SOCIAL THEORY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

Eagleton, Terry. Why Marx Was Right. Yale University Press, New Haven [etc.] 2011. xii, 258 pp. £16.99.

Aiming to present Marx's ideas not as perfect but as plausible and using historical and present-day examples ranging from feudalism to Nazism and from Marie Antoinette to Keith Richards, Professor Eagleton in this book sets out to refute ten common objections to Marxism (e.g. its obsolescence, its historical and economic determinism, its materialism, its obsession with class, and that it leads to political tyranny), and in the process provides an accessible introduction to Marx's work.

Franzway, Suzanne and MaryMargaretFonow. Making Feminist Politics. Transnational Alliances between Women and Labor. University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2011. viii, 179 pp. $70.00. (Paper: $25.00.)

Drawing on archival records, interviews, field observations (working with the United Steelworkers in Canada and the United States, for example), websites, and research provided by the Global Union Research Network (a cooperative body involving the ILO, ITUC, OECD and Global Union Federations), Professors Franzway and Fonow examine the emergence of transnational feminist activism in trade unions. They describe how union feminists mobilize around issues of wages and equity, child-care campaigns, queer organizing, and work–life balance, arguing that women across the world are transforming labour unions by broadening their focus from contractual details to empowerment and family and feminist issues.

Restivo, Sal. Red, Black, and Objective. Science, Sociology, and Anarchism. Ashgate, Farnham [etc.] 2011. ix, 224 pp. £55.00.

In this book Professor Restivo, one of the founders of the science studies movement, explores questions in theory, practice, values, and policy in science and technology studies. Adopting Peter Kropotkin's account of anarchism as one of the social sciences, and engaging with the works of Feyerabend and Nietzsche, he expounds and develops an anarchist account of science as a social construct and institution.

AFRICA

Trade Unions in West Africa. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Ed. by Craig Phelan. [Trade Unions Past, Present and Future, Vol. 7.] Peter Lang, Oxford [etc.] 2011. vi, 282 pp. € 44.40.

This volume about trade unionism in West Africa from 1929 onwards contains articles on the Confédération Générale du Travail in West Africa, the 1947–1948 railway strike in French West Africa, and teachers’ unions in Benin; two chapters on trade unions in Guinea, before and after independence; one on trade unions in the Gambia; another on the trade-union movement in Mali; and two on trade unions in Ghana. In the concluding chapter – on social partnership in West Africa – ILO representative George Minet considers the prospects as well as the problems facing trade unions in the region.

Algeria

Christelow, Allen. Algerians without Borders. The Making of a Global Frontier Society. University Press of Florida, Gainesville [etc.] 2012. xi, 250 pp. £62.60.

In this history of Algeria from the final quarter of the eighteenth century to the present day, Professor Christelow pays particular attention to Algerians who have engaged in interchange with people from other backgrounds: either in the “frontier encounters” between Algerians and French citizens or in border crossings; or by becoming immigrants or refugees outside the French domain, in the Muslim world or elsewhere in the West, specifically in Britain and the United States.

Benin

Semley, LorelleD. Mother is Gold, Father is Glass. Gender and Colonialism in a Yoruba Town. Indiana University Press, Bloomington [etc.] 2011. xvi, 235 pp. Ill. $70.00. (Paper: $24.95; E-book: $21.95.)

In this book Professor Semley explores the historical and political meanings of motherhood in West Africa, drawing on interviews conducted in Kétu, Benin, between 1997 and 2006, oral traditions, reinterpretation of archival sources, and analyses of ethnographies. She tells the story of how she discovered that women served as treasurers, advisors, ritual specialists, and colonial agents, in addition to their more conventional roles as queens, wives, and sisters.

Egypt

Abbas, Raouf and AssemEl-Dessouky. The Large Landowning Class and the Peasantry in Egypt, 1837–1952. Transl. by Amer Mohsen with Mona Zikri. Ed. by Peter Gran. [Beyond Dominant Paradigms in the Middle East.] Syracuse University Press, Syracuse 2011. xv, 293 pp. $24.95.

Members of the large landowning class in Egypt, which arose in the early nineteenth century from land grants given to family members and friends of the ruler Muhammad Ali, began to defend both their economic and their political interests toward the end of the nineteenth century. Drawing on archival sources, particularly the registers of taxable land, Professors Abbas and El-Dessouky in this volume – a compilation of two works published in the 1970s – chart the positions and political bodies that landholders dominated between 1837 and 1952. The editor places the volume in a historiographical context.

Ghana

Biney, Ama. The Political and Social Thought of Kwame Nkrumah. Palgrave MacMillan, New York 2011. xiii, 249 pp. £55.00.

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972), who led present-day Ghana to independence in 1957, wrote on decolonization, neocolonialism, imperialism, and African cultural philosophy, advocating Pan-African unity. His views belong to a radical intellectual canon of African political ideas alongside those of figures such as Frantz Fanon, Julius Nyerere, and Amilcar Cabral. In this intellectual biography of Nkrumah, the author traces his intellectual influences and his political career, focusing on his own writings, examining the political discourse and controversies surrounding him, and seeking to demonstrate Nkrumah's continuing relevance in contemporary Ghanaian affairs, on the African continent and within the diasporic African community.

Nigeria

Salau, MohammedBashir. The West African Slave Plantation. A Case Study. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2011. Maps. xii, 196 pp. £52.00.

Based on nineteenth-century European travellers’ accounts and Arabic texts, British colonial administrators’ documents, and, particularly, oral data collected by Paul Lovejoy and others in the 1960s through interviews with kolanut traders and their descendants, this dissertation (Toronto, 2005) traces the history of plantations in the Sokoto Caliphate, the largest state in nineteenth-century sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on an area of the Kano Emirate known as Fanisau. Dr Salau argues, for example, that slave labour was a major factor in the transition to groundnut cultivation in this area during the early twentieth century.

South Africa

Carson, Tracy. Tomorrow It Could Be You. Strikes and Boycotts in South Africa, 1978–1982. [Trade Unions Past, Present and Future, Vol. 9.] Peter Lang, Oxford [etc.] 2011. xviii, 307 pp. € 46.70.

Drawing on both archival research and interviews with union leaders, community activists, employers and workers, in this book Dr Carson analyses four strikes and boycotts in the Cape Province between 1978 and 1982 to explore how they were used to forge alliances between trade unions and community groups, and to assess their role in strengthening the country's growing political movement. She argues that the Cape boycotts helped lay the foundation for the more pervasive protests of the 1980s that contributed to the fall of the apartheid regime.

Crais, CliftonC. Poverty, War, and Violence in South Africa. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2011. viii, 190 pp. £50.00; $90.00. (Paper: £17.99; $26.99.)

This book explores the relationship between the colonial wars of the nineteenth century and the origins of poverty in contemporary rural South Africa. Professor Crais describes the devastation wrought by European forces and their African auxiliaries, the mass killings, the large-scale destruction of property, and famine. He examines how the survivors struggled to rebuild their lives, adopting new – vulnerable – crops such as maize, arguing that the violence used by the colonial forces produced a crisis within African communities that led to long-term, irreversible historical changes, entailing new forms of inequality and modern poverty.

Donham, DonaldL. Violence in a Time of Liberation. Murder and Ethnicity at a South African Gold Mine, 1994. Duke University Press, Durham 2011. xiv, 237 pp. Ill. $79.95. (Paper: $22.95.)

This book is about an incident at a South African gold mine that coincided with the 1994 elections that ended apartheid. On 16 June, the first celebration of the new national holiday Soweto Day, black workers attacked the Zulus among them, killing two and injuring many more. In this study, Professor Donham offers a reconstruction of the incident, based on anthropological fieldwork, interviews, and unpublished sources, such as government reports and company records.

Forrest, Kally. Metal That Will Not Bend. National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, 1980–1995. Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg 2011. x, 566 pp.

In this book about the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), Cosatu's most radical socialist affiliate, labour historian Forrest traces the rise of Numsa and its predecessors from the early 1980s through 1995, a year after South Africa's first democratic elections, looking at these unions as seats of innovation in the broader labour movement, and analysing how they succeeded in contributing to change in South Africa.

AMERICA

Blackburn, Robin. The American Crucible. Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights. Verso, London [etc.] 2011. 498 pp. Maps. £20.00; $34.95.

Professor Blackburn examines in this book the history of the enslavement of Africans and their descendants in the Americas from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, focusing in particular on consumer capitalism and the plantations, and aiming to explain why Europeans resorted to slavery and gave it a racialized character. He argues that the slave regimes were by-products of the rise of colonialism and capitalism. He also explores the role of resistance and rebellion, abolitionism, and class struggle, which ultimately ended the New World Slave systems between the 1780s and the 1880s.

Desigualdade social na América do Sul. Perspectivas Históricas. Org. Tacísio R. Botelho [e] Marco H.D. van Leeuwen. Veredas e Cenários, Belo Horizonte 2010. 299 pp. Maps. No price.

Based on a conference held in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 2007, this collection of essays about social inequality in nineteenth and twentieth-century South America contains: three contributions on methods and resources; a presentation of information systems that facilitate comparative historical research on occupations and class (HISCO and HISCLASS); two discussions of sources for the study of social inequality and mobility in Argentina and Brazil respectively; four case studies on social inequality and occupational structure in Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina; and two studies focusing on the spatial aspects of social inequality in Brazil.

Migrants and Migration in Modern North America. Cross-Border Lives, Labor Markets, and Politics. Ed. by Dirk Hoerder and Nora Faires. Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 2011. xxi, 432 pp. Maps. £70.00; $94.95. (Paper: £16.99; $24.95.)

The nineteen chapters in this volume examine the movements of diverse populations within and between Canada, the Caribbean, Central America, Mexico, and the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on regions within states and transborder areas. In the forty-six page introduction, Professor Hoerder provides a historical overview of North American societies in the Atlantic world, and advocates an interdisciplinary approach to migration studies called “transcultural societal studies”, which combines traditional discourse-based humanities, data-based social sciences, habitus-centred behavioural approaches, and the normative disciplines of law, ethics and religion, and the sciences.

Argentina

Johnson, LymanL. Workshop of Revolution. Plebeian Buenos Aires and the Atlantic World, 1776–1810. Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 2011. xiv, 410 pp. Ill. $94.95. (Paper: $27.95.)

In this book about the history of Buenos Aires from 1776 to 1810 Professor Johnson analyses the economic, demographic, and social contexts of “plebeian” political formation and action, considering race, ethnicity, and urban population growth, as well as work culture and leisure. Investigating the so-called French Conspiracy of 1795, he argues that this purported conspiracy to raise a slave rebellion in Buenos Aires helps explain how the artisans, free labourers and slaves of Buenos Aires were crucial to the success of the revolutionary junta of May 1810, the beginning of the Argentine war of independence.

Brazil

Dinius, OliverJ. Brazil's Steel City. Developmentalism, Strategic Power, and Industrial Relations in Volta Redonda, 1941–1964. Stanford University Press, Stanford (Cal.) 2011. xxi, 325 pp. Ill. $65.00. (E-book: $65.00.)

The National Steel Company (CSN), Brazil's leading state-owned company and largest industrial enterprise in the mid-twentieth century, was founded in 1941 not only to raise industrial production domestically but also to serve as an example in implementing new social welfare policies for industrial workers. In this book Professor Dinius presents a social history of CSN focusing on the role the steelworkers played in Brazil's social and economic development from 1940s until the 1964 military coup, arguing that CSN's workers used their strategic power to reshape the company's labour regime, extracting substantial wage gains and benefits.

Soares, MarizadeCarvalho. People of Faith. Slavery and African Catholics in Eighteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro. [Latin America in Translation.] Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 2011. xiii, 321 pp. Ill. $84.95. (Paper: $23.95)

The discovery of a Catholic lay brotherhood's statutes formed by the enslaved Mina congregants of a church in Rio de Janeiro was the starting point for this book, a translation of a dissertation (Rio de Janeiro, 2000), in which Professor Soares reconstructs the lives of Mina slaves transported from the west coast of Africa to Rio de Janeiro in the eighteenth century. She situates the brotherhood in the history of the Atlantic slave trade in West Africa and analyses the role of Catholicism, and particularly that of lay brotherhoods, in how Africans constructed their identities under slavery in colonial Brazil.

Canada

Patrias, Carmela. Jobs and Justice. Fighting Discrimination in Wartime Canada, 1939–1945. University of Toronto Press, Toronto [etc.] 2012. x, 249 pp. Ill. $24.95.

Professor Patrias in this study examines the nature and extent of racist discrimination in Canadian employment practices during World War II, aiming to demonstrate that although the government officially prohibited employment discrimination based on race, nationality, and religion, employers, with the complicity of state officials, excluded workers of African, Asian, and eastern and southern European origin from white-collar and skilled jobs. The author argues that both labour shortages and the government's egalitarian war rhetoric at the same time created an opportunity for minority activists and their English Canadian allies to challenge discrimination. See also Julie Guard's review in this volume, pp. 146–148.

Colombia

Carroll, LeahAnne. Violent Democratization. Social Movements, Elites, and Politics in Colombia's Rural War Zones, 1984–2008. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana 2011. xv, 447 pp. Maps. $45.00.

This book examines the implementation of democratic reform in Colombia from 1984 to 2008, as well as the subsequent violent backlash in three rural regions with weak states, strong social movements, and armed leftist insurgencies, namely Urabá, the middle and lower Caguán Valley, and Arauca, producing bananas, coca, and oil, respectively. Using interviews as well as electoral data and archival sources, the author provides a detailed account of the struggles for local power of the elites against the peasants and rural workers and vice versa.

Cuba

Chomsky, Aviva. A History of the Cuban Revolution. [Viewpoints/Puntos de Vista. Themes and Interpretations in Latin American History.] Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester [etc.] 2011. xi, 241 pp. Ill. £13.99.

This textbook aims to provide a concise socio-historical account of the Cuban Revolution. Drawing on historical literature and primary sources both from Cuba and the United States, Professor Chomsky discusses Cuban history before and during 1959 (when the Revolution led by Fidel Castro overthrew the Batista regime), Cuba's experiments with socialism, and Cuban relations with the United States. She also explores the revolution's effects on the lives of ordinary people, considering issues of race, gender, sexuality, sport, religion, emigration, art, and culture.

United States of America

Bencivenni, Marcella. Italian Immigrant Radical Culture. The Idealism of the Sovversivi in the United States, 1890–1940. New York University Press, New York [etc.] 2011. viii, 279. Ill. $50.00; £34.00.

Italian immigrants figured prominently in labour conflicts in the United States from the 1880s onward, for example in the famous Lawrence textile strike of 1912. Forming their own alternative press, institutions, and working-class organizations, radical Italian Americans were a distinctive part of the American left until World War II. In this book Professor Bencivenni focuses on the sovversivi's culture, and on how it fused with and sustained political work, emphasizing that class alone cannot explain the sovversivi's radicalism.

Benson, Peter. Tobacco Capitalism. Growers, Migrant Workers, and the Changing Face of a Global Industry. Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2011. xiv, 323 pp. Ill. $75.00; £52.00. (Paper: $27.95; £19.95.)

Between 2002 and 2010 Professor Benson conducted anthropological research among tobacco growers and workers, farm labour and immigrant rights advocates, union organizers, and public health groups to document social change and industrial decline in tobacco-growing North Carolina. In the context of the anti-tobacco movement, the globalization and industrialization of farm and food chains, as well as the political struggles over immigration, the author examines the impact of public health policies and tobacco industry strategies on communities that have long been dependent on tobacco revenues.

Branch, EnobongHannah. Opportunity Denied. Limiting Black Women to Devalued Work. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick [etc.] 2011. xiv, 190 pp. $69.00. (Paper: $23.95.)

This is a history of black women's work in the United States from 1860 to 1960, a period when discrimination based on race and gender was viewed as legitimate. Arguing that occupational structure is a key location where racial and gender differences are transformed into class inequality, Professor Branch aims to demonstrate how black women's historically disadvantaged occupational position confined them to the least desirable jobs – farm labour, domestic service, and industrial fringe jobs.

Brecher, Jeremy. Banded Together. Economic Democratization in the Brass Valley. [The Working Class in American History.] University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2011. xxiii, 251 pp. $75.00. (Paper: $27.00.)

After dozens of factories were closed in the Connecticut Naugatuck Valley region during the 1970s and 1980s, a number of churches, unions, and community organizations set up the Naugatuck Valley Project to promote local, democratic ownership through employee-owned companies, cooperative housing, and a community land trust. Drawing mainly on interviews and participant observation, the documentary filmmaker, historian, activist, and writer Jeremy Brecher tells in this book the story of a community's efforts to rebuild and revitalize and to gain greater control over their economic lives.

Burns, Sean. Archie Green. The Making of a Working-Class Hero. University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2011. xxvi, 190 pp. Ill. $25.00.

Archie Green (1917–2009), the son of Jewish-Ukrainian socialists, was a folklorist and labour historian who documented the cultural traditions of working people, educated the public about workers’ culture and music in American life, helped establish the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and – according to his biographer – coined the term “laborlore”. Drawing on interviews with Green and his collaborators to examine the intersections of radicalism, folklore, labour history, and worker culture, this book traces Green's political genealogy and activist trajectory.

Chandler, Susan and JillB. Jones. Casino Women. Courage in Unexpected Places. Cornell University Press, Ithaca [etc.] 2011. xiii, 224 pp. $29.95.

For this book about women working in the gaming industries of Las Vegas and Reno, the authors interviewed maids, cocktail waitresses, cooks, and laundry workers, as well as dealers, pit bosses, managers, and vice presidents. While some women overcame their initial fear of organizing and took part in collective actions, for example by helping to form the 60,000-member Culinary Union, others, dealers and middle managers among them, did not act and remained silent for fear of losing their job. The authors, both professors of social work, examine the factors that drove some women to activism and led others to accept the status quo.

Chung, SueFawn. In Pursuit of Gold. Chinese American Miners and Merchants in the American West. University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2011. xiii, 258 pp. $55.00.

In the late nineteenth century, tens of thousands of Chinese came to the United States in pursuit of gold, bringing with them traditional knowledge and beliefs about mining and irrigation. While most research has focused on Chinese miners in California, in this book Professor Chung closely examines the lives of Chinese immigrants, miners, and merchants in three relatively isolated turn-of-the-century mining towns in eastern Oregon and Nevada, concluding that the Chinese in these places interacted amicably with other communities.

Currarino, Rosanne. The Labor Question in America. Economic Democracy in the Gilded Age. [The Working Class in American History.] University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2011, xi, 210 pp. $70.00. (Paper: $25.00.)

This book about labour and citizenship examines the debate about the “labour question” that arose in the United States during the depression that began in the 1870s. Professor Currarino examines the trade-union movement, immigration disputes, economic theory, popular literature, legal debates, and social reform, and distinguishes two overarching approaches: the first drew on a model of citizenship that equated social and political legitimacy with property ownership and self-reliance; the second, which derived from the social and economic conditions of wage work, emphasized economic participation in a consumer society.

Follett, Richard, Eric Foner, and WalterJohnson. Slavery's Ghost. The Problem of Freedom in the Age of Emancipation. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2011. viii, 119 pp. £10.50.

The three essays in this volume assess the meaning of freedom for enslaved and free Americans in the decades before and after the Civil War. In his contribution Professor Johnson examines the work of labour historian Herbert Gutman and the emergence of the concept of agency in historical writing about African Americans. Professor Foner focuses on Abraham Lincoln and his ideas about colonization (settling freed people outside the United States). Dr Follett explores how the material, cultural, and ideological imprint of slavery continued to influence rural life and patterns of power after slavery was abolished.

Gellman, Erik S. [and] JarodRoll. The Gospel of the Working Class. Labor's Southern Prophets in New Deal America. University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2011. Ill. $30.00.

Highlighting the importance and dynamic power of religious ideas in social and political movements, this book traces the influence of the southern activist preachers Owen Whitfield and Claude Williams, one black and the other white, who in the 1930s and 1940s used their ministry to organize farm and industrial workers for the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The authors relate the activism of the 1930s and 1940s to that of the 1960s, and emphasize the significance of the ministers’ wives, for example, in establishing the People's Institute for Applied Religion.

Gilbert, David. Love and Struggle. My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond. PM Press, Oakland, (Calif.) 2011. 336 pp. Ill. $22.00.

David Gilbert was a founding member of Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society and an activist of the Weather Underground Organization. He was arrested in October 1981 for his part in the 1981 Brink's robbery, an attempted “expropriation” that resulted in four deaths and a long prison term for himself and Kathy Boudin, his partner. In this memoir, written from the maximum-security prison where he has spent the past thirty years, Gilbert tells the story of his life as a revolutionary.

Gilpin, R. Blakeslee. John Brown Still Lives! America's Long Reckoning with Violence, Equality, and Change. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2011. xiii, 279 pp. $30.00.

This book about the controversial American abolitionist John Brown (1800–1859), who resorted to violence in the struggle against slavery, looks at Brown's final decade and the 150 years since his death. Incorporating art, literature, and history, Professor Gilpin traces Brown's legacy through writers and artists such as Thomas Hovenden, John Steuart Curry, Stephen Vincent Benét, W.E.B. Du Bois, Robert Penn Warren, Jacob Lawrence, and Kara Walker to shed light on the many symbolic John Browns and their significance in broader national debates.

Kerr, DanielR. Derelict Paradise. Homelessness and Urban Development in Cleveland, Ohio. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst [etc.] 2011. xii, 295 pp. Ill. $80.00. (Paper: $28.95.)

In this book Professor Kerr examines the historical roots of homelessness in the city of Cleveland from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. Using archival research and interviews, he aims to demonstrate that homelessness, rather than being attributable to the illnesses and inadequacies of the homeless themselves, is rooted in the shifting ground of urban labour markets, social policy, municipal planning, the criminal justice system, and corporate power.

Lause, MarkA. A Secret Society History of the Civil War. University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2011. xiii, 209 pp. Ill. $35.00; € 40.00.

In this book about the influence of nineteenth-century American secret societies on the origins and course of the American Civil War, Professor Lause examines how European traditions influenced American freemasonry and underground groups and movements in America, particularly George Lippard's Brotherhood of the Union. The author argues that antebellum secret societies, which ranged from organizations with progressive agendas to groups with conservative goals, exacerbated existing sectional tensions in the United States.

McDuffie, Erik S. Sojourning for Freedom. Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism. Duke University Press, Durham [etc.] 2011. xiv, 311 pp. Ill. $84.95. (Paper: $23.95.)

Focusing on their participation in the US Communist Party (CPUSA) between 1919 and 1956, this book examines the lives of black women radicals, such as Bonita Williams, Grace Campbell, Audley Moore, Louise Thompson Patterson, Esther Cooper Jackson, and Claudia Jones. Considering their work in Harlem, Chicago, and Birmingham, Alabama, and their travels to the Soviet Union and Spain during the Civil War, Professor McDuffie argues that the communist left served as a viable alternative for black women radicals to agitate for black freedom and dignity outside of women's clubs, the church, and civil rights and black nationalist groups.

McMillian, John. Smoking Typewriters. The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2011. xiv, 277 pp. Ill. £17.99

This book examines how underground newspapers in the 1960s educated, politicized, and built communities among disaffected young people in the United States. Following the example of papers like the Los Angeles Free Press, the East Village Other and the Berkeley Barb, “politicos” and “hippies” across the country launched hundreds of mimeographed pamphlets and flyers, small-press magazines, and newspapers. Reappraising the origins and development of the New Left rebellion, Professor MacMillian argues that the New Left uprising of the 1960s emerged from the grassroots, rather than the national office of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

May, VanessaH. Unprotected Labor. Household Workers, Politics, and Middle-Class Reform in New York, 1870–1940. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2011. 246 pp. Ill. $65.00. (Paper: $26.95.)

Around 1900 domestic workers in the American urban north were predominantly Scandinavian, German, and especially Irish, immigrants. After World War I African-American women took their place. In this study of domestic service in New York between 1870 and 1940, Professor May examines public debates about domestic service, middle-class women's reform programmes, immigrant household workers’ ethnic communities, and organizations and labour activism by African-American domestics, to explain why and how household workers, the largest category of working women before 1940, were excluded from labour protection.

Messer-Kruse, Timothy. The Haymarket Conspiracy. Transatlantic Anarchist Networks. [The Working Class in American History.] University of Illinois Press, Urbana [etc.] 2012. ix, 236 pp. $85.00. (Paper: $30.00.)

In this book Professor Messer-Kruse sets out to answer the question of whether the Haymarket bombing of 1886 was the culmination of a coordinated plan to attack the police. The author traces the evolution of revolutionary anarchist ideas in Europe and their migration to the United States and, challenging the view that there was no evidence connecting the convicted workers to the bomb throwing, examines police investigations and trial proceedings, with the aim of revealing the hidden transatlantic networks, the violent subculture, and the misunderstood beliefs of Gilded Age anarchists. See also Constance Bantman's review in this volume, pp. 131–134.

Roediger, DavidR. and ElizabethEsch. The Production of Difference. Race and the Management of Labor in U.S. History. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2012. x, 286 pp. Ill. £22.50.

In this book Professors Roediger and Esch explore the history of management in the United States from 1830 until 1930 focusing on race and migration. They examine race and plantation management in antebellum journals; analyse labour management in building the US transcontinental railroad and in projects abroad; and discuss the coexistence of “scientific management” and “race management” in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century factories, aiming to show how (white) managers explicitly ranked racial groups, both in terms of which labour they were best suited for and their relative value compared to others. See also Lisa Phillips's review in this volume, pp. 129–131.

Roof, Tracy. American Labor, Congress, and the Welfare State, 1935–2010. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2011. viii, 284 pp. £31.00.

In this book Professor Roof studies the changing political and institutional context shaping labour's legislative influence from the 1930s to the present. Focusing on the AFL-CIO, she examines the interplay between unions and Congress and the interdependent relationship between the Democratic Party and the labour movement. She traces the trajectories of representative policy proposals from their conception through the legislative process, aiming to reveal how various institutional obstacles and minority obstruction have prevented labour law reform bills and healthcare policy proposals from being enacted as laws.

Iran

Dabashi, Hamid. The Green Movement in Iran. Ed. with an introduction by Navid Nikzadfar. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick [etc.] 2011. $34.95.

This collection of writings by Professor Dabashi focuses on the Iranian election of June 2009, its tumultuous aftermath, and the characteristics and aspirations of the emerging Green Movement. In these articles, most of which appeared in Al-Ahram and CNN, he gives an account of the events since 12 June (the election day) and discusses the nature and consequences of the Green Movement. He explores political continuity in the history of Iran, questions the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic, and challenges views of the situation among left intellectuals. He also comments on US politics in relation to Iran, discusses the Palestinian cause, and analyses the Islamic Republic's publicity tactics.

Kashani-Sabet, Firoozeh. Conceiving Citizens. Women and the Politics of Motherhood in Iran. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2011. Ill. $29.95.

Based on unpublished hand-written nineteenth-century Persian manuscripts alongside other archival and printed materials, this book about the experiences of motherhood in Iran in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries examines how maternity came to be associated with patriotic womanhood, how the idealization of motherhood burdened ordinary women, and how maternalist policies imposed new strictures on women's lives. Professor Kashani-Sabet also considers the political and professional visibility of women in general and the rise of ideologies that appropriated motherhood for political purposes.

EUROPE

Between Prague Spring and French May. Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960–1980. Ed. by Martin Klimke, Jacco Pekelder, and Joachim Scharloth. Berghahn Books, New York 2011. vi, 347 pp. $120.00; £75.00.

This volume about the reciprocal influences among dissenters in western Europe, the Warsaw Pact countries, and the non-aligned European countries aims to reveal how ideological and political developments in East and West were interconnected through official channels as well as private and clandestine contacts. The seventeen contributions include chapters on the French and German protest movements; solidarity movements with the RAF; the genealogies of the British New Left; student protests in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia; the left in Denmark and Sweden; Vietnam War protests in the Netherlands; 1968 protests on Norwegian television; Ceauşescu's speech on 21 August 1968; and a chronology of protest events in 1968 Europe.

Between the Avant-Garde and the Everyday. Subversive Politics in Europe from 1957 to the Present. Ed. by Timothy Brown and Lorena Anton. [Protest, Culture and Society.] Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2011. xi, 294 pp. $120.00; £75.00.

The thirteen chapters in this volume about the connection between subcultures and anti-authoritarian politics in Europe from the 1950s to the fall of communism and beyond include contributions on avant-garde movements such as the Munich-based art group Spur, the British-Dutch group Sigma, Situationism, and the International Times (IT); “corpse polemics” in West Germany; Greek communist youth identities and rock music; African-American music in West German political protest; “Nazi Rock” in Britain and Germany; immigrant subcultures in Britain (1955–2001); student protest in 1960s Poland; life in Kreutzberg (Berlin); the Czech alter-globalization movement; protest rituals and postmodern protest.

Beyond Pleasure. Cultures of Modern Asceticism. Ed. by Evert Peeters, Leen Van Molle and Kaat Wils. Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2011. viii, 250 pp. Ill. $95.00/£55.00.

In this collection of essays about “modern asceticism”, based on a conference held in Leuven in October 2005, eleven contributors explore various aspects of the body, aesthetics, science, and social ideas, focusing on themes such as the Lebensreform movements in Belgium and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, censorship in early film history, abstinence in British marriages (1890s–1940s), austerity in building and interior design, Marie Curie's scientific asceticism, Wittgenstein's Tractatus as an expression of asceticism, and contemporary body culture.

Cattaruzza, Marina. Sozialisten an der Adria. Plurinationale Arbeiterbewegung in der Habsburgermonarchie. [Schriften des Italienisch-Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Trient, Band 24.] Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2011. € 72.85.

This book, originally published in Italian in 1998, is about the socialist labour movement in the coastal region of the Habsburg monarchy from the middle of the nineteenth century to World War I. Triest, Istria, Gorizia, and Gradisca were multi-ethnic areas where Italian, German, Slovenian, and Croatian organizations worked side by side, interconnected, and – sometimes – collided. Using Italian, Austrian, and Croatian archives, Professor Cattaruzza examines how the political culture of social democracy spread from Vienna to the coast, how it underwent changes and adaptations, and how the Viennese centre sought to exert control over the movement on the periphery.

Families and States in Western Europe. Ed. by Quentin Skinner. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2011. viii, 211 pp. £50.00; $85.00. (Paper: £17.99; $29.99.)

This volume about the relationship between civil society and the modern democratic state, as well as how the family figures within this relationship, explores issues such as secularism, the pressure of multiculturalist demands, and the growing rejection of welfare state principles. The collection, based on a conference held in Cambridge in 2008, includes a theoretical overview and eight contributions focusing on Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Spain, respectively.

Gorsuch, Anne E. All This Is Your World. Soviet Tourism at Home and Abroad after Stalin. [Oxford Studies in Modern European History.] Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2011. viii, 222 pp. £60.00.

Beginning in the Khrushchev era, Soviet citizens were encouraged to travel, not only to eastern Europe, but also to the “capitalist” West. By the mid-1960s, hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens each year crossed previously closed Soviet borders to travel abroad. Drawing on archival material from Russia, Estonia, Hungary, Great Britain, and the United States, Professor Gorsuch in this book explores the meaning and experience of travel and encounter in late socialism and observes the gradual integration of the de-Stalinizing Soviet Union into global processes of cultural exchange.

Headlines of Nation, Subtext of Class. Working-Class Populism and the Return of the Repressed in Neoliberal Europe. [EASA Series, Vol. 15.] Ed. by Don Kalb and Gábor Halmai. Berghahn Books, London [etc.] 2011. vi, 222 pp. $70.00; £40.00.

This volume about the emergence and spread of populism in contemporary Europe considers the social groups that comprise the key constituencies of these mostly right-wing populist movements. Eight urban and regional case studies focusing on Serbia, Romania, Hungary, Italy, and Scotland investigate how the experiences, histories, and relationships of social class help explain the re-emergence and dynamics of populist nationalism in eastern and western Europe. The collection is based on a conference held in Ljubljana in 2008.

Protest Beyond Borders. Contentious Politics in Europe since 1945. Ed. by Hara Kouki and Eduardo Romanos. [Protest, Culture and Society.] Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2011. x, 254 pp. $85.00; £50.00.

One aim of this interdisciplinary volume is to evaluate how national protest movements since 1945 contributed to the formation and evolution of a transnational civil society in Europe. In addition to nine case studies (for example, about expressions of solidarity in West German social movements; campaigns against political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union; the protests against the G8 summit in Heiligendamm in 2007; anti-corporate campaigns on the internet; the Northern Irish civil rights movement; and anarchism in postwar Europe), the collection contains a theoretical article on transnational approaches to contentious politics and another on intermediary organizations.

Austria

Hanisch, Ernst. Der große Illusionist. Otto Bauer (1881–1938). Böhlau Verlag, Wien [etc.] 2011. 478 pp. Ill. € 39.00.

In this biography of the prominent Austrian socialist politician, journalist and Austro-Marxist theoretician Otto Bauer (Vienna, 1881–Paris, 1938), Professor Hanisch traces Bauer's life in the context of Austrian social, political, and economic history, using the few sources documenting Bauer's private life and drawing on a selection from Bauer's many public texts. The author concludes with a chapter on how Bauer was commemorated after the war. See also Siegfried Mattl's review in this volume, pp. 126–128.

Eire – Ireland

Cousins, Mel. Poor Relief in Ireland, 1851–1914. Peter Lang, Oxford [etc.] 2011. Maps. xiii, 307 pp. € 45.50.

This book is about the “indoor” and “outdoor” provision of poor relief in Ireland from 1851 to 1914. Dr Cousins charts regional variations, examines issues that highlight political and social class struggles in relation to the provision of poor relief, and considers the broader ramifications of the Poor Law and the Boards of Guardians within local communities, concluding that the Poor Law, particularly outside large cities, was important as a form of local democracy and because of its role in forming local communities.

McGuire, Charlie. Sean McLoughlin. Ireland's Forgotten Revolutionary. Merlin Press, Pontypool 2011. 186 pp. £15.95.

Sean McLoughlin (1895–1960) was a republican activist in the Gaelic League, Fianna Eirean, and the Irish Volunteers, Commandant-General of the army of the Irish Republic in the 1916 Easter Rising, and an IRA flying column commandant during the Civil War (1922–1923). He was also a leading figure in the Irish communist movement. Drawing on archival research in Ireland, Britain, and Moscow, Mr McGuire examines McLoughlin's life, his role in the events of 1916, and his significance in Irish labour history. The book includes four texts by McLoughlin on republicanism and labour.

Finland

Meinander, Henrik. A History of Finland. Transl. from the Swedish by Tom Geddes. Hurst & Company, London 2011. Ill. xiv, 227 pp. Ill. $37.50.

In this concise history of Finland the emphasis is on the twentieth century, when Finland, after having been part of the Swedish kingdom and, as an autonomous Grand Duchy, of the Russian empire, transformed into a conscious nation and became an independent state. Professor Meinander places his overview in the context of the Baltic Sea region and highlights how Finland's cultural heritage and technological innovation influenced the country's development.

France

Clarke, Jackie. France in the Age of Organization. Factory, Home and Nation from the 1920s to Vichy. [Berghahn Monographs in French Studies, Vol 11.] Berghahn Books, New York 2011. 218 pp. $80.00; £50.00.

This book explores the efforts of a loose coalition of engineers, industrialists, trade unionists, psychologists, and domestic scientists to modernize France after World War I. These “organizers” were part of a movement for “scientific organization” or “rationalization”, which had focused initially on industry but devised conceptual models about homes, minds, and bodies as well. Dr Clarke aims to show, for example, how the “organizers” used applied psychology and physiology to develop techniques for enhancing individual and collective efficiency, and how they sought to eliminate social conflict by strengthening class and gender solidarity to achieve productive ends.

Courban, Alexandre. Gabriel Péri. Un homme politique, un député, un journaliste. Suivi de Ma Vie et de Paroles communists, paroles françaises par Gabriel Péri et des poèmes d'hommage á Gabriel Péri. La Dispute, Paris 2011. Ill. € 22.00.

This is a biography of Gabriel Péri (1902–1941), a French communist politician and editor for international political affairs at L'Humanité from 1924 to 1939. He was shot as a hostage during the Nazi occupation. Drawing from Péri's own memoirs (which he wrote during his incarceration in 1941), newspapers, and archival materials (including the Comintern archive in RGASPI, Moscow), Dr Courban chronicles not only Péri's life but also the way that Péri is remembered. The volume includes Péri's memoirs, a text in defence of himself, and some commemorative poems by Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard, and Nazim Hikmet, among others.

George, Jocelyne. Les féministes de la CGT. Histoire du magazine Antoinette 1955–1989. Éditions Delga, Paris 2011. 236 pp. € 19.00.

This book tells the story of Antoinette, the women's magazine published from 1955 to 1989 by the French general trade-union federation, CGT with the aim of promoting militancy among women and conveying a feminine impression of the CGT, advocating the right of women to work, and to receive equal pay for equal work, and addressing the social aspects of maternity. Although the magazine never used expressions like “patriarchal domination”, Professor George argues that Antoinette explicitly opposed the denigration of women and helped promote the feminism of women trade unionists.

Miller, MaryAshburn. A Natural History of Revolution. Violence and Nature in the French Revolutionary Imagination, 1789–1794. Cornell University Press, Ithaca [etc.] 2011. xv, 231 pp. $45.00.

Politicians, playwrights and journalists often used phenomena like earthquakes, lightning, mountains, swamps, and volcanoes to describe, explain and justify the violence of the French Revolution. Professor Miller in this book examines how invoking natural phenomena shaped the political dynamics of the Revolution, aiming to demonstrate that the way in which revolutionaries deployed these metaphors drew on notions derived from the natural science of the era about regeneration, purgation, and equilibrium, and arguing that understanding the use of this natural imagery is fundamental to our understanding of the Terror.

Reynolds, Chris. Memories of May ’68. France's Convenient Consensus. [French and Francophone Studies.] University of Wales Press, Cardiff 2011. 189 pp. £95.00; $160.00; € 135.00; (Paper: £19.99; $30.00; € 29.99.)

In the collective memory, the events of May 1968 are increasingly depicted not as the serious crisis and largest strike in French history but more as an irresponsible utopian revolt led by a spoilt generation of Parisian students. Including the geographical, historical, and cultural peripheries in his research, and emphasizing the nationwide nature and the diversity of the revolt, Dr Reynolds investigates in this book how this image has come to dominate representations of the events, who benefits from it, how it has influenced the way young people view May 1968 today, and how it misrepresents the history of 1968.

FredE. Schrader. Zur politischen Semantik der Revolution. Frankreich (1750–1850). VS Research, Wiesbaden 2011. 205 pp. € 29.95.

In this historical analysis of “représentation politique”, a key concept in the discourses of the French Revolution, Professor Schrader examines the philosophical and legal history of this concept and its “cultured” semantics in the works of Montesquieu, Hobbes, and Rousseau, in dictionaries, in the discourses of French masonic lodges, the American Revolution, and Sieyès, and analyses the concept's “wild” popular semantics in Cahiers de doléance and in the discourses of clubs and figures like Marat and Robespierre. He also considers “États”, “Assemblée”, and “Commune”, and concludes by reflecting on the social-historical dimension of “représentation politique”.

Germany

Eduard Bernsteins Briefwechsel mit Karl Kautsky (1912–1932). Eingel. und hrsg. von Eva Bettina Görtz, unter Verwendung von Vorarbeiten von Jürgen Rojahn und Tine Koldehofe. [Quellen und Studien zur Sozialgeschichte, Band 22.] Campus Verlag, Frankfurt [etc.] 2011. lxiv, 633 pp. € 109.00.

Eduard Bernsteins Briefwechsel mit Karl Kautsky (1891–1895). Eingel. und hrsg. von Till Schelz-Brandenburg. [Quellen und Studien zur Sozialgeschichte, Band 23.] Campus Verlag, Frankfurt [etc.] 2011. xxxiv, 801 pp. € 109.00.

The correspondence between Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932) and Karl Kautsky (1854–1938), key ideologues of German and European social democracy, is an important source not only for the history of social democracy and the labour movement but also for European political and social history. The letters in the volume covering the years 1891 to 1895, the “Golden Age” of the German labour movement, document the contradictions and disagreements within German and European socialism in this period of its seemingly unstoppable rise. The letters from 1912 to 1932 highlight biographical aspects, in particular the significance of Luise Kautsky and Regine Bernstein for the activities of their respective husbands. See IRSH, 50 (2005), p. 333, for an annotation on the volume covering the years 1895–1905.

Fulbrook, Mary. Dissonant Lives. Generations and violence through the German dictatorships. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2011. xii, 515 pp. £35.00.

Focusing primarily on private letters, diaries, and other autobiographical materials, in this book Professor Fulbrook examines how Germans of different ages and stages in life experienced the challenges of total war, radical social transformation, and the Nazi and communist dictatorships. Combining an exploration of the subjective perceptions and lived experiences of successive generations with an analysis of changing historical structures and developments, Professor Fulbrook seeks to enhance understanding of the character of dictatorial regimes, where public conduct often conflicts with private reflections.

Hanshew, Karrin. Terror and Democracy in West Germany. Cambridge University Press, New York [etc.] 2012. x, 282 pp. Ill. $99.00.

In this history of the German extra-parliamentary left and its major exponent in the 1970s, the Red Army Faction (RAF), Professor Hanshew uses the concept of a “militant democracy” as a central element in her analysis of how the political left and right hotly debated, against the background of Germany's troubled past, where the limits of legitimate political action were. She argues that Germans, in this difficult decade of open conflict about how to protect democracy from both terrorism and state overreaction, finally managed to defuse these adversarial dynamics and to accept the Federal Republic of Germany as a stable, reformable polity. See also Jacco Pekelder's review in this volume, pp. 148–151.

Great Britain

Beals, M.H. Coin, Kirk, Class and Kin. Emigration, Social Change and Identity in Southern Scotland. [British identities since 1707, Vol. 3.] Peter Lang, Oxford [etc.] 2011. 277 pp. £37.00; $60.95; Sfr 56.00; € 46.30. (E-book: £37.00; $60.95; Sfr 59.00; € 46.30.)

In this study Dr Beals explores the impact of emigration on the “sending” community. Focusing on southern Scotland from 1770 to 1830, she not only describes the economic trends that prompted or prevented emigration but also examines how changing perceptions of labour, wealth, morality, and identity made emigration a more or less desirable endeavour, emphasizing their relevance to migration history.

Bevir, Mark. The Making of British Socialism. Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2011. viii, 350 pp. $39.50; £24.95.

In this book Professor Bevir offers a new interpretation of the emergence of British socialism. Looking back to the nineteenth century, before ideological views were deeply entrenched, he examines debates about capitalism, revolution, the simple life, sexual relations, religion, and utopian communities, and analyses the ideas of Marxists, Fabians, and ethical socialists, including Ernest Belfort Bax, Henry Mayers Hyndman, William Morris, George Bernard Shaw, and Sidney Webb. He argues that British socialism in the late nineteenth century combined new economic theories opposed to capitalism with established traditions in order to respond to the changes of the late nineteenth century.

Brooke, Stephen, Sexual Politics. Sexuality, Family Planning, and the British Left from the 1880s to the Present Day. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2012. xii, 284 pp. Ills. £65.00.

In this book Professor Brooke examines ideas of sexual relations and emancipation (both heterosexual and same-sex) and reproductive politics on the British left from the 1880s until 2010, beginning with the work of socialists and sex reformers such as Edward Carpenter, Karl Pearson, and Olive Schreiner, and ending with the contribution to sex reform by the New Labour governments from 1997 to 2010. One of the book's arguments is that, although birth control advocacy had its roots in Malthusianism, it evolved into an instrument for the empowerment of working-class women and men and protection of working-class families. See also David Stack's review in this volume, pp. 137–139.

Class and Gender in British Labour History. Renewing the Debate (or Starting It?). Ed. by Mary Davis. Merlin Press, Pontypool 2011. x, 221 pp. £16.95.

This volume about British women workers, trade unionists, and political activists addresses the relationship between class and gender, particularly within the process of industrialization. Individual chapters cover the Bradford worsted industry (1820–1845) and the Leeds clothing trade (1880–1980); the sweatshop in British history; women, the construction industry, and skill as a masculine construct; black women; the early women's trade union movement; the 1888 matchwomen's strike; the National Federation of Women Workers; the socialist suffragette Alice Wheeldon; and Scottish socialist women. The volume opens with an essay on E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class.

Delap, Lucy. Knowing Their Place. Domestic Service in Twentieth-Century Britain. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2011. xii, 260 pp. Ill. £65.00.

Challenging the traditional view of domestic service as obsolete from the mid-twentieth century onwards, Dr Delap in this book traces how the early twentieth-century employment of maids and cooks was replaced by later practices of employing au pairs, mothers’ helps, and cleaners. She examines servants’ working conditions, the management of servants, and the “servantless” home, and also explores humorous expressions about servants (e.g. in cartoons and motion pictures), depictions of servants in pornography and erotica, and domestic service in heritage nostalgia. See also Raffaella Sarti's review in this volume, pp. 139–143.

Fewster, Joseph M. The Keelmen of Tyneside. Labour Organisation and Conflict in the North-East Coal Industry, 1600–1830. [Regions and Regionalism in History.] The Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2011. x, 222 pp. £60.00.

For centuries keelmen ferried coal down river to the Tyne estuary and loaded it aboard ships bound for London or overseas. Living in Sandgate near Newcastle, the keelmen and their families formed a distinct community with a reputation for independence and roughness but frequently manifested solidarity as a community and as an early industrial labour organization. Describing the keelmen's battles with employers and magistrates, and their struggles against poverty, this book charts the history of the keelmen from the early seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century, when technological changes made them redundant.

Hamilton, Scott. The crisis of theory. EP Thompson, the New Left and postwar British politics. Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2011. viii, 293 pp. £60.00.

E.P. Thompson (1924–1993) is probably best known as the author of The Making of the English Working Class, but he was also a New Left politician, a leader of Britain's anti-nuclear movement, and a poet. Moving between Thompson's biography, the social and political history of his time, and close readings of his work – focusing in particular on Thompson's 1978 book The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays – Dr Hamilton in this book examines and relates the different aspects of Thompson's life and work, aiming also to shed light on twentieth-century British intellectual and political life.

Humfrey, Paula. The Experience of Domestic Service for Women in Early Modern London. [The Early Modern Englishwoman 1500–1750. Contemporary Editions.] Ashgate, Farnham [etc.] 2011. 218 pp. Ill. £55.00.

This volume brings together late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century texts from London metropolitan ecclesiastical and parish courts, revealing the experiences of female domestic servants with work in early modern London. According to the editor, the servants’ depositions she drew from the records of the London Court of Arches and the documents from the parish of St Margaret, Westminster demonstrate that while paid domestic work was a pre-marital phase in some women's lives, for others it was a means of generating income throughout adulthood and may therefore be considered a prototypical form of female wage labour.

Kirk, John and ChristineWall. Work and Identity. Historical and Cultural Contexts. [Identity Studies in the Social Sciences.] Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2011. x, 254 pp. Ill. £55.00.

What is the importance of work? This question is central to this book about work and social identity. The authors first examine the broader historical and cultural contexts of identity and work, focusing on the twentieth-century United States and United Kingdom. In the second part they study work and identity using oral testimonies from more than 100 – mainly white British – men and women workers in three sectors: teaching, banking, and the railway industry. The third part features representations of the workplace and workers through anecdotes and objects saved by interviewed persons as work memorabilia.

Laybourn, Keith and DavidTaylor. Policing in England and Wales, 1918–39. The Fed, Flying Squads and Forensics. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2011. xii, 256 pp. £55.00.

In this book about the modernization of the English and Welsh police during the interwar years, Professors Laybourn and Taylor argue that the changes resulted in part from the threat of police strikes. They examine police trade unionism, the Metropolitan Police Strike of August 1918, and the national Police Strike of July/August 1919, also explaining how the Police Federation was formed by the government as an alternative to trade-union militancy. In the 1930s policing was transformed by advances in forensics and, above all, the expansion of motorized transport.

Liverpool. City of Radicals. Ed. by John Belchem and Bryan Biggs. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool 2011. xii, 207 pp. Ill. £16.95.

Examining Liverpool's century-old reputation as a radical city, the ten contributions to this volume focus on such themes as the Liverpool School of Architecture, Liverpool as a contemporary art centre, radical theatre and music, women radicals from 1890 to 1930, football supporters, the significance of the 1911 transport strike, present-day grassroots activism, and “Scouse” identity. In the opening chapter editor John Belchem considers to what extent radical elements were the dominant cultural force in the social networks of Liverpool in 1911.

Rollison, David. Commune, Country and Commonwealth. The People of Cirencester, 1117–1643. [Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History, Vol. 10.] The Boydell Press, Rochester [etc.] 2011. xi, 283 pp. £60.00.

Cirencester was a centre of wool trade and has been identified by historians such as R.H. Tawney as the capital of a region where industrial capitalism and the “protestant ethic” were born. In this social and political history of Cirencester from the Middle Ages through the period of the English Civil War, Dr Rollison describes the recurring struggles to achieve communal solidarity and independence in a society divided by inequalities of class and status, suggesting that towns like Cirencester are a missing link connecting local and national history in the centuries from the Magna Carta to the English Revolution.

Italy

Agarossi, Elena and VictorZaslavsky. Stalin and Togliatti. Italy and the Origins of the Cold War. [Cold War International History Project Series.] Woodrow Wilson Center Press [etc.], Washington DC 2011. xvi, 339 pp. £35.00.

This book, a translation of a study published in Italian in 1997 and updated in 2007, examines the relations between Italian communists, the Soviet regime, and Stalinism in the 1940s and 1950s. Using previously classified documents, such as reports to Stalin on the frequent meetings of Palmiro Togliatti with Soviet diplomats, and challenging Marxist interpretations of PCI history, Professors Agarossi and Zaslavsky aim to reveal the dependence of the PCI on Soviet decision-making, the Stalinist leadership's efforts to penetrate western Europe, and the use of the PCI as an instrument of this policy.

Cullen, Niamh. Piero Gobetti's Turin. Modernity, Myth and Memory. [Italian Modernities, Vol. 12.] Peter Lang, Bern [etc.] 2011. Ill. € 46.70.

This book, based on a dissertation (University College, Dublin, 2008), traces the intellectual career of the Turin anti-fascist journalist Piero Gobetti (1901–1926). Emphasizing that Gobetti was not an isolated voice but was one of the leading members of a vibrant political and cultural avant-garde scene led by a new generation of intellectuals, such as Antonio Gramsci, who came to the fore in post-1918 Turin, Dr Cullen studies Gobetti in the context of the cultural, political, social, and physical setting of one of Italy's most modern cities. She also discusses the politically controversial afterlives of Gobetti and Gramsci.

Lavoro domestico e di cura: quali diritti? A cura di Raffaella Sarti. Ediesse, Roma 2010. 369 pp. (Incl. CD-rom.) € 18.00.

This volume about domestic and care workers’ rights comprises eight contributions covering, for example, the period from the 1960s to the 1990s; the work of the Christian union Acli-Colf; the domestic labour law of 1958; healthcare and insurance for domestic workers; and the growing need for care workers. The collection, based on a conference held in Urbino in 2008, opens with an extensive historical survey of working conditions among domestic workers since the Unification of Italy. The accompanying CD-rom contains detailed present-day regional information about care of the elderly.

Minuto, Emanuela. Frammenti dell'anarchismo italiano 1944–1946. Edizioni ETS, Pisa 2011. 141 pp. € 15.00.

After the fall of the Mussolini regime in July 1943, anarchist groups surprisingly still existed in Italy. Using newspapers and unpublished sources, including the papers of the anarchist journalist and writer Ugo Fedeli (1898–1964), and examining the federations of north Italy and the founding congress of the Federazione Anarchica Italiana in Carrara in 1945, the author reconstructs the anarchists’ ideas, activities, and organizing efforts between 1944 and 1946, depicting a movement that often crossed the paths of the republican and socialist movements, influencing each other and supporting various forms of political activism.

The Netherlands

Meershoek, Guus. De Groep IJzerman. Hoe de politie infiltreerde in de links-radicale beweging van de jaren zestig. Boom, Amsterdam 2011. 167 pp. Ill. € 19.90.

Between 1967 and 1971 police officers infiltrated several groups of the Dutch radical left, the student movement, and the women's movement. In this book Dr Meershoek, who specializes in police history, draws on interviews with the police officers involved in this undercover operation, their supervisors, and a few observed militants, aiming to reveal how an undercover police operation to gather information about possible public disturbances was transformed into a political intelligence operation, when some of the infiltrated organizations radicalized and seemed inclined to accept terrorism as a means of struggle.

Poland

Mrozowicki, Adam. Coping with Social Change. Life Strategies of Workers in Poland's New Capitalism. Leuven University Press, Leuven 2011. 284 pp. € 49.50.

Highlighting the role of reflexivity, agency, and ethos, this book explores the life experiences and life strategies of manual workers in Poland since the end of state socialism in 1989. Through an in-depth analysis of 166 personal interviews with blue-collar workers conducted between 2002 and 2004, Professor Mrozowicki reconstructs the processes of adapting to and resisting structural changes in working-class milieus in Silesia, one of Poland's industrial regions. Challenging commonly held views, the author concludes that the interviewed workers rarely resembled disoriented victims of post-socialist transformation.

Portugal

Chorão, LuísBigotte. Política e justiça na i república. Um regime entre a legalidade e a excepção. Vol. 1: 1910–1915. Letra Livre, Lisboa 2011. 501 pp. Ill. € 24.50.

This study is the first of three planned volumes about the political history of the Portuguese First Republic (October 1910–May 1926), focusing especially on legal aspects. In this volume the author, a lawyer with a Ph.D. in history, examines the first five years of the Republic, which saw the provisional government led by Teófilo Braga, the constitutionalization of the regime with the election of Manuel de Arriaga as president of the Republic, and the government headed by Pimenta de Castro, which ended with the revolt of 14 May 1915.

Gomes, J. Varela. Memória ideológica no centenário da república. Letra Livre, Lisboa 2011. 225 pp. € 14.00.

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Portuguese Republic João Varela Gomes, a former army captain who spent several years in jail for heading the failed military coup against Salazar in 1962, brings together in this volume twenty-nine polemical texts and obituaries he wrote between 1983 and 2010, mainly for the newspaper Alentejo Popular, in which he explains his views of the First and Second Republics, the centenary celebrations, and the historical revisionism practised by the politicians and historians of the “Democracia Filofascista”.

Russia – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Barnes, StevenA. Death and Redemption. The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society. Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2011. x, 352 pp. $80.00; £55.00. (Paper: $35.00; £24.95.)

Using the central Gulag administration archives, local administrative documents, and memoirs of individual prisoners, Professor Barnes in this book provides a close study of the camps and exiles in the Karaganda region of Kazakhstan, along with a general reconsideration of the scope, meaning, and function of the Gulag in the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1953, revealing, in addition to the interaction between Karaganda and Moscow (including efforts by local authorities to deal with the often contradictory directives), how Gulag inmates experienced the camps. See also Erik van Ree's review essay in this volume, pp. 107–119.

Cohen, StephenF. The Victims Return. Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin. I.B. Tauris, London [etc.] 2011. Ill. 216 pp. £17.99. (Paper: £9.99.)

Professor Cohen in this book tells the story of survivors of Stalin's prisons and forced-labour camps who returned to Soviet society under Khrushchev, using newly available materials and personal testimonies of Stalin's victims, whom the author came to know during his frequent trips to Moscow since the late 1970s, among them the Bukharin family, especially Anna Larina, Bukharin's widow. See also Erik van Ree's review essay in this volume, pp. 107–119.

David-Fox, Michael. Showcasing the Great Experiment. Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921–1941. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2012. £35.00; $55.00.

During the 1920s and 1930s thousands of European and American writers, professionals, scientists, and artists – André Gide, Henri Barbusse, Theodore Dreiser, and Lion Feuchtwanger, for example – visited the Soviet Union to record their impressions. Drawing on declassified archival records of the agencies instructed to design the international image of communism, Professor David-Fox in this book studies the Soviet reception of intellectuals and fellow travellers, paying special attention to Soviet attempts to cooperate with far-right nationalists and fascist intellectuals.

Edele, Mark. Stalinist Society 1928–1953. [Oxford Histories.] Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2011. x, 367 pp. £47.50; $99.00.

Adopting “the attitude of the essayist rather than the boundless ambition of the scholar”, Professor Edele uses secondary sources, source editions, published memoirs (particularly those of Grigorii Chukai, a rank-and-file Stalinist and army officer), diaries, and transcribed interviews to present this overview of the social formation of Stalinist society from 1928 to 1953. He argues that Soviet society was complex and not completely “totalized”, and that it was not ideology, terror, or state control that held this society together but the realities of earning a living in a chaotic economy.

Johnston, Timothy. Being Soviet. Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life under Stalin 1939–1953. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2011. lii, 240 pp. £55.00.

This book is about the relationship between Soviet citizens and Soviet power in the years between 1939 and 1953. Using newspapers, films, plays, and popular music, and exploring the place of rumour in Soviet society, the author examines how ordinary people responded to the shifting rhetoric of Soviet identity in this period. Avoiding the categorization of Soviet citizens into either supporters or resisters of the Soviet system, he argues that for many their relationship with Soviet power was defined by “the little tactics of the habitat”, which enabled them to stay fed, informed, and entertained.

Khrushchev in the Kremlin. Policy and government in the Soviet Union, 1956–64. Ed. by Jeremy Smith and Melanie Ilic. [BASEES/RoutledgeCurzon Series on Russian and East European Studies, Vol. 73.] Routledge, London [etc.] 2011. xx, 249 pp. £90.00.

The thirteen chapters in this volume focus on significant policy areas during Nikita Khrushchev's leadership, including policy on dissent; nationalism; economic decentralization (the sovnarkhoz reform); policy towards the West in technology exchange and towards eastern Europe in political and economic reform; agriculture; railways; and construction. Largely based on recently declassified archive collections, this collection aims to re-evaluate the Khrushchev era as a significant departure from the Stalin years while still suffering from many of the limitations imposed by the Stalinist system.

Mochulsky, FyodorVasilevich. Gulag Boss. A Soviet Memoir. Transl. and ed. by Deborah Kaple. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2011. 229 pp. Ill. £16.99.

This is the memoir of Fyodor Mochulsky (1918–1999), who was a foreman, from 1940 to 1946, at Pechorlag, an outpost of Stalin's Gulag situated north of the Arctic Circle. From the perspective not of a prisoner but of an employee of the secret police (the NKVD), Mochulsky gives a detailed account of camp conditions and the challenges facing all those involved, from prisoners to guards. He depicts the power struggles within the camps between the secret police and the communist party, and between the political prisoners and the criminal convicts. See also Erik van Ree's review essay in this volume, pp. 107–119.

Naimark, NormanM. Stalin's Genocides. Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2010. ix, 163 pp. £18.95.

The aim of this “extended essay” is to argue that Stalin's mass killings of the 1930s should be classified as “genocide”. Professor Naimark first discusses the use of the term genocide and, using recently published biographies of Stalin, explains how Stalin became a “genocidaire”. He then examines concrete episodes of mass killing: dekulakization in 1929–1931, the Ukrainian Holodomor (“killer famine”) in 1932–1933, the murderous campaigns against non-Russian nationalities from the 1934 to World War II, and the great terror in 1937–1938. The author concludes with a discussion of the problem of comparing Nazi and Soviet crimes.

Spain

Reeve, Charles [and] RaúlRuanoBellido. Le suspect de l'hôtel Falcón. L'insomniaque. Montreuil, 2011. 124 pp. Ill. € 13.00.

Francisco Gomez Palomo (1917–2008), alias Paco, was arrested in June 1937 at the Hotel Falcón in Barcelona, where he and other POUM delegates from Madrid were staying, together with the POUM leadership. After his release in 1938 he went into exile in Paris, where he continued to be politically involved in groups such as Socialisme ou Barbarie and Informations et Correspondance Ouvrière. In May 1968 he sided with the student movement. This portrait is based on conversations with Paco. Excerpts from accounts of the Spanish Civil War by various authors, including George Orwell, provide a context.

Seidman, Michael. The Victorious Counterrevolution. The Nationalist Effort in the Spanish Civil War. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison [etc.] 2011. xiii, 352 pp. Ill. Maps. $29.95. (E-book: $19.95.)

In this social and economic history of the Nationalist zone during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) Professor Seidman examines how the Franco regime managed state finance and economic production and mobilized support from elite and middle-class Spaniards to achieve its eventual victory over the republicans and the revolutionary left. He argues that the Nationalists were successful because they avoided the inflation and shortages of food and military supplies that thwarted their republican adversaries.

VadilloMuñoz, Julián. Mauro Bajatierra, anarquista y periodista de acción. La Malatesta, Madrid; Tierra de fuego, La Laguna 2011. 138 pp. Ill. € 7.00.

Mauro Bajatierra Morán (1884–1939) was a baker, an anarchist, a journalist and a writer of political texts, novels (contributing, for example, to the Novela Ideal fiction series), children's books, and theatrical works. He is best known for his work as a reporter covering the Spanish Civil War for the newspaper CNT. In this thematically organized biography, Dr Vadillo Muñoz attempts to reconstruct Bajatierra's life. The book includes a bibliography of Bajatierra's works.

Vega, Eulàlia. Pioneras y revolucionarias. Mujeres libertarias durante la República, la guerra civil y el franquismo. Icaria, Barcelona 2010. 389 pp. € 23.00.

Although women played leading roles in anarchism, only the most prominent appear in written sources. Relying mainly on interviews, Dr Vega in this book aims to illuminate the roles, activities, and motives of militant libertarian, anarchist, and anarcho-syndicalist women during the republic, the Civil War, and the Franquist period. She argues that the women in this book were pioneers because they ventured to conquer spaces formerly denied to young working women, and revolutionaries because they militated to build an egalitarian system, economically, socially, and with regard to gender. See also Mercedes Yusta's review in this volume, pp. 143–145.