Mauritania

Wiley, Katherine Ann. Work, Social Status, and Gender in Post-Slavery Mauritania. Indiana University Press, Bloomington (IN) 2018. xiii, 212 pp. Ill. Maps. $85.00. (Paper: $35.00; E-book: $34.99).

Despite being abolished in Mauritania in 1981, the legacy of slavery lives on in the political, economic, and social discrimination against former slaves and their descendants (Ḥarāṭīn). Professor Wiley examines the shifting roles of Muslim Ḥarāṭīn women, who support their families financially, using economic activity as a lens to examine what makes work suitable for women, their trade practices, and how they understand and assert their social positions, social worth, and personal value. Their position influences their opportunities and constraints, but so do their gender, socioeconomic standing, religion, and generations. While social value was historically based on genealogy, Ḥarāṭīn women today emphasize the importance of achieved attributes, including wealth, respect, and industriousness.

Namibia

Häussler, Matthias. Der Genozid an den Herero. Krieg, Emotion und extreme Gewalt in Deutsch-Südwestafrika. Velbrück 2018. 300 pp. € 38.90.

In the historiography of German Southwest Africa, the German Pacification Wars against Herero and Nama (1904–1908) are called “genocide”. The study aims to show that the common view of genocide merits revision and that the genocidal intention formed during the course of the violence. Based on primary sources, such as the handwritten War Diary of the infamous commander of the Southwest African Protectorate Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha, Dr Häussler reconstructs the war between Herero and Germans, paying particular attention to the unleashing of genocidal violence and demonstrating that the incidents of violence were much less planned than is commonly assumed.

South Africa

Philip, Kate. Markets on the Margins. Mineworkers, Job Creation & Enterprise Development. Boydell & Brewer, Rochester (NY) 2018. xvi, 222 pp. Ill. £60.00.

In 1987, South Africa's National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) called a national mineworkers strike, leading 40,000 of them to lose their jobs. To assist them, the NUM set up a job creation programme. Against the backdrop of South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy, this programme provided support in communities hard hit by escalating job losses in the mines. In this book, Kate Philip, who ran the NUM job creation programme, tells the story of this job creation initiative in a particular southern African context and relates this to its implications and relevance for enterprise development strategies that aim to create jobs and reduce poverty in developing countries.

Brazil

Aidoo, Lamonte. Slavery Unseen. Sex, Power, and Violence in Brazilian History. [Latin America Otherwise.] Duke University Press, Durham (NC) 2018. x, 258 pp. Ill. $99.95; £76.00. (Paper; E-book: $25.95; £19.99).

In this book, Professor Aidoo upends the narrative of Brazil as a racial democracy, showing how the myth of racial democracy elides the history of sexual violence, patriarchal terror, and exploitation of slaves. Drawing on sources ranging from inquisition trial documents to travel accounts and literature, the author demonstrates how interracial and same-sex sexual violence operated as a key mechanism for the production and perpetuation of slavery, as well as of racial and gender inequality. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, he aims to examine more fully the complexities of Brazilian slavery, race relations, interracial sexual violence, and racialized and pathological constructions of male homosexuality in the late nineteenth century.

Lee, Ana Paulina. Mandarin Brazil. Race, Representation, and Memory. [Asian America.] Stanford University Press, Stanford (CA) 2018. xxii, 256 pp. Ill. $85.00. (Paper: $25.95).

In late-nineteenth century Brazil, black slavery was replaced by yellow unfree labour. In this book, Professor Lee explores the centrality of Chinese exclusion in Brazilian nation-building, tracing the role of cultural representation in producing racialized national categories. Based on depictions of Chinese identity in Brazilian popular music, literature, and visual culture, as well as in archives and correspondence between Brazil and the Qing dynasty, the author demonstrates that ideas about immigrants were critical to the formation of Brazilian national identity, and that Chinese racialization cannot be disassociated from broader social, economic, and cultural relations arising from a heritage of slavery and an elite desire for whiteness.

Weinstein, Barbara. The Color of Modernity. São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2015. xiii, 458 pp. Ill. $104.95. (Paper: $29.95).

The city and province of São Paulo has become synonymous with prosperity, while Brazil's Northeast, according to this book, is associated with poverty and backwardness. Focusing on two episodes (the 1932 Constitutionalist Revolution and the 1954 IV Centenário, the quadricentennial of São Paulo's establishment), Professor Weinstein aims to show how both elites and ordinary people in São Paulo embraced a regional (“paulista”) identity that emphasized their European origins and talent for modernity and progress. She argues that this racialized regionalism widened social and economic inequalities and impeded democratization. See also Paulo Fontes's review in this volume, pp. 156–158.

Canada

Foster, Jason. Defying Expectations. The Case of UFCW Local 401. [Working Canadians: Books from the CCLH.] AU Press, Edmonton 2018. viii, 195 pp. Can. $34.95.

In this study of the Union of Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 401 Professor Foster investigates a union that has had remarkable success organizing groups of workers often difficult for North American unions to reach: immigrants, women and youth. Relating the story of UFCW Local 401 as it has unfolded over the past twenty years, the author aims to explain how and why the union changed, shedding light on the union revitalization and seeking to understand the role of narratives in transforming the locals, and how they brought about coherence in apparent contradiction and complexity.

Chile

Godoy Orellana, Milton. Mundo minero y sociabilidad popular en el Norte Chico. Chile, 1780–1900. Mutante [etc.], Santiago 2017. 391 pp. Ill. Chil. $8,000.00. (E-book: $0.00).

This book brings together a series of works that address different aspects of a regional history. The first chapter offers a historiography. Chapter two studies practices and systems of mining such as la pirquinería. Chapter three analyses the journey by the writer and geologist Aracena in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and his diaries. Chapter four is about the relationship between the mines and the minor port of Papadu (1840–1920), Chapter five is about the invention of traditions and the reconstruction of lost patrimonial elements, and Chapter six examines the late colonial settlement process in the Pulmanhue hills, which operated a rich goldmine from the late eighteenth century to the present.

Latin America

Kelly, Patrick William. Sovereign Emergencies. Latin America and the Making of Global Human Rights Politics. [Human Rights in History.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2018. xx, 318 pp. Ill. £71.99. (Paper: £21.99; E-book: $24.00).

Concern over rising state violence in Latin America triggered an unprecedented turn to a global politics of human rights in the 1970s. Dr Kelly argues that Latin America was pivotal in these changes, as both the target of human rights advocacy and the site of a series of significant developments for regional and global human rights politics. Drawing on case studies of Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, the author examines the crystallization of new understandings of sovereignty and social activism based on individual human rights. Activists and politicians articulated a new human rights practice that blurred the confines of the nation state to endow individuals with a set of rights protected by international law.

Posner, Paul W., Patroni, Viviana, and Mayer, Jean François. Labor Politics in Latin America: Democracy and Worker Organization in the Neoliberal Era. University Press of Florida, Gainesville (FL) 2018. xviii, 253 pp. $80.00.

In recent decades, Latin American countries have sought to modernize their labour market institutions to remain competitive in the face of increasing globalization. In this book, the authors evaluate the impact of such neo-liberal reforms on labour movements and workers’ rights through comparative analyses of labour politics in Chile, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela, assessing the capacity of workers and working-class organizations to advance their demands and achieve a more equitable distribution of economic gains and showing how flexibilization and privatization, trade liberalization, and economic deregulation have undermined organized labour in all these countries, leading unions to become fragmented internally and unable to promote counter-reforms or increase collective bargaining.

Sabato, Hilda. Republics of the New World. The Revolutionary Political Experiment in Nineteenth-century Latin America. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) 2018. xii, 220 pp. $29.95; £24.00.

By the 1820s, the former Spanish territories of Latin America had founded independent republics. By committing to republicanism in the nineteenth century, they embarked on a political experiment outside the newly formed United States. In this book, Dr Sabato explores this republican experiment by delving into the relationship between people and government that developed after the adoption of popular sovereignty as a founding principle of power, focusing on the establishment and legitimation of political authority in chapters on regular elections, suffrage and electoral practices, and on the armed citizens, the guardians of popular sovereignty that had the right to bear arms in the face of any abuse of power.

Peru

Alcalde, M. Cristina. Peruvian Lives across Borders. Power, Exclusion, and Home. University of Illinois Press, Urbana (IL) 2018. xi, 214 pp. Ill. $99.00. (Paper: $28.00; E-book: $19.95).

In this anthropological study, Professor Alcalde examines the evolution of belonging and the making of home among middle- and upper-class Peruvians in Peru, the United States, Canada, and Germany. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and textual analysis, the author argues that to belong is to exclude. Transnational Peruvians engage along the borders of belonging, allowing them to claim and maintain the social status they enjoyed in their homeland, even as they profess their openness and tolerance. These processes and their origins in Peru's gender, racial, and class hierarchies are described to show that the idea of return, whether desired, rejected, imagined or real, inspires constructs of Peruvianness, belonging and home.

United States of America

Heideman, Paul. Class Struggle and the Color Line. American Socialism and the Race Question, 1900–1930. Haymarket Books, Chicago (IL) 2018. ix, 472 pp. $21.00. (E-book: $21.00).

This collection seeks to restore the early socialist discussion of the colour line by reconstructing the scope of the debate on the race question that took place in the American Left during the early decades of the twentieth century. Collecting source materials from an array of writers and organizations, Heideman offers a new perspective on the complex history of revolutionary debates about fighting anti-Black racism. Contextual material from the editor places each contribution in its historical and political setting. The editor focuses on the central role of Black Socialists in advancing a theory and practice of human liberation.

Griffith, Sarah M. The Fight for Asian American Civil Rights. Liberal Protestant Activism, 1900–1950. University of Illinois Press, Urbana (IL) 2018. x, 209 pp. Ill. $99.00. (Paper: $27.95; E-book: $14.95).

In this book, Professor Griffith re-evaluates and repositions activism by liberal Protestants within the context of American civil rights history by studying the activism of the Young Men's Christian Association secretaries and distinct Asian American communities. Exploring a wealth of sources, the author provides insight into the ways religion interacted with intellectual trends and shifting national and international politics. The early work, based on mainstream ideas of assimilation and integration, ran aground on the Japanese exclusion law of 1924. Yet, the vision of Christian internationalism and interracial cooperation survived the World War II trauma, as liberal Protestants emerged in the post-war era with a re-energized campaign to reshape Asian-white relations.

Huret, Romain D. Transl. [from French] by Angell., John The Experts’ War on Poverty. Social Research and the Welfare Agenda in Postwar America. [American Institutions and Society.] Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 2018. viii, 230 pp. Ill. $49.95.

A network of experts, extending from the end of the New Deal to the late 1960s, was dedicated to the battle against poverty in the United States and sought to form a policy bureaucracy to support federal socioeconomic action. The first chapters of the book offer detailed portraits of key figures from the expert community and situate them in their social and professional context, illustrating how the concept of poverty successfully emerged among politicians and the public. The second section describes how proposals by experts on eliminating poverty failed to influence the political process, even when these experts proposed viable alternatives.

Ibarra, Armando, Carlos, Alfredo, and Torres, Rodolfo D.. The Latino Question. Politics, Labouring Classes and the Next Left. Forew. by Neumann-Ortiz., Christine Pluto Press, London 2018. xv, 219 pp. Ill. £75.00. (Paper; E-book: £18.99).

This book offers an analysis of the transformative nature of Latino politics in the United States. In an alternative to dominant ideas, the authors emphasize the importance of political economy for understanding Latino politics, culture, and social issues. Drawing on original sources and a number of critical traditions, including the thought of Marx and Gramsci, they interpret the politics of race and ethnicity in modern capitalist society. Each chapter focuses on an aspect of Latino politics, while all chapters have overlapping themes, including mass labour migration, Latino politics as class politics, and the extent to which Latino politics are conditioned or even determined by macroeconomic trends.

Izzo, Amanda. L. Liberal Christianity and Women's Global Activism. The YWCA of the USA and the Maryknoll Sisters. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick (NJ) [etc.] 2018. vi, 275 pp. Ill. $95.00. (Paper; E-book: $28.95).

Focusing on two influential groups (the Young Women's Christian Association of the USA and the Maryknoll Sisters), Professor Izzo offers new perspectives on how these women contributed to transnational social movements, tracing the connections between turn-of-the-century Christian women's reform culture and liberal and left-wing religious social movements of the 1960s and 70s. Part one centres on a post-suffrage nexus between women's professional outreach and gendered ambitions for cooperative social change. Part two elaborates on the mid-century split, which positioned the YWCA and the sisters at opposite sides of Cold War anticommunism. Part three reveals how the organizations’ political and spiritual ambitions re-converged amid the leftist ferment of the 1960s and 70s.

Lause, Mark A. Long Road to Harpers Ferry. The Rise of the First American Left. [People's History.] Pluto Press, London 2018. 240 pp. £75.00. (Paper; E-book: £17.99).

This book describes the history of pre-Civil War American radicalism on the long journey to the failed slave revolt of Harpers Ferry in 1859. The author describes the class struggle, showing how class solidarity and consciousness became important to a generation of workers. Working-class radicals also fought for the abolition of slavery, indigenous rights, and women's equality. The first part of the book traces the debate around the standard revolutionary themes of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The second part describes efforts to build permanent organizations and movements focusing on the overlapping concerns of radical land reform and abolitionism. The third part discusses the shift from vanguards to cadres.

Olsson, Lars. Women's Work and Politics in WWI America. The Munsingwear Family of Minneapolis. Palgrave Macmillan, New York [etc.] 2018. xiii, 301 pp. Ill. $84.99. (E-book: $64.99).

By World War I, the Northwestern Knitting Company was the largest workplace for women in Minnesota and the largest garment factory in the United States. Professor Olsson investigates the interplay of class, gender, ethnicity, and race in labour relations at the factory. The workers, most Scandinavian women, toiled long hours for low pay, while company directors and stockholders made enormous profits. Management developed paternalistic strategies to bind the workers to the company and pre-empt unionization, including bonuses and an industrial welfare program. When the US entered the war, the company was contracted to produce underwear for soldiers, and management expanded the metaphor of “the Munsingwear Family” from company loyalty to national loyalty.

Reconsidering Southern Labor History. Race, Class and Power. Ed. by Hild, Matthew and Merritt, Keri Leigh. University Press of Florida, Gainesville (FL) [etc.] 2018. ix, 308 pp. $84.95.

Many of the difficulties facing workers today are deeply rooted in the history of labour exploitation in the South. Contributors demonstrate that the problems that have long beset southern labour include the legacy of slavery, low wages, lack of collective bargaining rights, and repression of organized unions. The nineteen essays in this collection examine vagrancy laws, inmate labour, mine workers, union membership, and strikes, addressing pesticide exposure among farmworkers, labour activism during the civil rights movement, and foreign-owned auto factories in the rural South. They distinguish between different struggles experienced by women and men, as well as by African American, Latino, and white workers.

Rosenberg, Rosalind. Jane Crow. The Life of Pauli Murray. Oxford University Press, New York [etc.] 2017. xvii, 494 pp. Ill. £19.99.

Throughout her prodigious life, activist and lawyer Pauli Murray (1910–1985) systematically fought against all arbitrary distinctions in society, channelling the discrimination she faced to make America a more democratic country. In this biography, Rosenberg offers a portrait of a figure who, struggling with issues of identity, was pivotal in both the modern civil rights and the women's movements. Appointed by Eleanor Roosevelt to the President's Commission on the Status of Women in 1962, she advanced the idea of Jane Crow, standing for the double discrimination she faced as a black female. Her concept of Jane Crow propelled Ruth Bader Ginsberg to her first Supreme Court victory for women's rights.

Central Asia

Eden, Jeff. Slavery and Empire in Central Asia. [Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2018. ix, 227 pp. £75.00. (E-book: $80.00).

The Central Asian slave trade swept numerous Iranians, Russians, and others into slavery during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Drawing on eyewitness accounts, autobiographies, and interviews with slaves, this book offers an impression of the lives of slaves and of human trafficking. Slavery strained Central Asia's relations with Russia, England, and Iran, and served as a justification for the Russian conquest of this region in the 1860s and 70s. Challenging the consensus that the Russian Empire abolished slavery with these conquests, the author reveals that slaves achieved their own emancipation by fomenting the largest slave uprising in the region's history.

China

Chan, Shelly. Diaspora's Homeland. Modern China in the Age of Global Migration. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) 2018. xiv, 264 pp. Ill. $99.95. (Paper: $25.95).

This study investigates how the mass migration of more than twenty million Chinese overseas influenced China's politics, economics, and culture. Professor Chan argues that the development of homeland-diaspora dynamics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries inextricably enmeshed China with the world. The book is divided into five diaspora moments, including the lifting of the Qing emigration ban in 1893, intellectual debates in the 1920s and 30s about whether Chinese emigration constituted colonization, whether Confucianism should be the basis for a modern Chinese identity, as well as the intersection of gender, returns, and Communist campaigns in the 1950s and 60s. The author shows how mass migration helped establish China as a nation state within a global system.

Koss, Daniel. Where the Party Rules. The Rank and File of China's Communist State. [Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2018. xvi, 391 pp. Ill. £74.99; $99.99. (Paper: £26.99; $34.99; E-book: $28.00).

In China, rank-and-file members of the Communist Party allow the state to penetrate local communities. Dr Koss's subnational comparative analysis demonstrates that in “red areas” with high party saturation, the state enforces policy and collects taxes most effectively. Because party membership patterns are extremely enduring, they must be explained by events prior to the Communist takeover in 1949. The Sino-Japanese Wars (1937–1945), when Japanese occupation shielded the communists from persecution, continue to shape China's political map to this day. Newly available evidence from the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961) and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) shows how a strong local party basis has sustained the regime in times of existential crisis.

White III, Lynn T. Rural Roots of Reform, before China's Conservative Change. Routledge, Abingdon 2018. xxix, 380 pp. $169.95. (Paper: $63.95; E-book: $26.98).

China's economic and military rise dominates discussions of the world's most populous country. The government is credited with success, but data on production by rural factories, as presented in this book, prove that growth accelerated during the early 1970s, initiated mainly by officials in rural production teams and brigades. These local leaders transformed many peasants into workers in 1970s and 80s. Country factories competed with state industries for materials and markets. By the 1980s, shortages led to inflation, government deficits, unofficial credit, unenforceable planning, and illegal migrations and then to international exports – amid severe political tensions that instigated to reactive changes after 1990. These reactionary changes have endured into the era of Xi Jinping.

India

Bhattacharya, Bhaswati, Much Ado over Coffee. Indian Coffee House Then and Now. Social Science Press, New Delhi 2017. xxii, 432 pp. IR 975.00.

Based on oral history, fiction, and records of the Coffee Board of India, Dr Bhattacharya offers a many-sited description of the Indian Coffee House, possibly the world's first coffee house chain, from the 1930s to post-colonial India. Addas, places where friends met to converse informally, initially flourished in neighbourhood tea shops and then switched to the newly opened coffee houses. While coffee capitalists sought a destination for the export surplus, the educated middle class considered the coffee houses a modern place to be. The author publishes written sources of addas in the cities of Calcutta, Allahabad, and Delhi, while some footnotes feature video links of luminaries visiting these coffee houses.

Israel

Preminger, Jonathan. Labor in Israel. Beyond Nationalism and Neoliberalism. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) [etc.] 2018. xiii, 236 pp. $60.00.

This book investigates the changing political status of organized labour in the context of changes in Israel's political economy, including liberalization, the rise of non-union labour organizations, the influx of migrant labour, and Israel's complex relations with the Palestinians. Based on interviews, mass media sources, and literature, Dr Preminger concludes that organized labour in Israel is in a transitional and unsettled phase in which new marginal initiatives, new organizations, and new alliances that have blurred the boundaries of the sphere of labour have not yet consolidated into clear structures of representation or accepted patterns of political interaction.

Belgium

Medieval Bruges c.850–1550. Ed. by Brown, Andrew and Dumolyn, Jan. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2018. xxi, 549 pp. Ill. £99.99. (E-book: $110.00).

Bruges was one of the most important cities in medieval Europe. This edited volume follows a broadly chronological pattern, starting with the early settlement, based on the latest findings in archaeological research, charting the expansion of Bruges up to the end of the thirteenth century, when the city was struck by crisis, and then turning to the city's golden age, ending with its decline in the sixteenth century. The analysis by the authors of its commercial growth, industrial production, socio-political changes, and cultural creativity is grounded in an understanding of the city's structure, its landscape, and its built environment. The ten contributions place Bruges within a network of urban and rural development and its history in a comparative framework.

Eastern Europe

Koleva, Svetla. Totalitarian Experience and Knowledge Production. Sociology in Central and Eastern Europe 1945–1989. Transl. by Vladimir Vladov. [Post-Western Social Sciences and Global Knowledge, Vol. 2.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2017. xviii, 298 pp. € 121.00; $140.00. (E-book: € 110.00; $127.00).

This book examines, from a comparative perspective, sociology as practised in six European Communist countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the USSR) marked by various forms of totalitarianism in the period 1945–1989. Dr Koleva argues that sociology functioned in these undemocratic societies, insofar as sociologists succeeded in establishing relatively autonomous institutional and cognitive zones with freedom of thought in the quest for scientific truth. Based on interviews conducted in 1999–2002 with 69 scholars who practised their profession during that period, the author reveals the tribulations of the scientific identity of sociology under the specific social-political conditions of totalitarian societies.

Perceptions of Society in Communist Europe. Regime Archives and Popular Opinion. Ed. by Blaive, Muriel. Bloomsbury Academic, London 2019. xi, 248 pp. £59.50. (E-book: £50.49).

Drawing on archival sources from Eastern European countries, this volume considers the extent to which communist regimes cared about popular opinion, and how it helped them maintain their rule. Contrary to popular belief, communist regimes legitimized their dominance with minimal violence. The twelve contributions portray the ruled as active social agents, whose complaints were based on an assumed, shared understanding of what socialist legacy should be. Communist dictatorships learned how to tolerate the hidden transcript of citizens as long as they respected the normative political and ideological boundaries. Analysing topics such as a Stalinist musical in Czechoslovakia, workers’ letters to the leadership in Romania, and children's television in Poland, the contributors deconstruct parochial national perceptions of communism.

France

Abidor, Mitchell. May Made Me. An Oral History of the 1968 Uprising in France. Pluto Press, London 2018. xiii, 253 pp. £75.00. (Paper; E-book: £12.99).

The mass protests that shook France in May 1968 were exciting, dangerous, creative, and influential, changing European politics to this day. Students staged demonstrations and workers general strikes, and factories and universities were occupied. Fifty years later, the author brings together the oral testimonies of those young rebels. He reveals the legacy of the uprising and the changes those experiences entailed for both those who took part and the course of history. In numerous interviews with students and workers, May 1968 appears not just as a mass event, but rather as one driven by millions of individuals, portraying a human mosaic of France at the time.

du Familistère, L'album. Sous la dir. de Frédéric Panni et Hugues Fontaine. Les Editions du Familistère, Guise 2017. 720 pp. Ill. € 29.00.

Published on the occasion of the bicentenary of the birth of founder Jean-Baptist André Godin (1817–1888) of Finistère in Guise (Aisne), this edited volume on the site consists of contributions by 44 authors and contains over 700 illustrations. Finistère, still the production site of the Godin stoves, was called the social palace, where workers had a Utopian life. The chapters cover e.g. the factory, architecture, the workers, and the industry, considering in detail the social experiment from the nineteenth century onwards of building a Utopian setting, with good hygiene, as well as a school, museum, theatre, and swimming pool.

Marx, une passion française. Sous la dir. Ducange, de Jean-Numa et Burlaud, Antony. [Collections Recherches.] Éditions La Découverte, Paris 2018. 346 pp. € 25.00.

Two centuries after the birth of Marx in 1818, this book provides a historical and sociological perspective on how Marx's thought was received in the French context, from the nineteenth century to the present day. Rather than offering a new interpretation of Marx, the authors decipher the forms his work has taken and the influences it has had. Analysing Marx's place and influence in French intellectual, political, and artistic debate, from the extreme left to the Aronian right and in the French-speaking colonial world, the twenty-seven contributors to this book offer a singular view that demonstrates the uses – and misuses – of an oeuvre that remains among the most important of the contemporary era.

Reclus, Élisée. Lettres à Clarisse. Ed. critique par Ronald Creagh et Christophe Deschler. [Correspondances et mémoires, 30.] Classiques Garnier, Paris 2018. 182 pp. Ill. € 69.00. (Paper: € 32.00).

Élisée Reclus, the author of these letters, is a well-known figure in the field of geography and as an anarchist, naturist, vegetarian, and internationalist. The letters published here are to his first wife Clarisse, from 1859–1869, and reveal the emotion that accompanies separation and express the intimacy the couple shared and their various commitments, conveying the thoughts and ideas of the geographer, his professional experience, his explorations, and his ideas about feminism and ecology, as related in their life as a couple. The book reflects the life course and a timeline of the travels of Élisée Reclus and features a bibliography of his works.

Germany

Die Grenze des Sozialismus in Deutschland. Alltag im Niemandsland. Begleitband 1 zum biografischen Handbuch über die Todesopfer des DDR-Grenzregimes 1949–1989. Ed. by Schroeder, Klaus and Staadt, Jochen. [Studien des Forschungsverbundes SED-Staat an der Freien Universität Berlin.] Peter Lang, Berlin [etc.] 2018. 539 pp. Ill. € 46.70; £38.00; $56.95.

Between 1949 and 1989, violence and human rights abuses characterized the situation on the inner-German border. The SED dictatorship could assert its existence against the ongoing mass exodus from the GDR only by establishing a murderous border regime. This volume deals with the circumstances surrounding this GDR border regime and comprises nine contributions about historical, regional, and everyday life and circumstances on the GDR border, from the end of the war till after the reunification. The subjects considered include the politics of negotiations about reducing the use of mines, inhumane treatment of injured victims, and repression of suspected asylum seekers.

Helm, Christian. Botschafter der Revolution. Das transnationale Kommunikationsnetzwerk zwischen der Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional und bundesdeutscher Solidaritätsbewegung 1977–1990. [Studien zur Internationalen Geschichte, Bd. 39.] De Gruyter, Berlin [etc.] 2017. ix, 411 pp. € 59.95; $68.99; £54.50. (E-book: € 59.95; $68.99; £54.50).

The Sandinista revolution led to a burst of transnational solidarity with Nicaragua, shaped by the context of the Cold War. In West Germany, over 300 groups – some left-wing, some Christian, and some libertarian – were committed to supporting the aims of the Sandinistas. Based on research in Germany and Nicaragua, this dissertation chronologically examines transnational networks and practices of solidarity, with particular attention to Nicaraguan agency. Dr Helm regards the organizational infrastructure as a transnational network through which people, ideas, and information could circulate between both countries, the influence that images drawn by Nicaragua or the Sandinista revolution had on German activists, as well as the criticism expressed in German media.

Modern Germany in Transatlantic Perspective. Ed. by Meng, Michael and Seipp, Adam R.. Berghahn, New York [etc.] 2017. viii, 312 pp. $120.00; £85.00.

This book is a tribute to the extended commitment of Konrad Jarausch to scholarly exchange across the Atlantic. By assembling this volume, the editors sought to render an account of his career in the form of a conversation among scholars from Europe and the United States, whose intellectual trajectories have intersected with Jarausch's life and work, bringing together a group of authors from a range of academic backgrounds and cohorts reflecting on how his scholarship has shaped the discipline of modern German history. The eleven contributions elaborate on themes such as theory and historiography questions, women in the historical profession, German unification as a challenge in German history, and twentieth-century German Christianity.

Great Britain

Alternatives to State-Socialism in Britain. Other Worlds of Labour in the Twentieth Century. Ed. by Ackers, Peter and Reid, Alastair J.. [Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements.] Palgrave Macmillan, London 2016. xvii, 354 pp. € 96.29. (E-book: € 74.96).

This book presents a revisionist challenge to twentieth-century British labour history, aiming to transcend the Marxist and Fabian exclusion of working-class experience in research addressing various social movements and ideas. In this collection of twelve essays, the authors establish the liberal-pluralist tradition covered in three distinct sections. Part one is about subjects such as trade unions, the Co-operative Party, women's community activism, and Protestant Nonconformity, Part two addresses the employer Edward Cadbury, trades union congress leader Walter Citrine, and the electricians’ leader Frank Chapple; Part three covers G.D.H. Cole, Michael Young, and leftist libertarianism by Stuart White. See also Maurizio Atzeni's review in this volume, pp. 153–156.

Hannah, Simon. A Party with Socialists in It. A History of the Labour Left. Forew. by McDonnell., John [Left Book Club.] Pluto Press, London 2018. 288 pp. £75.00. (Paper: £12.99).

From its origins in the late nineteenth century, the British Labour Party was uncomfortably divided between a metropolitan liberal- and a working-class milieu. This book sheds light on the internal dynamics of the party with its socialist members. The author provides a framework by considering the dynamics of the left–right division in terms of transformative and integrative tendencies, exploring the story of the Bevanite movement and the celebrated government of Attlee, through the emergence of a New Left that was sceptical of the Labour party during the Wilson era, to the decline of the Labour Left after their historic defeat in the 1980s to the shift towards Blairism.

Holdorph, Anne. The Real Meaning of our Work? Jewish Youth Clubs in the UK, 1880–1939. Peter Lang, Oxford [etc.] 2017. viii, 236 pp. € 74.10; £60.00; $90.95. (E-book: € 74.10; £60.00; $90.95).

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Jewish community in the United Kingdom began their own clubs to educate and entertain young Jewish youth. These clubs adapted the social control models of the Christian community by providing purposeful recreation, religious education, and sporting activities. Dr Holdorph uses primary sources, including publicity material provided by the clubs, as well as oral history accounts given by former members. The author explores how religious programming within clubs reflected different expectations of girls and boys, helping leaders to promote acceptably gendered British-Jewish identities, and examining to what extent gendering religion was a vital component of Jewish education between 1880 and 1939.

Mitchell, Seán. Struggle or Starve. Working-class Unity in Belfast's 1932 Outdoor Relief Riots. Haymarket Books, Chicago (IL) 2017. xiii, 182 pp. $16.95. (E-book: $9.99).

In October 1932, the streets of Belfast were gripped by widespread rioting by unemployed workers and working-class communities that lasted for almost a week. Known as the Outdoor Relief Riot, it was one of a few instances in which class sympathy trumped sectarian loyalties in a divided city. In this book, Mitchell recreates the events as they unfolded and provides a thorough analysis that uncovers fatal flaws in the politics of those who led the strike, preventing them from consolidating and building on their initial success. He applies these lessons to the question of how working-class unity can be achieved today to transform society and consign sectarianism.

Newsinger, John. Hope Lies in the Proles. George Orwell and the Left. Pluto Press, London 2018. vi, 186 pp. £75.00. (Paper; E-book: £16.99).

George Orwell was one of the most significant literary figures on the left in the twentieth century. Professor Newsinger offers a critical account of Orwell's political thinking and its continued significance today. To Orwell, socialism meant a classless society with freedom of speech and civil liberties as essential requirements, and the working class was the agency of socialist transformation. The author also elaborates on whether Orwell's anti-fascism was eclipsed by his criticism of the Soviet Union, explores his ambivalent relationship with the Labour Party and considers Orwell's shifting views on the United States and his relationship with the progressive Left and feminism.

Nicholls, Angela. Almshouses in Early Modern England. Charitable Housing in the Mixed Economy of Welfare 1550–1725. [People, Markets, Goods: Economies and Societies in History, Vol. 8.] Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge 2017. xii, 278 pp. Ill. £19.99.

Almshouses, providing accommodations for the indigent, were integral in the early welfare services of local communities in England. In this doctoral thesis, Dr Nicholls examines the role and significance of English almshouses in the period 1550–1725. Drawing on archival evidence from the counties Durham, Warwickshire, and Kent, representing the north, midlands, and the south of England, the author analyses why almshouses were founded, who the occupants were, what benefits they received, and how residents were expected to live there. The book places these findings in the context of contemporary national and local debates about poverty and poor relief. See also Henk Looijesteijn's review in this volume, pp. 149–151.

Hungary

Dent, Bob. Painting the Town Red. Politics and the Arts During the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic. Pluto Press, London 2018. xiii, 231 pp. Ill. £75.00. (Paper; E-book: £24.99).

The intensely political cultural production that erupted during Hungary's short-lived Soviet Republic of 1919 encompassed music, art, literature, film, and theatre. After giving an overview of the historical and political context in Hungary after World War I, the author examines the subsequent roles of artists and explains why so many prominent artists participated in the Soviet Republic, and why their enthusiasm later subsided. He also looks at the attitude of the People's Commissariat for Education and Culture, in which György Lukács – later a renowned Marxist – was pivotal. The postscript reflects briefly on the post-1919 fates of selected persons featured in the book.

Italy

Carocci, Sandro. Transl. [from Italian] by Byatt., Lucinda Lordships of Southern Italy. Rural Societies, Aristocratic Powers and Monarchy in the 12th and 13th Centuries. [Viella History, Art and Humanities Collection, 5.] Viella, Roma 2018 (2014). 622 pp. Maps. € 95.00.

This book offers a systematic analysis of lordship in southern Italy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, based on new interpretations by Professor Carocci of the powers of the nobility, rural societies, and royal policy. Revealing the complexity of interactions between the king, nobles, and peasants and their manifestations in laws and violence, feudal relations and economic investments, debates on freedom and serfdom, and the exploitation of people and natural resources, he offsets the leading role of peasant societies here against that of the kings, who were determined to curb aristocratic powers, and that of the noblemen obliged to adapt their lordship in response to powerful rural societies and crown policies.

De Benedictis, Angela. Neither Disobedients nor Rebels. Lawful Resistance in Early Modern Italy. [Viella History, Art and Humanities Collection, 6.] Viella, Roma 2018. 230 pp. € 55.00.

This volume analyses some Italian urban rebellions that occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Urbino, Messina, Mondovì, Castiglione delle Stiviere). What each case has in common is the claim of each respective people to be neither disobedient, nor rebellious. In every case, Professor De Benedictis searched in legal sources for information that the collective authors gave of the tumults and presented their actions as a legitimate defence and lawful resistance against the unjust government, because it threatened their liberties. These revolts resemble those in Catalonia (1640) and Naples (1647). Fundamental problems emerge from all cases considered: the fine line between loyalty and obedience.

Russia – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Daly, Jonathan. Crime and Punishment in Russia. A Comparative History from Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin. [The Bloomsbury History of Modern Russia Series.] Bloomsbury, London [etc.] 2018. Maps. xx, 236 pp. £65.00; $88.00. (Paper: £19.99; $26.95).

The evolution of criminal justice in Russia from the early modern era to the present day is surveyed in this book. Professor Daly approaches Russia both on its own terms and in light of changes in Europe, to which Russia's rulers and educated elites continuously looked for legal models and inspiration. He examines the weak advancement of the rule of the law over the period and analyses the contrasts and seeming contradictions of a society. The author also provides political, social, and economic context, showing how the story of crime and punishment fits into the broader narrative of modern Russian history. See also Zhanna Popova's review in this volume, pp. 146–148.

Gorshkov, Boris B. Peasants in Russia from Serfdom to Stalin. Accommodation, Survival, Resistance. [The Bloomsbury History of Modern Russia Series.] Bloomsbury, London [etc.] 2018. xi, 236 pp. Ill. Maps. £59.50. (E-book: £50.49).

The peasantry accounted for the majority of the Russian population during the Imperialist and Stalinist periods. Incorporating recent scholarship, including Russian and non-Russian texts, along with classic studies, Dr Gorshkov provides a comprehensive examination of peasant life and addresses the rise, evolution, decline, and demise of serfdom, the relationship among the state, lord and peasant, peasant communal and social institutions, state peasant and rural policies, agrarian reforms, and the rural economy as a complex ecological entity and then analyses peasant economic activities, including agriculture and livestock, social activities and the functioning of peasant social and political institutions within the context of these interrelationships.

Malik, Hassan. Bankers and Bolshewiks. International Finance and the Russian Revolution. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) [etc.] 2018. xviii, 296 pp. $35.00; £27.00.

This book reveals how a complex web of factors, from government interventions to competitive dynamics and cultural influences, drove a large inflow of capital during a tumultuous period in world history. Shedding new light on decision-making by the powerful personalities who acted as the gatekeepers of international finance, Dr Malik narrates how they channelled foreign capital into Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on banking and government archives covering four countries, the author demonstrates how the realms of finance and politics grew increasingly intertwined and reveals insights into how influential figures in world finance navigated in one of the most lucrative markets.

Russian and Soviet Health Care from an International Perspective. Comparing Professions, Practice and Gender, 1880–1960. Ed. by Grant, Susan. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham 2017. xvii, 281 pp. £63.00.

This collection of eleven essays compares Russian and Soviet medical workers – physicians, psychiatrists and nurses – and examines them within an international. Ideology and everyday life through analyses of medical practice, while gender is assessed through the experiences of women medical professionals and patients. The contributions compare medical workers in Russia and the Soviet Union with one another and with colleagues in other parts of the world and examine how healthcare was realized in practice. This comparative approach provides important insights into how the Soviet state envisioned the organization of healthcare, and how medicine was implemented.

Trudolyubov, Maxim. The Tragedy of Property. Private Life, Ownership and the Russian State. Transl. [from Russian] by Tait., Arch [New Russian Thought.] Polity Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2018. xi, 237 pp. £55.00; € 71.90 (Paper; E-book: £17.99; € 23.90).

In this book, Dr Trudolyubov depicts contemporary Russia from the perspective of the history of space and property. Nineteenth-century Russian liberals associated property with serfdom: it was something to be destroyed – and it was, in 1917. With the arrival of mass housing in the 1960s, the Soviet Union gave the concept of private ownership a good name. The collapse of Soviet ideology allowed property, but not all properties were equal. As Russian entrepreneurs register their businesses in offshore jurisdictions and park their money abroad, Russia faces the prospect of building its own institutions of property and conflict resolution, a process that will require a rapprochement with Europe.

Spain

Gascón, Antonio [y] Guillamón., Agustín Nacionalistas contra anarquistas en la Cerdaña (1936–1937). Antonio Martin, la experiencia libertaria de Puigcerdá y el sagrado mito de Bellver. Descontrol, Barcelona 2018. 692 pp. Ill. € 18.00.

The purpose of this book is to present the context of the events in Cerdanya in 1936–1937 and to end the myths surrounding Antonio Martín, who was called either a serial killer or an anarchist hero. The study is based on oral testimonies and series of reports generated by the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, ranging from the situation in the Cerdanya to the Bellver incidents, and subsequent repression of anarchists in the region. The authors reveal the existence of the so-called black list of Puigcerdá, written by the nationalists of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, which selected the victims of the massacre of 9 September 1936.