In The Feminine Mystique, Jewish-raised Betty Friedan struck out against a postwar American culture that pressured women to play the role of subservient housewives. However, Friedan never acknowledged that many American women refused to retreat from public life during these years. Now, A Jewish Feminine Mystique? examines how Jewish women sought opportunities and created images that defied the stereotypes and prescriptive ideology of the "feminine mystique." As workers with or without pay, social justice activists, community builders, entertainers, and businesswomen, most Jewish women championed responsibilities outside their homes. Jewishness played a role in shaping their choices, shattering Friedan's assumptions about how middle-class women lived in the postwar years. Focusing on ordinary Jewish women as well as prominent figures such as Judy Holliday, Jennie Grossinger, and Herman Wouk's fictional Marjorie Morningstar, leading scholars from a variety of disciplines explore here the wide canvas upon which American Jewish women made their mark after the Second World War.

The revised and updated third edition of The Making of Urban America includes seven new articles and a richly detailed historiographical essay that discusses the vast urban history literature added to the canon since the publication of the second edition. The authors' extensively revised introductions and the fifteen reprinted articles trace urban development from the preindustrial city to the twentieth-century city. With emphasis on the social, economic, political, commercial, and cultural aspects of urban history, these essays illustrate the growth and change that created modern-day urban life. Dynamic topics such as technology, immigration and ethnicity, suburbanization, sunbelt cities, urban political history, and planning and housing are examined. The Making of Urban America is the only reader available that covers all of U.S. urban history and that also includes the most recent interpretive scholarship on the subject.

In The Feminine Mystique, Jewish-raised Betty Friedan struck out against a postwar American culture that pressured women to play the role of subservient housewives. However, Friedan never acknowledged that many American women refused to retreat from public life during these years. Now, A Jewish Feminine Mystique? examines how Jewish women sought opportunities and created images that defied the stereotypes and prescriptive ideology of the "feminine mystique." As workers with or without pay, social justice activists, community builders, entertainers, and businesswomen, most Jewish women championed responsibilities outside their homes. Jewishness played a role in shaping their choices, shattering Friedan's assumptions about how middle-class women lived in the postwar years. Focusing on ordinary Jewish women as well as prominent figures such as Judy Holliday, Jennie Grossinger, and Herman Wouk's fictional Marjorie Morningstar, leading scholars from a variety of disciplines explore here the wide canvas upon which American Jewish women made their mark after the Second World War.

Using unusual and revealing primary materials from the careers of two remarkable Jewish women, Raymond Mohl offers an original interpretation of the role of Jewish civil rights activists in promoting racial change in post-World War II Miami. He describes the city's political climate after the war as characterized by segregation, aggressive anti-Semitism, and a powerful strain of cold war McCarthyism. In this hostile environment the dynamic leadership of two northern newcomers, Matilda "Bobbi" Graff and Shirley M. Zoloth, played a critical role in the city's campaign for racial reform. This analysis of the movement between 1945 and 1960 substantiates a new but now dominant interpretation of civil rights history that sees grassroots action as the powerful engine that drove racial change. It emphasizes the major role played by women in the cause and documents the variety of civil rights experiences of Jews who migrated to Miami in large numbers during the mid-century decades. Committed to social justice, they built activist organizations, challenged segregationists and anti-Semites, and worked with black activists to break down Jim Crow barriers.

In recent decades, an exciting new scholarship has emerged that is changing the way African American urban history is perceived. While earlier studies often portrayed African Americans as passive and powerless or as victims of white racism and slum pathologies, The New African American Urban History emphasizes the "new" scholarship that conveys a sense of active involvement. It supports the view of African Americans as people empowered, engaged in struggle, living their lives with dignity, and shaping their own futures. In this perceptive volume, contributors examine the great modern migrations of African Americans to the city, the creation and expansion of black communities, and black life and culture--with special emphasis on working-class culture. This collecton of essays, written by prominent scholars, comes together in perfect harmony with a common thematic approach and interpretive analysis, which has shaped new writing in the field for the past decade. Both groundbreaking and inspiring, The New African American Urban History will prove to be an invaluable resource for students and professionals in urban and ethnic studies.