From grocery store to doctor's office, alternative medicine is everywhere. A recent survey found that more than two in five Americans uses some form of alternative medicine. "The Politics of Healing" brings together top scholars in the fields of American history, history of medicine, anthropology, sociology, and politics to counter the view that alternative medical therapies fell into disrepute in the decades after physicians established their institutional authority during the Progressive Era. From homeopathy to Navajo healing, this volume explores a variety of alternative therapies and political movements that have set the terms of debate over North American healing methods.

From grocery store to doctor's office, alternative medicine is everywhere. A recent survey found that more than two in five Americans uses some form of alternative medicine. The Politics of Healing brings together top scholars in the fields of American history, history of medicine, anthropology, sociology, and politics to counter the view that alternative medical therapies fell into disrepute in the decades after physicians established their institutional authority during the Progressive Era. From homeopathy to Navajo healing, this volume explores a variety of alternative therapies and political movements that have set the terms of debate over North American healing methods.

According to their national myth, all Americans are "middle class," but rarely has such a widely-used term been so poorly defined. Do we identify the middle class by a house in the suburbs, a white collar job, or a political outlook that is right-of-centre? Or is the middle class in fact more complex? These fascinating essays provide much-needed context to the subject of class in America.

"A historical tour de force of the Progressive era in a middle class city, Professor Johnston's book will begin to unravel the stultifying stereotyping of the middle classes and remove cobwebs of inaction from the minds of today's civic organizers and thinkers."--Ralph Nader

"This is one of the most original, provocative, and imaginative works about the modern U.S. that I have read in years. Johnston has produced far more than a splendid history about the neglected politics of a neglected city. His book is studded with insights about what it meant and means to be middle class and the fecund nature of populism in industrial and post-industrial America. What is more, he gives us hope for the future."--Michael Kazin, Georgetown University, author of "The Populist Persuasion: An American History"

"Johnston's daring, meticulous, subtle, and analytically acute study of Portland's lower middle class leaves hundreds of shallow and condescending cliches about the petite bourgeoisie mortally wounded or gasping for breath in its splendid wake. He succeeds in restoring the historical autonomy, particularity, and egalitarian moral economy of America's lower middle classes. As with E.P. Thompson's history of the English working class, subsequent work on the middle class in America must now take this study as its point of departure."--James C. Scott, author of "Seeing Like a State"

"Johnston seizes the Progressive Era and gives it back to the people. He argues that the roots of reform flourished among average citizens, those who thought that they could change the world by reasoning and voting together. This is a book about democracy at its best. Johnston recalls America's potential andunderscores the paramount importance of civic activism on the local level."--Glenda E. Gilmore, editor of "Who Were the Progesssives?" and author of "Gender and Jim Crow"

"In this very exciting study, Johnston has truly broken new ground. For all its theoretical sophistication, the book is written with flair and is blessedly free of arcane jargon. The prose is clear, powerful, and even jaunty at times. "The Radical Middle Class" will become one of those rare and important books that no scholar of U.S. class relations and politics will be able to ignore."--Elaine Tyler May, author of "Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era"

"Robert Johnston has written a terrific book, engaging one of the most neglected and important topics in U.S. history: the political history of the middle class. More successful than some of his predecessors, he gives middle-class Americans the history they so richly deserve. Powerfully argued, splendidly told, and provocatively fresh, "The Radical Middle Class" marks a milestone in the historiography of the American middle class. It is really the first book of its kind."--Sven Beckert, Harvard University, author of "The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie"

"Turn in the Road" tells the story of a young man coming of age in Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War. With his father away fighting the war in Richmond, Wade must look after his mother and sisters and protect them as best he can from rogue cavalrymen, renegades, and thieves. After an attack leaves his sister's life in the balance, Wade strikes out alone in the midst of the fighting, to confront the men responsible. Along the journey, Wade's young heart and mind are forever changed by the horrors of war.

"However urban the nation has become," Catherine McNicol Stock and Robert D. Johnston write, "twenty percent of its citizens still live outside major metropolitan areas. Moreover, rural economic activity agricultural, extractive, recreational, and industrial has an enormous impact on the nation's overall economic well-being. The stories of contemporary rural people still have the power to move us. . . . They reflect the values, dreams, and ideals at the core of the economically, racially, and ethnically diverse American experience."

The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State moves rural history into explorations of modern politics: diverse rural peoples and their complex relationships to the American state in the twentieth century. The volume's contributors examine African American progressive farm organizers; the experiences of Caribbean and Mexican farm laborers; agrarian intellectuals in the New Deal; the politics of land and landscape in the Rocky Mountain west; and the origins of today's rural political movements."

"However urban the nation has become," Catherine McNicol Stock and Robert D. Johnston write, "twenty percent of its citizens still live outside major metropolitan areas. Moreover, rural economic activity agricultural, extractive, recreational, and industrial has an enormous impact on the nation's overall economic well-being. The stories of contemporary rural people still have the power to move us. . . . They reflect the values, dreams, and ideals at the core of the economically, racially, and ethnically diverse American experience."

The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State moves rural history into explorations of modern politics: diverse rural peoples and their complex relationships to the American state in the twentieth century. The volume's contributors examine African American progressive farm organizers; the experiences of Caribbean and Mexican farm laborers; agrarian intellectuals in the New Deal; the politics of land and landscape in the Rocky Mountain west; and the origins of today's rural political movements."

Johnston develops his fascinating investigation of biblical numerology by showing the uniqueness of the eternal Word of God and its God-breathed inspiration.

According to their national myth, all Americans are "middle class," but rarely has such a widely-used term been so poorly defined. Do we identify the middle class by a house in the suburbs, a white collar job, or a political outlook that is right-of-centre? Or is the middle class in fact more complex? These fascinating essays provide much-needed context to the subject of class in America.