Barbados

Newman, Simon P. A New World of Labor. The Development of Plantation Slavery in the British Atlantic. [The Early Modern Americas.] University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 2013. viii, 327 pp. Ill. £36.00.

From 1627 onwards, English, Scottish, and Irish convicts, prisoners, and vagrants were transported to the Caribbean island of Barbados to work on the plantations as bound labourers; from the mid-1640s increasing numbers of enslaved Africans arrived at the island. Comparing the brutal white servant regime with the West African institution of slavery, Professor Newman aims to demonstrate that the coerced labour system provided the foundation for the system of racialized black slavery, and that class as much as race informed the establishment of plantation slavery in Barbados and British America. See also Richard Drayton’s review in this volume, pp. 153–156.

Brazil

Challenging Social Inequality. The Landless Rural Workers Movement and Agrarian Reform in Brazil. Ed. by Miquel Carter. Select. ch. transl. from the Portuguese by Miguel Carter. Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 2015. xxix, 494 pp. Ill. £76.00. (Paper: £21.99.)

Focusing on the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) and featuring contributions by seventeen scholars, journalists, and development workers, this anthology is about the causes and consequences of and contemporary reactions to the inequality in Brazil’s agrarian sector. The fifteen chapters include essays providing the historical background of the MST; case studies of landless peasants demanding land distribution by the government, information on the establishment of official agricultural settlements, and efforts to develop productive rural communities; and analyses of the MST’s relations with governments and the rule of law, as well as the influence of the MST on other Brazilian social movements.

Cuba

Morrison, Karen Y. Cuba’s Racial Crucible. The Sexual Economy of Social Identities, 1750–2000. [Blacks in the Diaspora.] Indiana University Press, Bloomington (IN) [etc.] 2015. xxvi, 339 pp. Ill. $80.00. (Paper: $32.00; E-book $31.99.)

In this book about the historical dynamics of Cuban race relations, Professor Morrison, using archival, oral-history, and literary sources, and focusing especially on perspectives among people of African descent, examines the Cuban intersections of race, nation, and reproductive sexuality from 1750 to the present within the context of Spanish colonialism, slavery, late nineteenth-century Cuban nationalism, early twentieth-century modernizing nationalism, African-based religions, and revolutionary socialism, aiming to demonstrate that throughout history individual Cuban women and men have made their own racially-oriented choices in family formation.

Jamaica

Fuller, Stephen. The Correspondence of Stephen Fuller, 1788–1795. Jamaica, The West India Interest at Westminster and the Campaign to Preserve the Slave Trade. Ed. by M.W. McCahill. [Parliamentary History: Texts & Studies, Vol.9.] Wiley Blackwell for The Parliamentary History Yearbook Trust, Chichester [etc.] 2014. xi, 256 pp. £19.99; $25.00.

In this volume, Dr McCahill makes available the correspondence of Stephen Fuller, Britain’s agent for Jamaica from 1764 to 1794, who was pivotal in the efforts of the West India lobby to justify and preserve the slave trade. Fuller’s letters contain information about the slave trade, the conditions in which Jamaican slaves lived and worked, and the attitudes of planters and their representatives. The volume also reproduces letters from a few of his correspondents and materials from the printed journals of both houses of parliament and the Jamaican assembly; the sixty-page introduction provides background information about the lobbying campaign.

United States of America

The Chicano Movement. Perspectives from the Twenty-First Century. Ed. by Mario T. García. [New Directions in American History.] Routledge, New York (NY) [etc.] 2014. xxiii, 266 pp. $150.00. (Paper: $49.95.)

The Chicano Movement, which began with the famous 1965 San Joaquin Valley grape farm workers’ strike, was the largest civil rights and empowerment movement by people of Mexican descent in the United States between 1965 and 1975. Based, in part, on a conference held at the University of California at Santa Barbara in February 2012, this volume offers samples of recent historiography on the Movimiento in eleven studies addressing various episodes in and aspects of Chicano activism, countering, for example, the view that the Chicano Movement was a monolithic group.

Escaping Servitude. A Documentary History of Runaway Servants in Eighteenth-Century Virginia. Ed. by Antonio T. Bly and Tamia Haygood. Lexington Books, Lanham (MD) 2015. 433 pp. Ill. $110.00; £90.00. (E-book: $109.99; £90.00.)

This is a collection of advertisements to find indentured servants who fled bondage in early America. The editors have collected ca. 1,000 “notices” that appeared in newspapers in Virginia between 1736 and 1789, aiming to shed light on the history of indentured servitude in early America, especially on the lives of fugitive servants. The notices are printed without explanatory notes, but the introduction provides some historical background information. The volume also includes a historiographical note, a glossary, and a subject index.

Gourevitch, Alex. From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth. Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, New York (NY) [etc.] 2015. x, 213 pp. $80.00; £55.00. (Paper: $27.99; £19.99.)

The Knights of Labor regarded wage-labour as a form of dependent labour, different from chattel slavery but still based on relations of mastery and subjection, and therefore sought to abolish the wage system and to replace it with co-operation. In this book, Professor Gourevitch reconstructs how the Knights of Labor and their predecessors the “labor republicans”, who derived their definition of freedom from a long tradition of political theory, appropriated and radicalized the republican tradition. He argues that the Knights of Labor were not just a passing phase in American working-class formation, but contributed substantially to republican political thought.

Hilliard, Kathleen M. Masters, Slaves, and Exchange. Power’s Purchase in the Old South. [Cambridge Studies on the American South.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2014. xiii, 217 pp. Ill. £55.00; $80.00. (Paper: £18.99; $27.99.)

American antebellum slaves purchased goods and services unnecessary for subsistence, according to Professor Hilliard, and appeared to have gained emotional satisfaction from both the goods and the process of acquiring these goods. She studies the political economy of the master-slave relationship in plantation communities of the coastal states from Virginia to Georgia between 1815 and 1860 through the lens of consumption and forms of exchange (buying, gift-giving, contraband, and theft), revealing complex ties of informal, illicit, and underground exchange. She also considers the “paternalist thesis” advanced by Eugene Genovese in Roll, Jordan, Roll (New York 1974).

Jennison, Watson W. Cultivating Race. The Expansion of Slavery in Georgia, 1750–1860. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington (KY) 2015. xi, 428 pp. Ill. Maps. $50.00. (Paper: $28.00.)

In this social, cultural, and political history of race-based slavery in Georgia from the eighteenth century to the eve of the Civil War, Professor Jennison traces the history of slavery in Georgia from the emergence of a slave society based on rice cultivation in the “low country” to the expansion of slavery to the “upcountry” in the decades that followed. He argues that long-term economic and demographic changes, including the forced removal of Native Americans, account for the hardening of the racial system in Georgia. This book is the paperback edition of a study originally published in 2009.

King, Shannon. Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway? Community Politics and Grassroots Activism during the New Negro Era. [Culture, Labor, History Series.] New York University Press, New York [etc.] 2015. xi, 255 pp. $49.00; £35.00.

This is a thematically organized book about black politics and community rights in Harlem from 1900 to 1930, a period when Harlem transitioned from a white to a black neighbourhood. Professor King examines the roles of New York City’s political economy, labour unionism, and black labour activism; Harlem tenant campaigns; intraracial and interracial conflicts and cooperation in debates about the use of public space; and black responses to racial violence and police brutality in black Manhattan and Harlem. He argues that mobilizations for community rights raised the black community’s racial consciousness and established Harlem’s political culture.

Laurie, Bruce. Rebels in Paradise. Sketches of Northampton Abolitionists. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst (MA) [etc.] 2015. xi, 177 p. Ill. $22.95; £18.95.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the town of Northampton, Massachusetts, became a centre of political abolitionism and a hub in the Underground Railroad, the network of secret routes and safe houses for people escaping slavery. In this book, Professor Laurie presents political biographies of five men who started the Northampton abolitionist movement: Sylvester Judd Jr.; John Payson Williston; Erastus Hopkins; Henry Sherwood Gere; and David Ruggles, the only African American among them.

Mendelsohn, Adam D. The Rag Race. How Jews Sewed Their Way to Success in America and the British Empire. [The Goldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History.] New York University Press, New York [etc.] 2015. 297 pp. Ill. $35.00; £22.99.

Aiming to explain the economic ascent of Jewish immigrants to the United States, Professor Mendelsohn compares the history of Jewish participation in the American garment industry with that of Jews in the same business in England from 1820 to 1924. He discusses different specializations, such as the second-hand trade, manufacture, and sale of new clothing, and highlights the opportunities resulting from the westward and southward expansion and the Civil War, concluding that while social and cultural factors were significant, the nature of the clothing trade per se was instrumental in the economic success of Jews in the United States.

Pargas, Damian Alan. Slavery and Forced Migration in the Antebellum South. [Cambridge Studies on the American South.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2015. xii, 281 pp. Ill. £55.00; $80.00. (Paper: £19.99; $29.99.)

Forced migration, Professor Pargas argues, was significant in the lives of American-born slaves, who were often reallocated to accommodate demand in various slave economies. In this book, he compares and contrasts the experiences of long-distance, local, and urban slave migrants in the American South before the Civil War; examines how different groups reacted to their new destinations and work regimes; and describes how forced migration influenced identity formation among American-born slaves.

Vials, Christopher. Haunted by Hitler. Liberals, the Left, and the Fight against Fascism in the United States. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst (MA) [etc.] 2014. xi, 280 pp. Ill. £80.00. (Paper: £26.95.)

Examining newspapers and periodicals, television shows, Off-Broadway theatre, popular works of history, and other media; and focusing especially on the use of the word fascism, Vials, a professor of English, traces the history of antifascism in the United States, from its origins in the 1930s through the struggle against McCarthyism in the 1950s, the Black Power movement in the 1960s, and the gay and lesbian movement in the 1980s.

Wigham, Eliza. The Anti-Slavery Cause in America and its Martyrs. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2014. vii, 168 pp. £15.99; $25.99.

Eliza Wigham (1820-1899) was a Quaker philanthropist, suffragist, and abolitionist in Edinburgh, Scotland, and supported the abolitionist cause in the United States. In 1863, she published this history of the American abolitionist movement from its beginnings in Philadelphia in 1775, through the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, to the Civil War. She intended to influence the British government, which, she feared, might side with the Confederates in the American Civil War and thus support slavery. This digitally printed version of her book appears in a series about slavery during the colonial era.

Yarrow, Andrew L. Thrift. The History of an American Cultural Movement. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst (MA) [etc.] 2014. 248 pp. Ill. £80.00. (Paper: £24.95.)

The American thrift movement of the early twentieth century brought together people from diverse backgrounds, including YMCA leaders, temperance advocates, and business leaders, as well as civil rights pioneers, credit unions, and other progressive activists. This book examines the intellectual and institutional aspects of the thrift movement in the United States within the context of other moral and social reform currents of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the rise of consumer society, and the conflict between “pre-modern” values and those of “modern” urban society.

Zimmer, Kenyon. Immigrants against the State. Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America. [The Working Class in American History.] University of Illinois Press, Urbana (IL) [etc.] 2015. x, 300 pp. Ill. $95.00. (Paper: $30.00.)

Focusing on Italian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants in San Francisco, New York City and Paterson, New Jersey from the 1880s through the 1940s, this book explores the history of anarchism in the United States from the perspective of migration history. Using sources from both sides of the Atlantic, Professor Zimmer investigates how and why thousands of Yiddish and Italian immigrants became anarchists in America, and how their adoption of an anticapitalist, antistatist, anticlerical, and cosmopolitan ideology influenced their experiences, identities and actions. See also Andrew H. Lee’s review in this volume, pp. 165–168.

China

Prophets Unarmed. Chinese Trotskyists in Revolution, War, Jail, and the Return from Limbo. Ed. by Gregor Benton. [Historical Materialism Book Series, Vol. 81.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2015. xv, 1269 pp. € 199.00.

As most of the Chinese Trotskyists’ archive has been lost or destroyed over the years, the texts and documents in this volume are mainly analyses and reminiscences. The compilation includes: a study by Wu Jimin on Chinese Trotskyism (2008); autobiographical accounts by Chen Duxiu, Zheng Chaolin, Wang Fanxi and others; Chinese Trotskyist reflections on Mao Zedong’s revolution; articles and speeches by Trotsky about Chinese Trotskyists; and some correspondence, prefaces, and introductions to memoirs, biographies, and obituaries. In the introduction the editor provides a history of Chinese Trotskyism.

India

The Coal Nation. Histories, Ecologies and Politics of Coal in India. Ed. by Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt. Ashgate, Farnham [etc.] 2014. xxvii, 318 pp. £95.00.

Exploring the history of coal in India, the third largest coal producer in the world, the fifteen contributions to this interdisciplinary volume examine social, economic, legal, environmental, and political aspects of mining, including land ownership and moral resource rights, safety issues and protective legislation for indigenous and local communities. One chapter is about the consequences of coal mining in colonial Assam; another about mining and migrant labour along the India-Bangladesh borderlands; and one essay focuses on gender in coal mining-induced displacement in Jharkhand. Three chapters address policy issues regarding coal in India.

Indonesia

Ingleson, John. Workers, Unions and Politics. Indonesia in the 1920s and 1930s. [Brill’s Southeast Asian Library, Vol. 2.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2014. xvii, 352 pp. € 125.00; $163.00.

In this book about the history of the Indonesian labour movement between 1926 and 1942, Professor Ingleson describes how the Dutch colonial state managed the urban workforce and analyses the colonial labour movement in terms of politics, race, class, and gender. He discusses: different types of unions; the impact of the 1930s Depression; labour protests and the repression by the state; and the rebuilding of the labour movement in the years before the Japanese occupation, demonstrating that labour unions were more active in the colony than is often assumed.

Knight, G. Roger. Sugar, Steam and Steel. The Industrial Project in Colonial Java, 1830-1885. University of Adelaide Press, Adelaide 2014. xi, 242 pp. Ill. $44.00.

Dutch colonial Java in the early nineteenth century was a minor centre of pre-industrial, artisanal cane sugar manufacturing; by the 1880s it had evolved into a world leader in the industrialized manufacture of sugar. Sugar (alongside coffee) had become pivotal in the Cultuurstelsel, the colonial state’s cultivation system. In this book, Professor Knight sets out to explain how this came about, describing the industrial revolution in sugar manufacture on Java, the agrarian basis for this project, financing methods, exploitation of peasants, and the role of the colonial bourgeoisie.

Turkey

Zürcher, Erik-Jan. Turkije, een moderne geschiedenis. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2015. 511 pp. € 39.95.

In this revised and enlarged edition of a history of Turkey from 1800 to the present (originally published in Amsterdam in 2006), previously published in English as Turkey: A Modern History (London 1993), Professor Zürcher focuses on the key themes of Turkey’s integration into the capitalist world system and the modernization of the Turkish state and society. In a newly added chapter he discusses how Turkey has been transformed under the rule of the AK Parti over the past twelve years.

France

Les vies d’André Léo. Romancière, féministe et communarde. Sous la dir. de Frédéric Chauvaud, François Dubasque, Pierre Rossignol et Louis Vibrac. Préface de Michelle Perrot. [Collections “Archives du féminisme”.] Presses Universitaires de Rennes, Rennes 2015. 353 pp. Ill. € 20.00.

The twenty articles in this volume focus on different aspects of the life and work of the republican and feminist writer André Léo (pseudonym of Léodile Béra, 1824-1900). This includes: her exile after the fall of the Paris Commune; her friendship with Pauline Prins and her relationship with Grégoire Champseix and Benoît Malon; her journalism; her feminism; her ideas about education; her fictional work and her connections with libertarian writers of her time. The volume includes the text of a manifesto concerning women’s work (1868), a chronology and a bibliography of André Léo’s novels, stories, essays, and articles.

Germany

Bergmann, Theodor. Sozialisten, Zionisten, Kommunisten. Die Familie Bergmann-Rosenzweig – eine kämpferische Generation im 20. Jahrhundert. VSA Verlag, Hamburg 2014, 102 pp. Ill. € 12.80.

Theodor Bergmann, the son of a liberal Berlin rabbi, and his five brothers and two sisters were more interested in politics and science than in religion. This small book features twenty (double) portraits, in which Professor Bergmann, a historian of twentieth century socialist and communist movements, tells the story of his parents, his siblings and their children, most of whom were socialists, Zionists, or critical communists (supporting the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands-Opposition, for example). He sketches the background to this family history in the introduction.

Bock, Norman. Zwischen Verdrängung und Verklärung. Die ‘junge Welt’ in der Auseinandersetzung mit der Geschichte des europäischen Kommunismus. Nomos Verlag, Baden-Baden 2014. 313 pp. € 56.00.

In this dissertation (Chemnitz, 2013), Dr Bock examines how publications by the far left have presented the history of European communism. Focusing especially on recent issues of junge Welt, launched in 1947 as a newspaper for youth in the GDR, he studies how this periodical depicted the Russian Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, Stalinism, and the German Peaceful Revolution of 1989, also addressing the question of whether the concept of “left historical revisionism” applies in the case of junge Welt.

Buggeln, Marc. Slave Labor in Nazi Concentration Camps. Transl. by Paul Cohen. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2014. vii, 334 pp. £60.00.

Drawing on eyewitness accounts and written documents, in this book (largely based on a dissertation, Universität Bremen 2008), Dr Buggeln examines the use of concentration camp inmates for the German war economy in the Nazi concentration camp system, especially at the Neuengamme subcamps in Hamburg. He traces the negotiations between those who were responsible for the establishment of the Neuengamme subcamps, compares conditions in the various subcamps, and considers the prisoners and their survival strategies.

Felsch, Philipp. Der lange Sommer der Theorie. Geschichte einer Revolte. 1960–1990. C.H. Beck, Münster 2015. 326 pp. Ill. € 24.95.

In 1970, when the market for leftist books was thriving in West Germany, Peter Gente founded the Merve publishing house. During the two decades that followed he provided latecomers in the West-German student movement, squatters and punks, as well as aficionados of avant-garde art with theoretical works, written mainly by Italian Marxists and French poststructuralists. In this book, Dr Felsch describes the intellectual history of Peter Gente, his companion Heidi Paris, and their publishing house, also addressing the question of why difficult, “glamorously incomprehensible” theoretical texts appealed to their readers.

Jung, Yong Suk. Strukturwandel im sozialen Feld. Bergarbeiterfamilien im Ruhrgebiet 1945 bis 2000. [Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen. Schriftenreihe A: Darstellungen, Band 54.] Klartext, Bochum 2015. 218 pp. € 29.95.

Miners’ families in the Ruhr region from the late nineteenth century onwards were characterized by early marriages, many children, and housewives without paid employment. In this book, an abridged and edited version of a dissertation (Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 2011), Dr Jung investigates how family structures among miners in this region changed between the end of World War II and 2000, examining factors such as the influence of housing conditions and growing labour market opportunities for women.

Kaesler, Dirk. Max Weber. Preuße, Denker, Muttersohn. Eine Biographie. Verlag C.H. Beck, München 2014. 1007 pp. Ill. € 38.00.

Although Max Weber is often perceived as an interpreter of the present world, Professor Kaesler emphasizes that the world that inspired his theories differed significantly from ours. In this biography, Kaesler reconstructs the development of Weber’s work within the context of contemporary ideas and controversies, traces Weber’s scholarly and political activities, and sheds light on his personal life, aiming to demonstrate how his family background shaped his life and work. In doing so, he also presents a social and political history of Weber’s Germany.

Krämer, Jenny [und] Benedikt Vallendar. Leben hinter Mauern. Arbeitsalltag und Privatleben hauptamtlicher Mitarbeiter des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit der DDR. Klartext, Essen 2014. 251 pp. € 18.95.

Based on files from the former East-German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), memoirs, and interviews, this book focuses on the daily routines and private lives of Stasi officers, describing their recruitment, training, and Stasi modes of operation; the required “social commitment”; Stasi members’ remuneration, bonuses and privileges; family life and recreational activities; and issues such as conflicts with colleagues, alcohol abuse, sexuality, and disciplinary measures. The authors conclude that despite numerous privileges, Stasi officers often found their work to be frustrating.

Oppelland, Torsten [und] Hendrik Träger. Die Linke. Willensbildung in einer ideologisch zerstrittenen Partei. [Schriftenreihe: Die politischen Parteien der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.] Baden-Baden, Nomos 2014. 263 pp. € 22.00.

Die Linke, also known as die Linkspartei, was founded in 2007 following a merger between the Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (PDS, the legal successor to the SED) and the Wahlalternative Arbeit & soziale Gerechtigkeit (WASG, a spinoff from the SPD). After outlining the history of the SED and the PDS, Professor Oppelland and Dr Träger examine the structure and decision-making policies of the ideologically divided Linkspartei and analyse its electoral results and strategic options.

Ormond, Henry. Henry Ormond – Anwalt der Opfer. Plädoyers in NS-Prozessen. Hrsg. Katharina Rauschenberger, Werner Renz. Unter Mitarb. v. Steven Schindler. [Wissenschaftliche Reihe des Fritz Bauer Instituts, Band 24.] Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main [etc.] 2015. 361 pp. Ill. € 34.90.

Henry Ormond was a German-born lawyer who, between 1950 and 1973, represented victims of the Holocaust in damage claims and restitution lawsuits. The test case of former forced labourer Norbert Wollheim against I.G. Farben, the company that had employed Auschwitz prisoners as forced labourers, led to damage compensation payments to former forced labourers from Buna-Monowitz, a subcamp of Auschwitz owned by I.G. Farben. This volume brings together Ormond’s pleadings in the Norbert Wollheim case and in trials against Nazi criminals. Each case is introduced by the editors. The book opens with a biographical sketch of Ormond.

Suderland, Maja. Inside Concentration Camps. Social Life at the Extremes. Transl. by Jessica Spengler. Polity Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2013. xiii, 336 pp. £55.00. (Paper: £17.99.)

Using autobiographical materials as well as academic literature and discussing sociological conceptions of how a society is constituted, in this book about everyday social life in Nazi concentration camps – daily activities and routine, social relationships, and networks – Dr Suderland explores the “hidden social practices” of Nazi concentration camp prisoners, through which they attempted to preserve their human dignity and a sense of individuality and social identity. This book is a translation of Ein Extremfall des Sozialen (2009).

Great Britain

Bentham, Jeremy. The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. The Book of Fallacies. Ed. by Philip Schofield. Clarendon Press, Oxford 2015. lxxxv, 552 pp. £85.00.

The Book of Fallacies was written by Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) to promote radical reform of the political, legal, and ecclesiastical establishments of Britain. The “fallacies” he had in mind were political arguments invoked in the Houses of Parliament to prevent reform measures. According to the editor, this edition of The Book of Fallacies, which has been reconstructed from Bentham’s manuscripts, is the first that follows Bentham’s structure in the work and includes material omitted from previous versions. The editor has provided indexes of names and subjects.

Beveridge, William H. The Works of William H. Beveridge. Routledge, London [etc.] 2015. 7 vols. £460.00.

This series of photomechanical reprints of texts by Lord Beveridge (1879–1963) comprises: Changes in Family Life, the printed version of a survey in conjunction with a BBC series broadcast in 1932; The Pillars of Security And Other War-Time Essays and Addresses (1943), which includes a discussion of the 1942 Beveridge Report and influenced the conception of the British welfare state; Voluntary Action. A Report on Methods of Social Advance (1948), in which Beveridge expounds his idea of a “voluntary action” sector to ensure a buffer between the state and the market; The Evidence for Voluntary Action (1949), a supplementary volume to Voluntary Action; The London School of Economics And Its Problems 1919–1937 (1960; Beveridge was Director of the LSE from 1919 to 1937); and Full Employment in a Free Society. A Report (1944; a second edition was published in 1960). The seventh volume (A Beveridge Reader) is a reprinted anthology of texts by Beveridge, selected and introduced by Karel and John Williams (1987).

Shore, Heather. London’s Criminal Underworlds, c.1720–c.1930. A Social and Cultural History. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2015. xi, 286 pp. Maps. £60.00.

This book about changing ideas about the criminal underworld from the early eighteenth until the early twentieth century features case studies focusing on individual lives and criminal networks, in which Dr Shore emphasizes the significance of kinship and ethnic and community networks. It also includes chapters about themes such as the evolution of print culture; changes in policing and law enforcement strategies; the relationship between criminality and the press and courtroom constructions of criminal typologies; and the significance of urban space and territory. One chapter is about organized crime in Interwar London. See also John Welshman’s review in this volume, pp. 158–161.

Sutcliffe, Marcella Pellegrino. Victorian Radicals and Italian Democrats. [Studies in History New Series.] The Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2014. xii, 252 pp. Ill. £50.00.

This book is about the transnational connection between Italian democrats (especially Giuseppe Mazzini) and British radicals between 1837 and 1890. Mainly drawing on sources from the industrial North of England and emphasizing the significance of the adult education movement, Dr Sutcliffe traces how Mazzini’s writings on democracy, education, association, and citizenship, published in the radical press, influenced Victorian radicals, ranging from Chartists, early co-operators, and Oxford social reformers to self-improving skilled workers and artisans, highlighting figures such as George Jacob Holyoake and forms of education such as the “co-operative tours” to Italy in the 1880s.

Todd, Selina. The People. The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910–2010. John Murray, London 2014. 456 pp. Ill. £30.00.

Using personal testimonies of servants, factory workers, miners, and housewives and emphasizing that there never was a homogeneous “white working class”, Professor Todd recounts the experiences of people who pertained to the British working class from the period between 1910 and 1945, when “the poor” became “the people”, through the after-war years of a National Health Service, free education, social security, and full employment to the Thatcher period and its legacy: the end of full employment and extensive welfare provisions.

Willes, Margaret. The Gardens of the British Working Class. Yale University Press, New Haven (CT) [etc.] 2014. 413 pp. Ill. (Paper: $35.00; £12.99.)

This book is about gardening in Britain, from subsistence horticulture to recreational gardening. Drawing on reconstructions of early modern gardens, as well as on manuscripts and printed sources, Ms Willes presents an account of ordinary gardeners in British history, including: Tudor husbandmen, who combined horticulture in their gardens with cultivating strips in common fields; market gardeners; housewives who cultivated plants for the kitchen and herbs for medicinal use; gardeners employed in elite households; nineteenth-century craftsmen who grew flowers in their backyards; working-class floricultural societies; and fruit and flower shows.

Italy

Wickham, Chris. Sleepwalking into a New World. The Emergence of Italian City Communes in the Twelfth Century. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) [etc.] 2015. xi, 305 pp. Maps. $29.95; £19.95.

Though not democracies in the modern sense, the communes of northern and central Italy have been widely viewed as stepping stones to the modern world for their non-monarchical forms of government, their institutional creativity or their secular culture. Focusing especially on Milan, Pisa, and Rome, Professor Wickham describes how these autonomous city-states emerged in the twelfth century, ruled by consular elites, unaware, he argues, that they were creating a new form of collective government. See also Stefania Montemezzo’s review in this volume, pp. 151–153.

Russia – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Allen, Barbara C. Alexander Shlyapnikov, 1885–1937. Life of an Old Bolshevik. [Historical Materialism, Vol. 90.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2015. xiv, 426 pp. Ill. € 129.00; $167.00.

The Russian communist Alexander Shlyapnikov (1885–1937) was a skilled metal worker, labour organizer and leader of the Workers’ Opposition, which, during the Russian Civil War of 1918–1921, advocated workers’ control of production. Despite the rejection of his proposals by Communist Party leaders, Shlyapnikov continued to express dissenting views about the Soviet socialist project. He was executed during Stalin’s Great Terror. Using various primary sources, including NKVD files, Shlyapnikov’s correspondence with Lenin and other Bolsheviks and diaries of Alexandra Kollontai, in this biography Professor Allen examines the life of the “Old Bolshevik” Shlyapnikov through his political education and positions.

Spain

Barrio Alonso, Ángeles. Por la razón y el derecho. Historia de la negociación colectiva en España (1850–2012). [Comares historia.] Editorial Comares, Granada 2014. 247 pp. € 23.00.

This book describes the long and difficult process of the institutionalization of collective bargaining in Spain from 1850 to 2012, which paralleled efforts to democratize the political system. Only in the late 1970s, during the transition to democracy and after independent labour unions were legalized, was industrial democracy established in Spain, once the Moncloa Pact was passed in 1977. The implementation of the 2012 labour reform by the Rajoy government, argues Professor Barrio Alonso, marks the end of thirty years of uninterrupted social dialogue.

Casanova, Julián [and] Carlos Gil Andrés. Twentieth-Century Spain. A History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2014. xix, 377 pp. Maps. £55.00; $85.00. (Paper: £19.99; $29.99.)

In the twentieth century, according to Professors Casanova and Gil Andrés, Spain experienced the end of the demographic transition, the disappearance of the traditional peasant world, the spread of education, women’s emancipation, a revolution in transport and communications, the rise of public opinion, and the extension of citizen’s rights. This book, a translation of Historia de España en el siglo XX (Barcelona 2009), presents a history of twentieth-century Spain within the context of these changes. Intended for a general readership, it includes a list of key figures, a time line, and a guide to further reading.

Mass Killings and Violence in Spain, 1936–1952. Grappling with the Past. Ed. by Peter Anderson and Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco. [Routledge/Cañada Blanch Studies on Contemporary Spain, Vol. 19.] Routledge, New York (NY) [etc.] 2014. viii, 234 pp. £85.00.

Aiming to show why the Francoist past remains problematic for people associated with either side of the conflict, this volume about the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath features: three articles about violence committed by the nationalist rebels, including one about aggressive Francoist antifeminism and the reversal of women’s liberation; two essays about violence in the Republican zone, including one about anticlerical violence; three studies focusing on repression and resistance in the postwar period (e.g. the prison system and the Church); one contribution about memory cultures of the Civil War and another about anti-Francoist historiography of the repression.

Ponce Alberca, Julio. Gibraltar and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–39. Local, National Anderson and Migueland International Perspectives. Transl. by Irene Sánchez González. Bloomsbury Academic, London [etc.] 2015. viii, 198 pp. Ill. £65.00.

This translation of Gibraltar y la Guerra Civil española (Seville, 2009) offers a detailed account of the role of the strategically significant British colony of Gibraltar in the Spanish Civil War. Although formally neutral, Professor Ponce Alberca argues that the British authorities as well as the businesses present on Gibraltar favoured a Nationalist victory and, in practice, provided support for the Nationalists. He concludes that Gibraltar exemplified the calculated non-intervention policy promoted by Great Britain.