This collection of essays analyzes the experience of women in Weimar and Nazi Germany--the first a period of crisis and polarization between right and left, and the second a period in which the right triumphed. The history documented in this book provides us with a perspective from which to analyze our own time, for in the history of Weimar and Nazi Germany we see the issues surrounding women, family, and reproduction as powerful mobilizing forces for both right and left.

Renowned historical sociologist Charles Tilly wrote many years ago that "banditry, piracy, gangland rivalry, policing, and war-making all belong on the same continuum." This volume pursues the idea by revealing how lawbreakers and lawmakers have related to one another on the shadowy terrains of power over wide stretches of time and space. Illicit activities and forces have been more important in state building and state maintenance than conventional histories have acknowledged. Covering vast chronological and global terrain, this book traces the contested and often overlapping boundaries between these practices in such very different polities as the pre-modern city-states of Europe, the modern nation-states of France and Japan, the imperial power of Britain in India and North America, Africa's and Southeast Asia's postcolonial states, and the emerging postmodern regional entity of the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, the contemporary explosion of transnational crime raises the question of whether or not the relationship of illicit to licit practices may be mutating once more, leading to new political forms beyond the nation-state.

Renowned historical sociologist Charles Tilly wrote many years ago that "banditry, piracy, gangland rivalry, policing, and war-making all belong on the same continuum." This volume pursues the idea by revealing how lawbreakers and lawmakers have related to one another on the shadowy terrains of power over wide stretches of time and space. Illicit activities and forces have been more important in state building and state maintenance than conventional histories have acknowledged. Covering vast chronological and global terrain, this book traces the contested and often overlapping boundaries between these practices in such very different polities as the pre-modern city-states of Europe, the modern nation-states of France and Japan, the imperial power of Britain in India and North America, Africa's and Southeast Asia's postcolonial states, and the emerging postmodern regional entity of the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, the contemporary explosion of transnational crime raises the question of whether or not the relationship of illicit to licit practices may be mutating once more, leading to new political forms beyond the nation-state.

Germans have been one of the most mobile and dispersed populations on earth. Communities of German speakers, scattered around the globe, have long believed they could recreate their "Heimat" (homeland) wherever they moved, and that their enclaves could remain truly German. Furthermore, the history of Germany is inextricably tied to Germans outside the homeland who formed new communities that often retained their Germanness. Emigrants, including political, economic, and religious exiles such as Jewish Germans, fostered a nostalgia for home, which, along with longstanding mutual ties of family, trade, and culture, bound them to Germany.

The "Heimat" Abroad is the first book to examine the problem of Germany's long and complex relationship to ethnic Germans outside its national borders. Beyond defining who is German and what makes them so, the book reconceives German identity and history in global terms and challenges the nation state and its borders as the sole basis of German nationalism.

Krista O'Donnell is Associate Professor of History, William Paterson University.

Nancy Reagin is Professor of History, Pace University.

Renete Bridenthal is Emerita Professor of History, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

Historians have only recently begun to chart the experiences of maritime regions in rich detail and penetrate the historical processes at work there. Seascapes makes a major contribution to these efforts by bringing together original scholarship on historical issues arising from maritime regions around the world. The essays presented here take a variety of approaches. One group examines the material, cultural, and intellectual constructs that explain historical experiences of maritime regions. Another set discusses efforts to impose political and military control over these regions. A third group focuses on the social history of subaltern populations. The final essays deal with piracy in Mediterranean, Japanese, and Atlantic waters.

The essays presented here reflect recent widespread interest in reconsidering the political, geographical, and cultural boundaries conventionally observed by area specialists and others. They intentionally range widely through time and space, dealing with diverse issues and contexts, but each highlights the very general theme of cross-cultural interaction. Although they draw heavily on area studies, the contributors seek to put previously separate bodies of scholarship in dialogue with one another by exploring those interactions that have historically linked world regions. Four general themes are especially prominent in this volume, and the essays develop sophisticated positions on each. On the issue of agency and structure, they offer useful guidance toward recognizing the importance of both human agency and historical structures in historical processes. On the theme of states and their roles in cross-cultural interactions, they acknowledge that states do not entirely control their own destinies but nevertheless deeply influence the development of these exchanges, sometimes decisively so. Regarding the theme of the global and the local, they emphasize the reciprocal influence of global dynamics and local circumstances and agree that analyses must take both into account to be successful. Finally, all of the essays allow that the theme of cross-cultural interaction is crucial to understanding the world and its development through time.