First published in 1969, this book presents a one-volume anthology of Charles Booth's Life and Labour of the People in London, the classic early study of the poor in the urban environment. The original text consists of a vast compendium of descriptions of families, homes, streets, conditions of work, cultural and religious practices, much of it illustrated with charts, maps and statistics - giving the public an idea of the dimensions and meaning of poverty. The editors have selected the extracts in this book for their vividness, readability and intrinsic interest, and their introduction conveys the context of 1880s London - relating Booth's investigations to contemporary concerns.

A controversial examination of the Jewish ''success story" in American that questions notions of identity, assimilation, and ethnicity.

"Socialism in America" is a thematic presentation of the various types of socialism, such as Communitarian, Christian, Marxist, and Anarcho-Communist, that have existed in the United States from the time of the Revolutionary War to 1919. The documents included demonstrate how socialism wsa an integral part of the American past: because its ideals were embedded in the birth of America, it authentically expressed the American egalitarian norm.

The documents demonstrate that each type of socialism has a counterpart in a broadly based contemporary social movement: for example, religious communities were linked to revivalism and millenarianism. Ultimately, the collapse of socialism in America was tied to the country's conservative mood in the 1890s and World War I.

Albert Fried recalls the rise and fall of an underworld culture that bred some of America's most infamous racketeers, bootleggers, gamblers, and professional killers, spawned by a culture of vice and criminality on New York's Lower East Side and similar environments in Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, Detroit, Newark, and Philadelphia. The author adds an important dimension to this story as he discusses the Italian gangs that teamed up with their Jewish counterparts to form multicultural syndicates.

In "Socialist Thought" Fried and Sanders set socialism within its historical context from pre-revolutionary France to the present by using major turning points such as 1789, when the French Revolution launched socialism, to establish a chronological framework. The authors contend that though its roots can be traced to the Bible, socialism truly came into being at the end of the 18th century, the age of democratic ideas, as a response to the Industrial Revolution and an attempt to change the consciousness of society and its material organization. The readings, emphasizing utopian socialists and Marx, demonstrate that socialist aspirations throughout history have been as varied as the individuals expressing them. Over the past three centuries, socialists have embraced both anti-authoritarianism and totalitarianism, class struggle and co-operation, revolution and democracy.

Not since the Civil War was America so riven by conflict as it was during Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency. His bold initiatives and his willingness to break historic precedent in handling the Great Depression and the coming of World War II were challenged by giant figures of the era, powerful public men each with their own fierce constituencies. Albert Fried brings out the tremendous drama in Roosevelt's ideological and personal struggle with five influential men: ex-New York governor and presidential candidate Al Smith, the enormously popular "radio priest" Charles E. Coughlin, Louisiana Senator Huey Long, labor champion John L. Lewis, and the universally adored aviator Charles A. Lindbergh. An enthralling story of a critical period in this century's history, FDR and His Enemies reveals the intellectual, moral, and tactical underpinnings of a great debate in which Roosevelt always triumphed.

Nearly five centuries after the first wave of Catholic missionaries arrived in the New World to spread their Christian message, contemporary religious workers in the Bolivian highlands have begun to encourage Aymara Indians to return to traditional ritual practices. All but eradicated after hundreds of years of missionization, the "old ways" are now viewed as local cultural expressions of Christian values. In order to become more Christian, the Aymara must now become more Indian. This groundbreaking study of the contemporary encounter between Catholic missionaries and Aymara Indians is the first ethnography to focus both on the evangelizers and the evangelized. Andrew Orta explores the pastoral shift away from liberation theology that dominated Latin American missionization up until the mid-1980s to the recent "theology of inculturation," which upholds the beliefs and practices of a supposedly pristine Aymara culture as indigenous expressions of a more universal Christianity. Addressing essential questions in cultural anthropology, religious studies, postcolonial studies, and globalization studies, Catechizing Culture is a sophisticated documentation of the widespread shift from the politics of class to the politics of ethnicity and multiculturalism.