"The Luther Myth"

New from Oxford University Press: The Luther Myth: The Image of Martin Luther from Religious Reformer to Völkisch Icon by Patrick Hayden-Roy.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the period from the close of the Napoleonic Wars up through the immediate post-World-War II era the image of Martin Luther was transposed in Germany from a religious reformer and advocate of freedom to a symbol of völkisch nationalist identity, such that with the seizure of power by the Nazis, Luther was used to portray a symbiosis between the new regime and the tradition of Protestant religiosity. The Luther Myth traces the evolution of this image within the environment of nineteenth- and twentieth-century German nationalist sentiment, looking particularly at how Protestant Germans styled Luther to affirm the essentialist racial identity politics of the Nazis, the cult of authoritarian leadership around Adolf Hitler, the drive to impose state control over all competing sources of authority, and the victimizing of German Jews. In doing so, it sheds new light on why Nazism was able to co-opt German Protestantism as a source for legitimizing its seizure of power despite the fact that the animating core of Nazi ideology was radically subversive in relation to traditional Christian piety.

Using evidence drawn from not only theological works and literary and philosophical sources, but also speeches, theatrical works, public celebrations, and monuments, it pulls together the narrative of development and connects it over the longer term, offering an original contribution to scholarship on the topic and allowing readers a format for considering how similar dynamics are still at work in contemporary society and culture.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Community"

New from SUNY Press: Community by David Weissman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Communities are vital to personal and social well-being because collaboration is required where skills and resources are scarce; their pathologies―anonymity and isolation, tribalism and murder―defeat us.

Community is often invoked respectfully but without a clear referent. The word is said to be used ninety-four ways, evidence that its sense is diffuse. Community clarifies the word's principal expressions and the alternative ideological spaces-holistic and hierarchical or open and tolerant-in which communities form. Members bind in the interest of utility-jobs or schools-or because home and friendship are the focus of feeling and significance. These binders are social glue: they explain our dedication to communal aims and loyalty to fellow members. Autonomy in their context is socialized; its bases are the information, attitudes, and skills acquired when families and schools prepare us for roles in communities inherited or chosen. Yet community is fraught. Holistic societies are repressive; open societies are vulnerable. The members of successful communities-families, businesses, and schools-often thrive. Those excluded for want of luck or skill are abandoned and anonymous. Their isolation is one of an open society's two pathologies: collaboration is a social necessity when resources, space, and skills are scarce; competition turned visceral and murderous is a vice.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Plunder of Black America"

New from Yale University Press: The Plunder of Black America: How the Racial Wealth Gap Was Made by Calvin Schermerhorn.

About the book, from the publisher:

The long history of the racial wealth gap in America told through the stories of seven Black families who struggled to build wealth over multiple generations

Wealth is central to the American pursuit of happiness and is an overriding measure of well-being. Yet wealth is conspicuously absent from African American households. Why do some 3.5 million Black American families have zero or negative wealth?

Historian Calvin Schermerhorn traces four hundred years of Black dispossession and decapitalization—what Frederick Douglass called plunder—through the stories of families who have strived to earn and keep the fruits of their toils. Their struggles reveal that the ever-evolving strategies to strip Black income and wealth have been critical to sustaining a structure of racialized disadvantage. These accounts also tell of the quiet heroism of those who worked to overcome obstacles and defy the plunder.

From the story of Anthony and Mary Johnson, abducted from Angola and brought to Virginia in 1619, to the enslaved Black workers dispossessed by the Custis-Washington family, to Venture Smith (born Broteer Furro), who purchased his freedom, to three generations of a family enslaved in the South who moved north after Emancipation, to the Tulsa massacre and the subprime lending crisis, Schermerhorn shows that we cannot reckon with today’s racial wealth inequality without understanding its unrelenting role in American history.

The Page 99 Test: The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Odious Debt"

New from Oxford University Press: Odious Debt: Bankruptcy, International Law, and the Making of Latin America by Edward Jones Corredera.

About the book, from the publisher:

What are fallen tyrants owed? What makes debt illegitimate? And when is bankruptcy moral? Drawing on new archival sources, this book shows how Latin American nations have wrestled with the morality of indebtedness and insolvency since their foundation, and outlines how their history can shed new light on contemporary global dilemmas.

With a focus on the early modern Spanish Empire and modern Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, and based on archival research carried out across seven countries, Odious Debt studies 400 years of history and unearths overlooked congressional debates and understudied thinkers. The book shows how discussions on the morality of debt and default played a structuring role in the construction and codification of national constitutions, identities, and international legal norms in Latin America.

This new history of the moral economy of the Hispanic World from the 1520s to the 1920s illuminates contemporary issues in international law and international relations. Latin American jurists developed a global critique of economics and international law that continues to generate pressing questions about debt, bankruptcy, reparations, and the pursuit of a moral global economy.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Revolutionary Self"

New from W.W. Norton: The Revolutionary Self: Social Change and the Emergence of the Modern Individual, 1770-1800 by Lynn Hunt.

About the book, from the publisher:

An illuminating exploration of the tensions between self and society in the age of revolutions.

The eighteenth century was a time of cultural friction: individuals began to assert greater independence and there was a new emphasis on social equality. In this surprising history, Lynn Hunt examines women’s expanding societal roles, such as using tea to facilitate conversation between the sexes in Britain. In France, women also pushed boundaries by becoming artists, and printmakers’ satiric takes on the elite gave the lower classes a chance to laugh at the upper classes and imagine the potential of political upheaval. Hunt also explores how promotion in French revolutionary armies was based on men’s singular capabilities, rather than noble blood, and how the invention of financial instruments such as life insurance and national debt related to a changing idea of national identity. Wide-ranging and thought-provoking, The Revolutionary Self is a fascinating exploration of the conflict between individualism and the group ties that continues to shape our lives today.

Learn more about Lynn Hunt.

The Page 99 Test: Writing History in the Global Era.

Writers Read: Lynn Hunt (August 2018).

The Page 99 Test: History: Why it Matters.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The New Lunar Society"

New from The MIT Press: The New Lunar Society: An Enlightenment Guide to the Next Industrial Revolution by David A. Mindell.

About the book, from the publisher:

How to create our industrial future with inspiration and lessons from the originators of the industrial revolution.

Climate change, global disruption, and labor scarcity are forcing us to rethink the underlying principles of industrial society. In The New Lunar Society, David Mindell envisions this new industrialism from the fundamentals, drawing on the eighteenth century when first principles were formed at the founding of the Industrial Revolution. While outlining the new industrialism, he tells the story of the Lunar Society, a group of engineers, scientists, and industrialists who came together to apply the principles of the Enlightenment to industrial processes. Those principles were collaboration, the marriage of practical and scientific knowledge, and the belief that the world could progress through making things.

The Lunar Society included pioneers like James Watt, Benjamin Franklin, and Josiah Wedgwood, and their conversations no less than ignited the Industrial Revolution and shaped the founding of the United States. Telling the stories of these makers in parallel with those of our current moment of crisis on multiple fronts, Mindell argues for a new industrialism. He asks: What does industry look like when it strives to optimize for the lowest carbon footprint as well as the greatest profit? When it values resilience as much as efficiency? When it upholds dignified, inclusive, sustainable work? Optimistic but not utopian about our ability to build the world, The New Lunar Society shines a light on how a new generation can reanimate the best ideas of our thinking doer forebears and begin to build a future that is both realistic and human-centered.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Negative Natural Theology"

New from Oxford University Press: Negative Natural Theology: God and the Limits of Reason by Christopher J. Insole.

About the book, from the publisher:

How can we live in harmony with the universe, and not just in it? What is it to feel at home in the world?

Some thinkers who feel the force of these questions reach for the concept of God. Others do not. This book asks what might be at stake in the choice of whether or not to speak about God: not just in terms of abstract reasoning or arguments about God, but in relation to deeper undercurrents of motivation and yearning.

The book is interested in sites in contemporary thinking, where the concept of the divine beckons, or looms, but also, perhaps, repels, or hides. It asks 'what is at stake' in the decision (if it is that) to talk about God and the divine, or not to do so, with a wide and deep curiosity about what this might include: reasons and arguments, certainly, but also more biographical, intuitive, and affective dimensions, including imagination, and feelings about what is valuable. Also relevant are unconscious drives and factors. Concepts can convince, or fail to convince, but, also, they can attract and repel.

The book draws on both analytical and continental post-Kantian sources, treating individual thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, William James, Carl Jung, Karl Rahner, Albert Camus, Saul Kripke, Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit, Karen Kilby, and Janet Soskice, as well as cultural movements such as modern paganism, new atheism, and humanism.

'Natural theology' involves speaking about God without reference to revelation, tradition, or sources of authority, using the resources of 'reason alone'. 'Negative theology' is concerned with the way in which a type of abstract reasoning and rational argument run out, without this necessarily being an ending: other types of speech and communication may become possible and essential. Speaking into this space, the book draws on philosophy, theology, anthropology, literature, and psychology.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Strength through Diversity"

New from Rutgers University Press: Strength through Diversity: Harlem Prep and the Rise of Multiculturalism by Barry M. Goldenberg.

About the book, from the publisher:

For nearly seven years, from 1967 to 1974, many hundreds of bright, college-going youth—most of whom had previously been labeled as high school “dropouts”—would proudly celebrate their graduation from Harlem Prep, a small educational experiment that grew to become a nationally renowned, cherished community institution in the iconic Black neighborhood of Harlem. Operating in a repurposed supermarket that used blackboards as classroom dividers, the school’s unique multicultural philosophy inspired all who stepped foot inside. This philosophy, exemplified by the school’s motto of “unity through diversity,” shaped the school’s ethos, fostered student achievement, and, most of all, made Harlem Prep distinct from any other educational institution, past or present. In Strength through Diversity, Barry M. Goldenberg shares the history of this one-of-a-kind multicultural institution from its rise to its apex and decline, revealing the collective stories of hope, struggle, and love from administrators, teachers, community members, and students. Using history as a blueprint, Goldenberg illustrates the untapped potential of multicultural education in the ongoing quest for educational equity.

Visit Barry M. Goldenberg's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Staging the Promises"

New from Cornell University Press: Staging the Promises: Everyday Future-Making in a Serbian Industrial Town by Deana Jovanović.

About the book, from the publisher:

Staging the Promises reveals how inhabitants of Bor, a Serbian copper-processing and mining town that lived through prosperous Yugoslav times and a post-socialist decline, were the audience theatrically performed promises of aspirational futures. Deana Jovanović chronicles the efforts of the copper-processing company and the town's authorities to theatrically perform promises of better economic, urban, environmental, infrastructural and post-industrial futures. Her book asks: What impact did the staging of promises have on the residents? What temporal, material, and political effects did these performances generate? How did they shape the citizens' futures and their present?

Jovanović offers many ethnographic examples of ambivalence in people's orientation to their futures, while residents balanced hope with despair, disillusionment, and dismay. Staging the Promises highlights how the performances shaped the present, and how, in a Gramscian twist, they sustained hope alongside power dynamics that residents often criticized.

Staging the Promises assesses the performative ways through which contemporary capitalist futures are remade. For Jovanović, Bor represents a site that reflects a current global trend: staging the promises of enhanced futures today play a significant role in contemporary populist politics. Through them, she argues, distant futures become gradually withdrawn from people's horizons.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Temporary Measures"

New from Oxford University Press: Temporary Measures: Migrant Workers and the Developmental State in the Philippines and South Korea by Suzy K. Lee.

About the book, from the publisher:

Migration is a common response to economic crisis. Not only by individuals, who can choose to seek opportunities abroad, but also by states, which sometimes induce those individual choices by adopting policies that facilitate and promote migration. What does it mean for a country when this happens? What impact, if any, does migration have on the originating crisis? And what happens when the crisis ends? Temporary Measures examines these questions through the experiences of South Korea and the Philippines, two countries where labor export was pursued as a path out of chronic underdevelopment and economic crises. In South Korea, labor export became a crucial link in an export-led industrialization push that not only stabilized but so transformed the Korean economy that within two decades, the country became a net importer of migrant labor. The Philippines also experienced an economic transformation as a result of labor export, but in a way that generated a dependence on migration and migrant remittances. This book, by tracing the history of these two countries' labor export programs, offers explanations for why and how they diverged so dramatically. It describes the multiple pathways through which migration can serve national development projects and the conditions under which different models succeed or fail.

Suzy K. Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development at Binghamton University.

--Marshal Zeringue