Book Description
In the early 1960s, American conservatives seemed to have fallen on hard times. McCarthyism was on the run, and movements on the political left were grabbing headlines. The media lampooned John Birchers's accusations that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist puppet. Mainstream America snickered at warnings by California Congressman James B. Utt that "barefooted Africans" were training in Georgia to help the United Nations take over the country. Yet, in Utt's home district of Orange County, thousands of middle-class suburbanites proceeded to organize a powerful conservative movement that would land Ronald Reagan in the White House and redefine the spectrum of acceptable politics into the next century.
Suburban Warriors introduces us to these people: women hosting coffee klatches for Barry Goldwater in their tract houses; members of anticommunist reading groups organizing against sex education; pro-life Democrats gradually drawn into conservative circles; and new arrivals finding work in defense companies and a sense of community in Orange County's mushrooming evangelical churches. We learn what motivated them and how they interpreted their political activity. Lisa McGirr shows that their movement was not one of marginal people suffering from status anxiety, but rather one formed by successful entrepreneurial types with modern lifestyles and bright futures. She describes how these suburban pioneers created new political and social philosophies anchored in a fusion of Christian fundamentalism, xenophobic nationalism, and western libertarianism.
While introducing these rank-and-file activists, McGirr chronicles Orange County's rise from "nut country" to political vanguard. Through this history, she traces the evolution of the New Right from a virulent anticommunist, anti-establishment fringe to a broad national movement nourished by evangelical Protestantism. Her original contribution to the social history of politics broadens--and often upsets--our understanding of the deep and tenacious roots of popular conservatism in America.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting Subject..........2006-03-09
I was assigned this book for class and therefore didn't have a huge interest in the subject before I read the book. I haven't finished it, but I also don't plan to finish it. The subject was interesting, but the book wasn't captivating.
I found that the author sometimes became overly concerned with statistical information and details which left me (as well as my classmates) confused and frustrated. When too many facts are thrown at you at once, you just want to skip it and move along.
If you actually know about the John Birch Society and are highly interested in the Conservative Right, I'm sure you will like the book, even in spite of those "factual" sections. Historically, it's very accurate and I know that those who were interested really enjoyed the author's style.
Analyzes the 'warrior' battle plan of the 1950's and 1960's.......2005-05-30
This book is neat precisely because it takes a scholarly approach to examining the new right. Instead of writing a frenzied treatise why the right is bad, Lisa McGirr lets readers draw conclusions from her fact-based historical analysis.
The suburban new right emerged in the 1950's and early 1960's out of a desire for self-preservation. People in these newly emergent suburbs were alternating between the 'self-reliant' model of conservative libertarianism and 'big-government' social conservatism which placed its premiums on social and political conformity as a tool for ensuring order in the community. The then cold war united the two periodically disparate strains of conservatism into a unified school of thought; conformity was good for national security.
Because it upheld the values which they supported (and felt were in the best benefit for America) the people who would become part of the New Right honestly did not mind when they and/or their companies received economic subsidies from the government. They had to defend the country against the reds after all. This was not mooching off the system, but ensuring the country would be able to produce the best resources and the brightest people to outmatch 'the reds'.
The 'red-baiting' and 'race-baiting' which I and other people have publicly and psychologically associated with the right only came into existence when the status quo was being threatened.
The same people who had not protested (and in fact welcomed) government benefits for themselves became genuinely anxious upon realizing that the civil rights movement was attempting to reconfigure the American state to offer more benefits to more groups of people. This exposed contradictions in the American state as it currently existed and hinted that a reconfigured American state would not provide exactly the same order of things as they had known it to exist.
Fearful of these 'other' people, some southern states undertook the-then shocking action of voting for Barry Goldwater in 1964, disrupting the solidly Democratic south. Prior to this time, a southerner voting Republican was unthinkable. The party of Lincoln after all was responsible for both emancipation and reconstruction.
Although Goldwater would loose to Johnson, his candidacy and campaign positions (including against the civil rights act) further laid the foundations for the present day situation. Voting shifts in the 1964 presidential election ultimately encouraged the Reagan revolution of the 1980's and George W. Bush's promotion of faith based initiatives today.
Good, but not great.......2004-05-05
McGirr's book traces the rise of what I would call the (white, middle-class) suburban right and the Christian right, beginning in the early 60s. The new right coalesced around anti-Communism, laissez faire capitalism, states' rights and local government, the "traditional" family, Christian values, individual economic responsibility, and low taxes.
It was the suburban Christian right that first brought these views together. Barry Goldwater, who ran for President in 1964 against Johnson, was an early exemplar of new right views. However, his strong opposition to the Civil Rights acts won him the lower South and, along with his virulent anti-Communism, helped him lose the rest of the country.
The suburban Christian right shed the virulent and conspiratorial anti-Communism that they initially directed at domestic enemies; south-eastern politics moved away from the New Deal order and shed legal segregation and overt biological racism; they all joined their Christian and conservative forces and formed a conservative coalition behind Ronald Reagan.
McGirr's is a "bottom up" analysis that begins with the grass roots social base of the suburban Christian right, using Orange County as a prototypical case study. She also examines the interplay of grass roots leaders, rank and file members, regional business elites, and national intellectual and political leaders.
The book doesn't delve into how the suburban right teamed up with south-eastern conservatives, but their shared Christianity, shared social conservatism, and shared opposition to civil rights, busing, and affirmative action makes it fairly easy to guess what that part of the story in general looks like. However, McGirr's would be a better book if she examined some of these connections, at least briefly. This is what makes the book good but not great.
Post-script: Today, the Cold War is over, terrorism has replaced communism as America's global enemy, and George W. Bush has combined the Christian right with the post-Cold War, neo-conservative, neo-imperialist right. Bush has tried to combine anti-terrorism, neo-imperialism, and Christian conservativism without provoking Christian-Islamic antagonisms--antagonisms already strained by Christian conseravtive and neo-conservative support for Israel. These topics would make an interesting post-script to McGirr's book.
Rhetorical, but ok.......2004-05-01
I had to read this book for a history class. It provides enough incite on the origin of conservatism in Orange County, but to me, she overemphasizes her status as a historian. Instead of telling one point just once, she repeats it again in another segment, which, as a reader, I already knew because she said it before. She is non-biased in her approach of the conservative uprooting, yet she does seem to make them out to look like the enemy rather than a large group of people that were encouraging enrollment for causes they believed in. I recommend it to anyone who likes to read the word "Knott" over and over again.
Absorbing,Thorough Analysis Of Neoconservative Ascent !.......2002-04-27
This book represents both a fascinating study of the evolution of `60s politics as well as a historical attempt to document and explain the perplexing fact that a country flirting with the danger of a social and political revolution from the left suddenly veered so much farther to the right toward a broad-based popular conservatism. Herein Lisa McGirr, a gifted author and Harvard professor comes closer to making her prose swing than one would expect of a book of this type. Meanwhile, she also spins a convincing argument regarding the origins of the American neo-conservative revival in the late `60s and early `70s. At the time, domestic conservatism had been badly eclipsed by the burgeoning youth culture and their radical leftist notions. To her credit, the account rendered here is not only academically spirited, but is written in a way that makes this serious work of scholarship accessible to the general public.
She focuses meaningfully on the activities within a specific congressional district, in Orange County California, where, she argues quite persuasively, the seeds of the neo-conservative revival were most fruitfully planted and sown. Within this district, literally thousands of affluent and educated suburban "warriors" combined to launch a powerful movement destined less than a decade later to propel Ronald Reagan into the White House. In the process they also helped to chisel a new agenda into the granite pillars of the American pantheon, one that helped to define the very nature of domestic political battles for decades to come.
This book gives us a graphic and detail introduction to these hearty, healthy and enthusiastic warriors; housewives arguing political strategy over coffee and Danish, young and well-educated defense engineers arriving to live out the American dream, impressionable young religious workers convinced that the only way to save the country and themselves from Hellfire and brimstone was to work fervently against the designs of the "godless democrats". From this well-detailed work we begin to see how the movement came into being, how it organized itself, what motivated the individuals as well as what their evolving political agenda became and why.
McGirr demonstrates that this was far from being a movement of marginalized or isolated extremists; on the contrary, from the beginning it was more accurately characterized as an intensely enthusiastic enterprise, one formed and energized by the social, economic, and political elite, people with both means and motive for becoming involved to better control their own futures as well as those of the country at large. In what is perhaps her best set of insights, she demonstrates how these young and innovative neo-conservatives established a new set of political philosophies and precepts, forged in a alloy of Christian fundamentalism, misguided nationalism, and more traditional true conservatism (i.e. an old-style libertine attitude).
This is a seminal work, an effort at true scholarship which dares to look at Rosemary's baby in the face by searching through the afterbirth of the not so immaculate birthing of modern neo-conservatism. What she discovers and demonstrates along the way may often upset our traditional notions of what happened and why, but it never fails to inform or edify us as to what transpired or why. This is an interesting and worthwhile book, and one that I can heartily recommend. Enjoy!
Book Description
When it was published twenty-five years ago, this book captured a huge audience of Vietnam War protesters, dropouts, and rebels--and their baffled elders. Theodore Roszak found common ground between 1960s student radicals and hippie dropouts in their mutual rejection of what he calls the technocracy--the regime of corporate and technological expertise that dominates industrial society. He traces the intellectual underpinnings of the two groups in the writings of Herbert Marcuse and Norman O. Brown, Allen Ginsberg and Paul Goodman. In a new introduction, Roszak reflects on the evolution of counter culture since he coined the term in the sixties.
Alan Watts wrote of The Making of a Counter Culture in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1969, "If you want to know what is happening among your intelligent and mysteriously rebellious children, this is the book. The generation gap, the student uproar, the New Left, the beats and hippies, the psychedelic movement, rock music, the revival of occultism and mysticism, the protest against our involvement in Vietnam, and the seemingly odd reluctance of the young to buy the affluent technological society--all these matters are here discussed, with sympathy and constructive criticism, by a most articulate, wise, and humane historian."
Customer Reviews:
The definitive definition - where it all began.......2004-05-17
Roszak's "Making of a Counter Culture" defined an era and the youth society that composed it. A thrilling expose' of Counter Culture Philosophy and oreintation, this is where the discussion all began. His bent on analysis of cultural differences and tendency to omit much of the political implications necessitated the need for a library of text thereafter.
Timothy Fitzgerald
If you were born before 1960.......2004-04-16
read this still inspiring report on the counterculture and own its potential for self-transformation in your own life and the life of our global society.
Roszak's The Making of a Counter Culture.......2004-01-07
Overall I was pleased with Roszak's book. Most of the pieces i've read about the sixties and the "hippie" era focus only on the sex, the drugs, and the music. While Roszak did dicuss this, his book was quite different because it focused mainly on the politcal and social issues of the time. Roszak include everything from the Vietnam War to how the counter culture has affected the lifestyles of the typical American family. Although Roszk is clearly on the far left side of the political spectrum, it is obvious that he tries his best to be objective and is sure to back up most of his points and information with credible sources. What I admire most about Roszak's book is the tone he takes. In my experience, many adult pieces concerning this era in history and the taboo, radical things that went on are often full of criticism towards that particular generation. Roszak did not criticize the protestors or the acid droppers, like most do. In his book, he carefully explained and supported the motives for these people, suggestng his approval and admiration for those who weren't afraid to stand up for what they believed in, no matter how much society frowned upon it.
THE Essential Book For Understanding the 60s Counterculture!.......2000-05-30
This book is by far the most seminal book one can read in attempting to get an accurate and unvarnished understanding of the sixties counterculture; the social and historical reasons for its rise, its intellectual underpinnings, and the way in which its actions were informed and indeed propelled by its unique constellation of integrating values into a cultural ethos.
Recently the counterculture has been viciously attacked, intellectually trashed and intentionally trivialized by a series of books and articles by mainstream neoconservatives who wish to discredit the counterculture once and for all by blaming it and the "permissiveness" it spawned for the manifest ills the mainstream society has actually engendered through the evolution of its own corrupted, nonrepresentative, and nondemocratic political process. Many ignorant youthful authors have succumbed to attributing fallacious ideas and notions of this ethos in a way that is not only inaccurate and disingenuous, but which serves to trivialize the quite serious cultural critique it comprised.
All that is set aside here. Remember, this book was written more than 30 years ago, even as the counterculture was rising, so it is very much a observational history, one done at ground zero of the demonstrations, sit-ins, when the tumult and strident calls for radical new solutions rang clear, and the heady air of nascent social and intellectual revolution was in the air.
Here one finds the counterculture placed in its proper context, and not just discussed 'en passant' as the demonized triage of sex, drugs, and rock and roll'. One can hardly understand the sixties in such simplistic terms, and Roszak helps one to understand the complex welter of social, economic, and political factors that led to its emergence. In its essence the counterculture was a social and political reaction to the hypocrisy of the mainstream materialistic culture from which it sprang, and as sociologist Philp Slater has commented elsewhere, most of the individual elements of the value system of the counterculture stem from values the mainstream culture in fact claims to hold but actually does not practice and employ.
This, then, is book with remarkable insight, perspective, and historical verve. Rosazak nails quite accurately the tensions, problems and contradictions associated with the rise of the counterculture and the innate problems its continued existence eventually portended for the materialistic mainstream culture. Of course, as history shows us, the sixties ethos was flattened by the overwhelming onslaught of the establishment and the Ohio National Guard, and the political and social ethos of the counterculture melded into the domain of increasingly isolated private and personal philosphies of hippies being assimilated into the mainstream.
The fact that its ethos is now blamed for much of the discontent and confusion of contemporary America is a likely result of what happens when one tries to merge antagonistic ideas and notions into a cultural system that is inconsistent with its own. This is a wonderful book, and one needs to read before the victors of those fractious times so revise the official version of the history of the 1960s that those of us who were there will no longer recognize it.
Excellent discussion of 1960's counterculture........1997-12-30
This book offers a highly detailed examination of the relationship of the late 1960's counterculture to cutting-edge intellectual ideas of the same era; Roszak discusses Herbert Marcuse and Norman Brown, among others, in great detail and shows very lucidly how their ideas influenced intellectual and political movements on college campuses in both America and Europe. Roszak's prescience here is amazing, considering that he wrote this book in 1967-68, while the phonemena he discusses were still unfolding! It would be interesting if Roszak were to write a response to his own book today, considering how the counterculture of the early 1990's has been so rapidly devoured by the mainstream--Roszak foresaw the possibility of this happening to the 1960's counterculture, but it took far longer then than it has now. Roszak's ruminations on the absurdity of the Alternative Nation would be welcome with this reader!
Book Description
Arthur Demarest brings the lost civilization of Maya to life by applying a holistic view to the most recently discovered archaeological evidence. His theoretical interpretation simultaneously emphasizes the brilliant rain forest adaptations of the ancient Maya and the Native American spirituality that permeated all aspects of their daily life. Drawing on data from the latest significant archaeological research in Central America, this new study appeals to those interested in the ecological bases of civilization, the function of the state and the causes of the collapse of civilizations.
Customer Reviews:
Mayan Royal Rock Stars.......2005-03-05
This is a must read for anyone interested in the ancient Maya and why their advanced civilization that had achieved so much under such harsh conditions suddenly collapsed and disappeared for parts unknown. Demarest argues that the collapse was political rather than the most widely accepted paradigm that it was ecological. He concludes that the collapse was due to a proliferation of royal elites competing for power, similar to the present situation in Saudi Arabia. Warfare between these competing elites caused a collapse during a 100 year period that resulted in a depopulation of major cities and a drastic reduction of palace and temple construction. The book is worth reading if only for Demarest's description of the Wizard of Oz type power structure where Mayan royal elites held power through fantastic ritualistic displays that captivated the masses. He describes the Mayan royal elites as a combination of rock stars, evangelical preachers, and circus performers that dressed in elaborate costumes with feathered head dresses, lit fires with pyrite mirrors, and engaged in public displays of blood letting. Demarest even relates the Mayan architecture to theater with temples high above plazas where the masses could observe rituals. The book is easy to read for layman.
Amazon.com
Lynching, the extrajudicial punishment inflicted by vigilantes and mobs on often innocent victims, was far from an unusual occurrence, though some historians have depicted it as such. Instead, writes Philip Dray, lynching was part of a "systematized reign of terror that was used to maintain the power whites had over blacks." Drawing on records held at the Tuskegee Institute, Dray argues that from 1882 until 1952, not a single year passed without a recorded lynching somewhere in the United States, most often in the Deep South and Mississippi Delta regions. This violent "justice," meted out "at the hands of persons unknown" (with, therefore, no possibility of attaching guilt to the perpetrators, though, as Dray points out, such seemingly spontaneous events required organization and planning) held African American communities in terror and was one force behind the exodus of black southerners to the north in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dray's extraordinary study reveals a pattern of crime against humanity, one that, he writes, diminished gradually for various reasons, not least of them the work of reformers and ordinary citizens "who knew we were too good to be a nation of lynchers." --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
It is easy to shrink from our country’s brutal history of lynching. Lynching is called the last great skeleton in our nation’s closet: It terrorized all of black America, claimed thousands upon thousands of victims in the decades between the 1880s and the Second World War, and leaves invisible but deep scars to this day. The cost of pushing lynching into the shadows, however—misremembering it as isolated acts perpetrated by bigots on society’s fringes—is insupportably high: Until we understand how pervasive and socially accepted the practice was—and, more important, why this was so—it will haunt all efforts at racial reconciliation.
“I could not suppress the thought,” James Baldwin once recalled of seeing the red clay hills of Georgia on his first trip to the South, “that this earth had acquired its color from the blood that had dripped down from these trees.” Throughout America, not just in the South, blacks accused of a crime—or merely of violating social or racial customs—were hunted by mobs, abducted from jails, and given summary “justice” in blatant defiance of all guarantees of due process under law. Men and women were shot, hanged, tortured, and burned, often in sadistic, picnic-like “spectacle lynchings” involving thousands of witnesses. “At the hands of persons unknown” was the official verdict rendered on most of these atrocities.
The celebrated historian Philip Dray shines a clear, bright light on this dark history—its causes, perpetrators, apologists, and victims. He also tells the story of the men and women who led the long and difficult fight to expose and eradicate lynching, including Ida B. Wells, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, and W.E.B. Du Bois. If lynching is emblematic of what is worst about America, their fight may stand for what is best: the love of justice and fairness and the conviction that one individual’s sense of right can suffice to defy the gravest of wrongs. This landmark book follows the trajectory of both forces over American history—and makes the history of lynching belong to us all.
Customer Reviews:
A Very Difficult Book To Read But Essential!.......2007-02-15
This is history book in the purest sense of what a history book should be yet this book is much more than a history of American Violence against African Americans, it's a history of how civilization can be repressive and savage despite it's seemingly enlightened ideology. Philip Dray doesn't hold back in painful details of lynching, the dynamics and psychology behind the mob mentality, and how people actively seek to uphold an illusion of law and order from the bigoted vigilantes to the unsympathetic courts. Collectively we have tried and still continue to try to supress the history of slavery and the bloody history subsequent racial violence. This book needs to be required reading in our schools as a counter to other so-called history texts admonishing certain fathers of the nation.
One word - outstanding........2006-01-29
Quite possibly the best, most well-researched book I've ever read. A smooth read, impeccable use of historical sources, and a clear narrative account of the most tragic era in American history. For scholars who research or teach in the area of social control, legal, and extra-legal punishment, you *cannot* have a full grasp of the topic unless you read Dray's work. A fine work of history...the author is to be commended.
Very informative.......2005-10-05
This book was not only shipped within 2 days but in new condition. The book itself is very informative about other things than lynching. It talks about various people related to the anti-lynching movement tons of other things. I'm currently using this as a text book for a college class. This is a great teaching resource! Buy the book, you won't forget it!
A first rate history of an American tragedy.......2005-09-10
Dray's account, while often disturbing reading, is an essential for anyone who seeks to understand the lynching phenomenon in the United States. Scholarly, but accessible, the history's gruesome recountings of lynchings are balanced by the tales of those individuals and organizations that fought, often at great personal peril, to bring an end to this national disgrace. This meticulously researched volume is recommended for the professional as well as the lay historian. It is a cautionary tale, but ultimately one not without hope.
I only THOUGHT I knew about lynchings..........2005-07-16
I fancy myself a history buff. And as a black man, I like to think I know my history. I knew how savage whites in the South could be to black men who didn't know their place.
I knew what a potent and mix sex and race were - and are - in America.
But nothing I knew prepared me for what I read. Mr. Dray did an incredible job in tying together the long history of lynching in this country, from its origins in early America, to the 1960s - in other words *in my lifetime*.
I gained a appreciation for Ida Wells that I never had; she is often mentioned in Black History texts, but I never understood until "BPU" why she was so amazing.
This book should be required reading for high school students Nationwide (another fact that Dray makes clear is that while Southerners were the worst offenders, lynchings took place in the Northern states as well).
This shameful period of American History is as bad as the Nazis atrocities against Jews - and for a far longer period of time. People who think that post-slavery, Jim Crow was nothing more than a benign embarassment should be made to read this book until they get it.
Hats off to Phillip Dray for a engrossing and educational read. By the time I finished, I understood our country a little better than before.
Book Description
This pathbreaking work is a social and cultural history of the Maya peoples of the province of Yucatan in colonial Mexico, spanning the period from shortly after the Spanish conquest of the region to its incorporation as part of an independent Mexico.
Instead of depending on the Spanish sources and perspectives that have formed the basis of previous scholarship on colonial Yucatan, the author aims to give a voice to the Maya themselves, basing his analysis entirely on his translations of hundreds of Yucatec Maya notarial documents—from libraries and archives in Mexico, Spain, and the United States—most of which have never before received scholarly attention.
These documents allow the author to reconstruct the social and cultural world of the Maya municipality, or cah, the self-governing community where most Mayas lived and which was the focus of Maya social and political identity. The first two parts of the book examine the ways in which Mayas were organized and differentiated from each other within the community, and the discussion covers such topics as individual and group identities, sociopolitical organization, political factionalism, career patterns, class structures, household and family patterns, inheritance, gender roles, sexuality, and religion.
The third part explores the material environment of the cah, emphasizing the role played by the use and exchange of land, while the fourth part describes in detail the nature and significance of the source documentation, its genres and its language. Throughout the book, the author pays attention to the comparative contexts of changes over time and the similarities or differences between Maya patterns and those of other colonial-era Mesoamericans, notably the Nahuas of central Mexico.
Book Description
White Americans, abetted by neo-conservative writers of all hues, generally believe that racial discrimination is a thing of the past and that any racial inequalities that undeniably persist--in wages, family income, access to housing or health care--can be attributed to African Americans' cultural and individual failures. If the experience of most black Americans says otherwise, an explanation has been sorely lacking--or obscured by the passions the issue provokes. At long last offering a cool, clear, and informed perspective on the subject, this book brings together a team of highly respected sociologists, political scientists, economists, criminologists, and legal scholars to scrutinize the logic and evidence behind the widely held belief in a color-blind society--and to provide an alternative explanation for continued racial inequality in the United States.
While not denying the economic advances of black Americans since the 1960s, Whitewashing Race draws on new and compelling research to demonstrate the persistence of racism and the effects of organized racial advantage across many institutions in American society--including the labor market, the welfare state, the criminal justice system, and schools and universities. Looking beyond the stalled debate over current antidiscrimination policies, the authors also put forth a fresh vision for achieving genuine racial equality of opportunity in a post-affirmative action world.
Customer Reviews:
Race remains our most significant social issue.......2004-02-03
I read this book hoping to find some ideas about the status of race in post civil rights America. Although I found the book helpful and infomative, I do remain highly concerned that the issues the book addresses seem static. The authors do offer a lot of statistics and concise ideas to help understand the problems concerning race in America.
The attack on the racial realists and conservitive views on race really caught my attention. I find the arguements in this book far more convincing. I struggled to articulate how the conditions of American culture create a negative experience for blacks, but this book articulates the message clearly. I find myself reading and hearing arguments about race with a new understanding.
3.5 stars, against Stephen Thernstrom.......2004-01-03
Should one send political scientists to do a historian's job? That is the question one has to ask about this book compiled by a consortium of political scientists, in response to the "racial realism" of today's right-centrist consensus. This consensus, argued by such authors as Jim Sleeper, Tamara Jacoby, John McWhorter, The New Republic and the renowned historians of American immigration Stephen and Abigail Thernstrom, argue that racism is not really a problem in American life. To the extent that African-Americans are disadvantaged it is because of their own failings or, somewhat more tactfully, the failings of the black politicians and the guilty liberals they (overwhelmingly) support.
This book argues that this fundamentally optimistic view is wrong. They are right to say so and their book is very detailed and comprehensive (the Thernstroms in particular are repeatedly criticized). Still the book is not perfect. The book makes an error in numbering its footnotes in chapter five. It also incorrectly says that until recently there were no African-Americans elected from North Carolina since Reconstruction (one in fact was elected in 1898). The style is not very engaging, it consists mostly of summaries of papers in economics, political science, sociology and the other social sciences. The result is a certain dryness and abstract quality that could use more historical analysis (the treatment of unions is somewhat superficial). The discussion of racism is not the most thoughtful available (and little is said about Latinos). Nevertheless one should not ignore its points. "Racial realists" argue that racism is not a problem because only a handful of people would support racist attitudes in opinion polls. There are several problems with this argument. Aside from the fact that people do not necessarily volunteer their support of unpopular ideas, it turns the concept of racism and racist harm into a question of pure malice. If there is none (or if it somehow "rational") there is no racism. One might ask why showing discrimination should require showing malice, when other torts merely require showing negligence? Also it is a non-sequitur to argue that if whites are not malicious, blacks and/or liberals must have screwed up. Moreover, rephrasing the question can lead to rather different results: in a 1980 poll only 5% supported segregation, but only 40% supported a law stating that a homeowner could not refuse to sell because of race. The authors go on about how in the post-war period African-Americans were discriminated in social security legislation, GI bill benefits and housing segregation. We also relearn about the insufficiently notorious effects of urban renewal and automation.
What is best about the book are the statistics it provides showing consistent racial gaps, even when corrected for class, age, income or any other variable. For example 53% of mortgages in black Chicago middle-class neighbourhoods are from sub-prime lenders, whereas only 12% of mortgages in white neighbourhoods are. African-Americans are 25% less likely to get mammograpy screening, notwithstanding age or income, while a 1985 Massachusetts study showed that whites underwent significantly more corony surgery than blacks. 61% of basketball players were black in 1996-97, but 81.5 % of coaches were white; 52% of football players are black but in 2001 nearly 97% of head coaching positions were white. During the 1990s in Los Angeles, Latinos make up 41% of the population, but only 6% of the jurors. It is often said that spiralling illegitimacy is the key reason for persistent black poverty today, but the President's Council of Economic Advisers has noted that the poverty gap would have fallen by only a fifth had there been no changes in black family structure since 1967. Likewise the Thernstroms et al have argued that high black youth unemployment is the result of their demand for excessive wages. Yet studies have shown that their length of employment is not correlated with wage demands. The gap between black and white test scores has infuriated potential university students. But the correlation between scores and success is somewhat weaker for women and Asians. Another questionable use of data by "racial realists" is their concentration of Berkeley in the 1980s. There the white graduation rate within 6 years was 88% but only 59% for blacks. But in 28 other colleges the white average was 86% and the black average 75%. Might this not say more about the problems of particular universities than an inherent cultural failing of African-Americans?
We also learn about a third wave of criminology scholarship and we learn how only 26% of the gap between blacks and whites drug offences in Pennsylvania is the result of the higher arrest rate among blacks. Even after making every allowance Georgia blacks are five times more likely to get life sentences for drug offences than whites. We see at every stage of the arrest process, from scholars such as Madeline Wordes, George Bridges, and Michael Leiber, a clear bias against African-Americans. Although the prospect that somewhere, somehow affirmative action might hurt white men has haunted the conservative imagination, only 4% of 1990-94 sex/age discrimination suits were launched by white men, (yet they file three-quarters of age discrimination suits). Oddly enough, racial realists have blamed blacks for inadequate black representation. Supposedly they won't vote for whites. Yet in the past few decades only 0.5% of white majority districts elections have chosen a black representative. And whites have shown great reluctance or active hostility in voting for blacks in prominent elections in Chicago, Philadelphia and California. The authors conclude with sensible suggestions for reforms in education, stronger civil rights protection and an improved welfare state.
Informative & Thought-Provoking.......2003-11-19
It presents information in such a way that you are at the very least, forced to consider what they've presented. As a self-identified "African-American" who considers himself a conservative, I think this book does a great job of presenting the foundation of how the problem of race still exists and presents pragmatic ideas - however controversial - that are far better, in my view, than maintaining the status quo.
If those who on principle oppose these ideas (specifically, the conservatives this book spends a lot of time lambasting) would come out with substantive data to disprove what this book says, the race debate would become a lot clearer and would bring us closer to realizing a better America for all.
grab your highlighter.......2003-10-07
For anyone interested in how the politics of race are presented in today's world (affirmative action, prison sentencing, etc.), this book is a definite must-read. The authors analyze the conservative's overly-simplistic view of race as being based simply on whether a person exhibits overt prejudice while ignoring the larger implications of accumulated wealth and advantages enjoyed by whites from years of legal discrimination.
The authors poke holes in much of the misinformation coming from the conservative side of the aisle, and reveal just how sinister and permeating racial bias still is in America. Grab this book, a good cup of coffee, a high-lighter, and become updated on the dynamics of race in 2003 America.
Book Description
"How much does it cost?" We think of this question as one that preoccupies the nation's shoppers, not its statesmen. But, as Pocketbook Politics dramatically shows, the twentieth-century American polity in fact developed in response to that very consumer concern.
In this groundbreaking study, Meg Jacobs demonstrates how pocketbook politics provided the engine for American political conflict throughout the twentieth century. From Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon, national politics turned on public anger over the high cost of living.
Beginning with the explosion of prices at the turn of the century, every strike, demonstration, and boycott was, in effect, a protest against rising prices and inadequate income. On one side, a reform coalition of ordinary Americans, mass retailers, and national politicians fought for laws and policies that promoted militant unionism, government price controls, and a Keynesian program of full employment. On the other, small businessmen fiercely resisted this low-price, high-wage agenda that threatened to bankrupt them.
This book recaptures this dramatic struggle, beginning with the immigrant Jewish, Irish, and Italian women who flocked to Edward Filene's famous Boston bargain basement that opened in 1909 and ending with the Great Inflation of the 1970s.
Pocketbook Politics offers a new interpretation of state power by integrating popular politics and elite policymaking. Unlike most social historians who focus exclusively on consumers at the grass-roots, Jacobs breaks new methodological ground by insisting on the centrality of national politics and the state in the nearly century-long fight to fulfill the American Dream of abundance.
Book Description
In the 1960s, Mississippi was the heart of white southern resistance to the civil-rights movement. To many, it was a backward-looking society of racist authoritarianism and violence that was sorely out of step with modern liberal America. White Mississippians, however, had a different vision of themselves and their country, one so persuasive that by 1980 they had become important players in Ronald Reagan's newly ascendant Republican Party.
In this ambitious reassessment of racial politics in the deep South, Joseph Crespino reveals how Mississippi leaders strategically accommodated themselves to the demands of civil-rights activists and the federal government seeking to end Jim Crow, and in so doing contributed to a vibrant conservative countermovement. Crespino explains how white Mississippians linked their fight to preserve Jim Crow with other conservative causes--with evangelical Christians worried about liberalism infecting their churches, with cold warriors concerned about the Communist threat, and with parents worried about where and with whom their children were schooled. Crespino reveals important divisions among Mississippi whites, offering the most nuanced portrayal yet of how conservative southerners bridged the gap between the politics of Jim Crow and that of the modern Republican South.
This book lends new insight into how white Mississippians gave rise to a broad, popular reaction against modern liberalism that recast American politics in the closing decades of the twentieth century.
Book Description
This innovative cultural history investigates an intriguing, thrilling, and often lurid assortment of sensational literature that was extremely popular in the United States in 1848--including dime novels, cheap story paper literature, and journalism for working-class Americans. Shelley Streeby uncovers themes and images in this "literature of sensation" that reveal the profound influence that the U.S.-Mexican War and other nineteenth-century imperial ventures throughout the Americas had on U.S. politics and culture. Streeby's analysis of this fascinating body of popular literature and mass culture broadens into a sweeping demonstration of the importance of the concept of empire for understanding U.S. history and literature.
This accessible, interdisciplinary book brilliantly analyzes the sensational literature of George Lippard, A.J.H Duganne, Ned Buntline, Metta Victor, Mary Denison, John Rollin Ridge, Louisa May Alcott, and many other writers. Streeby also discusses antiwar articles in the labor and land reform press; ideas about Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua in popular culture; and much more. Although the Civil War has traditionally been a major period marker in U.S. history and literature, Streeby proposes a major paradigm shift by using mass culture to show that the U.S.-Mexican War and other conflicts with Mexicans and Native Americans in the borderlands were fundamental in forming the complex nexus of race, gender, and class in the United States.
Customer Reviews:
ground breaking.......2004-05-08
American Sensations is a brilliant book, useful to students, professors and other readers interested in the history of popular culture and US imperialism. Well written and researched, Streeby's analysis of popular culture regarding the US/Mexican War--a conflict often overlooked in accounts of US cultural history--is stunning. This is a real classic destined to be read for years to come by students and scholars in American Studies, Latin American Studies, and Chicana/o Studies. And given current debates over US imperialism in the Middle East, American Sensations should be required reading for anyone interested in how the past continues to shape our present moment.
Books:
- The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm
- The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy (Studies in Ethics and Economics)
- The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena
- The Complete Guide to Home Wiring - 3rd Edition: Includes Information on Home Electronics & Wireless Technology (Black & Decker Complete Guide)
- The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (New Press People's History)
- The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (New Press People's History)
- The Economics of Life: From Baseball to Affirmative Action to Immigration, How Real-World Issues Affect Our Everyday Life
- The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America
- The Enlargement of the European Union and NATO: Ordering from the Menu in Central Europe
- The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond (Princeton Economic History of the Western World)
Books Index
Books Home
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General
| 20th Century
| United States
| Americas
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939
A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America
Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era
Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America)
The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton Studies in American Politics)
