"The Menace of Prosperity"

New from the University of Chicago Press: The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1865–1981 by Daniel Wortel-London.

About the book, from the publisher:

Upends entrenched thinking about cities, demonstrating how urban economies are defined—or constrained—by the fiscal imagination of policymakers, activists, and residents.

Many local policymakers make decisions based on a deep-seated belief: what’s good for the rich is good for cities. Convinced that local finances depend on attracting wealthy firms and residents, municipal governments lavish public subsidies on their behalf. Whatever form this strategy takes—tax-exempt apartments, corporate incentives, debt-financed mega projects—its rationale remains consistent and assumed to be true. But this wasn’t always the case. Between the 1870s and the 1970s, a wide range of activists, citizens, and intellectuals in New York City connected local fiscal crises to the greed and waste of the rich. These figures saw other routes to development, possibilities rooted in alternate ideas about what was fiscally viable.

In The Menace of Prosperity, Daniel Wortel-London argues that urban economics and politics are shaped by what he terms the “fiscal imagination” of policymakers, activists, advocates, and other figures. His survey of New York City during a period of explosive growth shows how residents went beyond the limits of redistributive liberalism to imagine how their communities could become economically viable without the largesse of the wealthy. Their strategies—which included cooperatives, public housing, land-value taxation, public utilities, and more—centered the needs and capabilities of ordinary residents as the basis for local economies that were both prosperous and just.

Overturning stale axioms about economic policy, The Menace of Prosperity shows that not all growth is productive for cities. Wortel-London’s ambitious history demonstrates the range of options we’ve abandoned and hints at the economic frameworks we could still realize—and the more democratic cities that might result.

Visit Daniel Wortel-London's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Civil Blood"

New from Cornell University Press: Civil Blood: Vendetta Violence and the Civic Elites in Early Modern Italy by Amanda G. Madden.

About the book, from the publisher:

Civil Blood is a study of the practice of vendetta among the civic elites in sixteenth-century Italy and illustrates the complex and integral role that vendetta violence played in civic life and state formation on the winding path to state cent

ralization. At many temporal, geographic, and political points in early modern Italy, vendetta appears to have not only disrupted but also constituted the processes by which the modern state emerged.

Amanda G. Madden examines vendetta as both central to politics and as an engine of change and illustrates the degree to which key phenomena of the period―state centralization, growing bureaucracies, institutional reforms, and the process of state formation―were interpenetrated by, and not simply opposed to, ongoing factional violence among civic elites.

Madden further illuminates in Civil Blood how elites utilized violent enmities to maintain a grip on political control and negotiated with the duke concerning political power and civic prerogatives. As a result, ruling elites not only defined their own place in governance but also shaped the function and definition of government.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Scandal: Why Politicians Survive Controversy in a Partisan Era"

New from Columbia University Press: Scandal: Why Politicians Survive Controversy in a Partisan Era by Brandon Rottinghaus.

About the book, from the publisher:

Once, it was thought, a scandal was the kiss of death for a political career. Today, however, surviving scandal seems to be the norm. Donald Trump has weathered―and even perhaps benefited from―controversies that would have been unimaginable for virtually any other candidate. Prominent figures in both parties have won elections and remained in office despite credible allegations of wrongdoing. Do scandals still matter? When and why do voters punish politicians or give them a free pass?

Charting the changes from Watergate to the present, this book is a rigorous and compelling investigation of the politics of scandals. Bringing together wide-ranging survey data, innovative experiment design, and historical analysis, Brandon Rottinghaus demonstrates how political polarization, affective partisanship, fading trust in media, and the spread of misinformation have diminished the resonance of controversies. Although scandals still fell many politicians, there is a clear trend over time for fewer voters to be swayed by them. In a polarized world, scandals take only a modest toll on politicians’ approval ratings, survival in office, ambitions, and legacies. In many cases, partisans accept―or even embrace―misbehavior from members of their own party and revel in scandals affecting the opposing party. Challenging conventional wisdom with extensive data, this book illuminates the declining significance of scandals and the consequences for democratic accountability.

Visit Brandon Rottinghaus's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Empire of Print"

New from Oxford University Press: Empire of Print: Evangelical Power in an Age of Mass Media by Sonia Hazard.

About the book, from the publisher:

Empire of Print offers a fresh account of evangelical power by uncovering how the American Tract Society (ATS) leveraged print media to spread its message across an expanding nation. One of the era's largest media corporations and a pillar of the benevolent empire, the ATS circulated some 5.6 billion printed pages between its founding in 1825 and the eve of the Civil War.

It wasn't just the volume of materials that mattere―it was the sophisticated media infrastructure that evangelicals developed for their message to reach readers, coast to coast. Media infrastructure refers to the material assemblages that work below the surface of media content, including the format of publications, the avenues of their movement, and the circumstances surrounding their reading. As a non-coercive yet effective form of power, infrastructure shaped how, when, and why readers engaged with evangelical texts.

While showing how the ATS became a formidable force in American society during the nineteenth century, Empire of Print opens larger questions about the entanglements among people, things, texts, and institutions, the dynamics of power in a media-saturated world, and the salience of race, class, and region in the distribution and reception of media.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Home Work"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Home Work: Gender, Child Labor, and Education for Girls in Urban America, 1870–1930 by Ruby Oram.

About the book, from the publisher:

How reforms to girlhood education in the Progressive Era cemented inequalities of gender, race, and class in urban school systems.

In Home Work, historian Ruby Oram tells the story of how middle-class, white women reformers lobbied the state to implement various public education reforms to shape the lives of girls and women in industrial cities between 1870 and 1930. Women such as Jane Addams and Florence Kelley used education reform to target working-class communities and advocate for their middle-class ideals of girlhood and femininity, which could vary depending on the racial or socio-economic backgrounds of the girls. For example, reformers generally encouraged white girls to care for their future families, while pushing Black girls toward becoming domestic workers in others’ homes. Using Chicago as a case study, Oram also explores how many of the reforms sought by white women were in response to evolving anxieties about immigration, health, and sexual delinquency.

An illuminating addition to the history of urban education in America, Home Work enriches our understanding of educational inequality in twentieth-century schools.

Visit Ruby Oram's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Wrangling Pelicans"

New from the University of Texas Press: Wrangling Pelicans: Military Life in Texas Presidios by Tim Seiter.

About the book, from the publisher:

A richly detailed history of daily life for colonial Spanish soldiers surviving on the eighteenth-century Texas Gulf Coast.

In 1775, Spanish King Carlos III ordered the capture of American pelicans for his wildlife park in Madrid. The command went to the only Spanish fort on the Texas coast—Presidio Nuestra Señora de Loreto de la Bahía in present-day Goliad. But the overworked soldiers stationed at the fort had little interest indulging a king an ocean away. Their days were consumed with guarding their community against powerful Indigenous peoples and managing the demands of frontier life. The royal order went ignored.

Wrangling Pelicans brings to life the world of Presidio La Bahía’s Hispano soldiers, whose duties ranged from heated warfare to high-stakes diplomacy, while their leisure pursuits included courtship, card playing, and cockfighting. It highlights the lives of presidio women and reveals the ways the Spanish legal system was used by and against the soldiers as they continually negotiated their roles within the empire and their community. Although they were agents of the Spanish crown, soldiers at times defied their king and even their captain as they found ways to assert their autonomy. Offering a fresh perspective on colonial Texas, Wrangling Pelicans recreates the complexities of life at the empire’s edge, where survival mattered more than royal decrees.

Visit Tim Seiter's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Counterrevolutionary Shadow"

New from the University Press of Kansas: The Counterrevolutionary Shadow: Race, Democracy, and the Making of the American People by Michael Gorup.

About the book, from the publisher:

A bold explanation of how reactionary political movements appeal to racism to reconcile American democracy with antidemocratic practices.

“All power to the people!” So goes the familiar slogan of 1960s racial justice politics. The message is clear: the fight against racism is a fight for greater democracy—for the rule of “the people.” And yet, across American history, movements of racial backlash have also framed themselves as aiming to deliver greater democracy and redeem the rule of “the people.” Examples abound, ranging from the Southern Redeemers who overthrew Reconstruction, to the “populist” backlash to the civil rights movement, and the white revanchism of our own time. How is it that we find claims to greater democracy on both sides of these struggles? What does this reveal about modern democracy, popular sovereignty, and the peculiar politics of race in America?

The Counterrevolutionary Shadow: Race, Democracy, and the Making of the American People provides a novel account of the relationship between race and democratic politics in the United States. Across five chapters, Michael Gorup turns to the life and work of key figures in the history of American political thought—including Thomas Jefferson, Hosea Easton, David Walker, Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Huey P. Newton—to argue that racial politics in the United States has always been a politics of peoplehood. Racism is what Gorup calls a politics of “popular enclosure”: it limits the scope of democratic power by circumscribing who is said to belong to #8220;the people.” In so doing, it contains democratization from within. Neither strictly antidemocratic, nor a necessary entailment of modern democracy as such, Gorup argues that racism is best understood as a political construct developed to manage, if never fully reconcile, the contradictions that beset settler democracy.

Racism is, in short, American democracy’s “counterrevolutionary shadow”—a technology for rendering despotic practices like enslavement, exploitation, and dispossession tolerable within a society where the people are said to rule.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Writing Zoological Natural History for British India"

New from Oxford University Press: Writing Zoological Natural History for British India by John Mathew.

About the book, from the publisher:

This book examines the critical role played by colonial peripheries, specifically British India, in shaping the development of zoology and other disciplines emerging from 19th-century natural history. Through an analysis of publications such as the monumental Fauna of British India series (1888-1949), it explores how zoology became a site of contestation between European metropolitan centres and colonial territories. While taxonomy and comparative anatomy dominated scientific endeavours in Europe, colonial naturalists-primarily European expatriates-engaged in a localized form of natural history and taxonomy that significantly influenced the field. Central to this narrative is the figure of the 'translocate,' a term introduced to describe Europeans who lived and worked extensively in colonial contexts. These intermediaries bridged colonial and metropolitan scientific communities, asserting dual authority: they claimed a superior understanding of the local environment while navigating and often dismissing indigenous knowledge systems within an asymmetrical power dynamic. By doing so, it repositions the colonial periphery as a critical space in the global development of zoological knowledge, highlighting the complex interplay of authority, power, and knowledge production during the colonial era.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Now We Are Here"

New from Stanford University Press: Now We Are Here: Family Migration, Children’s Education, and Dreams for a Better Life by Gabrielle Oliveira.

About the book, from the publisher:

Who gets to live a life with dignity? Each day, families around the world make the difficult decision to leave their homes in search of safety, stability, and opportunity. For many migrant families, this search centers on access to strong, caring, and equitable educational systems that enable children to flourish. Now We Are Here follows the lives of 16 migrant families from Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras as they navigate the promises and challenges of the American education system. Drawing on immersive ethnographic research in homes and schools from 2018 to 2021, Gabrielle Oliveira offers an intimate portrait of these families' experiences. She weaves together stories of parental sacrifice, children's educational and migration journeys, and educators' responses to trauma—all shaped by the additional disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. Oliveira highlights the perseverance of families confronting the overlapping crises of border detention, family separation, and a public health emergency. These experiences forced them to reimagine education and what it means to build a future in the U.S. By examining how migrant children engage in classrooms, how teachers understand their needs, and how hope evolves, this book offers vital insights into the intersections of schooling and immigration. It calls for more responsive educational practices and policies that affirm the dignity and potential of all migrant children.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Civilizing Contention"

New from Cornell University Press: Civilizing Contention: International Aid in Syria's War by Rana B. Khoury.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Civilizing Contention, Rana B. Khoury asserts that to understand civilian and refugee activism in war, we must regard the international actors and organizations that enter the scene to help. When these organizations respond to crises, they work with local actors. In so doing, they facilitate the activists' participation in something like a civil society even in the depths of war. Yet as aid imposes its structures and routines, it also leaves activists unprotected from the violence of war and its aftermaths.

Khoury pursues these ideas through analysis of Syria's war that emerged from the 2011 Arab Uprisings. She traces the afterlife of a social movement that did not merely take up arms or capitulate to repression. Interviews with Syrian activists and international aid workers in Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon provide insight into action among actors in the war, while original social media data offers additional evidence. Civilizing Contention deepens knowledge of civilian and refugee agency by explaining how ordinary people act in extraordinary ways in a world structured by powerful forces.

Visit Rana B. Khoury's website.

--Marshal Zeringue