Algeria

European Revolutionaries and Algerian Independence, 1954–1962. Ed. by Ian Birchall. [Revolutionary History, Vol. 10, No 4.] Merlin Press, Pontypool 2012. 418 pp. £20.00.

This issue of Revolutionary History features materials relating to organizations and individuals in France and Europe acting in solidarity with the Algerian independence struggle between 1954 and 1962. Chapters are included from Sylvain Patieu's Les Camarades des frères (2002), which focuses on the French Trotskyists and anarchists who expressed solidarity with the Algerian struggle; documents illustrating the different positions adopted by sections of the French far Left; accounts of solidarity actions in Britain and Austria; north African communist documents on colonialism; and an essay about the influence of the Algerian War of May–June 1968.

Benin

Dahomey and the Ending of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The Journals and Correspondence of Vice-Consul Louis Fraser, 1851–1852. [Sources of African History, vol. 10.] Ed. by Robin Law. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012. 287 pp. Maps. £55.00.

The documents presented in this volume pertain to a vice-consulate the British government maintained in the west African kingdom of Dahomey (situated in the southern part of present-day Benin) in 1851–1852. The material serves as a valuable historical account, not only for studying British policy, which in this period was mainly concerned with suppressing the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but also as an important source on the history of Dahomey itself, which was a powerful indigenous state in the nineteenth century. In the introduction Professor Law provides a historical context.

Kenya

Okia, Opolot. Communal Labor in Colonial Kenya. The Legitimization of Coercion, 1912–1930. Palgrave Macmillan, New York [etc.] 2012. 186 pp. Ill. $55.00.

During Kenya's colonial history the British administration employed various forms of forced labour, in infrastructure projects, for example, and on settler plantations. This coercion, labelled as “minor communal services” by the ILO, was construed by the colonial state as part of the traditional work obligations that Africans would normally owe to their chiefs and hence, a communal responsibility. In this book Professor Okia examines the development of communal forced labour in Kenya from 1912 to 1930, exploring the effects of, and African reactions to, this form of exploitation.

Mozambique

Allina, Eric. Slavery by Any Other Name. African Life under Company Rule in Colonial Mozambique. [Reconsiderations in Southern African History.] University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville and London 2012. xiii, 255 pp. Ill. $49.50. (E-book: $49.50.)

Using documents from the long-lost and unexplored archive of the colonial Mozambique Company, a private company that governed central parts of Mozambique under a royal charter from 1892 to 1942, as well as interviews conducted in 1997 and 1998 with elderly Mozambicans, Professor Allina in this book sets out to uncover the Mozambique Company's comprehensive and often brutal system of forced labour, and to reconstruct the impact of this modern form of slavery on the lives of Africans.

South Africa

Watson, R.L. Slave Emancipation and Racial Attitudes in Nineteenth-Century South Africa. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2012. xv, 318 pp. Maps. £65.00; $99.00.

In the 1830s slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire, including in South Africa's Cape Colony. For the former Cape slaves, however, freedom was largely illusory, because they lacked an economic base on which to build an independent existence. This study compares South Africa's relatively peaceful transition to a non-slave society to the bloody experience of the US South after abolition and examines the rise of South Africa's racism. Although racist attitudes were largely absent in the Cape Colony while slavery persisted, Professor Watson argues, they increased after abolition, driven primarily by white people's need for secure, exploitable labour.

Canada

Whitaker, Reg, GregoryS.Kealy, and AndrewParnaby. Secret Service. Political Policing in Canada from the Fenians to Fortress America. University of Toronto Press, Toronto [etc.] 2012. viii, 687 pp. Ill. $90.00. (Paper: $36.95.)

This comprehensive history of political policing in Canada is organized into five parts. The first tells of the early actions against supporters of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Asians, and World War I enemies, including the Reds. The second part covers the period through to the end of World War II; the third the Cold War years; the fourth the question of Quebec and the scandals surrounding the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; and the fifth the twenty-first century. The authors contend that Canada differs from many other nations in how its security operations are run, having been concentrated for most of its history almost exclusively against its own citizens.

Cuba

Hamilton, Carrie. Sexual Revolutions in Cuba. Passion, Politics, and Memory. Forew. by Elizabeth Dore. The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2012. xv, 298 pp. $39.95.

This history of sexuality in Cuba from the Revolution in 1959 to the early twenty-first century explores how the revolutionary regime's policies affected citizens’ sexual lives. Drawing on interviews conducted between 2004 and 2008, as well as on published sources, Dr Hamilton charts changing patterns in heterosexual relations, competing views of masculinity and femininity, same-sex relationships and homophobia, AIDS, sexual violence, interracial relationships, and sexual tourism. She argues that the changes resulted less from deliberate policies on sexuality than from broader social, political, and economic transformations.

El Salvador

Frazier, JosephB. El Salvador Could Be Like That. A Memoir of War, Politics, and Journalism. Karina Library Press, Ojai (Cal.) 2012. xvi, 203 pp. Ill. $17.96.

Associated Press correspondent Joe Frazier covered the civil war in El Salvador from 1979 to 1986, “the last bloody gasp of the Cold War”. Drawing on his dispatches for the AP and combining journalistic reports with personal stories and political commentaries, Mr Frazier in this memoir presents an account of the civil war, highlighting the experiences of the Salvadoran people, describing the work of the death squads and the horrors and injustices of the war, discussing liberation theology and the assassination of Archbishop Romero, and describing his life as a war correspondent.

Haiti

Ghachem, MalickW. The Old Regime and the Haitian Revolution. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2012. xiii, 350 pp. £60.00; $99.00. (Paper: £18.99; $26.99.)

Focusing on the Code Noir, the law that regulated master–slave relations in the French empire, Professor Ghachem in this book about the Haitian Revolution (1789–1804) examines how the law of slavery evolved during the colonial period as a result of numerous interactions and disputes between administrators, jurists, white planters, free people of colour, and slaves. Rejecting the image of the Haitian Revolution as a violent and abrupt transition from slavery to freedom, he argues that emancipation in Haiti was also a long-term product of its tradition of colonial law.

Mexico

Washbrook, Sarah. Producing Modernity in Mexico. Labour, Race, and the State in Chiapas, 1876–1914. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2012. Ill. £80.00.

Dr Washbrook analyses in this book the politics of state-building and the history of land tenure and rural labour in the state of Chiapas under the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship (1876–1911). Examining the changing relationship between Indian groups and non-Indian governments and economic interests in Chiapas, she concludes that as a result of political and economic policies of the local and national elites, modernity in Chiapas was accomplished at the expense of the Indians, who were increasingly forced to labour in the export sector, and by modernizing “traditional” ethnic relations and political and economic institutions.

Peru

Drinot, Paulo. The Allure of Labor. Workers, Race, and the Making of the Peruvian State. Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 2011. 310 pp. Ill. £67.00. (Paper: £16.00.)

This book (based on a dissertation, Oxford, 2000) about the social politics of early twentieth-century Peru describes how intellectuals and policymakers in the 1920s and 1930s believed that industrialization and a modern workforce would transform Peru into a civilized nation. Dr Drinot argues that, even though the majority of the labouring people was indigenous, both legislation and praxis excluded Indians from the sphere of labour policy. See also Rossana Barragán's review in this volume, pp. 536–539.

O'Toole, RachelSarah. Bound Lives. Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru. [Pitt Latin America Series.] University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh 2012. xii, 257 pp. $25.95.

In colonial Peru the Spanish colonial authorities separated Andeans (Indians) from Africans and their descendants (blacks) by defining each according to specific labour demands (casta). In this book about race relations in northern coastal Peru during the colonial era Professor O'Toole examines the interactions between colonial authorities, indigenous communities and enslaved populations, and explores how the interplay between colonial law and daily practice shaped the nature of colonialism and slavery.

Puerto Rico

Shaffer, KirwinR. Black Flag Boricuas. Anarchism, Antiauthoritarianism, and the Left in Puerto Rico, 1897–1921. University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2013. xvii, 220 pp. $65.00.

From the end of the nineteenth century to the 1920s, a vibrant radical leftist anarchist movement emerged in Puerto Rico and associated their struggle with broader international anarchist struggles. Professor Shaffer explores in this study how Puerto Rican anarchists used both trade-union and cultural politics to pursue their radical agenda, and how the most successful anarchist movement around the newspaper El Comunista was targeted by the US government from the 1920s Red Scare onward, ultimately leading to the newspaper being closed and the movement to disintegrate. See also Bieito Alonso's review in this volume, pp. 534–536.

United States of America

Bardacke, Frank. Trampling Out the Vintage. Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers. Verso, London [etc.] 2012. viii, 836 pp. Ill. Maps. £35.00; $54.95. (Paper: £30.00; $34.95; E-book: $16.99.)

This is an account of the rise and fall of the United Farm Workers’ union (UFW) and Cesar Chavez, its most famous and controversial leader. Drawing on archival and printed sources and his own experiences as a field worker in the Salinas Valley during the 1970s, as well as on interviews with farm workers, organizers, and the opponents and friends of the UFW, the author tells the story of the Union, from its beginnings with Saul Alinsky and Catholic Social Action at the Union's founding, through the UFW's heyday from 1965 to 1985, to the internal struggles that crippled the union.

Boris, Eileen and JenniferKlein. Caring for America. Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2012. xviii, 295 pp. Ill. £22.50.

Once considered economically marginal, by the end of the twentieth century home care had moved to the centre of the US economy. In this book Professors Boris and Klein study the history of the American welfare state from the perspective of home-care work from the 1930s to the present, also chronicling how home-care workers, predominantly African-American, “Hispanic”, and immigrant women, by transforming organizing strategy and the nature of collective bargaining, have become one of the most vibrant forces in the US labour movement. See also Marina de Regt's review in this volume, pp. 530–532.

Chosen Capital. The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism. Ed. by Rebecca Kobrin. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick (N.J.) [etc.] 2012. ix, 311 pp. Ill. $26.95.

This volume examines how Jews as an ethnic and religious group adapted, took advantage of, and expanded particular niches of the American economy and analyses how they shaped and were shaped by America's particular system of capitalism. The eleven case studies address such themes as the Jewish garment industry; the scrap trade; the liquor business; Blacks, Jews, and the music business; sweatshop capitalism and Jewish socialism; and how American capitalism reshaped Judaism itself by encouraging mass manufacturing and distribution of food products such as matzah.

Fox, Cybelle. Three Worlds of Relief. Race, Immigration, and the American Welfare State from the Progressive Era to the New Deal. [Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparative Perspectives.] Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2012. ix, 393 pp. Ill. £24.95.

This book examines the role of race and immigration in the development of the American social welfare system by comparing how welfare policies were applied to blacks, Mexicans, and European immigrants during the Progressive Era and the New Deal. Focusing especially on Los Angeles and Chicago, Professor Fox sets out to demonstrate that these groups were treated quite differently: European immigrants were largely included in the social welfare system, blacks were largely excluded, while Mexicans were often expelled from the country simply for requesting assistance.

Gellman, ErikS. Death Blow to Jim Crow. The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights. [The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture.] The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2012. xiii, 354 pp. Ill. $39.95.

This is a study of the National Negro Congress (NNC) and the affiliated Southern Negro Youth Congress, organizations that campaigned for a “second emancipation” for African Americans between 1936 and 1947. Focusing on five geographic regions (Chicago; Richmond, Virginia; Washington DC; New York City; and Columbia, South Carolina), Professor Gellman aims to demonstrate how the NNC, acting within a coalition of interracial alliances between unions, civic groups, and the Communist Party, reoriented American protest politics, opened new sectors of employment to black workers, demonstrated against extrajudicial violence, and revived an African-American culture.

Goldstein, Alyosha. Poverty in Common. The Politics of Community Action During the American Century. Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 2012. xii, 379 pp. Ill. $67.00. (Paper: $16.99.)

After World War II, policymakers, social scientists, and grassroots activists in the United States defended the idea of community action as a means of alleviating poverty. Analysing historical dynamics including Progressive-era reform as a precursor to community development during the Cold War, Professor Goldstein explores in this book (based on a dissertation, New York University, 2005) how the idea of community as a means of fighting poverty related to notions of self-governance, citizen participation, self-help, and self-determination. He argues that US policy on domestic poverty was closely linked to Cold War doctrines of international development and modernization.

Grisinger, JoannaL. The Unwieldy American State. Administrative Politics Since the New Deal. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2012. xiii, 309 pp. $85.00. (Paper: $55.00.)

Progressive Era reforms and New Deal policies in the United States shifted considerable power toward administrators, according to the author of this book. Dr Grisinger offers a political history of administrative law reform and a legal history of the administrative politics involved in shaping and legitimating the administrative state – a term she uses to describe the whole of federal agencies, departments, bureaus, and commissions – from the 1940s through the early 1960s.

Jentz, JohnB., and RichardSchneirov. Chicago in the Age of Capital. Class, Politics, and Democracy during the Civil War and Reconstruction. [The Working Class in American History.] University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2012. xii, 310 pp. $55.00.

During the decades from the 1850s through the 1870s, America shifted from being a nation of predominantly small producers and slaves to one of mainly wage-earners. Focusing on Chicago, the most dynamic industrial city of the northern states, Professors Jentz and Schneirov examine debates over the eight-hour working day and the legitimacy of wage-labour; immigrant workers and the rise of urban populism; the events surrounding the Depression of the 1870s; and the railroad strike of 1877 and its consequences.

Kaufman, Will. Woody Guthrie, American Radical. [Music in American Life.] University of Illinois Press, Chicago [etc.] 2011. xxv, 280 pp. Ill. $29.95.

This new biography of the American folk singer Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) aims to reclaim the politically radical profile of this iconic figure of the “Dust Bowl troubadour”. Tracing Guthrie's Oklahoma family background and his political awakening and activism throughout the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War and McCarthyism, and the Civil Rights struggle, Professor Kaufman focuses on Guthrie's role in the development of a workers’ culture in the context of radical activism led by the Communist Party of the United States, the Popular Front, and the CIO, and argues that he has been pivotal in perpetuating cultural front objectives into the postwar era.

Luff, Jennifer. Commonsense Anticommunism. Labor and Civil Liberties between the World Wars. The University of Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2012. xii, 288 pp. Ill. $39.95.

Historians often treat anticommunism in the United States as a conspiracy of capitalists and conservatives to reverse the New Deal order after World War II, argues Dr Luff. Challenging this view, she examines in this book the history of labour anticommunism in the interwar period. Focusing on the paradoxical role of the American Federation of Labor, she aims to demonstrate how labour conservatives became reluctant defenders of civil liberties in the 1920s and proto-McCarthyists in the late 1930s.

Mulderink, EarlF. New Bedford's Civil War. Fordham University Press, New York 2012. 320 pp. Ill. $55.00.

In the antebellum era New Bedford was the world's whaling capital, but it also experimented with industrialization, mainly in textile manufacturing. Professor Mulderink, in this economic, social, and political history of New Bedford, explores the impact of the American Civil War on both the whaling and the textile industries; the politics and policies of the city's leaders, men whose views were mainly antislavery; and racial dynamics and New Bedford's African Americans, whose military service during the Civil War enhanced their status.

Shields, JohannaNicol. Freedom in a Slave Society. Stories from the Antebellum South. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2012. xxiii, 318 pp. Ill. Maps. £65.00; $99.00.

Before the American Civil War, Dr Shields argues, Southern white people were as strongly committed to freedom for their kind as they were to slavery for African Americans. Combining biography with history and literary analysis, this book focuses on eight popular writers of poetry, fiction, and history from pre-Civil War Alabama to investigate in their work the ethical dilemma of a modernizing slave society.

Smith, SherryL. Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power. Oxford University Press, New York [etc.] 2012. xiv, 265 pp. Ill. $34.95; £22.00.

In the late 1960s a loose coalition of hippies, civil rights advocates, Black Panthers, unions, Mexican-Americans, Quakers, celebrities (e.g. Marlon Brando), and others joined with Red Power activists to fight for American Indian rights. Contributing to the discussion about partnerships in social and political change, Professor Smith in this book examines how among various groups of dissatisfied Americans the Indians found supporters for their campaign for recognition of treaty rights, realization of self-determination, and protection of reservations as cultural homelands. She argues that this coalition was ephemeral but significant, leading to political reforms that strengthened Indian sovereignty.

Smith, ThomasRuys. Southern Queen. New Orleans in the Nineteenth Century. Continuum, London [etc.] 2011. viii, 247 pp. Ill. $29.95.

During the nineteenth century, New Orleans evolved from a small colonial backwater into one of the richest and most powerful cities in the American South and the “Southern Queen of Cities”. This study examines the rise and subsequent fall, after the Civil War, of the city and traces the causes of its longstanding reputation for decadence, exoticism, and illicit pleasures, despite the series of wars, epidemics, and riots that afflicted the city throughout the century. Dr Smith explores, for example, the continual and violent racial tension that persisted beneath the surface of glamour.

Zaretsky, Eli. Why America Needs a Left. A Historical Argument. Polity, Cambridge [etc.] 2012. 206 pp. £16.99.

Arguing that America has always had a vibrant and powerful Left, Professor Zaretsky in this book, which is intended for general readers and undergraduate students, rethinks the idea of a Left by examining three key moments in American history: the Civil War, the New Deal, and the New Left movements of the 1960s and after: the civil rights movement, the women's movement, and gay liberation. He concludes that active involvement of the Left – especially its critical interaction with mainstream liberalism – proved indispensable.

China

Chen, JanetY. Guilty of Indigence. The Urban Poor in China, 1900–1953. Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2012. viii, 309 pp. Ill. $45.00; £30.95. (E-book: $45.00.)

Although prior to the twentieth century Confucian elites did not view poverty as a social problem, in republican-era China poverty came to be regarded as society's most fundamental problem and became the focus of a national debate about the future of the country. In this book Professor Chen explores these changing attitudes toward poverty and, concentrating on Beijing and Shanghai, examines the experiences of the urban poor, the policing of homelessness and vagrancy, the advent of institutions such as the workhouse and the activities of organizations such as the Salvation Army.

Coase, Ronald and NingWang. How China Became Capitalist. Palgrave Macmillan, New York [etc.] 2012. xi, 256 pp. £60.00.

Professors Coase and Wang describe in this book the series of events that brought about China's economic transition from a communist system to capitalism. Drawing on interviews as well as on Chinese and English sources, they trace China's transition to a market economy. They argue that the reforms implemented by the Chinese leaders did not represent a concerted attempt to create a capitalist economy but in fact served to continue Mao's (unsuccessful) efforts to decentralize the economic and political system.

India

Haynes, DouglasE. Small Town Capitalism in Western India. Artisans, Merchants and the Making of the Informal Economy, 1870–1960. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2012. xv, 344 pp. £65.00; $99.00.

Based on interviews, as well as on colonial and other archival sources, this book explores the little-studied history of artisan cloth manufacture in the small towns of the Bombay Presidency – and the post-independence Bombay State – from 1870 to 1960. Professor Haynes examines the roles of rural and small town consumers, traders and merchants, artisan households, karkhandars, or weaver-capitalists and wage labourers, many of them migrants, in the making of what the author describes as “small-town capitalism”.

Roy, Srila. Remembering Revolution. Gender, Violence, and Subjectivity in India's Naxalbari Movement. Oxford University Press, New Delhi [etc.] 2012. ix, 252 pp. Rs 1200.00; $99.00; £27.50.

Drawing on sociological fieldwork, party texts, fiction, and women's personal testimonies, Dr Roy in this book studies the role and involvement of middle-class women (and men) in the late 1960s radical Left Naxalbari movement of West Bengal, the birthplace of Indian Maoism. By examining how sexual and everyday brutality are embedded in revolutionary movements, she contributes to the study of the gendered politics of left-wing cultures and practices of violence.

Roy, Tirthankar. Natural Disasters and Indian History. [Oxford India Short Introductions.] Oxford University Press, New Delhi [etc.] 2012. xii, 165 pp. Rs 325.00; $14.95; £7.99.

Drawing on case studies of storms, earthquakes, and famines that took place in colonial India between 1770 and 1935 and studying the impact these events had on the economy, politics, and science, Professor Roy argues in this book that while natural disasters weaken the capacity of the state and civil society, create gainers and losers, and destroy cooperation, disasters have also enabled new understandings of nature, state, and society, providing a foundation for growing useful new knowledge.

Sharma, Jayeeta. Empire's Garden. Assam and the Making of India. [Radical Perspectives.] Duke University Press. Durham [etc.] 2011. xiii, 324 pp. Ill. £71.00. (Paper: £16.99.)

In the mid-nineteenth century, the Indian region of Assam was transformed from a peripheral frontier kingdom into an imperial tea garden and an important hinterland for British India, in part through large-scale migration of indentured labour from central India. This study explores how this transformation fundamentally reshaped not only ecology and labour relations in the region but also wider relations concerning race, ethnicity, and class. Professor Sharma argues that the process led to a racialized construction of tea labourers and an imagined racially defined modernity, giving rise to competing claims to history, nationalism, and progress that remain clearly perceptible in present-day Assam.

Iran

Fadaee, Simin. Social Movements in Iran. Environmentalism and civil society. [Iranian Studies, vol. 13.] Routledge, London [etc.] 2012. ix, 163 pp. £80.00.

This study focuses on the recent emergence of an environmental movement to contribute to the study of social movements in non-Western societies. Professor Fadaee explores the origins and rise of movements that have emerged around environmental problems in north-west Iran and analyses to what extent social movement theories, as elaborated in the works of Alain Touraine and Alberto Melucci, may be applied to explain the emergence of this new type of movement in Iran. She concludes that the Eurocentric bias in those theories limit their value for explaining new social movements in non-Western societies. See also Peyman Jafari's review in this volume, pp. 544–547.

Japan

Kovner, Sarah. Occupying Power. Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan. Stanford (Cal.) 2012. xi, 226 pp. Ill. $50.00. (Paper: $22.95; E-book: $22.95.)

For more than 300 years Japan had tolerated and regulated the performance of sexual services for remuneration, but after World War II it appeared new and unusual to Japanese observers, according to Professor Kovner. She examines in this book how the arrival of foreign soldiers (American and Allied servicemen from Australia and elsewhere) changed the setting of the Japanese sex industry, arguing, for example, that while sex workers contributed significantly to the postwar economic recovery, they were nonetheless blamed for increases in venereal disease and charged with diluting the Japanese race by producing mixed-race offspring.

Australia

Scollay, Moira. Lalor. The Peter Lalor Home Building Cooperative 1946–2012. University of New South Wales Press, Sydney 2012. xi, 313 pp. Ill. £53.95.

The Peter Lalor Homebuilding Co-operative Society was a grassroots organization formed after World War II to address the chronic housing crisis in Melbourne. Named after the leader of the Eureka gold miners’ rebellion (Victoria, 1854), it was established to help its members realize the great Australian dream of home ownership. Using interviews with original residents of Lalor, as well as other sources, Dr Scollay traces the history of Lalor in this book, an edited version of a dissertation (Australian National University, 2010). Endnotes, a bibliography and additional information including prosopography tables are available at http://rsha.anu.edu.au/peter-lalor.

Europe

Howell, MarthaC. Commerce before Capitalism in Europe, 1300–1600. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2010. xii, 365 pp. Ill. £55.00; $90.00. (Paper: £17.99; $29.99.)

By studying property law, marriage, gift-giving, sumptuary legislation, and attempts to “reform” commerce, Professor Howell in this book aims to reveal how the merchants, shopkeepers, artisans, and consumers in the cities and courts of western Europe, particularly the Low Countries, understood and used property. Challenging interpretations of these people as proto-capitalists, she argues that they did not consider their property as a fungible asset, but used it to secure social bonds by intensifying market regulations and by assigning new meaning to marriage, gift-giving, and consumption.

Kontrollierte Arbeit – Disziplinierte Körper? Zur Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte der Industriearbeit im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Hrsg. Lars Bluma [und] Karsten Uhl. [Histoire, Band 27.] Transkript, Bielefeld 2012. 429 pp. Ill. € 35.80.

This interdisciplinary volume about the mechanization and rationalization of industrial work in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries analyses spatial arrangements of workers’ bodies, machines, and work processes. The twelve contributions (three of them in English) include a case study using Foucault's biopolitics concept and another focusing on Carl Arnhold's occupational training ideas. One contributor compares safety measures in East and West German uranium mining; others analyse health and safety policies in the French lead paint industry and West German steel production, respectively. Two articles are devoted to the German works canteen.

Marfany, Julie. Land, Proto-industry and Population in Catalonia, c.1680–1829. [Modern Economic and Social History Series.] An Alternative Transition to Capitalism? Ashgate, Farnham [etc.] 2012. 208 pp. Maps. £65.00.

This micro-study of early modern Igualada, an important proto-industrial centre situated within the viticultural region in Catalonia, contributes to the debate about the transition to capitalism in Europe. Dr Marfany investigates key aspects of this transformation: the agrarian roots of capitalism, proto-industrialization, family formation, and population growth, production and consumption in the household economy, and the “industrious revolution”, questioning claims that the nuclear family of north-western Europe was a better model for industrialization than the southern European extended family.

The Postcolonial Low Countries. Literature, Colonialism, and Multiculturalism. Ed. by Elleke Boehmer and Sarah De Mul. Lexington Books, Lanham [etc.] 2012. vi, 260 pp. $70.00; £44.95. (E-book: $69.99; £44.95.)

This book brings together critical and comparative approaches to the emergent field of neerlandophone postcolonial studies. Four essays suggest new ways of thinking about the postcolonial Netherlands and Belgium, one contribution offers a cultural critique of the headscarf ban in Belgium. In the section about postcolonial memory four contributors analyse Dutch motion pictures, a story by a Turkish-German writer, the work of some Afrikaans women writers, and Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost. Two contributors in the third section, on literature and multiculturalism, analyse Moroccan diaspora literature.

Austria

Arbeit ist das halbe Leben ... Erzählungen vom Wandel der Arbeitswelten seit 1945. Hrsg. Sabine Lichtenberger [und] Günter Müller. [Damit es nicht verlorengeht …, Band 65.] Böhlau Verlag, Wien [etc.] 2012. € 24.90.

This volume presents the personal memories of their working lives of twenty Austrians, eleven men and nine women, white- and blue-collar workers, civil servants, teachers, nurses, and housewives, born between 1923 and 1951. Their stories illustrate how work has changed since 1945, and demonstrate how the opportunities and challenges offered by economic and technological change varied depending on gender, age, education, and occupation. In the personal testimonies reconciliation of work and family life is discussed as well.

Hormayr, Gisela. “Ich sterbe stolz und aufrecht”. Tiroler SozialistInnen und KommunistInnen im Widerstand gegen Hitler. [Studien zu Geschichte und Politik, Band 15.] StudienVerlag, Innsbruck [etc.] 2012. 350 pp. Ill. € 24.90.

This book is about the opposition to the Nazi regime by men and women from the Tirol labour movement. After reviewing the current state of Austrian resistance research, Dr Hormayr, using mainly documents from the prosecution authorities, as well as some programmatic writings and personal documents, gives an account of the activities of several socialist and communist resistance groups, the arrests after discovery, and the trials, and the executions. She pays special attention to the Revolutionäre Sozialisten Josefine and Alois Brunner and a group of railway workers from Innsbruck with a Rote Hilfe background.

France

Belliot, Gilles, DanielChevalier, ClaudeLeLan [e.a.]. Debout et Libres! La CGT dans l'aéronautique nazairienne (1923–2010). Éditions du Centre d'histoire du travail, [Nantes] 2012. 191 pp. Ill. € 20.00.

This volume about labour organization by the French general trade-union federation CGT in the aircraft industry of Saint-Nazaire consists of testimonies – edited by Christophe Patillon of the Centre d'histoire du travail – from several employees and CGT militants. They give detailed accounts of labour disputes at Aérospatiale and other aircraft factories mainly between 1968 and 2009. The volume opens with a brief review of union activities in the pioneering French aircraft industry during the period 1933–1967.

Ducange, Jean-Numa. La Révolution française et la social-démocratie. Transmissions et usages politiques de l'histoire en Allemagne et Autriche (1889–1934). [Collection “Histoire”.] Presses Universitaires de Rennes, Rennes 2012. 361 pp. Ill. € 20.00.

Inspired by Karl Marx, who did not get around to writing the history of the French Revolution he intended, German and Austrian social democrats from the 1880s onwards wrote their history of the Revolution. This interpretation of the Revolution, which was related to the novel materialist concept of history, became widely taught in handbooks, courses, and other teaching materials for the labour movement. Focusing on the works of such key figures as Karl Kautsky, Heinrich Cunow, and Hermann Wendel, Professor Ducange in this book examines the social democrats’ historiography of the French Revolution from 1889 to 1934.

Duval, Clement. Outrage. An Anarchist Memoir of the Penal Colony. Transl. by Michael Shreve. Intr. by Marianne Enckell. PM Press, Oakland 2012. 199 pp. Ill. $20.00.

Clément Duval (1850–1935) was a French locksmith, burglar, and anarchist who was sentenced in 1887 to hard labour for life in the French Guiana prison camps. He managed to escape after fourteen years and eighteen escape attempts and reached New York City in 1903, where he was taken in by Italian anarchists, particularly Luigi Galleani, who translated, revised, and published Duval's account of his life in the penal colony. This is a translation of Ms Enckell's French edition of Duval's story, Moi, Clément Duval, bagnard et anarchiste (1991).

Gordon, DanielA. Immigrants and Intellectuals. May '68 and the Rise of Anti-Racism in France. Merlin Press, Pontypool 2012. xvi, 348 pp. £18.95.

This study explores the role of anti-racism in the history of May '68 and the relation between immigrant workers and French leftist intellectuals in the period 1961 to 1983. Dr Gordon explores how a protest movement for the rights of migrant workers arose from the massacre of around 120 Algerian demonstrators by the French police in October 1961, in which French leftist intellectuals brought immigrant rights campaigns into mainstream French politics. The author also examines how relations evolved between the immigrant workers and the French workers’ movement in this period. See also Michael Seidman's review in this volume, pp. 540–542.

Histoire des mouvements sociaux en France. De 1814 à nos jours. Sous la dir. de Michel Pigenet et Danielle Tartakowsky. La Découverte, Paris 2012. 800 pp. € 32.00.

The seventy-one contributions to this encyclopaedic survey of social movements in French history are divided into four sections, covering the periods 1814–1880s; 1880s–1930s; 1930s–1970s; and 1980s–present. Within each section, the articles focus on various themes, episodes, and social movements in French history, including Luddism, internationalism, the revolt of the Lyon canuts, the Paris Commune, the rise of the May Day tradition, and many instances of campaigns, strikes, and riots by workers, peasants, students, Catholics, feminists, sexual minorities, and other groups. All the chapters conclude with bibliographic notes, while the volume also includes a general bibliography and an index.

Julliard, Jacques. Les gauches françaises. Histoire, politique et imaginaire. 1762–2012. Flammarion, Paris 2012. 942 pp. € 25.00.

In this history of the French Left from the eighteenth century to the present day, the author focuses on key moments in French history to provide an overview of the ideas the Left has preserved from each historical period, for example, the belief in progress from the end of the eighteenth century; human rights from the French Revolution; and universal suffrage from 1848. Each chapter concludes with a double portrait of two figures representative of the period, for instance: Robespierre and Danton, and Tiers and Blanqui.

Maruani, Margaret [et] MoniqueMeron. Un siècle de travail des femmes en France. 1901–2011. La Découverte, Paris 2012. 229 pp. € 24.00.

This book contains statistical data about women's work in France during the twentieth century, particularly women's occupations, employment, and unemployment. The authors, a sociologist and a statistician, have amassed and analysed data from many different statistical publications, also examining changes in how labour was divided by gender. Contrary to commonly held assumptions, they find that women's labour market participation over the years has been remarkably constant, even through periods of war and recession: never dropping below one-third and now accounting for nearly one-half of the labour force.

Moch, LesliePage. The Pariahs of Yesterday. Breton Migrants in Paris. Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 255 pp. 2012. Ill. Maps. $84.95. (Paper: $23.95.)

From the 1870s onwards many Breton migrants began arriving in Paris. An example of successful integration into Parisian life, at the turn of the twentieth century Bretons were still “the pariahs of Paris”. In this monograph Professor Moch traces the changing status of Bretons from 1871 to 1940, placing their history in the context of internal migration, integration of national minorities, and the French state's inclusionary and exclusionary policies, and relating the role of the Bretons of Paris to the long-term history of the urban labour force.

Vigna, Xavier. Histoire des ouvriers en France au XXe siècle. [Paris], 2012. Perrin, n.p. 2012. 404 pp. € 24.00.

This book offers a social and political history of workers’ lives in France from the early twentieth century, when the number of industrial workers for the first time surpassed that of farmers, through the de-industrialization that began in the late 1970s. Professor Vigna discusses everyday working-class life, the impact of the two World Wars, the Depression of the 1930s, the Front populaire, and May 1968, also considering women and migrant labour and questioning the common assumption that the working class was inseparable from the parties of the Left.

Germany

All Power to the Councils! A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918–1919. Ed. and transl. by Gabriel Kuhn. Merlin Press, London 2012. xxviii, 322 pp. £20.00.

This volume about the German Revolution of 1918–1919 features annotated manifestos, speeches, articles, and letters from Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, and the Spartakusgruppe, as well as from Gustav Landauer and Erich Mühsam, the Munich anarchists involved in the Bavarian Council Republic. The collection also includes reports from the Berlin Revolutionary Stewards and documents from other German cities that were taken over by workers’ uprisings or mutinying sailors and soldiers. The volume also contains a thematically arranged bibliography, a timeline, and a glossary of key organizations, persons, journals, and historical terms.

Gewerkschaftlicher Wiederbeginn im Bergbau. Dokumente zur Gründungsgeschichte der Industriegewerkschaft Bergbau, 1945–1951. Hrsg. Jens Adamski 2012. [Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen. Schriftenreihe B: Quellen und Documente, Band 7.] Klartext, Essen 2012. 436 pp. € 34.95.

Mining was pivotal in Germany's post-World-War-II economic recovery, according to Dr Adamski, and provided a model for reconstructing and democratizing the German economy. A similar role was played by the German mining union, the Industriegewerkschaft Bergbau. In this thematically organized volume, over 180 documents illustrate the founding and early history of the Industriegewerkschaft Bergbau, the union's organizational structure, its relations with other social and political actors, and its fields of action. The editor introduces each theme and provides explanatory footnotes to the documents.

“Glückauf” auf Japanisch. Bergleute aus Japan im Ruhrgebiet. [Title on cover: Japanische Bergleute im Ruhrgebiet.] Ed. by Atsushi Kataoka, Regine Matthias [sic], Pia-Tomoko Meid [u.a.] Klartext, Essen 2012. 318 pp. Ill. € 22.95.

This commemorative collection comprises four essays dealing with the history of the group of 400 Japanese miners who came to work in the German coal-mining industry in the Ruhr area between 1957 and 1965 as a result of a German-Japanese government programme. Complementing the essays are sections with testimonies from the miners and contemporary documentary materials, such as newspaper articles. In addition to a general overview of this historical migration phenomenon (Hiromasa Mori), the essays examine the economic context (Werner Pascha), the broader historical context (Regine Mathias), and the impact of the programme on the Ruhr area. See also Ad Knotter's review in this volume, pp. 532–534.

Lademacher, Horst. Grenzüberschreitungen. Mein Weg zur Geschichtswissenschaft. Erinnerungen und Erfahrungen. Im Gespräch mit Burkhard Dietz und Helmut Gabel. Waxmann Verlag, Münster [etc.] 2012. 346 pp. Ill. € 42.00.

This book contains the memoires of the German historian Horst Lademacher (b. 1931), founder and former director of the Zentrum für Niederlande-Studien at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. In conversations with Herr Dietz and Herr Gabel, Professor Lademacher looks back on his life from his working-class childhood in the Sauerland to his academic career in Germany and the Netherlands. He also describes the International Institute of Social History, where he worked in the Central Europe Department from 1958 to 1962.

The Night of Broken Glass. Eyewitness Accounts of Kristallnacht. Ed. by Uta Gerhardt and Thomas Karlauf. Transl. by Robet [Robert?] Simmons and Nick Somers. Polity, Cambridge [etc.] 2012. xi, 279 pp. £20.00; € 24.00.

In August 1939 Harvard University organized the “My Life in Germany Before and After January 1933” competition, for which more than 250 submissions were received from all over the world. The Harvard sociologist Edward Hartshorne, one of the initiators, intended to publish the reports on the November pogroms, but after he joined the Secret Service the accounts he had gathered were forgotten. Twenty-one of the testimonies from Hartshorne's collection are published here for the first time.

Der vergessene Widerstand der Arbeiter. Gewerkschafter, Kommunisten, Sozialdemokraten, Trotzkisten, Anarchisten und Zwangsarbeiter. Hrsg. Hans Coppi and Stefan Heinz. [Geschichte des Kommunismus und Linksozialismus, Band 16.] Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2012. Ill. € 29.90.

The seventeen case studies in this volume about the resistance (overlooked, according to the authors) by the labour movement against the Nazi regime focus on various protest actions, for example, protests among Berlin metalworkers’ unions and the International Transport Workers’ Federation; opposition among freethinkers (e.g. Hilde Schimschok and Paul Winzen's group), social democrats, communists, Trotskyists, and anarchists; and resistance by foreign and German forced labourers. Two chapters discuss the role of the resistance in the German collective memory. The volume also contains biographical notes.

Winter, Miriam. Das Dolmetscherwesen im Dritten Reich. Gleichschaltung und Indoktrinierung. [Inter Partes, Band 10.] Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main [etc.] 2012. 111 pp. € 19.95.

The book deals with the profession of interpreters in the Third Reich. Using contemporary sources, the author, a professional interpreter, investigates how the Nazis sought to monopolize the profession for their own purposes, and how this affected the interpreters’ training, licensing, working conditions, and professional organization. She also analyses teaching materials published by the Nazified Reichsfachschaft für das Dolmetscherwesen, concluding that the RfD English-language booklets were intended not only for further training but also for indoctrination.

Great Britain

After the Party. Reflections on Life since the CPGB. Ed. by Andy Croft. Lawrence & Wishart, London 2012. 159 pp. £15.99.

In 1991 the Communist Party of Great Britain held its last Congress. Seventy-one years after the foundation of the party, the Congress voted to replace the party of Lenin with a loose and short-lived structure called Democratic Left. In this volume eight former members, combining personal and political history, analysis and autobiography, anecdote and argument, consider the consequences of the CP's dissolution for British political and intellectual life.

Eccles, Audrey. Vagrancy in Law and Practice under the Old Poor Law. Ashgate, Farnham 2012. xii, 249 pp. Ill. £65.00.

Drawing on the Quarter Sessions records of six counties, as well as on Parliamentary Papers and other sources, and focusing on the 1744 Vagrant Act, this book traces the changes in English vagrancy law from 1700, when the Vagrant Removal Costs Act made vagrancy a county charge, to the passing of the New Poor Law in 1834. Highlighting the impact of wars and immigration from Ireland and Scotland, Dr Eccles aims to reveal the causes of the vagrancy problems and the incongruity between the law and social reality.

Frost, Diane and PeterNorth. Militant Liverpool. A City on the Edge. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool 2013. x, 218 pp. £14.99.

In the 1980s the Labour-controlled City Council of Liverpool, as opposed to other socialist councils that eventually came to an accommodation with Mrs Thatcher's Conservative government, refused to implement its spending cuts. In the eyes of Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock and others, the Labour Party in Liverpool had been hijacked by ruthless revolutionaries playing politics with people's lives in a doomed attempt to overthrow the elected Conservative government. Drawing on testimonies from both supporters and opponents of the Council's actions, this book aims to present a balanced account of Liverpool's “Militant Tendency” years.

Halpin, Kevin. Memoirs of a Militant. Sharply and to the point. Praxis Press, Glasgow 2012. viii, 202 pp. Ill. £9.99.

In this memoir the trade unionist and militant communist Kevin Halpin (b. 1927) gives an account of his life, including his childhood in Preston, his wartime service in minesweepers, his membership of Britain's Communist Party, his Marxist education, his work at Ford Motors, and his experiences as a union organizer and party militant. He also discusses the Twentieth Soviet Communist Party congress and its impact on political thinking in Britain.

Huzzey, Richard. Freedom Burning. Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain. Cornell University Press, Ithaca [etc.] 2012. xiii, 303 pp. Ill. Maps. $29.95.

After Britain abolished slavery in 1834, the British government tried to suppress the slave trade through a combination of diplomacy and force. Victorian objectors to the use of violence were concerned more with the principles of international law and free trade than with collateral African victims of raids against slave-trading chiefs, according to Dr Huzzey. This study aims to explain how the philanthropic, imperial, and economic interests that underlay Britain's anti-slavery zeal shaped racist and imperialist prejudices, new forms of coerced labour, and the expansion of colonial possessions.

Laite, Julia. Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens. Commercial Sex in London, 1885–1960. [Genders and Sexuality in History.] Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2012. 299 pp. Maps. £55.00.

Exploring the period between the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 and the Street Offices Act of 1959, Dr Laite examines the processes of the criminalization of prostitution in the broader context of hardening public and political attitudes towards commercial sex in London, the effects on the commercial sex industry, and the position of women working in that industry. She argues that laws directed against prostitution tended to do more harm than good, because they promoted organized vice and caused the position and working conditions of the women working as prostitutes to deteriorate. See also Marion Pluskota's review in this volume, pp. 526–528.

Linehan, Thomas. Modernism and British Socialism. [Modernism and …] Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2012. xiv, 171 pp. £17.99.

Using a concept of modernism that extends beyond the radical innovation in the arts that it usually connotes, in this book about the revitalization of British socialism between 1880 and 1910 Dr Linehan identifies the links between this socialist revival and modernism. He examines the ideas of figures such as Annie Besant, Edward Carpenter, and George Bernard Shaw, and looks at utopian communities such as Totley Farm and the Whiteway Colony. In addition to aspiring to economic justice for working people, he argues, socialism sought to address spiritual and cultural issues that arose during the processes of modernization and modernity.

Saltzman, RachelleH. A Lark for the Sake of Their Country. Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2012. xxvi, 262 pp. Ill. £65.00.

This book is about the upper- and middle-class “volunteers” in the 1926 General Strike in Great Britain. Using correspondence and interviews conducted between 1985 and 1987 with volunteers, strikers, and contemporary observers, as well as contemporary newspapers and magazines, novels, diaries, plays, and memoirs, Dr Saltzman, an anthropologist and folklorist, explores how the upper classes used the strike to assert their ideological right to define Britishness, and how collective folk memories about this event continue to define national identity.

Italy

Bacconi, Renato. Saint Gobain. Un secolo di industria, lavoro e società a Pisa (1889–1983). BFS edizioni, Pisa 2012. 336 pp. € 22.00.

This is the story of the glass workers at the Saint Gobain glass factory, Pisa's main industry, from its establishment in 1889 until the labour dispute of 1983, in which the author, who was also the secretary of the Camera del Lavoro of Pisa, figured prominently. Glass workers had distinctive organizational forms. While those of the glassblowers resembled the traditional master blowers’ organizations, the ones of the glass pane workers were more like modern industrial unions. The conflict of 1983 was instigated by lay-offs in connection with the modernization of the factory.

Gianni, Emilio. Dal radicalismo borghese al socialismo operaista. Dai congressi della Confederazione Operaia Lombarda a quelli del Partito Operaio Italiano (1881–1890). Edizioni Pantarei, Milano 2012. [Biografie individuali e collettive del movimento operaio italiano borghese e proletario, vol. 4.] 447 pp. Ill. € 25.00.

The fourth in a series of works intended as a combination of a biographical dictionary and a prosopography of the Italian labour movement (see IRSH, 53 (2008), p. 561 for the first volume), this volume focuses on Milan from 1860 to 1892, particularly the Partito Operaio Italiano, which peaked at 60,000 members and 100 chapters, mainly in northern Italy. The volume also contains c.300 biographies of militants, POI members, and others, including Giuseppe Croce (a founding member of the POI), Constandino Lazzari (a co-founder of the POI weekly Fascio operaio), and the socialist feminist Paolina Schiff.

Marchetti, Sabrina. Le ragazze di Asmara. Lavoro domestico e migrazione postcoloniale. Roma, 2011. Ediesse, Roma 2011. 190 pp. € 12.00.

During the 1960s and 1970s many Eritreans fleeing the conflict between their country (an Italian colony until 1941) and neighbouring Ethiopia arrived in Italy. Among them were women from the Asmara region who went to work for Roman families as domestic servants, nannies, or cooks. Using interviews with fifteen women from Asmara, Dr Marchetti in this book contributes to the historiography of Eritrean migration to Italy. She argues that the postcolonial dimension emerging from the women's memories is a fundamental aspect of their identity, their experience as domestics, and how they relate to Italy as the former colonizing country.

Molé, NoelleJ. Labor Disorders in Neoliberal Italy. Mobbing, Well-Being, and the Workplace. [New Anthropologies of Europe.] Indiana University Press, Bloomington [etc.] 2012. xii, 212 pp. $70.00; £54.00. (Paper: $24,95; £16.99; E-book: $20.95; £15.99.)

This anthropological study is about psychological harassment at work (“mobbing”) as a culturally urgent issue in Italy. After providing historical and ethnographic overviews of Italy's labour market, the author analyses the origins of mobbing in relation to notions of protection and precariousness, the classification of mobbing – as opposed to sexual harassment – as a work-related illness, the deployment of preventive programmes and workers’ use of the concept of mobbing to make legal and medical claims. She argues that Italians associate mobbing with the growing instability of the labour market.

Il presente e la storia. Studi e ricerche in memoria di Alceo Riosa. A cura di M. Antonioli, B. Bracco e M. Gervasoni. [Cultura storica, 40.] BFS edizioni, Pisa 2012. 195 pp. Ill. € 18.00.

This volume in memory of Alceo Riosa (1939–2011), a historian of Italian socialism, contains ten essays on various topics, including Italian revolutionary syndicalism (the case of the Unione sindacale italiana); Italian socialism and the opera lirica; Italian socialists and the Trieste question (1946–1975); and the fascist historian Gioacchino Volpe. One article (in French) reflects on Riosa as a historian.

Rossi, Marco. Livorno ribelle e sovversiva. Arditi del popolo contro il fascismo 1921–1922. Pref. di Griogio Sacchetti. BFS edizioni, Pisa 2012. 109 pp. Ill. € 12.00.

Arditi del popolo, “people's squads”, were people's militias organized to fight fascism in Italy. This book focuses on Livorno, an anarchist stronghold, where militants of various tendencies during the years 1921–1922, temporarily overcoming sectarianism, formed a coalition against fascism. After highlighting Livorno's reputation as a “subversive” city, the author describes the emergence of the local Arditi del popolo, the fights against the fascists, the significance of the anarchists in the Arditi, and their ultimate downfall. The appendix contains an account of the strike held in Livorno in 1920 for the liberation of Errico Malatesta, who had been arrested.

Savelli, Laura. Autonomia femminile e dignità del lavoro. Le postelegrafoniche. [Storie di donne e di uomini, 3.] Felici Editore, Ghezzano 2012. 314 pp. € 18.00.

This is a history of female post, telegraph, and telephone employees in Italy from the early 1860s, when women were first admitted to jobs in telegraph offices, through the 1960s and 1970s. Highlighting the contribution of women workers to the construction and functioning of the Italian state machinery, the author examines their working conditions, and how these women viewed and experienced their work, the presence of the postelegrafoniche in the unions, where they focused on equal pay issues, and their close ties with the Italian women's movement.

Portugal

Greve des Ventres! Para a história do movimento neomalthusiano em Portugal. Em favor de um autocontrolo da natalidade. Org. João Freire e Maria Alexandre Lousada. Edições Colibri, Lisboa 2012. 198 pp. Ill. € 15.00.

This collection documents the history of Portuguese Neo-Malthusianism from its beginnings at the turn of the twentieth century and the rise of the movement during the Republic (1911–1922), to the period of suppression in the 1930s and 1940s. The volume contains both original Portuguese texts (including excerpts from Angelo Vaz's 1902 doctoral thesis on Neo-Malthusianism) and contemporary translations of Spanish and French Neo-Malthusian pamphlets, articles, and other publications, short biographies of key figures in Portuguese Neo-Malthusian history, and a substantial introduction.

Russia – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Gutjahr, Wolf-Dietrich. “Revolution muss sein”. Karl Radek – die Biographie. Böhlau, Köln [etc.] 2012. 948 pp. € 79.90.

Karl Radek (1885–1939) was a Polish-born journalist of the radical Left, a Soviet propagandist and a Comintern leader, until he was banned for his support of Trotsky in 1927. At the Moscow show trial of 1937 he was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment but was murdered at Stalin's behest in 1939. This biography, based on published Soviet documents, autobiographical and other texts by Radek, and contemporaries’ testimonies, traces Radek's adventurous life and examines Radek's political activity and work as a journalist.

Markwick, RogerD. and EuridiceCharonCardona. Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2012. xxii, 305 pp. Ill. £60.00.

One million women served in the Red Army on the eastern front in World War II as aviators, anti-aircraft gunners, nurses, and snipers; another 28,000 fought with the partisans. Drawing on print media, films, archival sources (including Komsomol files, war diaries, and unpublished memoirs), and interviews, this book describes the experiences, motives, and mindsets of Soviet women who went to war, overwhelmingly voluntarily, against Nazism, and examines how the Stalinist state viewed, depicted, and used Soviet women at war.

Riga, Liliana. The Bolsheviks and the Russian Empire. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2012. xiii, 313 pp. £60.00; $99.00.

In this comparative historical sociology of the early Soviet elite, Dr Riga examines the biographies of the ninety-three members of the Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Worker's Party (Bolshevik)/Russian Communist Party from 1917 to 1923. Finding that two-thirds of the Bolshevik leadership belonged to ethnic minorities (Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Latvians, Georgians, Jews, and others), and highlighting the shared experiences of assimilation and socio-ethnic exclusion that underlay their class universalism, she offers a reinterpretation of political radicalization in the last years of the Russian Empire.

Russia in Motion. Cultures of Human Mobility since 1850. Ed. by John Randolph and Eugene M. Avrutin. [Studies of World Migrations.] University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2012. 287 pp. $55.00.

The twelve chapters in this volume about human mobility and Russian governance include contributions about pre-revolutionary Kiev and the use of human mobility as a tool of governance; Odessa as a hajj hub (1880s–1910s); the migration of Russian peasants to the east; tourism in the Russian empire; Soviet internal-migration policies during the 1930s; migration control in Soviet and post-Soviet Moscow; Asian migrants to Moscow and Leningrad; barriers against geographical mobility in post-Soviet Russia; and an essay exploring the paradox of the coexistence of leisure travel and forced labour migrations in the Soviet Union.

Schlögel, Karl. Moscow, 1937. Transl. by Rodney Livingstone. Polity, Cambridge [etc.] 2012. xix, 652 pp. Ill. £25.00.

For this book, a translation of Terror und Traum. Moskau 1937 (2008), Professor Schlögel has assembled disparate stories of opposing experiences and manifestations to present a “synchronous narrative” of the events that took place in Moscow in 1937. He focuses on thirty-eight “scenes”, for example, the great show trials, the celebrations of the Pushkin Jubilee, Moscow as a construction site, the Moscow Directory of 1937, the International Geologists’ Congress, the suppressed census of 1937, the passing of the new constitution, and the elections to the Supreme Soviet, for which the preparations went hand in hand with the mass killings.

Slovakia

Stolarik, M. Mark. Where Is My Home? Slovak Immigration to North America (1870–2010). [Immigration from Europe to North America, Vol. 1.] Bern [etc.], Peter Lang 2012. xiii, 391 pp. Ill. Maps. €81.90.

Between 1870 and 2010 over 500,000 Slovaks migrated to the United States and Canada in search of work in the industrial triangle of the United States and in central Canada's cities. Using his own family history as the foundation, and drawing on interviews as well as on archival and printed sources, Professor Stolarik tells the story of Slovak migration to North America in the twentieth century, in particular the life histories of two dozen families scattered across the United States and Canada.

Spain

Baxmeyer, Martin. Das ewige Spanien der Anarchie. Die anarchistische Literatur des Bürgerkriegs (1936–1939) und ihr Spanienbild. Verlag Walter Frey, Berlin 2012. 599 pp. € 36.00.

In this dissertation (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, 2011) about anarchist literature during the period of the Spanish Civil War, Dr Baxmeyer examines anarchist ideas about literature and compares the production and reception of anarchist literature (for example the popular La Novela Ideal and La Novela Libre series) before and during the Civil War. Analysing representations of Spain in these publications, he argues that libertarian literature during the Civil War took a “nationalist turn”, drifting away significantly from its ideological roots, both formally and thematically.

Combates por la democracia. Los sindicatos, de la dictadura a la democracia (1938–1994). Dir. Álvaro Soto Carmona [y] Manuela Aroca Mohedano. [Colección Estudios, vol. 155.] UAM ediciones; F. Largo Caballero, [Madrid] 2012. 425 pp. € 15.00.

The seventeen contributions to this volume about the trade-union movement under Franco and during the transition to democracy aim to illustrate that the labour movement contributed significantly to the transition to, and consolidation of, democracy in Spain. They address, for example, the role of the state-controlled OSE compared to that of the free trade unions; trade-union protests during the first years of the Franco regime; the role of the trade unions in the Spanish economy; agrarian organizations; the roles of women and Roman Catholics; and the reconstruction of the free trade unions during the transition.

Graham, Helen. The War and its Shadow. Spain's Civil War in Europe's Long Twentieth Century. Sussex Academic Press, Brighton [etc.] 2012. xiv, 250 pp. Ill. £22.50.

Situating the Spanish Civil War in the context of twentieth-century European history and emphasizing that in Spain, as in other European internecine conflicts (e.g. the Yugoslav wars), war was waged predominantly on civilians, Professor Graham explores the long-term consequences of the Spanish Civil War in chapters about the institutionalized killing and the making of Francoism; the case of Amparo Barayón and her children's search for the truth about her murder; ideas about the International Brigaders before and after Spain; the enduring legacy of Francoism; and Spain's memory wars.

Payne, StanleyG. The Spanish Civil War. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.]. 268 pp. Maps. £55.00; $90.00. (Paper: £17.99; $27.99.)

Situating the Spanish Civil War in the context of European conflicts between 1918 and 1949, this book seeks to illuminate the Civil War's key issues, including the origins of the conflict, the collapse of the Spanish Republic, the complex web of Republican politics, and the character of the Spanish revolution. Professor Payne also examines the military history of the War, the non-intervention policy of the democracies, and the role of German, Italian, and Soviet intervention, and considers why the conflict provoked such strong reactions at the time and long afterwards.

El sindicalismo socialista español. Aproximación oral a la historia de UGT (1931–1975). Dir. Alicia Alted, Manuela Aroca, y Juan Carlos Collado. Fundación Francisco Largo Caballero, [Madrid] [2010]. 407 pp. Ill. € 24.21

This collection offers an oral history approach to the history of the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT, General Union of Workers), the main Spanish socialist trade union, from the beginning of the Second Republic in 1931 through the Francoist dictatorship. Combined with sections featuring extensive illustrations and based on interviews with 102 UGT activists, the ten chapters in this collection explore a comprehensive variety of themes, periods, and issues, including the period of the Second Republic and the Popular Front; the Civil War; exile; repression, underground activities, and workers’ protest in Francoist Spain; emigration; and renewal in the 1960s and 1970s. See also Vicente Sanz Rozalén's review in this volume, pp. 528–530.

El trabajo y sus riesgos en la época contemporánea. Conocimiento, codificación, intervención y gestión. [Collecció Història del Treball, Vol. 5.] Ed. Arón Cohen. Icaria editorial, Barcelona 2012. 378 pp. Ill. € 23.00.

The nine case studies in this volume examine the history of work-related health issues in Spain from c.1850 to 2000 in various sectors (agricultural labour and mining) and regions (Catalonia, Biscay, the Spanish south-east), and in relation to different themes (work, gender, and trachoma; the role of employers’ mutual societies; an inquiry about maternity insurance from 1925–1927; and the normalization of risks at work). The collection also includes an article on the Anglo-Saxon asbestos debate and a historiographical contribution about the history of work, health, and safety issues in France.

Sweden

Jonsson, Pernilla and SilkeNeunsinger. Gendered Money. Financial Organization in Women's Movements, 1880–1933. [International Studies in Social History, Vol 17.] Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2012. xv, 260 pp. $110.00; £70.00.

Contributing to the discussion of resource mobilization theories in the context of social movements, Professors Jonsson and Neunsinger in this book focus on two Swedish first-wave women's organizations, the middle-class feminist Fredrika Bremer Association and the Social Democratic Women's Federation, to examine the monetary resources available to them and the ways they used such resources. Comparing the Swedish organizations’ financial strategies with those of similar organizations in Germany, Britain, and Canada, they emphasize the importance of class, gender, age, and national context.

Switzerland

Vuilleumier, Marc. Histoire et combats. Mouvement ouvrier et socialisme en Suisse, 1864–1960. Éditions d'en bas & Collège du travail, Genève 2012. 564 pp. Sfr. 35.00.

The well-known historian of the labour movement in Switzerland has brought together twenty-two of his articles that are sometimes difficult to find, published between 1964 and 1996 in books and journals. Topics range from the First International to the Swiss general strike of 1918, with extensive consideration for refugees and exiles. Each article is preceded by a note detailing its context and bringing it up to date. As an introduction, the author has added an intellectual autobiography, in which he touches on the difficulties encountered by researchers in the 1960s and 1970s, including with a less than forthcoming IISH.