of American religion, first orienting readers to historiographic trends and traditions of interpretation in each area, then providing case studies to show their vision of how these areas should be developed. Full of provocative insights into the complexity of American religion, this volume helps us better understand America's religious history and its future challenges and directions.

Developing a knowledge of the Spanish-Italian connection between right-wing extremist groups is crucial to any detailed understanding of the history of fascism. Transnational Fascism in the Twentieth Century allows us to consider the global fascist network that built up over the course of the 20th century by exploring one of the significant links that existed within that network. It distinguishes and analyses the relationship between the fascists of Spain and Italy at three interrelated levels - that of the individual, political organisations and the state - whilst examining the world relations and contacts of both fascist factions, from Buenos Aires to Washington and Berlin to Montevideo, in what is a genuinely transnational history of the fascist movement. Incorporating research carried out in archives around the world, this book delivers key insights to further the historical study of right-wing political violence in modern Europe.

In the 1930s, John Steinbeck published "In Dubious Battle." a novel based on union organizing and anti-union sentiment in the rich central valleys of California. He followed that with a series of articles in The San Francisco News about poverty and starvation among the migrants in California. In 1939, he published "The Grapesof Wrath," which became an instant American classic and the premier moral vision of the 1930s. The themes were: homelessness; joblessness; poverty; starvation and the greed of the banks. Now, 73 years later, it is all back. Lost jobs, and lost homes by the hundreds of thousands, poverty, starvation and the greed of the banks. Steinbeck's vision of the 1930s is with us again,

As the population of the greater Las Vegas area grows and the climate warms, the threat of a water shortage looms over southern Nevada. But as Christian S. Harrison demonstrates in All the Water the Law Allows, the threat of shortage arises not from the local environment but from the American legal system, specifically the Law of the River that governs water allocation from the Colorado River. In this political and legal history of the Las Vegas water supply, Harrison focuses on the creation and actions of the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) to tell a story with profound implications and important lessons for water politics and natural resource policy in the twenty-first century. In the state with the smallest allocation of the Colorado's water supply, Las Vegas faces the twin challenges of aridity and federal law to obtain water for its ever-expanding population. All the Water the Law Allows describes how the impending threat of shortage in the 1980s compelled the five metropolitan water agencies of greater Las Vegas to unify into a single entity. Harrison relates the circumstances of the SNWA's evolution and reveals how the unification of local, county, and state interests allowed the compact to address regional water policy with greater force and focus than any of its peers in the Colorado River Basin. Most notably, the SNWA has mapped conservation plans that have drastically reduced local water consumption; and, in the interstate realm, it has been at the center of groundbreaking, water-sharing agreements. Yet these achievements do not challenge the fundamental primacy of the Law of the River. If current trends continue and the Basin States are compelled to reassess the river's distribution, the SNWA will be a force and a model for the Basin as a whole.

Thousands of young Jews were orphaned by the Nazi genocide in the German-occupied Soviet Union and struggled for survival on their own. This book weaves together oral histories, video testimonies, and memoirs produced in the former Soviet Union to show how the first generation of Soviet Jews, born after the foundation of the USSR, experienced the Nazi genocide and how they remember it in a context of social change following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. The 1930s, a period when the notion interethnic solidarity and social equality were promoted and a partly lived reality, were formative for a cohort of young Jews. Soviet policies of the time established a powerful framework for the ways in which survivors of the genocide understood, survived, and represent their experience of violence and displacement. The book demonstrates that the young Soviet Jews' struggle for survival, and its memory, was shaped by interethnic relationships within the occupied society, German annihilation policy, and Soviet efforts to construct a patriotic unity of the Soviet population. Age and gender were crucial factors for experiencing, surviving, and remembering the Nazi genocide in Soviet territories, an element that Anika Walke emphasizes by investigating the individual and collective efforts to save peoples' lives, in hiding places and partisan formations, and how these efforts were subsequently erased in the construction of the Soviet war portrayal. Pioneers and Partisans demonstrates how the Holocaust unfolded in the German-occupied Soviet territories and how Soviet citizens responded to it. The book does this work through oral histories of atrocities and survival during the German occupation in Minsk and a number of small towns in Eastern Belorussia such as Shchedrin, Slavnoe, Zhlobin, and Shklov. Following particular individuals' stories, framed within the broader historical and cultural context, this book tells of repeated transformations of identity, from Soviet citizen in the prewar years, to a target of genocidal violence during the war, to barely accepted national minority in the postwar Soviet Union.

The Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, dazzled with its new rainbow-colored electric lights. It showcased an array of wonders, like daredevils attempting to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, or the "Animal King" putting the smallest woman in the world and also terrifying animals on display. But the thrill-seeking spectators little suspected that an assassin walked the fairgrounds, waiting for President William McKinley to arrive. In Margaret Creighton's hands, the result is "a persuasive case that the fair was a microcosm of some momentous facets of the United States, good and bad, at the onset of the American Century" (Howard Schneider, Wall Street Journal).

Students will be able to debate the key political, social, and economic issues and initiatives of each President covered here by using this rich source of pro and con primary documents contemporary to the time. Carefully selected presidential statements and opposition statements on each major issue of the presidents' administrations, along with accompanying explanatory material, will help students to debate the issues and apply critical thinking skills to their understanding of U.S. history. This volume covers the Presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, and Calvin Coolidge. The section on each president includes entries on 5-9 key issues of his administration, from enforcing anti-trust legislation at the beginning of Roosevelt's administration to arguments over the value of the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact to outlaw war that closed the Coolidge era. Primary documents include presidential speeches, letters, memoirs and autobiographies, congressional speeches, Supreme Court decisions, statements by opposition groups, newspaper editorials, and comments from prominent private citizens.

Students will be able to trace ongoing arguments over significant political, social and economic issues during the course of these five administrations that comprise the Progressive Era, the war years, and the postwar return to normalcy, years that witnessed perhaps the greatest period of transformation in U.S. history. These presidents took varying positions on the increasingly activist role of government, the growing power of business, the issue of tariffs, the rights of workers, women, and children, the problems of minority groups, the question of immigration, the issue of isolationism or intervention abroad, and the growing concern over the environment. The section on each president features an introductory overview of the key issues of his administration, followed by an entry on each issue. Each entry contains an overview of the issue and discussion of the opposing viewpoints, followed by a statement from the president and the text of a document taking an opposing point of view. The section on each president concludes with suggested reading for further study. A timeline of the period puts all the issues in chronological context.

The New York Times-bestselling history of the first half of the twentieth century-five decades that transformed America-from the author of Only Yesterday. During the first fifty years of the twentieth century, the United States saw two world wars, a devastating economic depression, and more social, political, and economic changes than in any other five-decade period before. Frederick Lewis Allen, former editor of Harper's magazine, recounts these years-spanning World War I, the Progressive Era, the Great Depression, World War II, and the early Cold War-in vivid detail, from the fashions and customs of the times to major events that changed the course of history. Politically, the United States grew into its own as a global superpower during these years, even as domestic developments altered the everyday lives of its citizens. The introduction of the automobile, mass production, and organized labor changed the way Americans lived and worked, while innovations like penicillin and government regulation of food safety contributed to an increase in average life expectancy from forty-nine years in 1900 to sixty-eight years in 1950. With the development of a strong, centralized government, a thriving middle class, and widespread economic prosperity, the nation emerged from the Second World War transformed in virtually every way. Richly informative and delightfully readable, The Big Change is an indispensable volume charting the many changes that ushered in our contemporary age.

The book examines the changing nature of social cleavages and their effect on political allegiances and voting behaviour in the United States since the 1950s.

Given the political, financial, social, and economic conditions inherited from Communist rule, Romania's new government concluded that a shock therapy approach to reform would create unmanageable chaos and enduring instability. Though committed to economic liberalization, decisionmakers espoused a gradualist approach to economic reform. The government pursued its objectives by implementing policies it considered functionally operational. Although Romania experienced the macro dislocations and downturns that are common in transitional economies in the region, the country sustained shallower recessions, lower inflationary spirals, and shorter production losses than many reforming economies. This study analyzes how, against calculated probabilities and within a relatively short time period, Romania has stabilized and assembled all the basic ingredients for a successful transformation from a centralized system to a market-driven economy.

The lessons derivable from Romania's relatively successful experiment with systemic transformation could be beneficial to reform architects in all newly liberalized economies in Eastern Europe. The conclusions of this study reinforce the view that it is imperative to examine and foster the existing preconditions, including political, institutional, and financial components, before subjecting an economy to extensive and intensive shocks that could be judiciously mitigated or circumvented. Unlike other newly liberalized economies in Eastern Europe, where the once disgraced Communists have returned to power, sympathy for a centralized system has been steadily and swiftly declining in Romania. The primary factor in Romania's success, the author claims, is its circumspect approach to reform.

This study follows the social, intellectual and political development of the Phoenician myth of origin in Lebanon from the middle of the 19th century to the end of the 20th. Asher Kaufman demonstrates the role played by the lay, liberal Syrian-Lebanese who resided in Beirut, Alexandria and America towards the end of the 19th century in the birth and dissemination of this myth. Kaufman investigates the crucial place Phoenicianism occupied in the formation of Greater Lebanon in 1920. He also explores the way the Jesuit Order and the French authorities propagated this myth during the mandate years. The book also analyses literary writings of different Lebanese who advocated this myth, and of others who opposed it. Finally, the text provides an overview of Phoenicianism from Independece in 1943 to the present, demonstrating that despite the general objection to this myth, some aspects of it entered mainstream Lebanese national narratives. Kaufman's works should be of use to anyone interested in the birth of modern Lebanon as we know it today.