It is 1953, and the United States government is running amok with the likes of J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy. In the little village of Croton-on-Hudson, New York, a small group of leftist intellectuals, writers and artists feels under siege. After the suspicious deaths of two Crotonites, one a prominent anti-Communist newspaper publisher, the F.B.I. steps up its surveillance of the village. Spies, political passions, and intrigue, which echo even today, become the norm. Two fourteen-year-old girls, whose families are upended by the crisis, are willy-nilly cast into the role of amateur sleuth. As the price of her snooping, one of them lands in the hospital with a serious injury. Harth sets the historical scene in the real Hudson River valley village with the authentic touch of an insider. Her colorful cast of characters includes actors, visual artists, an architect, and a shadowy cult psychiatrist. "Red Hill Blues" features occasional visual material, and its tone is surprisingly light.

Sixty years after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and FDR's Executive Order 9066 making possible the incarceration of over 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent (two thirds of them American citizens) one question remains unresolved: "Could it happen again?" To the writers in this book--novelists, memoirists, poets, activists, scholars, students, professionals--the WWII internment of Japanese Americans in the detention camps of the west is an unfinished chapter of American history. Former internees and their children join with others in challenging readers to construct a better future by confronting the past. This is a fresh look at a compelling story, that continues to tarnish the American dream.

The little-known writings that Erica Harth examines here reveal a remarkable chapter in the history of Western thought. Drawing upon current theoretical work in gender studies, cultural history, and literary criticism, Harth looks at how women in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France attempted to overcome gender barriers and participated in the shaping of rational discourse.