Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America)

Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America)
Average customer rating:

Interesting Subject...

Analyzes the 'warrior' battle plan of the 1950's and 1960's

Good, but not great

Rhetorical, but ok

Absorbing,Thorough Analysis Of Neoconservative Ascent !

Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America)
Lisa McGirr
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America)

ASIN: 0691096112

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!

The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements
Average customer rating:

An eye-opener, with a few typos

Well argued opinions

We will conquer you!

IMPORTANT BOOK FOR THE 22 ND CENTURY

Eye-opening

The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements
Kevin MacDonald
Manufacturer: 1st Books Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0759672229

Book Description

MacDonald provides a theoretical analysis and review of data on the widespread tendency among certain highly influential, Jewish-dominated intellectual movements to develop radical critiques of gentile culture that are compatible with the continuity of Jewish identification. Particular attention is paid to Boasian anthropology, psychoanalysis, leftist political ideology and behavior, the Frankfurt School of Social Research, and the efforts to influence United States immigration policy.

Customer Reviews:

An eye-opener, with a few typos.......2007-09-06

In my country there are very few jews, apparently not even 10.000 in a population of 42.000.000, so it was very easy to grow up without being aware of their existence. However, they were very much present as I was growing up. The comic books heroes I idolized as a boy were mostly jewish creations: Superman (Siegel and Schuster), Batman (Kane), the Fantastic Four (Lee and Kirby), Spiderman (Lee and Ditko). So were one's favorite comedians, like the Marx Brothers or the 3 Stooges. And let's not even mention movies or saturday morning cartoons. As I grew up I became aware that many important thinkers and scientists were jewish, that many jews won Nobel prizes (49 so far in Medicine, 27 in Chemistry, 20 in Economics, 44 in Physics). Let's keep in mind that there are probably no more than 15 million jews. No one else can beat those numbers. I also learned that many were very rich. Peculiarly, it was also true that many jews had been at the forefront of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European offshoots, and that many also had been part of the counterculture, and not just in the USA. But anytime anyone said something that might be construed as disparaging of Jews, they presented a united front, and fought back. Jews appeared smarter, more motivated and more cohesive than anyone else. But many matters were hard to explain: how could jews be over-represented both among the plutocrats and the revolutionaries? It did seem like a Nazi slander to accuse them of both. Why was it that even as data supported the view that jews were smarter than others (i.e., Murray and Herrnstein), important jewish scientists wrote in opposition to this (i.e. Gould, Lewontin,Pinker)? And just why were there so many jews involved in progressive causes all over the world, such as contraception, abortion rights, black and minority rights and free immigration?

I had no answer to these questions until I read this book. MacDonald's thesis is as follows: human action is mostly defined by competition for scarce resources. In this competition, who's in one's group and who's not is a very important issue, because people are more likely to be altruistic towards those who belong rather than those who don't. Once people move beyond the extended families common to hunter-gatherers, the in-group will be defined by ethnicity, which in turn will mean race. People who are ethnically similar are more likely to be related than those who are dissimilar, and are also more likely to share genes. Hence, in-group solidarity is justified from an evolutionary advantage perspective. Through history, jews have been better than others are retaining their collective identity mainly through refusing absorption by other groups, a very difficult result to obtain during many millenia of various diasporae. This they have done by giving high priority to the survival of the jewish ethnicity, while attempting to prevent other groups achieving similar levels of collective action by delegitimizing their right to do so. The Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, the Greeks and the Romans tried to assimilate them, but without success. This was attempted later by the various European kingdoms (particularly the Spanish), the Russians and the Americans, who again failed. Each time the host society developed strong collectivistic views around ethnic categories the result was anti-semitism and persecution (Spain under Isabella and Ferdinand, Russia with the Czars and at the time of Kruschev and Brezhnev, Germany under Hitler, even the US during the "Red Scare" -1920s- and at the height of the Cold War -1950s-). The jewish reaction was to conceive and communicate highly compelling worldviews in which the categories of jewish v. gentile are weakened or where traditional rallying points such as Christianity or patriotism are dismantled (such as Communism or psychoanalisis), or where even the very existence of ethnic differentiations of any sort is rejected and all intergroup variations are attributed to environmental factors (such as in Boasian Antropology). Eventually even the possibility of universal concepts is rejected (as explicity argued by the Frankfurt School) and all reality is subject to corrosive criticism that leaves nothing standing (as in Derridian deconstructivism). MacDonald reviews extensively these intellectual movements and shows how they were led by individuals who thought of themselves as jews (mostly not as members of a religion, but of an ethnicity), and shows that they generally pursued a "party line", which was to preserve the right of jews to continue to exist and prosper as such, while denying other groups the right to oppose them, by delegitimizing and even by pathologizing them.

How did jews come to these behaviors? In this book MacDonald does not explain it, but he suggests that there was no need for some hidden cabal to establish and implement a plan. All that was required was strong ethnic identification along with the realization that a clever, powerful minority who refuses to be assimilated will attract antipathy from others and might eventually be harmed. Hence, the development of arguments that eliminate the legitimacy for such reaction would be a reasonable response. This might explain how jews can both be a very rich and powerful group (because they are more intelligent, highly motivated and capable of collective action than others) and also an enemy of the status quo (because it is a good strategy to weaken traditional institutions around which ethnocentric feelings have clustered in the past, such as Christianity, both protestant and catholic or patriotism). In any event, it is indisputable that jewish presence was paramount among early Russian Bolsheviks, among Eastern European communists, among early mentors of the civil rights movement, among proponents of unrestricted immigration, among countercultural heavyweights and among the radical intelligentsia. And it is also indisputable that jews are a leading force in media, finance and law. These are verifiable facts. That jewish leaders worked very hard to change the ethnic composition of several countries (such as the USA, Canada or Australia) is well-known because they themselves have said so, that they were successful is a fact, and that this has weakened the status (political, economic, cultural) of traditional WASP elites is indisputable. That the fragmentation of fairly homogeneous societies would be to be benefit of well-organized minorities able to to keep themselves apart is also very likely.

Particularly interesting to this reader was how the Frankfurt School pathologized the same attributes that make any group good at internal solidarity and external competition, such as a strong work ethic, identification with shared values and committed parenting. These traits among gentiles were seen as conducive to a fascist mindset, whereas among jews their legitimacy is taken for granted and never discussed. It was also fascinating to learn that jewish authors of published papers are much more likely to quote other jews rather than gentiles. I don't know if this is the case, but somebody should look it up because it is interesting. Further, according to MacDonald, neoconservatism is an attempt by former jewish radicals to influence American domestic and foreign policy to make it harmonize with jewish interests. This is not easy to refute and in fact recent authoritative books say so.

It is indeed possible to carry this arguments too far away and to fall into a conspiracy theory mindset. But MacDonald doesn't do so and he always grounds his opinions in the facts. Clearly, he believes that jews are too powerful, and that they are steering the US too far from its own interest as a country. But he merely describes the situation, he does not suggest ways to address it. He does fear that eventually this situation might lead to a resurgence of antisemitism (as has been seen in Europe) and ethnic strife, which he clearly believes are undesirable outcomes. Unfortunately, it seems to be the case that competition for scarce resources among jews and others (especially in the Mideast) is an important source of political instability and violence in today's world. Not the only one, but a significant one. While it is surely not the case that jews have caused events such as the Afghanistan and Iran wars, it is true that well-known people of that ethnic persuasion have been instrumental in the decisions leading to them, and that these actions benefit the situation of their co-religionists in Israel.

I don't know if the author's views are correct from a scientific viewpoint, but it is a compelling theory. It is consistent with observed facts and with actual human behavior, which is much more oriented to ethnic differentiation than to universal identification irrespective of efforts by many people. It also explains many things that otherwise would remain obscure. I do not think the book is anti-semitic, or conducive to anti-semitism, as some have said. It describes one group's strategies to pursue its own interests. That is surely legitimate, as it is legitimate to analyse it. While one must sympathise with jewish concerns about this type or arguments giving legitimacy to persecution and violence against them, surely people also owe a duty to the truth and are entitled to their own opinions. Silencing reasonable lines of enquiry with appeals to common interests or to historical catastrophes is just preaching to the choir. People who don't already buy into such arguments will not be moved by them. Instead of calling into question MacDonald's motivations, or the possible consequences of his books, those who disagree should show he is wrong, or dispute the facts he quotes.

I give the book 4 stars because it has a few irritating typos that shouldn't turn up in an academic book. "Principle" (fundamental) is not identical to "principal" (main). MP does not mean "Minister of Parliament" but "Member of Parliament" (this howler happens twice). And at the very end the author is confused on whether jews give between one quarter and a half of political contributions, or between a third and a half. Make up your mind, Dr. MacDonald, so that we might feel more comfortable believing you.

Well argued opinions.......2007-08-09

The author analyzes a select few of the major political and cultural movements having shaped Western political thought in the last century, among them marxism, multiculturalism and psychoanalysis. In my view the weakest link in MacDonald's attack on the proponents of these movements as being servants of a Jewish agenda is that he concludes thus because of their Jewish ethnicity. It appears as if he does not consider the possibility of that Freud, Marx (and others) and their Jewish followers developed and held the views they did, not because they were Jewish, but because these were the views they developed and held. I would be more careful than MacDonald is in attributing viewpoints to ethnicity just like that. Although MacDonald argues well, his views stand as _opinions_. During his testimony for David Irving the author professed being an agnostic in the case of the Holocaust: After having read this book, I would have to profess being an agnostic in the case he is making.

It is probably unfair to label this book anti-semitic. It would be more correct to say it is scepti-semitic.

The book is well worth reading.

We will conquer you!.......2007-05-24

Might as well give it up, we took over your culture by promoting socialism and immigration of non-white people. Well not including blacks of course. There were a goodly number of immigrants that came in from different places like China on the west coast in the 19th century, though I suppose they were needed at the time to build railroads and things. But then the real waves of immigration started with the Italians and the Irish in the second part of the 19th century, I guess you couldn't blame us Jews for that. The Irish were fleeing from the potato famine of course, the Italians from poverty -- but even though they were duly hated for seveal decades, and not considered really white or Europeans by those who lived there for a long time, at least they were Christian (well, Catholic, so sort of). The Jews really wanted to keep their cultural identity, good thing they didn't try to push it on non-Jews. But why did they need to push immigration so much? Maybe it was because they were so poor, despised and sometimes killed over there, that many wanted to come over here. Luckily the immigration policies that had brought swarms of immigrants of all kinds had tightened up by 1920, so that we weren't letting them all in anymore... if that hadn't happened, a lot more Jews would have come over fleeing the Holocaust. If they hadn't tightened those quotes, there'd be at least twice as many in the US by 1940!

What's really amazing, though, is how Jews managed to be at the forefront of Socialist and Communist movements, and at the same time were in charge of global capitalism and western finance. Thus they were both opposed to personal property, and the driving force behind it and the laws that enshrined it's preservation. How did Jews pull that off?

Read this book, it will certainly give you some ideas on how we kicked your butts.

IMPORTANT BOOK FOR THE 22 ND CENTURY.......2007-03-21

Amazon should be congratulated for having these books. With the rise of Anti Semitism, its important to be able to argue with historical facts and data.

congratulations amazon

Eye-opening.......2007-01-22

Professor Macdonald has written an eye-opening treatise on Jewish involvement in 20th century political movements. The book is entitled 'Culture of Critique' because many of these Jewish movements/organizations were formed to critique white Christian American institutions and beliefs. The basic premise of the book is that these Jewish organizations sought to make American more pluralistic and multicultural, while simultaneously maintaining their group solidarity. Through pschoanalysis, the Boasian school of anthropology, the New York intellectuals, advocating non-white immigration, communism, and other means, the Jews essentially broke the WASP establishment and displaced it with themselves. This was done in the name of combating anti-Semitism.

I once heard someone say that the Jewish people are inherently self-destructive. They were compared to the scorpion that rides the frog's back across the river, and then stings the frog when it gets across. Upon the frog asking the scorpion why it would have done this, the scorpion replies it is simply in its nature. It could help itself from stinging the frog. I constantly thought of this metaphor while reading this book. The Jewish people did not need to engage in this attack on the white Christian American establishment. They were relatively safe and prosperous in this country. However, they simply could not help themselves. It is just their nature.

Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America)

Average customer rating:

An enlightening book on public diplomacy
Causes and Effects
Eye Opening and Important -- A Great Read!
Excellent!

Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America)
Mary L. Dudziak
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Civil Rights & Liberties | Current Events | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

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ASIN: 0691095132

Book Description

In 1958, an African-American handyman named Jimmy Wilson was sentenced to die in Alabama for stealing two dollars. Shocking as this sentence was, it was overturned only after intense international attention and the interference of an embarrassed John Foster Dulles. Soon after the United States' segregated military defeated a racist regime in World War II, American racism was a major concern of U.S. allies, a chief Soviet propaganda theme, and an obstacle to American Cold War goals throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Each lynching harmed foreign relations, and "the Negro problem" became a central issue in every administration from Truman to Johnson.

In what may be the best analysis of how international relations affected any domestic issue, Mary Dudziak interprets postwar civil rights as a Cold War feature. She argues that the Cold War helped facilitate key social reforms, including desegregation. Civil rights activists gained tremendous advantage as the government sought to polish its international image. But improving the nation's reputation did not always require real change. This focus on image rather than substance--combined with constraints on McCarthy-era political activism and the triumph of law-and-order rhetoric--limited the nature and extent of progress.

Archival information, much of it newly available, supports Dudziak's argument that civil rights was Cold War policy. But the story is also one of people: an African-American veteran of World War II lynched in Georgia; an attorney general flooded by civil rights petitions from abroad; the teenagers who desegregated Little Rock's Central High; African diplomats denied restaurant service; black artists living in Europe and supporting the civil rights movement from overseas; conservative politicians viewing desegregation as a communist plot; and civil rights leaders who saw their struggle eclipsed by Vietnam.

Never before has any scholar so directly connected civil rights and the Cold War. Contributing mightily to our understanding of both, Dudziak advances--in clear and lively prose--a new wave of scholarship that corrects isolationist tendencies in American history by applying an international perspective to domestic affairs.

Customer Reviews:

An enlightening book on public diplomacy .......2007-01-11

If you think Las Vegas tourist ads and "listening tours" are components of public diplomacy and international relations, you need to read this book. If you think media coverage is intense now, you need to read this book. Dudziak gets into the reality and impact of media coverage forty years ago and its impact on the global information war of the time that is remarkably similar to today: "Following World War II, anything that undermined the image of American democracy was seen as threatening world peace and aiding Soviet aspiration to dominate the world... Nations were divided between a way of life 'distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression' and a way of life that "relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms."

Dudziak looks at the impact of race and the civil rights movement in the United States on American public diplomacy and foreign policy. The impact of America's "color bar" on foreign relations is astonishing and Dudziak helps contextualize the movement and government responses within contemporary pressures.

Indiscriminate actions against foreign and American dignitaries reinforced the accessibility of race-based norms to all and played into Soviet propaganda and provided a painful counternarrative that impacted US foreign relations. The US Ambassador, Chester Bowles, to India, speaking in 1952 at Yale University said, "A year, a month, or even a week in Asia is enough to convince any perceptive American that the colored peoples of Asia and Africa, who total two-thirds of the world's population, seldom think about the United States without considering the limitations under which our 13 million Negroes are living."

As we attempted to project democracy and its emphasis on equality and freedom, in opposition to Soviet tyranny, discrimination in the US was well known beyond our borders. Dudziak presents "With Us or Against Us" examples with Louis Armstrong and Josephine Baker as examples, among others. In the case of Baker, State Department officers justified censorship and hardship imposed on Baker by discounting her personal beliefs. Her "derogatory" remarks "concerning racial discrimination in the United States" were deemed to be "presenting a distorted and malicious picture of actual conditions." If we do not practice democracy, how well will our promotion of it be received? This was a real question of the time that other history books ignore and was the very question Ambassador Bowles asked.

As Dudziak wrote, "Domestic difficulties were managed by US presidents with an eye toward how their actions would play overseas." Disingenuous or factually misleading statements to justify domestic policies and opinions are not the mainstay of any single generation. While not intending to be destructive to the nation, these policies have a severely detrimental affect on domestic cohesion and leadership within the foreign relations. Dudziak implies the race issue in the international press was the seed of negative views of the US. The golden temple of American democracy was seen as something falling short, even hypocritical. Locksley Edmunson, writing in 1973, could be speaking of today with our Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and alleged secret CIA prisons when he wrote, "Those states best technically equipped to maintain world order are not necessarily the ones whose credentials recommend them as the most appropriate guardians of a global conscience."

You can read different things out of Mary Dudziak's book. As a student of public diplomacy, my take-away centered on the impact on foreign policy, which the author does a good job investigating. The take-away? Practice what you preach, or at least be effective in making them think you're trying to.

Causes and Effects.......2001-06-05

Upon first consideration one would think that the reciprocal influences of the Cold War and American civil rights activity would be self-evident. Perhaps, but Dudziak's book is full of surprises and details how galling the "American Dilemma" was to U.S. foreign policy-makers and various presidents and how each responded to the concerns of African, Asian, American, and European countries regarding the United States civil rights struggle over several decades. Why was civil rights legislation important to American foreign policy? How was Eisenhower's response to school desegregation in Little Rock influenced by foreign perceptions? How did the international attention to civil rights activity affect John Kennedy's domestic policies? Why was the State Department so concerned about Asian and African criticisms of the United States' record on civil rights? How was the Civil Rights Act of 1965 viewed by the international community? How did the views of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X affect United States foreign policy efforts? Was the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to an American activist also an international signal that worried a president and the State Department? These questions and many more are answered by Dudziak.

Dudziak deserves recognition and commendations for clearly demonstrating that the United States civil rights movement had a global as well as a national impact on America's foreign policy efforts and placed the United States squarely between the demands of a persecuted domestic minority and the scrutiny of the nations to which it declared itself the leader of human rights, liberty, and freedom in contrast to the totalitarian regimes of communist countries.

This book is well worth reading and an important addition to the growing number of books on the history of race relations that was not, and is not,taught in school. Kudos to Dudziak for an important job well done.

Eye Opening and Important -- A Great Read!.......2001-01-11

Mary Dudziak revisits a familiar chapter in American history--the civil rights movement--but provides readers with a completely new perspective on it.

We know about the work that was being done in the streets. But now Dudziak helps us see the movement through the eyes of America's cold war policymakers. For them, civil rights was a foreign policy problem, and Dudziak helps us see how this explains many of the movements successes and (maybe more important) many of its defeats.

Essential reading for everyone interested in American history, civil rights, constitutional law (yes, even Brown v. Board of Education must be seen in light of this analysis), and foreign policy.

Excellent!.......2001-01-08

This book is fabulous. Clear and articulate, it reads like a story and explores an aspect of the civil rights movement most authors and historians have neglected. It is meticulously researched and filled with information from sources ranging from presidential telephone conversations to news wires to official publications. The civil rights movement cannot be fully understood without reflecting upon the information contained in this book.

The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art

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Outstanding anthropological essays

The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art
James Clifford
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (A School of American Research Advanced Seminar)
Interpretation of Cultures (Basic Books Classics)
Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century
Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences
Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (Basic Books Classics)

ASIN: 0674698436

Book Description

The Predicament of Culture is a critical ethnography of the West in its changing relations with other societies. Analyzing cultural practices such as anthropology, travel writing, collecting, and museum displays of tribal art, Clifford shows authoritative accounts of other ways of life to be contingent fictions, now actively contested in postcolonial contexts. His critique raises questions of global significance: Who has the authority to speak for any group's identity and authenticity? What are the essential elements and boundaries of a culture? How do self and "the other" clash in the encounters of ethnography, travel, and modern interethnic relations? In discussions of ethnography, surrealism, museums, and emergent tribal arts, Clifford probes the late-twentieth century predicament of living simultaneously within, between, and after culture.

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding anthropological essays.......2000-06-20

James Clifford's book considers how anthropology can exist in these postmodern times. Considering such phenomena as a museum exhibit which displays "primitive artefacts" next to contemporaneous "modern art pieces," Clifford discusses the way "Western" culture privileges its own culture at the expense of other cultures, clearly showing the ways assumptions of the definition of culture defines this privilege. Clifford's essay on the Mashpees on Cape Cod offers a striking example of directions in which anthropology can move to redesign its own project without privileging itself. A well-written, erudite text. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the workings of contemporary society.

The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century

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Outstanding for a narrow audience.....
Story of the statistical revolution of the 20th century
Insightful book
The Lady Tasting Tea
A gem

The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century
David Salsburg
Manufacturer: Owl Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Science | Subjects | Books

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Mathematical Physics | Physics | Science | Subjects | Books

Statistics: Concepts and Controversies
How To Lie With Statistics
Cartoon Guide to Statistics
Statistics on the Table: The History of Statistical Concepts and Methods
The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900

ASIN: 0805071342

Amazon.com

Science is inextricably linked with mathematics. Statistician David Salsburg examines the development of ever-more-powerful statistical methods for determining scientific truth in The Lady Tasting Tea, a series of historical and biographical sketches that illuminate without alienating the mathematically timid. Salsburg, who has worked in academia and industry and has met many of the major players he writes about, shares his subjects' enthusiasm for problem solving and deep thinking. His sense of excitement drives the prose, but never at the expense of the reader; if anything, the author has taken pains to eliminate esoterica and ephemera from his stories. This might frustrate a few number-head readers, but the abundant notes and references should keep them happy in the library for weeks after reading the book.

Ultimately, the various tales herein are unified in a single theme: the conversion of science from observational natural history into rigorously defined statistical models of data collection and analysis. This process, usually only implicit in studies of scientific methods and history, is especially important now that we seem to be reaching the point of diminishing returns and are looking for new paradigms of scientific investigation. The Lady Tasting Tea will appeal to a broad audience of scientifically literate readers, reminding them of the humanity underlying the work. --Rob Lightner

Book Description

At a summer tea party in Cambridge, England, a guest states that tea poured into milk tastes different from milk poured into tea. Her notion is shouted down by the scientific minds of the group. But one man, Ronald Fisher, proposes to scientifically test the hypothesis. There is no better person to conduct such an experiment, for Fisher is a pioneer in the field of statistics. The Lady Tasting Tea spotlights not only Fishers theories but also the revolutionary ideas of dozens of men and women which affect our modern everyday lives. Writing with verve and wit, David Salsburg traces breakthroughs ranging from the rise and fall of Karl Pearsons theories to the methods of quality control that rebuilt postwar Japans economy, including a pivotal early study on the capacity of a small beer cask at the Guinness brewing factory. Brimming with intriguing tidbits and colorful characters, The Lady Tasting Tea salutes the spirit of those who dared to look at the world in a new way.

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding for a narrow audience............2007-07-04

I have given several copies of this book away to my statistician colleagues, as it is an outstanding overview of the development of statistics in the twentieth century.

It is not particularly technical but it probably would appeal only to statisticians, students of statistics, and others interested in the impact of statistics on the advancement of science.

Story of the statistical revolution of the 20th century.......2007-05-19

Salsburg writes a selective account of the history of statistics in the 20th century. In so doing, he tackles the philosophical issue of a scientific revolution from deterministic to stochastic thinking (he writes that this is a revolution in the Kuhnian sense). I haven't personally found another book which displays the big picture of what happened so clearly, and from that standpoint consider this book a must read on the topic. It is well written and appears to me to successfully communicate to a broad audience.

Insightful book.......2007-03-09

This is a very intriguing read about the history and the developments in the study of statistics throughout the twentieth century.

The Lady Tasting Tea.......2007-01-10

"The Lady Tasting Tea" is a valuable history of the evolution of statistical thinking. It presents a very good explanation of the meaning of "significance," "p-value" and other statistical concepts that are only dealt with as if gospel in statistics courses. It puts these concepts in context.

The book is an easy read. I found it particularly interesting because I have had the good fortune to have met, and/or worked on various committees with, several of those mentioned in the book. This includes the author. David Salsburg also provides the answer to a question that I thought for the last 35 years didn't have an answer. That is, can the lady really tell whether the milk or the tea was put in the cup first? This is the question posed in the second chapter of R. A. Fisher's classic book "The Design of Experiments."

I don't usually recommend books. However, this one I consider a "must read" for anyone who wishes to truly understand the application of statistics. It also gives us another reason to support the Guinness Brewing Company.

A gem.......2006-09-19

I personally have a deep admiration for statistical science. Probability is everywhere, from Heisenberg to quantum mechanics to common primary school science experiments. What constitutes a good experiment? What questions should we ask? How should we interpret the data? Indeed, what data should we be expecting? What if the data are contrary to our expectations? More directly, how did these methodologies come to be? What were their motivations? Statistics and probability presently provides some of the best tools science has to offer for exploring our world, and making sense of it. These are tools forged by individuals over the past centuries with real problems to solve, despite their own very human problems. This extremely readable book helps tell their fascinating stories and the history of the evolution of statistical methods now so prevalent in our sciences. I bought this book as a gift for a doctor friend of mine, and promptly borrowed it from her after thumbing through it. I couldn't put it down for 2 days, nor stop talking about it. Absolutely a must read for anyone with a realization of the importance statistics plays in modern society. 5 easy stars for this one.

Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America)

Average customer rating:

The construction of the illegal immigrant and discriminatory US policies
This book makes me want to hop the border to Canada
Reframing immigration history
The legally constructed "illegal aliens"

Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America)
Mae M. Ngai
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Americas | History | Subjects | Books

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Similar Items:

Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants since 1882
Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race
Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants
A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America (Russell Sage Foundation Books)
Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939

ASIN: 0691124299

Book Description

This book traces the origins of the "illegal alien" in American law and society, explaining why and how illegal migration became the central problem in U.S. immigration policy--a process that profoundly shaped ideas and practices about citizenship, race, and state authority in the twentieth century.

Mae Ngai offers a close reading of the legal regime of restriction that commenced in the 1920s--its statutory architecture, judicial genealogies, administrative enforcement, differential treatment of European and non-European migrants, and long-term effects. In well-drawn historical portraits, Ngai peoples her study with the Filipinos, Mexicans, Japanese, and Chinese who comprised, variously, illegal aliens, alien citizens, colonial subjects, and imported contract workers. She shows that immigration restriction, particularly national-origin and numerical quotas, re-mapped the nation both by creating new categories of racial difference and by emphasizing as never before the nation's contiguous land borders and their patrol. This yielded the "illegal alien," a new legal and political subject whose inclusion in the nation was a social reality but a legal impossibility--a subject without rights and excluded from citizenship. Questions of fundamental legal status created new challenges for liberal democratic society and have directly informed the politics of multiculturalism and national belonging in our time.

Ngai's analysis is based on extensive archival research, including previously unstudied records of the U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Naturalization Service. Contributing to American history, legal history, and ethnic studies, Impossible Subjects is a major reconsideration of U.S. immigration in the twentieth century.

Customer Reviews:

The construction of the illegal immigrant and discriminatory US policies.......2006-12-01

The United States of America is the great melting pot of the world's immigrants, or is it? A white, middle-class, Protestant, European American lifestyle is what the great melting pot of American folklore was truly intended to articulate to the immigrants of the early 20th century. Mai Ngai counters this image of the US as the embracive playground of diverse immigrants and powerfully weaves the tale of how race, nationality, assimilation, and immigration all became interwoven concepts in overtly discriminatory US immigration policy of the mid-20th century in her newest book Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. As Mae says, "The telos of immigrant settlement, assimilation, and citizenship has been an enduring narrative of American history, but it has not always been the reality of migrants' desires or their experiences and interactions with American society and state." (5)
Throughout the history of the United States, there has been a clear struggle to define who can gain citizenship in this great nation. Ngai's book attempts not to tackle this debate, but rather how the construction of the illegal immigrant came about because "the promise of citizenship applies only to the legal alien, the lawfully present immigrant. The illegal immigrant has no right to be present, let alone embark on the path to citizenship." (6) Her book begins in 1924 with the adoption of the Johnson-Reed Act which established numeric quotas for immigration from countries across the globe. Prior to the 1920s, immigration was relatively unrestricted as, "the free global movement of labor was essential to economic development in the New World." (17) Ngai points out that it is vital to note that this pre-Johnson Reed Act period did see the exclusion of Chinese laborers who migration disturbed the precious ideas of manifest destiny in the West. She stresses that the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was most important because the Supreme Court gave Congress absolute control over immigration as part of foreign relations.
Throughout her book, Ngai focuses on what she believes to be the two biggest consequences of the Johnson-Reed Act, the first being creation of the concept of illegal alien and the second being racially ranking the desirability for certain groups to immigrate to the United States. Perhaps the most powerful quote of the entire book goes, "Immigration restriction produced the illegal alien as a new legal and political subject, whose inclusion within the nation was simultaneously a social reality and a legal impossibility - a subject barred from citizenship and without rights." (4) Ngai points out that the irony of this newly created status is that the undocumented or illegal immigrants are woven into the economic fabric and labor market of our nation, and yet as they are cheap labor, they are disposable labor who can easily lose their ability to live in even the subhuman conditions in this oh so great nation.
Now that this new quota system was to be implemented, how would the country establish what the quotas would be for the varying countries of the world? Easy, they compared it to the approximate composition of the US population circa 1790, a clearly discriminatory and completely inaccurate and unreliable practice! As the rising popularity of eugenics was during this time period, there had been increased emphasis on census and racial definition and maintaining "racial hygiene". "Euro-American identities turned both on ethnicity - that is, a nationality-based cultural identity that is defined as capable of transformation and assimilation - and on racial identity defined by whiteness." (7) In this construction of the white American, those non-white, browner immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Mexico were deemed less desirable and lower class peoples who subsequently had a lower quota for the number of immigrants allowed. Ngai points to Mexicans as a changing population in regards to the immigration and whiteness policy of time, as originally they were deemed white as the need for immigrant farm workers was needed in the Southwest, but then subsequently deportation and repatriation of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans became the common practice.
Ngai wonderfully illustrates how as this period of quota-based immigration restrictions continued, the treatment of Filipinos, Mexicans, Chinese, and Japanese worsened to the extent of which no matter how long they or their families had been woven into the fabric of the US, they were viewed and abused as second-class foreigners. Ngai urges you to remember, these were systematic attempts at ranking races, excusing maltreatment, and elevating the political, economic, and racial status of white Euro-Americans, and not just subtle nuances of American policies. As the US struggled with its policies towards the Philippines, practices bounced back and forth from Filipinos being portrayed as being capable of "benevolent assimilation" but at the same time clearly of Asian ancestry and eventually was pushed towards independence and repatriation. As World War II arose, the massive discrimination and maltreatment that the Japanese and Chinese Americans endured only further reinforced their cultural ties to their home countries and therefore they were portrayed as disloyal citizens. In many cases these were actual citizens of the US, native-born patriotic people who had protected rights unlike those of their illegal immigrant counterparts. Ngai reminds us not to forget about the Cold War and the extreme measures that were taken to exclude Chinese people from immigration to the US and even participation as US citizens in order to protect us from evil communist China.
Ngai's phenomenal history comes to a close with the Immigration Act of 1965. Although this act overturned the racialized, discriminatory numeric quota system, it did sadly further extend the reach of numeric restrictions. For anyone who believes that racial hierarchy as part of US policy is a thing of the ancient past, for anyone who believes that African-Americans and their struggles for civil rights were the only systematically discriminated against population in recent US history, this is the book for you! Sit back and relax as Ngai takes you through this tremendously researched sensational tale of the United States and the construction of the illegal immigrant.

This book makes me want to hop the border to Canada.......2005-11-20

This book is truly awful. I don't know what her publisher was thinking by letting this book get out. The tone: Nasal. The language: Sociological jargon. The argument: Garbage. Save a tree and find something better.

Reframing immigration history.......2005-11-03

Mae Ngai's ambitious book compels historians and general readers alike to critically reassess traditional understandings of and approaches to U.S. immigration. Much of the histories on U.S. immigration and immigration policies have told a similar tale. The United States, the narrative goes, has been tainted by a long history of exclusion, a blight on the nation's democratic tradition that was only recently removed with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965. Such a narrative not only reaffirms the myth of American universalism, but also consistently fails to produce any new critical knowledge about U.S. immigration and U.S. history. Impossible Subjects differs from these other works of immigration history in this important respect: it proceeds with the conviction that the United States was never a "nation of immigrants."

Ngai examines the era between 1924 and 1965, an unconventional periodization in immigration history that situates the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act (usually signifying the end of one regime) at the beginning of her study, and the Immigration Act of 1965 (usually signifying the beginning of another) at the end. Beyond simply filling a historiographical gap in immigration history, the focus on this period of immigration restriction enables a reevaluation of U.S. immigration laws, and more broadly of U.S history, on several levels. First, it demonstrates that restrictionist policies did not merely function as a tool for exclusion, but more, it created-through a racial and geographical remapping of the nation-new categories and concepts deeply implicated in race that defined the spaces and limits of national inclusion. Second, these categories and concepts, most notably "illegal aliens" and "national origins," are not natural or fixed conditions and markers, but are the product of positive law that, when scrutinized, reveal the ways in which its uses have shaped and defined the United States in the twentieth century, particularly its ideas and practices about race, citizenship, and the nation-state. Finally, this periodization allows for a reconfiguration of immigration history beyond a nationalist framework. By suggesting that the making of modern America rested on the exclusion of nonwhites from the geographical and ideological borders of the nation during this regime of restriction, the book argues against the normative telos of immigrant settlement, assimilation, and citizenship as the defining narrative of American history, a narrative that is confined to the nation-state and that invariably reproduces American exceptionalism.

By charting the historical origins of the "illegal alien" and the genealogy of immigration laws that have consistently reproduced it, Ngai has ultimately written a stunning history that goes far beyond narrating the history of U.S. immigration restriction. It is a book that deserves to be read widely.

The legally constructed "illegal aliens".......2004-07-04

IMPOSSIBLE SUBJECTS, written by Mae Ngai, is the best of recent books on the 20th-century American history of immigration. She reveals that the problem of "illegal immigrants," which has been regarded as one of the most serious problems since the late 20th century, is indeed a legal construction. According to the author, immigrants from Mexico were drawn into the U.S. Southeast because the Southeast political economy, especially agri-business, raised need for the massive wave of low-wage immigrant workers and at the same time defined them as the racially "foreign" people who were rendered alien to America, which was defined as the nation of Caucasians. What enabled the American Government and people to attach racialized foreignness to the Mexican immigrants (and, inevitably, American citizens of Mexican origin) were Immigration Acts, border policing, and discriminatory control of visas.

Mae Ngai argues that positive laws concerning immigration policy have constructed the category of "illegal aliens" from Mexico, and the implementation of the laws by Border Patrols and INS has reinforced the labeling of racially alien immigrants. She bases her analysis on the critical legal theory which suggests that laws constitute social formations. Her usage of the new legal theory in her inquiry into the American immigration history is highly excellent and persuasive.

The historical analysis of the immigration problems in this book seems to be applicable to other countries' history. For example, Ngai's insight shall give light to the recent Japanese conservative media discourses on the "illegal migrants" from China, South Korea, and Latin American nations which describe the undocumented migrant workers as illegal, criminal and, in case of women, prostitutes.

Book Description

Articles on present-day tribal groups comprise more than half of the coverage, ranging from essays on the Navajo, Lakota, Cherokee, and other large tribes to shorter entries on such lesser-known groups as the Hoh, Paugusett, and Tunica-Biloxi.

Customer Reviews:

An Essential Reference Tool.......2000-07-07

As an anthropologist and an information professional, I highly recommend this book for anyone researching or studying Native Americans, historical or contemporary. What makes this an essential reference tool, in my opinion, is that it provides a variety of perspectives -- many of the authors are Native American, in addition to anthropologists, historians, etc. One must keep these various biases in mind when using this resource, but this diversity of voices is an example of what makes this source unique. Additionally, the entries offer many great historical summaries but with a focus on contemporary Native America that is difficult to find in other Native American reference tools that tend to focus on the pre-contact and early contact period lifeways and history of various tribal entities rather than modern issues and tribal life.

Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century

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Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century
Good read and study of planning history!

Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century
Peter Hall
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Urban & Land Use Planning | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Urban Planning & Development | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Social History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

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Readings in Planning Theory (Studies in Urban & Social Change)
The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History
City Reader (Urban Reader Series)
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects

ASIN: 0631232524

Book Description

Cities of Tomorrow is a critical history of planning in theory and practice in the twentieth century, as well as of the social and economic problems and opportunities that gave rise to it. Trenchant, perceptive, global in coverage, this book is an unrivalled account of its crucial subject.The third edition of Cities of Tomorrow is comprehensively revised to take account of abundant new literature published since its original appearance, and to view the 1990s in historical perspective. This is the definitive edition, reviewing the development of the modern planning movement over the entire span of the twentieth century.

Customer Reviews:

Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century .......2007-04-05

Be the first to review this item

Good read and study of planning history!.......1999-08-18

My university is using this book as a text as part of our study of Planning History. It is a very good read and is unlike a textbook. Outlines planning history from 1880 to 1980.

Bachelor Girl: The Secret History of Single Women in the Twentieth Century

Average customer rating:

The single woman in the 20th century
bachelor girls?
Detailed History of Single, but City, Girls
Helpful as a research text, succinct history
An interesting read

Bachelor Girl: The Secret History of Single Women in the Twentieth Century
Betsy Israel
Manufacturer: William Morrow
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
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Bachelor Girl : 100 Years of Breaking the Rules--a Social History of Living Single
Sex and The Single Girl: Before There Was Sex in the City, There Was (Cult Classics)

ASIN: 0380976498
Release Date: 2002-10-08

Book Description

In this lively and colorful book of popular history, journalist Betsy Israel shines a light on the old stereotypes that have stigmatized single women for years and celebrates their resourceful sense of spirit, enterprise, and unlimited success in a world where it is no longer unusual or unlikely to be unwed.

Drawing extensively on primary sources, including private journals, newspaper stories, magazine articles, advertisements, films, and other materials from popular media, Israel paints remarkably vivid portraits of single women -- and the way they were perceived -- throughout the decades. From the nineteenth-century spinsters, of New England to the Bowery girls of New York City, from the 1920s flappers to the 1940s working women of the war years and the career girls of the 1950s and 1960s, single women have fought to find and feel comfortable in that room of their own. One need only look at Bridget Jones and the Sex and the City gang to see that single women still maintain an uneasy relationship with the rest of society -- and yet they radiate an aura of glamour and mystery in popular culture.

As witty as it is well researched, as thoughtful as it is lively, Bachelor Girl is a must-read for women everywhere.

Customer Reviews:

The single woman in the 20th century.......2004-09-10

I really enjoyed her analysis of the cultural icons of the various decades. Her screenwriting background shows in her delightful analysis of a variety of films from the silent era all the way up through the recent television sitcoms. I think her final chapter is the weakest, but it's hard to analyize something while living in the middle of it.

I stayed up until one in the morning to finish the book which is a testiment to how well written it is.

bachelor girls?.......2004-04-15

Betsy Israel has an approach that is very readable and not at all male-bashing (she happens to be married). In a few chapters, she even honorably mentions a few males that have furthered the causes for women. If anything, most of the plights that women have been through is because of poor laws that were constructed to restrict them to one way of life. I also love how she portrays the many different single women that have struggled valiantly to bring us to where we are today. She also covers each decade's progress and setbacks all the way up to modern day.

I would recommend this book for all women to read - especially non-married women. After reading this book, you'll most likely feel relieved that you are in fact... a bachelor girl.

Janelle

Detailed History of Single, but City, Girls.......2003-01-22

This was a very interesting history of single women in the last 150 years. The author did extensive research on the topic. One shortcoming that the author acknowledges--the book focuses too much on being a single woman in New York City. She does not address the history of single women on a national level. Still, it is an interesting read and I would recommend it.

Helpful as a research text, succinct history.......2003-01-02

I bought this book specifically because of the historical aspect of young women in the early 1900's, and found it immensely helpful as well as very well written. I have to admit I haven't read through to the end, because the novel I'm writing deals with women in that era. I found Bachelor Girl to be exactly what I wanted as a reference as well as engaging to read. I wish more writers would take upon themselves the task of presenting history in this story-telling style. Highly Recommended.

An interesting read.......2002-12-28

"Bachelor Girl" is an exhaustive history of single women beginning in the mid-19th century to present day (although the author spends a lot more time on the first half of the 20th century). I had no idea the lives of single women back then were so interesting. Betsy Israel discusses their jobs/careers, how they lived, and how they affected American culture. The title, though, is a bit misleading--the bulk of the book deals with how the media and society viewed single women through the ages, not on their "secret lives." My only complaint about the book was the last chapter about the modern single woman. As a single woman a few years out of college, I didn't relate at all to anything she discussed. Especially the section on "baby brides" where she describes girls fresh out of college getting married. Who is she talking about?? None of my friends from college (male or female) are engaged or married, or close to it. As far as I know, marriage among recent college grads is a rarity. She fails to point out that people from certain groups tend to get married younger than average (i.e., people in the military, deeply religious people, people from certain ethnic groups). I think she glossed over things too much in the last section. She also kind of has the consensus that singles have an "uncomfortable place in society." Huh?? As a single, I just don't see it.

Book Description

For centuries, Mexican-American women have been creative, innovative forces shaping the cultural and economic development of what is now the American Southwest. Whether living in a labor camp, a boxcar settlement, or an urban barrio, Mexican women nurtured families, worked for wages, built extended networks, and participated in community associations--efforts that solidified the community and helped Mexican Americans find their own place in America. Now, in From Out of the Shadows, historian Vicki L. Ruiz provides the first full study of Mexican-American women in the 20th century, in a narrative enhanced by interviews and personal stories that capture a vivid sense of the Mexicana experience in the United States. Beginning with the first wave of women crossing the border early this century, Ruiz reveals the struggles they have faced, the communities they have built, and also highlights the various forms of political protest they have initiated. What emerges from the book is a portrait of a distinctive culture in America that has slowly gathered strength in the last 95 years. From Out of the Shadows is an important addition to the largely undocumented history of Mexican-American women in our century.

Customer Reviews:

Dry and timid.......2006-06-21

The theme is interesting, although unsubstantiated and weak. For centuries, Mexican-American women have silently been shaping the cultural and economic development of the Southwest. These women have raised children who have integrated into the US culture, worked, built networks. Their efforts have helped Mexican Americans find their own place in America. However, this book does not do the justice it probably had the intentions on doing. The strong aspect of the book is the distinctive culture that has slowly gained momentum in the last Century. Either the strength just isn't there, or this author was not able to accurately portray it.

A fast paced research.......2006-04-25

The information is priceless as a sort of reference-compendium and salute to Latina and Mexicana immigrants. A good chunk is dedicated to a case analysis of a Protestant social service mission working in a Texas community to imprint anglican values and culture on the new immigrants. Another dedicated cultural aspect explores the affect of Americanization on young unmarried women and the system of chaperoning stemming from the honor of the family having to be upheld by orthodox views of virginity. The book is inspiring in its scope but meanders a bit excitedly like a river through early immigration, americanization and chicana feminism. Starts off slow and nurturing upon each theme but gradually erodes into a more sporadic form.

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