SOCIAL THEORY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

Mouriaux, René. La dialectique d'Héraclite à Marx. [Collection “Utopie Critique”.] Éditions Syllepse, Paris 2010. 251 pp. € 20.00.

In this introduction to the history of dialectic, Professor Mouriaux, a historian of French syndicalism, first examines the origins of Western dialectic, Plato, Aristotle, and Hellenistic and Roman philosophy; in the second and third parts, medieval Christian thought, scholasticism, and Renaissance philosophy; and in the fourth part modern philosophy, from Kant and Hegel to Karl Marx. Two chapters are devoted to Marx, the first presenting his life and work, the second Marx's dialectic.

HISTORY

Behringer, Wolfgang. A Cultural History of Climate. Polity, Cambridge [etc.] 2010. xv, 295 pp. Ill. £55.00. (Paper: £17.99.)

This book is about cultural reactions to climate change. After an introductory chapter on natural climate change and the sources of our knowledge, Professor Behringer examines climate change from the last Ice Age to the medieval warm period. In the next two chapters he focuses on the symptoms and effects of the Little Ice Age and its consequences, which, according to the author, included witch-hunting, industrialization, scientific progress, and institutional change. In the final chapter he discusses the discovery of global warming and the debate on its impact.

Butterworth, Alex. The World that Never Was. A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents. The Bodley Head, London 2010. xiii, 482 pp. Ill. £25.00.

In this book about anarchism in Europe, Russia, and the United States during the period from the Paris Commune to the Russian Revolution, the author traces the lives and ideas of Elisée Reclus, Louise Michel, Peter Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta, and others, as well as the careers of the police spies who pursued them. Emphasizing narrative over analysis, the author paints a detailed picture of a complicated clandestine world of revolutionaries, police officers, and agents provocateurs, while also discussing the scientific, technological, and architectural achievements of that era. Each chapter concludes with a bibliographical note, while detailed citations and additional material can be found at www.theworldthatneverwas.com.

Fichter, James R. So Great a Proffit. How the East Indies Trade Transformed Anglo-American Capitalism. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) [etc.] 2010. 384 pp. Maps. £25.95; $35.00; € 31.50.

After the American Revolution, US merchants began trading in the East Indies, undermining the monopoly of the British East India Company and forcing Britain to open its own free trade to Asia. The United States and the British Empire thus converged around shared, Anglo-American free-trade ideals and financial capitalism in Asia. In this detailed study Professor Fichter explores how the US East India trade influenced the evolution of capitalism in the United States and helped shape the course of the British Empire.

The Force of Fashion in Politics and Society. Global Perspectives from Early Modern to Contemporary Times. Ed. by Beverly Lemire. Ashgate, Farnham [etc.] 2010. xv, 280 pp. Ill. £60.00.

Fashion is the lens through which this volume examines cultural, economic, and political change in various early modern and modern societies. The ten contributions (most of which were presented as papers at the International Economic History Congress held in Helsinki in 2006) focus on fashion cycles in early modern Antwerp; domestic textiles in early modern Europe; the introduction of new commodities in rural Catalonia, 1670–1790; the perfumery market in nineteenth-century Paris; the Boston anti-slavery bazaar (1834–1857); dress in the Sokoto caliphate (Nigeria), 1804–1903; contemporary Amerindian fashions in Canada; female artisans’ collective fashion work in the Philippines; and clothing consumption in colonial and postcolonial Zambia.

Gender, Migration and the Public Sphere, 1850–2005. Ed. by Marlou Schrover and Eileen Janes Yeo. [Routledge Research in Gender and History, Vol. 10.] Routledge, New York [etc.] 2010. viii, 185 pp. Ill. $80.00; £29.99.

Exploring differences between migrant men and women rather than focusing on women only, this interdisciplinary volume contains an essay discussing new directions in gender and migration studies and seven case studies about gender and the homeland in the Irish and Jewish diasporas (1850–1930); men and women in Paris (1870–1930); immigrant men and women in Belgium during the Cold War; men and women migrants in the Netherlands after 1945; dual citizenship and children's citizenship in the Netherlands; African domestic workers in Yemen and Sudanese refugee children.

The Global 1989. Continuity and Change in World Politics. Ed. by George Lawson, Chris Armbruster, [and] Michael Cox. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2010. xix, 317 pp. £55.00; $90.00. (Paper: £19.99; $31.99.)

Based on a workshop at the London School of Economics in 2008, this volume assesses the influence of 1989 on world history and contemporary world politics. It contains eleven chapters on topics such as global economic developments, transatlantic relations, Third World socialism, European integration, Russia and China, the Middle East, and the war on terror. The contributors argue that the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War produced mixed, paradoxical, and even contradictory outcomes.

Goody, Jack. Renaissances. The One or the Many? Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2010. ix, 322 pp. Ill. £45.00; $78.00 (Paper: £15.99; $27.99.)

Questioning the uniqueness of the European Renaissance, Professor Goody in this book examines the European model in relation to parallel renaissances in other cultural areas, primarily Islam and China, considering, for example, the case of Montpellier and medicine in Europe, to show what Europe owed to non-European influences. The chapters on rebirth in Islam, cultural continuity in India, and Renaissance in China were written in collaboration with Stephen Fennell.

The International Order of Asia in the 1930s and 1950s. Ed. by Shigeru Akita and Nicholas J. White. [Modern Economic and Social History.] Ashgate, Farnham 2010. xiii, 308 pp. £55.00.

Based on four international conferences held between 2001 and 2004, the eleven articles in this volume about the economic development of Asia during the 1930s and 1950s address the metropolitan–peripheral relationship in Asia, focusing on the role of the sterling area and its implications for Asian economic development; the formation of inter-regional trade relations within Asia in the 1930s, and their revival and transformation in the 1950s; the international order of Asia of the 1930s compared with that of the 1950s; and in what measure World War II marked a point of change in Asia's economic development.

Keeping the Lid on. Urban Eruptions and Social Control since the 19th Century. Ed. by Susan Finding, Logie Barrow, and François Poirier. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne 2010. vii, 188 pp. Ill. Maps. £34.99; $52.99.

Largely based on seminars held in Nantes (May 2006) and London (August 2006), this interdisciplinary volume about various aspects of urban imagination contains ten chapters, focusing on epidemics and vaccination in English towns around 1900; anarchist scares in late Victorian cities; Liverpool around 1900; Hull “repudiating” its working-class past; Liverpool re-enacting its past; maritime museums in Britain; immigration, segregation, and violence in French and American cities; Peter Ackroyd's London; New York's Italian-American community; and social spaces and representations of Salvador de Bahia (Brazil).

Memories of 1968. International Perspectives. Ed. by Ingo Cornils and Sarah Waters. [Cultural History and Literary Imagination, Vol 16.] Peter Lang, Oxford [etc.] 2010. vii, 386 pp. € 47.80.

This volume about public and private memories of 1968, based on a conference held in Leeds in 2008, juxtaposes representations of 1968 from France, Germany, Italy, the United States, Mexico, and China, aiming to open up memories of 1968 to a more diverse international perspective, one that, according to the editors, more closely reflects the dynamics of the events themselves. The fifteen contributors consider themes such as political appropriation, state repression, and commercialization, while giving voice to the other side of 1968 as well, for example, school teachers, mothers, and Turkish-German writers.

New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour and Syndicalism. The Individual, the National and the Transnational. Ed. by David Berry and Constance Bantman. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne 2010. xi, 228 pp. £39.99; $59.99.

This volume, largely based on a conference held in Loughborough (September 2008), is about the history of anarchist movements and their relation to organized labour, notably revolutionary syndicalism, in Europe from the nineteenth century to the Cold War. Eight contributors focus on militants (Gustave Schmidt alias Gus Smith, Errico Malatesta, Alfons Pilarki, and Ángel Pestaña) and movements (the 1896 London Congress, the British origins of French syndicalism, Polish anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism, and French anarchists and the CGT-FO). The collection opens with a history of revolutionary syndicalism in Europe and concludes with an analysis of the importance of community in revolutionary syndicalism.

Origins of the Black Atlantic. Ed. by Laurent Dubois and Julius S. Scott. [Rewriting Histories.] Routledge, New York [etc.] 2010. x, 410 pp. $130.00. (Paper: $38.95.)

In this volume Professor Dubois and Dr Scott bring together fourteen articles, published previously as journal articles or book chapters over the past thirty-five years, that reflect several perspectives and focus on various regions in North and South America and the West Indies to explore how enslaved and formerly enslaved Africans imagined, reformulated, and transformed the political and legal contexts in which they lived.

Represión, derechos humanos, memoria y archivos. Una perspectiva latinoamericana. Ed. José Babiano [etc.] Fundacion 1^o de Mayo [etc.] Madrid 2010. 227 pp. No price.

Based on a conference held in Madrid in October 2009, this collection focuses on the role of archives in relation to repression, human rights, and memory, mainly in Latin America but also in Spain and Portugal. Two contributors analyse competing memory discourses in South America and Spain respectively; six others discuss archives in Spain, Uruguay, Portugal, Chile, and Peru. The volume opens with a theoretical essay on memory, history, and the role of historians, and concludes with recommendations for the preservation and use of archives documenting human rights violations and an international directory of repositories and institutions keeping such records.

Rose, Sonya O. What is Gender History? [What is History?] Polity, Cambridge [etc.] 2010. viii, 157 pp. £45.00. (Paper: £13.99.)

In this short introduction to the field of gender history, Professor Rose, after providing definitions of basic terms and charting how gender history evolved from women's history, discusses the distinction between sex and gender and considers histories of the body and of sexuality. She highlights the significance of race, class, and ethnicity in their relation to gender, introduces the study of men and masculinity and illustrates how the study of gender has illuminated the histories of revolution, war, and nationalism, industrialization and labour relations, colonialism and imperialism. She concludes by examining some controversies in studying gender in history and by introducing some of the current new approaches.

Swaminathan, Srividhya. Debating the Slave Trade. Rhetoric of British National Identity, 1795–1815. [Ashgate Series in Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Studies.] Ashgate, Farnham [etc.] 2009. xiii, 245 pp. Ill. £50.00.

The slave trade debates were waged openly in print and at their height, between 1788 and 1793, publications numbered in the hundreds. Among those who took part in these debates were African authors like Ignatius Sancho, Phillis Wheatley, and Olaudah Equiano; West Indian planters and merchants; and the Quaker activist Anthony Benezet. Examining books, pamphlets, and literary works, Professor Swaminathan in this book analyses how the rhetorical strategies used by both sides of the abolitionist debate helped construct a British national identity and character.

Translocality. The Study of Globalising Processes from a Southern Perspective. Ed. by Ulrike Freitag and Achim von Oppen. [Studies in Global Social History, Vol. 4.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2010. xv, pp. 447. € 125.00; $183.00.

The thirteen, mainly anthropological, contributions to this volume (based on a conference held in Berlin in 2006) about globalizing processes include case studies on women migrants from Niger; Chinese women and migration to Europe; Arab combatants in the two World Wars; gold mining camps in Burkina Faso; life in a Kabylian village; kinship networks in Central Africa; Indian Muslims; Southern African cities and townships; South Asian transnational Muslim networks; and representations of “Turks” and “Germans” in the Turkish press in Germany. The volume also includes an introduction of the concept “translocality” and a discussion of “authochthony”.

Transnational Lives. Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700–present. Ed. by Desley Deacon, Penny Russell, and Angela Woollacott. [Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series.] Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2010. xvi, 309 pp. Ill. £55.00.

This volume, based on a conference held in Canberra in July 2006, presents a collection of diverse life stories from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, including that of a Chinese merchant who traded between Australia, India, and China; an Australian Aboriginal activist travelling across Europe; the lives of Eurasians who tried their luck in global entertainment industries; and African-American colonists in Liberia. The twenty-two contributions document the human impact of wars, labour systems, and social and gender inequalities that lie at the root of some transnational journeys and illustrate how important mobility has been in a modernizing world.

Le travail contraint en Asie et en Europe XVII–XXe siècles. Sous la dir. de Alessandro Stanziani. Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris 2010. xxxvi, 337 pp. € 27.00.

The twelve chapters in this volume about free and unfree labour in Asia and Europe examine labour relations in nineteenth-century India; English, American, German, and French labour law models; the Japanese factory law of 1911; Islam and the abolition of slavery; employment conditions in the silk industries of Japan and Lyons; discipline on the job at a seventeenth-century Japanese mercantile house; an early twentieth-century international network of Hindu merchants; the French nineteenth-century livret d'ouvrier; domestic service in seventeenth-century China; serfdom in Russia; and forced labour in turn-of-the-century India.

Unemployment and Protest. New Perspectives on Two Centuries of Contention. Ed. by Matthias Reiss and Matt Perry. [Studies of the German Historical Institute London.] Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2011. ix, 448 pp. £75.00.

Challenging the view of the unemployed as passive and politically apathetic individuals, this volume (largely based on a conference held in London in 2007) is about the various types of protest by the jobless to obtain work. It contains fourteen case studies of unemployment movements and individual protests in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, the United States, British-ruled Palestine, and New Zealand. The volume's themes include: representations of the unemployed in Victor Gollancz's Left Book Club, protests by the unemployed in the Internet era, and the protests of jobless immigrants in Depression-era France. One of the two historiographical introductions focuses on the seminal study of Marienthal's unemployed in the 1930s.

Utopia/Dystopia. Conditions of Historical Possibility. Ed. by Michael D. Gordin, Helen Tilley, and Gyan Prakash. Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2010. vi, 293 pp. £19.95.

Treating utopias as historically grounded categories, the ten essays in this volume examine how individuals and groups throughout the ages have interpreted utopian visions in their daily present, with an eye to the future. The collection includes chapters on the 1856–1857 Xhosa Cattle Killing in South Africa and the Christian evangelization of the Xhosa; internationalism in Central Europe at the turn of the twentieth century; possibilities for an everyday utopia in modern cities; Dalit politics; and, focusing on the Leningrad universities, how the Stalinist purges of the 1930s served as an extension of the utopian/dystopian relationship.

Wolikow, Serge. L'internationale communiste (1919–1943). Le Komintern ou le rêve déchu du parti mondial de la révolution. Les Editions de l'Atelier, Paris 2010. 287 pp. (Incl. CD-rom.) € 26.00.

Professor Wolikow in this book recounts the history of the Third International (Comintern) from its establishment in Moscow on 2 March 1919 until its dissolution in 1943. After examining the organization of the Comintern, its doctrines and media policies, the author focuses on the backgrounds, recruitment, and training of the people involved in Comintern history and on the Comintern's archives and historiography. The accompanying CD-rom features the second edition of the Dictionnaire biographique des militants du Komintern pour la Belgique, la France, le Luxembourg et la Suisse.

COMPARATIVE HISTORY

Burbank, Jane and Frederick Cooper. Empires in World History. Power and the Politics of Difference. Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2010. xiv, 511 pp. Ill. $35.00; £24.95.

Concentrating on Eurasia and with consideration for overseas empires in the Americas, Professors Burbank and Cooper in this book explore the multiple operating styles of empires. They examine Rome and China from the third century CE onwards, Byzantium, the Islamic Caliphates, Charlemagne's Catholic empire, and the rule of the Mongols and the Ottomans. The authors also discuss the influence of empire on capitalism and popular sovereignty, Europe's colonial projects, Russia's empire building, and America's “empire of liberty”. Designed for non-specialist readers, the book provides guides for further reading with each chapter instead of footnotes.

Refugees from Nazi Germany and the Liberal European States. Ed. by Frank Caestecker and Bob Moore. Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2010. xii, 346 pp. $110.00; £64.00.

The first section of this volume about policies towards refugees from Nazi Germany in the 1930s until September 1939 opens with a review of the international refugee regime during the 1930s. The next seven chapters are case studies highlighting Denmark, France, Switzerland, Latin America, Shanghai, Palestine, and the United States respectively. The final chapter in this section examines the reception of unaccompanied child refugees in Britain, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands. In the second section, which is arranged chronologically, the editors offer a comparative perspective on overall refugee policy in the 1930s.

Sklaverei und Postemanzipationsgesellschaften in Afrika und der Karibik. Hrsg. Christine Hatzky und Ulrike Schmieder. [Periplus. Jahrbuch für aussereuropäische Geschichte, Band 20.] LIT Verlag, Berlin 2010, iv, 267 pp. € 17.90.

This volume brings together seven articles about slave and post-emancipation societies in Africa and the Caribbean, focusing on a German ship doctor's account of a visit to Portuguese West Africa in 1841; the Iberian Atlantic slave trade in the nineteenth century; Afro-American abolition and emigration and the Martin R. Delanys 1859 Niger Valley Exploring Party; civilizing missions in Martinique before and after emancipation; and abolition and gender in French Sudan (1890–1920); the volume opens with two introductory and historiographical essays.

Tsuya, Noriko O., Wang Feng, George Alter [a.o.]. Prudence and Pressure. Reproduction and Human Agency in Europe and Asia, 1700–1900. The MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.) [etc.] 2010. xxv, 380 pp. Maps. $40.00 £27.95.

This volume about the impact of social organizations, economic conditions and human agency on human reproduction in Europe and Asia includes three articles discussing contexts and models; three articles examining from a comparative perspective the influence of household structure on demographic behaviour; reproductive responses to economic stress; and prenatal and postnatal control of family size and composition. Five contributions focus on reproductive behaviour in pre-industrial communities in Sweden, Belgium, Italy, Japan, and China. This publication is part of the long-term Eurasia Population and Family History Project.

The World in World Wars. Experiences, Perceptions and Perspectives from Africa and Asia. Ed. by Heike Liebau, Katrin Bromber, Katharina Lange, Dyala Hamzah and Ravi Ahuja. [Studies in Global Social History, Vol. 5.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2010. vii, 613 pp. € 129.00; $183.00.

The nineteen contributions to this volume, based on a conference held in Berlin in June 2007, explore social and cultural aspects of the two world wars in African, south Asian, and Middle Eastern societies. The six chapters in the first section focus on the frontline experiences of Indian, Malawian, and Arab soldiers and civilians. The following six chapters examine spontaneous and organized responses in public debates, propaganda activities, and in individual and collective memories in India, East Africa, Syria, Iraq, and Tunisia. The seven chapters in the third section discuss the broader implications of the wars for African and Asian societies. See also Massimo Zaccaria's review in this volume, pp. 478–480.

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES

Garcés-Mascareñas, Blanca. Labour Migration in Malaysia and Spain. Markets, Citizenship and Rights. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2012. 251 pp. € 39.95.

In this dissertation (Amsterdam 2010) Dr Garcés-Mascareñas examines the national or state side of migratory processes rather than the often studied global aspects of migration. By describing the cases of Malaysia (an example of a non-liberal state) and Spain (a liberal democracy), and comparing state regulation of labour immigration in both countries from the 1980s to 2007, she analyses what may be identified as the “trilemma” between markets, citizenship and rights. See also Marshall Clarke's review in this volume, pp. 490–492.

AFRICA

Christopher, Emma. A Merciless Place. The Lost Story of Britain's Convict Disaster in Africa. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2011. vii, 432 pp. Ill. Maps. £16.99.

After the loss of the American colonies, the British Government around 1780 began deporting its criminals to West Africa, where they were employed as guards at the region's slave-trading forts. The results, as Dr Christopher shows in her detailed study of this episode, were chaos, mutiny, piracy, and murder. She argues that this disastrous course of events influenced the British government's subsequent decision to deport its criminals to Australia. See also Ty Reese's review in this volume, pp. 473–475.

Argentina

The New Cultural History of Peronism. Power and Identity in Mid-Twentieth-Century Argentina. Ed. by Matthew B. Karush and Oscar Chamosa. Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 2010. viii, 309 pp. £68.00. (Paper: £16.99.)

The topics in this volume about the cultural history of Peronism, mainly during the first Peronist regime (1946–1955), include mass culture and melodrama, the Argentine Folklore Movement, working-class beauty queens, images emerging around Eva Perón, architecture, and the emotional investment inspired by Peronism. The eight contributors examine the experience and agency of urban male workers, women, indigenous groups, middle-class anti-Peronists, internal migrants, architects, and academics, assessing class-based identities and questions of race and gender and exploring the relationship between the state and popular consciousness. The volume concludes with a chapter on the study of Peronism.

Canada

I Have a Story to Tell You. Ed. by Seemah C. Berson. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo (Ontario) 2010. xv, 285 pp. $29.95.

In this volume Mrs Berson recounts the experiences of thirty-seven eastern European Jewish immigrants who came to Canada between 1900 and 1930 and – in most cases – went to work in the garment factories of Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg. The stories, based on interviews conducted in the 1970s, are about their lives in “the Old Country”, socialism, their difficulties finding work in Canada, the influence of Jewish culture and traditions, the fight against exploitation, and the struggles to establish unions to achieve better working conditions.

El Salvador

Ignacio Ellacuría 20 años después. Actas del Congreso Internacional. Sevilla, 26 a 28 de octubre de 2009. Departamento de Filosofía del Derecho de la Universidad de Sevilla. Dir. Juan Antonio Senent de Frutos y José Mora Galiana. Instituto Andaluz de Administración Pública, Sevilla 2010. vii, 503 pp. € 15.09.

This volume contains the proceedings of an international conference held in Seville in October 2009 to commemorate the death of Ignacio Ellacuría, a Spanish priest, philosopher, and theologian who lived and worked in El Salvador until he was assassinated in 1989, along with seven others, for opposing the Salvadoran government. The twenty-four contributions address various aspects of Ellacuría's philosophical, legal, and theological work, including his liberation philosophy, and reflect on his legacy. The volume concludes with two previously unpublished short texts by Ellacuría on ethics in philosophy.

Silber, Irina Carlota. Everyday Revolutionaries. Gender, Violence, and Disillusionment in Postwar El Salvador. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey [etc.] 2011. 238 pp. Ill. $27.95.

During the Salvadoran Civil War (1980–1992) the Chalatenango region was known for its peasant revolutionary participation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in this former war zone during the immediate postwar period of reconstruction between 1993 and 1998, and on research on immigration to the United States by former insurgents from 2000 to 2008, Professor Silber in this book aims to provide a longitudinal analysis of the aftermath of violence in a Latin American post-conflict society. See also Tine Destrooper's review in this volume, pp. 495–497.

Guadeloupe

Gircour, Frédéric et Nicolas Rey. LKP. Guadeloupe: Le mouvement des 44 jours. [Le présent avenir.] Éditions Syllepse, Paris 2010. 187 pp. Ill. € 15.00.

On 20 January 2009, a general strike in protest against the high cost of living was launched in Guadeloupe by the Collectif contre l'exploitation outrancière/Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon (LKP), an organization representing trade unions, left-wing political parties, and cultural associations. This volume chronicles the forty-four day strike (the longest general strike in French history, according to the authors), analyses the LKP as a social movement, assesses the LKP in relation to Guadeloupe's independence, and investigates the death of trade-union leader, Jacques Bino.

Guatemala

Konefal, Betsy. For Every Indio Who Falls. A History of Maya Activism in Guatemala, 1960–1990. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque 2010. x, 246 pp. Ill. $28.95.

In this book about Maya activism, Professor Konefal aims to show that militant Mayas were not bystanders in the transformations that preceded and accompanied Guatemala's civil war. Using interviews in addition to other sources, she examines the roots and diversity of Maya organizing and its place in the conflict; traces debates about ethnicity, class, and revolution; analyses the connections between cultural events, such as beauty queen pageants, and more radical demands for change; and follows the uneasy relationships between Maya revolutionaries and their Ladino counterparts.

Jamaica

Diptee, Audra A. From Africa to Jamaica. The Making of an Atlantic Slave Society, 1775–1807. University Press of Florida, Gainesville [etc.] 2010. xiv, 187 pp. Maps. Ill. $69.95.

This book focuses on the demography, experiences, and responses of enslaved African men, women, and children who were transported to Jamaica between 1775 and 1807, when the British abolished the slave trade. Using demographic analyses, Professor Diptee aims to provide insight into Atlantic slave societies, particularly in Jamaica. Examining the captives’ experiences in Africa, during the Atlantic crossing, and in Jamaica, she argues that their responses to their enslavement depended largely on their personal histories in Africa. Thirteen documents relating to the voyage of the slave ship African Queen (1792–1793) are reproduced in the appendix.

Mexico

Chimalpahin's Conquest. A Nahua Historian's Rewriting of Francisco López de Gómara's La conquista de México. Ed. and transl. by Susan Schroeder, Anne J. Cruz, Cristián Roa-de-la Carrera [a.o.] [Series Chimalpahin.] Stanford University Press, Stanford (Calif.) 2010. xvi, 510 pp. $60.00. (E-book: $60.00.)

Chimalpahin (born in 1597) was a Nahua historian best known for his epic histories of Indian Mexico. He also made a copy of Francisco López de Gómara's monumental Historia de las Indias y Conquista de México (1552). In transcribing the book, Chimalpahin deleted and corrected sections of La Conquista, adding information about the Nahuas, Emperor Moctezuma, and other indigenous people who participated in the first encounters with the conquistadores, adding the perspective of Nahua culture to Francisco López de Gómara's Hispanic account of the conquest. This volume is the first complete modern English translation of Chimalpahin's work.

United States of America

Cohen, Ronald D. Work and Sing. A History of Occupational and Labor Union Songs in the United States. Carquinez Press, Crockett, CA; Fund for Labor Culture & History, San Francisco 2010. x, 190 pp. Ill. $24.95.

This study explores and documents the practice of publishing and collecting occupational and labour union songs in the United States, from the early twentieth century to recent decades. The author focuses on labour songs related to blue-collar occupations, including those of white, black, Asian, and Hispanic workers. Professor Cohen, who has published extensively on the history of American folk music, also analyses the songs’ use by workers and their supporters.

Cowie, Jefferson. Stayin’ Alive. The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class. The New Press, New York [etc.] 2010. 464 pp. Ill. $21.95.

In this political and cultural history of American labour from the late 1960s, a period of rising incomes and optimism, to the early 1980s, years marked by deepening economic inequalities and lowered expectations, Professor Cowie draws on film, music, and television programmes (e.g., All in the Family), as well as on archival and printed materials, to reveal how the American working class discarded the radicalism of the 1960s and embraced Ronald Reagan's New Right.

Enck-Wanzer, Darrel, Denise Oliver-Velez, and Iris Morales. The Young Lords. A Reader. New York University Press, New York [etc.] 2010. xiii, 251 pp. Ill. $26.00; £16.99.

The Young Lords, originally a Chicago street gang fighting gentrification and unfair evictions in Puerto Rican neighbourhoods, evolved into a national political movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with headquarters in New York City and other centres in Philadelphia, Boston, and California. Based on interviews, speeches, and texts from pamphlets and newspapers (mainly Palante), this thematically organized volume offers an introduction to a movement of politically radical Puerto Ricans, who set up programmes for political, social, and cultural change within the communities where they operated.

Feminist Frontiers. Women Who Shaped the Midwest. Ed. by Yvonne J. Johnson. Truman State University Press, Kirksville 2010. xxv, 206 pp. Ill. $29.95.

The eleven biographical essays in this collection focus on women political and social reformers in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century American Midwest. They include Mary Sibley, a slave owner who wrote against slavery; suffragette Marietta Bones; Carry Nation, the “prohibition crusader”; Amanda Berry Smith, a pioneer for African-American childcare; Esther Twente, who helped develop social work education; abolitionist Frances Dana Gage, who was a pioneer advocate for women's rights and temperance; and socialist Genora Dollinger, who helped organize a sit-down strike against General Motors in Flint, Michigan, in 1936.

Huibregtse, Jon R. American Railroad Labor and the Genesis of the New Deal, 1919–1935. Foreword by Richard Greenwald and Timothy Minchin. [Working in the Americas.] University Press of Florida, Gainesville [etc.] 2010. xiv, 172 pp. Ill. £69.95.

In this book about American railroad unions in the 1920s, Professor Huibregtse, after summarizing the history of the railroad industry and its unions before and during World War I, sets out to explain how efforts by the Plumb Plan League and the Railroad Labor Executive Association brought about the Railroad Labor Act, its amendments, and the Railroad Retirement Act, laws that became models for the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act. He describes how the railroad unions devised a model for union activism that guided workers’ organizations over the next two decades.

Kornblith, Gary J. Slavery and Sectional Strife in the Early American Republic, 1776–1821. [American Controversies Series.] Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Lanham [etc.] 2010. xiv, 164 pp. € 44.95.

The first half of this sourcebook about the debate on slavery in the United States from the Revolutionary era through the conclusion of the Missouri Crisis in 1821 consists of an analytical essay on slavery and sectional strife in the early American republic (1776–1821). The second half comprises twenty-nine primary documents that illustrate and exemplify the slavery debate. Each document is introduced by a headnote that situates the document historically. Some of the documents are by well-known authors, such as Thomas Jefferson, others by more obscure Americans, such as the slaves who petitioned the Massachusetts government for their freedom in 1774.

Mello, William J. New York Longshoremen. Class and Power on the Docks. [Working in the Americas.] University Press of Florida, Gainesville [etc.] 2010. xiv, 241 pp. Ill. £58.87.

Beginning in 1945, New York dockworkers fought for nearly thirty years against shipping companies, local police, federal and state authorities, and their own corrupt union leadership. At the centre of the conflict were the longshoremen's demands for workplace control and a greater say in the decision-making process. Examining this movement to reform the labour process, Professor Mello concludes that despite some significant victories, the longshoremen ultimately lost their battle for control of “the waterfront”.

Minardi, Margot. Making Slavery History. Abolitionism and the Politics of Memory in Massachusetts. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2010. ix, 228 pp. Ill. $49.95.

Drawing on the memories of Phillis Wheatly and Crispus Attucks, two black Americans associated with Boston's Revolutionary history, as well as on representations of black men at the Battle of Bunker Hill, in this study (based on a dissertation, Harvard University, 2007) Professor Minardi examines the relationship between memory and social change, in particular how commemorative practices and historical arguments about the American Revolution influenced anti-slavery politics in Massachusetts during the period between the Revolution and the Civil War.

O'Farrell, Brigid. She Was One of Us. Eleanor Roosevelt and the American Worker. Cornell University Press, Ithaca 2010. x, 274 pp. Ill. $49.95.

Although born into a life of privilege and married to the President of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt was a labour advocate and long-time member of the AFL-CIO's Newspaper Guild. In this book, labour historian O'Farrell provides an account of Roosevelt's activities on behalf of workers, examines her guiding principles, and describes her circle of friends, which included Walter Reuther and Rose Schneiderman of the Women's Trade Union League and the garment unions.

Phillips, George Harwood. Vineyards and Vaqueros. Indian Labor and the Economic Expansion of Southern California, 1771–1877. [Before Gold. California under Spain and Mexico, Vol. 1.] The Arthur H. Clark Company, Norman (Okla.) 2010. 387 pp. Ill. Maps. $45.00.

Focusing on Native Americans more as workers than as victims, Professor Phillips in this book describes the economic dimension of traditional southern California Indian cultures, the origins and collapse of California's missions, the emergence and expansion of the pueblo of Los Angeles and the rise and decline of the ranchos. He then considers the Indians’ incorporation into these institutions and the resulting impact on the region's economy and society, aiming to demonstrate that Indian labour was vital to the early economic development of the Los Angeles region.

Red Activists and Black Freedom. James and Esther Jackson and the Long Civil Rights Revolution. Ed. by David Levering Lewis, Michael H. Nash and Daniel J Leab. Routledge, London [etc.] 2010. xix, 113 pp. Ill. $125.00.

This aim of this collection, largely based on a symposium held in New York in 2006 and also published as a special issue of American Communist History, is to demonstrate that the American Left, in particular Esther Cooper Jackson and James Jackson, figured prominently in the origins of the civil rights movement. Eleven essays focus on various aspects of the Jacksons’ activities, for example, the organization of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, Esther Cooper's study on black women domestic workers, and the connection between trade unionism and the early civil rights movement. The volume concludes with a reflection by Angela Davis on the Jacksons’ legacy.

Roy, William G. Reds, Whites, and Blues. Social Movements, Folk Music, and Race in the United States. [Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology.] Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2010. xii, 288 pp. Ill. $37.50; £26.95.

In this study of social movements’ relation to popular music, Professor Roy focuses on two twentieth-century American social movements that used popular music – more particularly folk music – in different ways. Comparing the role and use of folk music in the People's Songs movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which had strong ties to the CPUSA and the left-wing labour movement, with that in the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, the author concludes that whereas the People's Songs movement used folk music primarily as a tool for propaganda, the civil rights movement integrated music into collective action.

Rutkoff, Peter M. and William B. Scott. Fly Away. The Great African American Cultural Migrations. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2010. xv, 408 pp. Ill. £23.50.

When African Americans in the twentieth century left the rural American South for new opportunities in the urban north and west, they took with them the South's tradition of religion, language, music and art, recreating and preserving their southern identities in the churches, newspapers, jazz clubs, and neighbourhoods of America's largest cities. In this book Professors Rutkoff and Scott explore the development and adaptation of African-American culture, from its West African roots to its impact on mainstream America.

Schmidt, James D. Industrial Violence and the Legal Origins of Child Labor. [Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2010. xiv, 279 pp. Ill. £55.00; $85.00. (Paper: £17.99; $27.99.)

This book is about the shift in the cultural perception of child labour that occurred between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on litigation records about young workers injured or killed in industrial accidents in the Appalachian South between the 1880s and the 1920s, Professor Schmidt in this book argues that young workers and their families envisioned an industrial childhood that depended on negotiating safe workplaces, a vision at odds with child labour reforms aimed at excluding children from productive life.

Slatin, Craig. Environmental Unions. Labor and the Superfund. [Work, Health, and Environment Series.] Baywood Publishing Company, Amityville, New York 2009. xi, 246 pp. $59.95. (Paper: $39.95.)

In this book about workplace health and safety and environmental protection, Professor Slatin examines how union leaders, staff, and allied professionals worked to secure health and safety protection measures for hazardous waste operations and emergency response workers. He discusses the emergence of the hazardous waste management industry in the 1970s and 1990s, and labour's involvement in obtaining federal health and safety protection measures for workers in that industry, an effort that led to a worker health and safety section in the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986.

China

Karl, Rebecca E. Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World. A Concise History. [Asia-Pacific. Culture, Politics, and Society.] Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 2010. xii, 200 pp. £58.00. (Paper: £14.99.)

Professor Karl in this book traces Mao's life from his youth in Hunan province to his tenure as chairman of the People's Republic of China. Informing her readers that this is not a biography, but rather a history modelled after Georg Lukács's consideration of Lenin in the 1920s, she situates Mao and the revolution in a global setting informed by imperialism, decolonization, and Third Worldism, and discusses worldwide trends in politics, the economy, military power, and territorial sovereignty. She concludes by examining his legacy in China from his death in 1976 through the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

One Country, Two Societies. Rural-Urban Inequality in Contemporary China. Ed. by Martin King Whyte. [Harvard Contemporary China Series, Vol. 16.] Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) [etc.] 2010. xi, 445 pp. $55.00; £40.95; € 49.50.

The fifteen chapters in this volume, largely based on a conference held at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University, in 2006, examine the historical background of rural–urban relations; the size and trend in the income gap between rural and urban residents; aspects of inequality apart from income; experiences with discrimination, particularly among urban migrants; and conceptual and policy debates in China regarding the status and treatment of rural residents and urban migrants. One of the questions they try to answer is why the Chinese communist revolution, while professing dedication to an egalitarian society, in fact produced a form of socialist serfdom for rural residents.

India

Balachandran, G. Globalizing Labour? Indian Seafarers and World Shipping, c.1870–1945. Oxford University Press, New Delhi [etc.] 2012. xii, 318 pp. Rs 1240.00; £30.00.

In this book about south Asian maritime workers, seafarers, and merchant shipping between 1870 and 1947, Professor Balachandran examines the recruitment and control of coolies and seafarers, their social and regional origins, their work, wages, and itineraries, as well as patterns of protest and resistance. He also evaluates the position of India in the global economy in the period of late capitalism and high imperialism, and explores the importance of Indian labour in the context of European merchant shipping. See also Michael Fisher's review in this volume, pp. 475–478.

The Great Rebellion of 1857 in India. Exploring transgressions, contests and diversities. Ed. by Biswamoy Pati. [Routledge Studies in South Asian History, Vol. 7.] Routledge, London [etc.] 2010. xi, 194 pp. £80.00.

Aiming to demonstrate that the Great Rebellion of 1857 in India was more than a “sepoy mutiny”, the ten contributions to this volume explore such themes as, courtesans and the Rebellion; Indian women in nineteenth-century “mutiny” fiction; “marginal whites” (poor and unruly Europeans); penal laws and colonial anxieties about the Mughals; popular struggles involving adivasis (tribals and outcastes); and events in the Tamil-speaking regions at the time of the Rebellion. In the opening chapter, Professor Pati provides a historiographical introduction to the Rebellion.

Radhakrishnan, Smitha. Appropriately Indian. Gender and Culture in a New Transnational Class. Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 2011. xi, 239 pp. Ill. $79.95. (Paper: $22.95.)

Drawing on ethnographic research and interviews with Indian information technology professionals in Mumbai, Bangalore, Silicon Valley, and South Africa, Professor Radhakrishnan in this book examines the specific practices, attitudes, and beliefs of a small but prestigious segment of India's labour force, among which female IT professionals are particularly influential. Through a process the author calls “cultural streamlining”, these transnational knowledge workers transform various practices constituting “Indian culture” into appropriate differences: a generic, transferable set of “Indian” cultural norms palatable to Western cosmopolitan culture. See also Carol Upadhya's review in this volume, pp. 492–495.

Israel

De Vries, David. Diamonds and War. State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine. Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2010. xv, 351 pp. Ill. £ 56.00.

This study of the emergence of the diamond industry in 1930s and 1940s British-ruled Palestine aims to offer a social history of this industry and the labour conditions and struggles involved, embedded in the international political economy of the time. Professor De Vries explores the background of the global commodity chain of diamond production and trade, and focuses on the transplantation of the industry of diamond cutting and polishing to Mandate Palestine to examine the development of a specific pattern of state intervention in the empowerment of private capital. See also Karin Hofmeester's review in this volume, pp. 480–482.

Turkey

Gerber, Haim. State and Society in the Ottoman Empire. [Variorum Collected Studies Series.] Ashgate, Farnham [etc.] 2010. xvi, 296 pp. £80.00.

This volume contains facsimile reprints of fifteen previously published articles focusing on three main subjects: the early modern Turkish economy and society (for example, the waqf institution in early Ottoman Edirne, the monetary system of the Ottoman Empire, women's social and economic status in seventeenth-century Bursa, the Ottoman and Turkish family, and relations between Muslims and non-Muslims); nineteenth-century Ottoman administration, reforms, and modernization, in particular in Palestine and Syria; and identity and early nationalism in the Middle East.

Vietnam

Luong, Hy V. Tradition, Revolution, and Market Economy in a North Vietnamese Village, 1925–2006. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu 2010. xiii, 333 pp. Ill. $62.00. (Paper: $28.00.)

Using archival documents and anthropological fieldwork conducted between the late 1980s and 2006, in this book, an expanded edition of his 1992 publication, Professor Luong focuses on the political, economic, and sociocultural changes in Son-Duong, a North Vietnamese village. He examines the historical events and village structure in French colonial North Vietnam; the rise of Marxism and the revolution in the village; and the transformation from a command economy to a market economy, emphasizing the importance of local traditions in shaping villagers’ responses to colonialism, socialist policies, and the global market economy. He concludes his study with some theoretical reflections.

Ngo Van. In the Crossfire. Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary. Ed. by Ken Knabb and Hélène Fleury. Transl. from the French by Hélène Fleury, Hilary Horrocks, Ken Knabb [a.o.]. AK Press, Oakland [etc.] 2010. xix, 264 pp. Ill. $19.95.

As a young man Ngo Van (1912–2005) participated in the underground movement against the French colonial regime. After World War II, fleeing both the French colonial police and Ho Chi Minh's communism, Ngo Van emigrated to France in 1948, where he became a factory worker and a painter, and where, as a historian, he published several works on the history of modern Vietnam. This English edition of Ngo Van's autobiography, originally published in two volumes as Au pays de la Cloche fêlée (Paris, 2000) and Au Pays d'Héloïse (Paris, 2005), includes an introduction and a bibliography and chronology.

France

Adams, Christine. Poverty, Charity, and Motherhood. Maternal Societies in Nineteenth-Century France. University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2010. xi, 251 pp. $45.00.

The Society of Maternal Charity (Société de Charité Maternelle), one of the most important charities in nineteenth-century France, was dedicated to providing assistance to poor women and their infant children. It was organized by middle-class and elite women and financed by powerful families and the government. In this book Professor Adams examines the Society's philanthropic work in Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Dijon, Rouen, and Limoges, tracing the Society's role in shaping notions of maternity and paving the way for the social welfare state in France.

Bernard, André. Être anarchiste oblige! Atelier de création libertaire, Lyon 2010. 231 pp. Ill. € 14.00.

In this volume the French anarchist and war resister André Bernard (b. 1937) recounts his life story: how he came to embrace anarchism, how he, as a conscientious objector, refused to take part in the Algerian war and therefore had to flee France, his sojourns in Geneva, where he helped found the Centre international de recherches sur l'anarchisme (CIRA), and Brussels, his return to France in 1960, his trials and imprisonment until 1963. The volume also contains an essay on anarchism and non-violence and reprints of articles the author wrote for the anarchist journals Le Monde libertaire and Réfractions.

Dubois, Vincent. The Bureaucrat and the Poor. Encounters in French Welfare Offices. Transl. from French by Jean-Yves Bart. Ashgate, Farnham [etc.] 2010. xxi, 206 pp. £55.00.

Based on observations and interviews conducted at two local welfare offices in France in 1995, this book aims to provide a realistic impression of French welfare policies, institutions, and reforms. Analysing face-to-face encounters, Professor Dubois sets out to reveal the complex relationship between welfare agents and welfare applicants, arguing that “welfare encounters”, as illustrations of the complexity of social domination, are opportunities both to help people and to impose conduct and identities through exerting “symbolic violence”.

Ferguson, Eliza Earle. Gender and Justice. Violence, Intimacy, and Community in Fin-de-Siècle Paris. [The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science 128th Series, Vol. 1.] The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2010. x, 268 pp. £31.00.

Professor Ferguson in this book examines hundreds of dossiers concerning violent crimes between domestic partners from the Cour d'assises de la Seine from 1871 to c.1900 to offer insight into the daily lives of nineteenth-century Parisians. She aims to reveal how “intimate violence” was pivotal in testing and enforcing the boundaries of acceptable behaviour for men and women, in addition to being a control mechanism that was in turn regulated by local communities and state systems of justice.

Jenkins, Timothy. The Life of Property. House, Family and Inheritance in Béarn, South-West France. [Methodology and History in Anthropology, Vol. 21.] Berghahn, New York [etc.] 2010. xii, 181 pp. £35.00.

In this book Dr Jenkins examines forms of ownership and transmission of property in Béarn, a region in the French Pyrenees. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, and the work of Frédéric Le Play and Pierre Bourdieu (who was born in Béarn), he studies the complex and enduring expression of local categories concerning residence, kinship, marriage, and the transmission of wealth. Arguing that the study of small-scale ethnographic practices may elucidate larger-scale political and historical phenomena, he also addresses questions of the state, law, local languages, farming techniques, politics, economics, and demography.

Noël, Xavier. Paschal Grousset. De la Commune de Paris à la Chambre des députés. De Jules Verne à l'olympisme. [Réflexions faites.] Les Impressions Nouvelles, Liège 2010. 384 pp. Ill. € 29.50.

This is a biography of the French politician Paschal Grousset (1844–1909), who was Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Paris Commune. After the fall of the Commune he was deported to New Caledonia. He escaped and went to live in London, among other places. He translated English novels, including Stevenson's Treasure Island, and published science fiction novels under the pseudonym André Laurie. Writing as Philippe Daryl, he advocated sports education for everyone and proposed reviving the Olympic Games. After the Communards were granted amnesty, he returned to France in 1880 to become a socialist parliamentarian.

Nord, Philip. France's New Deal. From the Thirties to the Postwar Era. Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2010. xiii, 457 pp. $39.50; £27.95.

In this book Professor Nord examines the remaking of the French state after World War II by tracing developments in economic planning and the French social security system, and by exploring French cultural policies, which involved nationalizing radio, setting up a national cinema, and funding regional theatres. The author aims to show that this process of constructing modern France did not begin at the Liberation but had started at the end of the Third Republic and under the Vichy regime.

Wolin, Richard. The Wind from the East. French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s. Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2010. xiv, 391 pp. Ill. £24.95.

During the 1960s, French students, thinkers, writers, and artists, including Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Julia Kristeva, Phillipe Sollers, and Jean-Luc Godard, became fascinated with China's Cultural Revolution and, more generally, with Maoism. In this book Professor Wolin sets out to show how this Maoist “intoxication” inspired grassroots social movements and reinvigorated French civic and cultural life but nevertheless had little to do with a real understanding of Chinese politics.

Germany

Betts, Paul. Within Walls. Private Life in the German Democratic Republic. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2010. xi, 321 pp. Ill. $65.00.

Based on interviews, memoirs, diaries, Stasi files, and photographs and focusing on East Berlin, this book charts the meaning of private life in the GDR across various fields, ranging from law to photography, from religion to interior decoration, and from family life to memoir literature. Setting out to reveal how the private sphere, despite the primacy of public identities, assumed central importance in the GDR, Professor Betts first discusses institutions straddling the threshold between public and private (including the Church, the Stasi's “rival secret society”); he then examines the domestic sphere as a new arena of social reform in the 1960s and 1970s.

Hachtmann, Rüdiger. Das Wirtschaftsimperium der Deutschen Arbeitsfront 1933–1945. [Geschichte der Gegenwart, Band 3.] Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2012. 696 pp. Ill. € 49.90; S.fr. 66.90

The German Labour Front (DAF), founded in 1933, replaced the politically divided labour movement of the Weimar period. It became one of the largest organizations of the Third Reich, peaking at 25 million members and encompassing a vast amalgamation of companies in banking and insurance, construction and housing, book publishing and selling, car manufacturing, and shipping. This book describes the rise of the DAF's branches of industry from 1933 to 1945 and examines the impact of this NS organization's commercial activities on the German economy. See also Karl Heinz Roth's review in this volume, pp. 482–485.

Harris, Victoria. Selling Sex in the Reich. Prostitutes in German Society, 1914–1945. Oxford University Press Oxford [etc.] 2010. xii, 210 pp. Maps. £58.00.

Drawing on criminal records and registration documents from Leipzig and Hamburg from 1914 to 1945, in addition to government reports and the work of private charities, interest groups and contemporary studies, this book examines German prostitutes’ backgrounds, their reasons for entering the trade and their attitudes towards their work, their clients and those who sought to control them. The author aims to provide a new picture of the sex trade, arguing that it must be a “gendered history”, aiming to understand a society by examining how women and men interact within it.

Kocka, Jürgen. Civil Society and Dictatorship in Modern German History. [The Menahem Stern Jerusalem Lectures.] University Press of New England [etc.], Hanover [etc.] 2010. xi, 162 pp. $29.95.

The text of this volume is based on the Menahem Stern lectures that Professor Kocka delivered in Jerusalem in 2001, in which he addressed the following themes: the history of Germany's bourgeoisie and civil society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the East German dictatorship compared to that of the Third Reich; collective memories and politics in Germany after 1945 and 1990; and, in a chapter named “Historians, Fashion, and Truth”, historical interpretation over the last fifty years.

Paschen, Joachim. “Wenn Hamburg brennt, brennt die Welt”. Der kommunistische Griff nach der Macht im Oktober 1923. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main [etc.] 2010. 265 pp. € 27.90.

In October 1923 the KPD, led by Ernst Thälmann and Hugo Urbahns, started an armed insurrection in Hamburg with the aim of seizing power in Germany. In this book Dr Paschen offers a detailed account of the preparations for the coup, the three days of bloody fighting in the streets of Hamburg, and the aftermath, including the trial of Hugo Urbahns and his fellow insurgents (Thälmann escaped punishment), and the reactions by the people in the multiple elections held in 1924. The author concludes that a political swing to the right was one of the results of the attempted coup.

Petrescu, Corina L. Against All Odds. Models of Subversive Spaces in National Socialist Germany. [German Life and Civilization, Vol. 49.] Peter Lang, Oxford [etc.] 2010. vi, 276 pp. € 38.90.

In this book about public spheres in National Socialist Germany Dr Petrescu investigates where and under what circumstances resistance to Hitler's regime was possible. Drawing on leaflets, pamphlets, political and economic treatises, and theatre performances, the author examines the activities of the Jewish Cultural Association Berlin, the Kreisau Circle, the White Rose, and the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack Organization, four organizations operating in Germany between 1933 and 1944, to establish models of “crypto-public” spaces, and to evaluate their possibilities and limitations as sites of resistance.

Ragona, Gianfranco. Gustav Landauer anarchico ebreo Tedesco. 1870–1919. Editori Riuniti, Roma 2010. 447 pp. € 25.00.

In this intellectual and political biography of the German-Jewish writer, critic, translator, anarchist activist, and theorist Gustav Landauer (1870–1919) the author focuses on Landauer's attempts to integrate politics and culture, anarchism and socialism, freedom and social justice, and individuals and the community. According to the author, Landauer's anarchist and Jewish identities influenced his approach to this last theme.

Seidel, Hans-Christoph. Der Ruhrbergbau im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Zechen, Bergarbeiter, Zwangsarbeiter. [Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen. Schriftenreihe C: Arbeitseinsatz und Zwangsarbeit im Bergbau, Band 7.] Klartext, Essen 2010. 639 pp. € 79.00.

This dissertation (Ruhr Universität Bochum, 2009) offers a comprehensive analysis of coal mining in the Ruhr area during World War II. While the Nazi leadership considered coal production to be of vital importance to the outcome of the war, production in the labour-intensive, barely mechanized mines depended substantially on the size and productivity of the labour force. Dr Seidel examines how the mining companies responded to the demands of the war economy, the companies’ labour policies, and working and living conditions among the German miners, foreign workers, and forced labourers.

Vogel, Rahel Marie. Auf dem Weg zum neuen Menschen. Umerziehung zur “sozialistischen Persönlichkeit” in den Jugendwerkhöfen Hummelshain und Wolfersdorf (1961–1989). [Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe III, Geschichte und ihre Hilfswissenschaften, Band 1075.] Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main [etc.] 2010. 110 pp. Ill. € 18.50.

In building the GDR, the East German leadership hoped to create a new type of person as well: the “socialist personality”. Teenagers who did not comply with this model were labelled ineducable and sent to Jugendwerkhöfen (juvenile detention centres) to be re-educated. After exploring youth welfare policies in the GDR in general, Mrs Vogel in this book focuses on two Jugendwerkhöfen, Hummelshain and Wolfersdorf, to examine the methods used and the results of re-education in these so-called open institutions, which, she argues, were neither open nor the propagated “gateways to a new life”.

Wannenwetsch, Stefan. Unorthodoxe Sozialisten. Zu den Sozialismuskonzeptionen der Gruppe um Otto Straßer und des Internationalen Sozialistischen Kampfbundes in der Weimarer Republik. [Moderne Geschichte und Politik, Band 23.] Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main [etc.] 2010. 190 pp. € 37.20.

This is a comparative study of the socialist concepts of the Internationale Sozialistische Kampfbund (ISK) and of Otto Straßer's Kampfgemeinschaft Revolutionärer Nationalsozialisten (KGRNS), which originated in the NSDAP. Both splinter groups took part in the socialism debates in the Weimar Republic. Moving beyond the usual left–right dichotomy, the author juxtaposes the ISK's ethical socialism against Straßer's national socialism, arguing that while Straßer's political and economic ideas closely corresponded with Marxist views, the philosophical foundations and abstract concepts of the anti-democratic ISK were in fact nearer to Marxism.

Great Britain

Crawford, Patricia. Parents of Poor Children in England, 1580–1800. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2010. xi, 361 pp. Ill. £37.00.

In this book about the experiences of poor parents in England from 1580 to 1800, Professor Crawford examines the contrasting experiences of the mothers and fathers of illegitimate children. She discusses how material circumstances, particularly severe poverty, affected the upbringing of children, arguing that the rhetoric and practices by the Poor Law's “civic fathers” reduced all the poor (including adults) to the status of children. Reflecting on the experiences of poor mothers and fathers, she concludes that poverty, rather than lack of feeling, determined much of poor parents’ behaviour.

Ewen, Shane. Fighting Fires. Creating the British Fire Service, 1800–1978. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2010. viii, 235 pp. £50.00.

In this book about the professionalization of urban fire fighting Dr Ewen traces the origins of municipal fire brigades by examining the roles of fire insurance companies in the early nineteenth century, the “great fire” of Edinburgh in 1824, and individual firemen and public perceptions of fire fighting. He then describes how a disparate collection of fire brigades were transformed into a cohesive profession at the turn of the twentieth century, the experience of the Blitz during World War II, and the growing animosity between firemen and their employers, which culminated in the national firemen's strike of 1977. See also IRSH, 51 (2006), pp. 41–67.

Field, Geoffrey G. Blood, Sweat, and Toil. Remaking the British Working Class, 1939–1945. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2011. x, 405 pp. Ill. £125.00.

In this book about the British working class in World War II, Professor Field examines the war's impact on workers in the contexts of the family, military service, the workplace, local communities, and national politics. Challenging views that the war eroded class divisions, the author argues that, on the contrary, the war experience deepened workers’ social consciousness and reshaped class relations by “nationalizing” workers, both in a patriotic sense and by increasing the sense of belonging to a national class. See also Kevin Morgan's review in this volume, pp. 485–488.

Frank, Christopher. Master and Servant Law. Chartists, Trade Unions, Radical Lawyers and the Magistracy in England, 1840–1865. Ashgate, Farnham [etc.] 2010. x, 283 pp. £65.00.

In the English corpus of statutes known as master and servant law, workers’ breach of contract was treated as a criminal offence, although employers’ violations of agreements were subject only to civil remedies. Exploring the tactics, arguments, and rhetoric utilized during a legal and political campaign by trade unions, Chartists, and some radical solicitors in mid-nineteenth-century England and Wales, Professor Frank aims in this book to demonstrate the importance of early organized resistance to master and servant law, both for the eventual repeal of penal sanctions for breach of contract in 1875 and for the more general development of the trade-union movement.

Kelly, John. Ethical Socialism and the Trade Unions. Allan Flanders and British Industrial Relations Reform. [Routledge Research in Employment Relations.] Routledge, New York 2010. 246 pp. £70.00.

In this book Professor Kelly explores the connections between the evolution of industrial relations in Britain, both as a field of study and as a set of policy ideas, and the evolution of social democracy over the postwar period. To this end, he reviews the work and politics of Allan Flanders (1910–1973), a prominent British industrial relations academic whose ideas significantly influenced government labour policy in the 1960s and 1970s, a co-editor of Socialist Commentary and its predecessors from 1934 until 1973, and the leading figure in the influential 1950s “think tank”, Socialist Union.

Klein, Joanne, Invisible Men. The Secret Lives of Police Constables in Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham, 1900–1939. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool 2010. 334 pp. £65. (Paper: £19.99.)

In this book about the lives of ordinary English constables in the city police forces of Manchester, Birmingham, and Liverpool from 1900 to 1939, Professor Klein examines police force expectations and duties; internal force relationships; police unions and federations; friendliness and acrimony of constables toward civilians, including women; and domestic life. She explores how constables influenced law enforcement and considers changes in policing during this period, arguing that on duty they brought the criminal justice system and working-class culture together.

Reid, Alastair J. The tide of democracy. Shipyard workers and social relations in Britain, 1870–1950. Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2010. x, 361 pp. £60.00.

In this study of Scottish and English shipbuilding and industrial relations from 1870 to 1950, Dr Reid examines craft production in shipbuilding and the impact of machinery on craft skills in technological innovation up to the 1940s, considers leadership and democracy in the boilermakers’ society, and investigates the boilermakers’ apparent shift in affiliation from liberalism to socialism, and their roles at key moments in the foundation and early development of the Labour Party.

Selwood, Jacob. Diversity and Difference in Early Modern London. Ashgate, Farnham [etc.] 2010. viii, 214 pp. £55.00.

London in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was home not only to people from the British Isles but also to a significant population of French and Dutch immigrants, to travellers and refugees from Hungary, Turkey, and Morocco and, from the 1650s onwards, to a growing Jewish community. Drawing on court documents and sources, government records, guild books of minutes, along with plays and printed texts, including captivity narratives, Professor Selwood in this book investigates how Londoners conceived of the many peoples of their own city, how they defined belonging and exclusion, and how they responded to the diversity around them.

Swain, Shurlee [and] Margot Hillel. Child, nation, race and empire. Child rescue discourse, England, Canada and Australia, 1850–1915. [Studies in imperialism.] Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2010. xii, 196 pp. Ill. £60.00.

In this book about child removal policies and the dynamics of empire, Professors Swain and Hillel analyse the construction and transmission of nineteenth-century British child rescue ideology in the publications of English child rescuers, their colonial disciples, and literature written for children, aiming to demonstrate how the child at risk came to be reconstituted as central to the survival of nation, race, and empire and arguing that the rescued child was not always protected from further harm.

Italy

Giovanna Caleffi Berneri. Un seme sotto la neve. Carteggi e scritti. Dall'anti-fascismo in esilio alla sinistra eretica del dopoguerra (1937–1962). Cura e introduzione Carlo De Maria. Pref. Giampietro Berti. Nota concl. Goffredo Fofi. Biblioteca Panizzi, Reggio Emilia 2010. lxviii, 609 pp. No price.

Giovanna Caleffi (1897–1962), Carlo Berneri's widow, was an anarchist journalist and resistance fighter. This volume comprises her correspondence with Ernesto Rossi, Gaetano Salvemini, and Ignazio Silone, among others, as well as articles and pamphlets, mainly from Volontà, a periodical she published with her new companion Cesare Zaccaria, on various political and social issues, for example education, prisons, prostitution, and birth control. An article on the International Institute of Social History (1957) is included as well.

Un libertario in Europa. Camillo Berneri. Fra Totalitarismi e democrazia. Atti del convegno di studi storici. Arezzo, 5 maggio 2007. A cura di Giampietro Berti e Giorgio Sacchetti. Biblioteca Panizzi, Reggio Emilia 2010. 273 pp. No price.

Camillo Berneri (1897–1937) was an Italian anarchist journalist who was murdered in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. This volume, based on a conference held in Arezzo in May 2007 to commemorate Berneri's death, includes chapters on Italian anarchism between the wars; Berneri's activities between 1916 and1926; his views on the Soviet Union; Berneri in Spain and the Italian section of the Colonna Ascaso; the events of May 1937 when Berneri was killed; and several essays assessing Berneri's significance as a political thinker. The volume also includes a chapter on the Berneri-Aurelio Chessa papers in Reggio Emilia.

Ward, David. Piero Gobetti's New World. Antifascism, Liberalism, Writing. University of Toronto Press, Toronto [etc.] 2010. x, 209 pp. £35.00; $55.00.

Piero Gobetti (1901–1926) was a militant intellectual, radical liberal, and anti-fascist who founded three cultural and political reviews: Energie Nove, La Rivoluzione Liberale, and Il Baretti. He was persecuted by the fascist regime and died in exile in Paris. Arguing that Gobetti was significant in Italian intellectual life, Professor Ward in this study of Gobetti's ideas and writings examines the key themes permeating his work: fascism and anti-fascism; liberalism and liberal revolution; and writing and the role of the intellectual.

The Netherlands

De wereld en Nederland. Een sociale en economische geschiedenis van de laatste duizend jaar. Red. Karel Davids en Marjolein ’t Hart. Lex Heerma van Voss, Manon van der Heijden, Leo Lucassen, Jeroen Touwen. Boom, Amsterdam 2011. 372 pp. Ill. € 45.00.

This new textbook aims to provide an up-to-date overview of Dutch social and economic history during the last millennium in a global context. The first part, which covers the period before the Great Divergence (c.1000–c.1800), reviews economic developments throughout the world and in the Netherlands, labour relations, and industrialization; international political relations and state formation, political culture, overseas colonization, and the Atlantic revolutions; and social and cultural developments, the family, and social policies. Economic globalization, state formation, citizenship, the rise of the welfare state, demographic change, and social and cultural movements after 1800 are addressed in the second part. See also Bert Altena's review in this volume, pp. 471–473.

Russia – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Denisova, Liubov. Rural Women in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia. Ed. and transl. by Irina Mukhina. Routledge, London [etc.] 2010. xiii, 219 pp. £85.00.

This thematically structured social history of Russian peasant women, an abridged and adapted version of a Russian study entitled Sud'ba russkoi kresitanki v XX veke (Rospen, 2007), offers a comprehensive overview of rural women's work and family life in the twentieth century, including domestic violence, alcohol abuse, criminality, prostitution, religion, childcare, and birth control. Examining the impact of Stalinist policies on family life and religion, the author concludes that rural women were disproportionally affected. Even under Khrushchev, she argues, they were excluded from the regime's reforms and liberating policies. Changes came only in the second half of the 1960s.

Filtzer, Donald A. The Hazards of Urban Life in Late Stalinist Russia. Health, hygiene, and living standards, 1943–1953. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2010. xxx, 379 pp. Maps. £65.00; $110.00.

In this study of the standard of living of Russia's working class after World War II, Professor Filtzer focuses on five key industrial regions to examine sanitation, access to safe water, personal hygiene and anti-epidemic controls, diet and nutrition, and infant mortality. He compares the Soviet experience to that of earlier industrializing societies, describes how the absence of an adequate urban infrastructure influenced people's daily lives and analyses why the Stalinist regime failed to invest in goods and services that would have improved the well-being of the population.

Graziosi, Andrea. Histoire de l'URSS. [Nouvelle Clio. L'Histoire et ses problèmes.] Presses universitaires de France, Paris 2010. lxxv, 559 pp. Maps. € 45.00.

In this book Professor Graziosi aims to present a new history of the Soviet Union, written not only from the point of view of the regime, but also taking into account the Russian population's responses to the regime's policies. The volume also includes a thematically organized survey of archival and published sources, and a section devoted to the discussion of issues and debates concerning themes such as: the nature of the Soviet Union; Leninism, Stalinism, and terror; ideology; the Soviet economy; the peasantry; famine; the national question; foreign policy; and the causes of the collapse of the Soviet state.

Ruthchild, Rochelle Goldberg. Equality and Revolution. Women's Rights in the Russian Empire, 1905–1917. [Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies.] University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh 2010. xviii, 356 pp. Ill. $27.95.

Although Russia became the first major power to grant women the right to vote and hold public office, on 20 July 1917, this women's suffrage victory has largely been ignored by historians of global feminism and researchers of Russia and the Soviet Union alike. In this book about the struggle for equal rights in the Russian empire, Professor Ruthchild analyses the backgrounds, activism, and organizational networks of early Russian and Finnish feminists (Finland was part of the empire), aiming to reveal that Russian feminists were an integral force for revolution and social change, particularly during the uprisings of 1905–1917.

Smith, Scott B. Captives of Revolution. The Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolshevik Dictatorship, 1918–1923. [Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies.] University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh 2011. xix, 380 pp. Ill. $45.00.

The Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (PSR), a socialist alternative to the Bolsheviks, was the largest political party in Russia in 1917. In 1922 the Socialist Revolutionaries became the first fellow socialists to be condemned by the Bolsheviks as “renegades of socialism”. In this study of the PSR from the onset of the civil war in 1918 to the defeat of the PSR in 1923 Professor Smith aims to demonstrate that the struggle with the PSR was the formative experience of the Bolsheviks and the Soviet state. See also Sarah Badcock's review in this volume, pp. 488–490.

Yokoyama, Olga T. Russian Peasant Letters. Life and Times of a 19th-century Family. Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2010. viii, 258 pp. Ill. € 59.00; S.fr. 99.00.

This volume contains a selection of letters from a peasant family living in the former Vyátka province. The family members, occasionally using scribes, reported on family matters, harvests, and family finances, offered religious and moral advice, and expressed their desire to see the world and achieve success in life. The letters, written between 1881 and 1896, document the changes that led to upward mobility in an era of rapid growth of capitalism and urbanization during late imperial Russia. They are kept at the Tyumén’ branch of the Russian State Archive and appear here in English, with detailed commentaries by Professor Yokoyama.

Spain

The Agony of Spanish Liberalism. From Revolution to Dictatorship 1913–23. Ed. by Francisco J. Romero Salvadó and Angel Smith. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2010. viii, 281 pp. £55.00.

The ten contributions to this volume explore the causes of the downfall of Spain's liberal order and its replacement in 1923 by the military dictatorship headed by General Primo de Rivera. The introductory chapter discusses the decline of liberal politics in Spain in a European context. The following essays examine various aspects of and events in Spanish political and social history, for example: Spain's revolutionary crisis of 1917; Andalusian peasant protest during the so-called Bolshevik Triennium, 1918–1920; the Lliga Regionalista and the Catalan Right; the Catalan employers’ “dirty war” against the CNT; and the Moroccan colonial problem.

Casanova, Julián. The Spanish Republic and Civil War. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2010. xii, 358 pp. £60.00; $99.00. (Paper: £18.99; $31.99.)

In this new comprehensive history of the Spanish Republic and the Civil War, Professor Casanova discusses, among other factors, the decisive role of 1930s international instability in the duration and outcome of the Civil War. Reflecting on the question of why the military rebels won the war, he argues that they had the best-trained troops in the Spanish army, economic power and the Catholic Church on their side, and also that “the winds of international sympathy blew their way”.

Flōros, K. Oi anthrōpoi pou kuklōsan to alfa. Ē istoria tou ispanikou eleutheriakou kinēmatos kata tē diarkeia tēs diktatorias 1939–1977. Ekdoseis 1704621, s.l. 2010. vi, 409 pp. Ill. No price.

“The people who drew a circle around the A. The history of the Spanish liberation movement during the dictatorship of 1939–1977” is the title of this book, in which the author, drawing mainly on secondary literature, but also on primary sources and interviews (held in 2006 and 2007, with Octavio Alberola Surinach, Miquel Amorós, and four others), sets out to present a comprehensive, chronologically organized history of the anarchist opposition (the CNT, Defensa Interior, MIL-GAC, and GARI) to the Franco dictatorship, in Spain and abroad from 1939 to 1977. The volume includes indexes of persons and organizations in Greek and Spanish.

Luchadores. Historia del movimiento obrero en Madrid. Ed. Jorge M. Reverte, Ediciones GPS-Madrid [etc.], Madrid 2009. 276 pp. € 18.00.

In the first and largest part of this volume, historian Sandra Souto Kustrín analyses the history of the labour movement in Madrid in the twentieth century up to 1939, focusing on the socialist Unión General de Trabajadores, the leading labour organization in Madrid for most of that period. In the second part, journalist Carmen Rivas presents a history of the labour movement from the Franco dictatorship until the present day, at which time the communist-oriented trade-union federation, Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) rose to prominence. The volume concludes with reflections on the federation's post-Franco history by four of its general secretaries.

Morato, Juan José. Historia de la sección Española de la internacional (1868–1874). Estudio preliminar de Santiago Castillo. [Ediciones Facsimilares, No. 4.] Movimiento Obrero, Madrid 2010. lv, 237 pp. € 19.00.

This is a facsimile reprint of the history of the Spanish section of the First International written by the typographer, socialist, trade unionist, translator, journalist, and historian, Juan José Morato (1864–1938), a work that was first published in 1930. The volume opens with a biographical introduction of Morato by Santiago Castillo, sketching his apprenticeship as a typographer, his activities as a socialist journalist and historian, his expulsion from the PSOE, his ongoing efforts to address social issues as an independent writer, his trip to Moscow with a Spanish Republican delegation, and his death in that city.

La representación de los trabajadores en las nuevas organizaciones de empresa. Dirs. Fernando Valdés Dal-Re [y] María Luisa Molero Marañon. Fundación Francisco Largo Caballero, s.l. 2010. 271 pp. € 17.00.

Commissioned by the historical institute of the socialist trade-union federation, Unión General de Trabajadores, this volume focuses on various aspects of workers’ representation in present-day Spanish industrial organizations. The ten contributors, all labour law specialists, analyse various theoretical models and Spanish forms of representation, identify limitations and shortcomings, and examine Spanish and European collective bargaining legislation.

Tiene la palabra Marcelino Camacho, sindicalista. Coord. Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras. Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras; Fundación 1° de Mayo, Madrid 2010. 278 pp. Ill. €25.00.

Marcelino Camacho (1918–2010) was a co-founder and general secretary of the Spanish communist-oriented trade-union federation, Comisiones Obreras (CCOO). This book pays tribute to this trade-union leader and politician by reprinting a selection of his speeches and articles – mainly from the Gaceta Sindical – and other texts originally published between 1976 and 1988, as well as excerpts from an interview Camacho gave in 2002.

Tudela Vázquez, Enrique. Nuestro pan. La huelga del 70. Editorial Comares, Granada 2010. Ill. € 23.00.

In the summer of 1970 a strike broke out among construction workers in Granada. What began as a peaceful demonstration ended in a heated battle between strikers and police, leaving three bricklayers dead and dozens injured and disrupting the image of Granada as a quiet town hardly troubled by the Franco dictatorship. In this book, based on a dissertation (University of Barcelona, 2007), Dr Tudela Vázquez offers a detailed description of the social and economic backgrounds of the strike and, using interviews and written sources, traces the progress of the strike, the first mass labour protest in Granada in thirty-four years.

UGT y el reto de la emigración económica, 1957–1976. Dir. Alicia Alted. Fundación Francisco Largo Caballero, s.l. 2010. 238 pp. Ill. € 20.00.

Based on documents from the Archivo y Biblioteca de la Fundación F. Largo Caballero and other European archives, this volume about the socialist Spanish trade-union federation, Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) and Spanish economic emigration during the Franco period, contains a contribution by the former UGT secretary Manuel Simón about UGT activities abroad, as well as three other chapters by professional historians on UGT activities among Spanish migrants in Switzerland, Germany, France, and Belgium. The volume opens with forty pages of photographs.