"Yiddish in the Land of Sunshine"

New from NYU Press: Street Knowledge: Yiddish in the Land of Sunshine: Race, Labor, and Jewish Radicalism in Los Angeles by Caroline Luce.

About the book, from the publisher:

How a cohort of young Jewish radicals from the borderlands of Eastern Europe was critical in reshaping multiracial left-wing activism in southern California

Yiddish in the Land of Sunshine offers a novel account of Eastern European Jewish immigration and Yiddish public culture in Southern California. It traces the journeys of a cohort of young Jewish radicals as they moved from the borderlands of the Russian empire to the borderlands of the American southwest, exploring their engagement with well-known labor and left-wing movements in Los Angeles.

Much of the book is focused on Boyle Heights, a residential neighborhood east of the L.A. River once home to the highest concentration of Jews west of Chicago as well as to dozens of other diasporic communities, showing how the neighborhood’s particular ethno-racial diversity shaped Yiddish public culture. Rich with new details drawn from previously untranslated Yiddish sources, it examines new relationships and tensions that emerged as the Jewish radicals worked to forge multiracial coalitions in the workplace and the community, including with their Mexican, Asian, and African-American neighbors. It frames the community as a site of convergence, where multiple marginalized populations cultivated their own modes of belonging in overlapping ways, as well as of divergence, where residents’ experiences were differentiated by international and domestic political-economic developments.

The book decenters traditional narratives of Jewish immigration and acculturation focused on cities of the northeast, moving Jewish workers in the west from the margins to the center of American Jewish history. It showcases the variety of organizing practices through which Jewish radicals recreated Yiddish public culture in LA, offering a new perspective on the relational dynamics of race and place-making in the American west. Yiddish in the Land of Sunshine recovers the contributions of Eastern European Jewish radicals and trade unionists, demonstrating the ways in which immigrant workers shaped the city of Los Angeles.

Visit Caroline Luce's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Street Knowledge"

New from Princeton University Press: Street Knowledge: The Hidden Ways Social Change Happens by Darien Pollock.

About the book, from the publisher:

A philosophical framework for resistance that connects Socrates to the street

Does social change happen “top down” or “bottom up”—brought about by those who hold power or by those who struggle against the powerful? In Street Knowledge, Darien Pollock argues that the most powerful change comes from the bottom up. “Street culture” supplies the creative activity that inspires not only political change but any kind of positive social change. Pollock argues that part of what prevents progressive social change is that people in power only legitimize and respond to ideas and arguments that are legible to them; marginal actors—those with street knowledge—are forced to develop ways of making ideas that are illegible to the broader public meaningful and useful. At its best, street knowledge can be used to address civic injustice, cultural hegemony, and economic exploitation.

Reading Plato, Marx, DuBois, Derrida, and others, Pollock discovered that academic philosophy has had a street orientation all along. The core qualities he associated with the “street disposition”—the psychological and spiritual capacity to resist an unjust social arrangement—were already represented in Plato’s Republic. Drawing on the late Congressman John Lewis’s idea of “good trouble” as well as Socrates, Pollock argues that “the street” should be understood as a universal feature of the human condition—with the potential to emerge anywhere at any time. Street knowledge, Pollock contends, lays the foundation for a radically new way of doing philosophy and achieving social justice.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Equal Subjection"

New from Oxford University Press: Equal Subjection: What Justice Demands of Political Leaders by Claudio López-Guerra.

About the book, from the publisher:

Politicians like to claim that they are “in it together” or “in the same boat” with their subjects. In fact, they are not. Should they be? To what extent?

This book offers the first systematic treatment of these questions. It contends that, under the status quo, rulers do not have enough skin in the game; they do not bear the consequences of their decisions in office as much as justice demands. López-Guerra defends equal subjection, a novel understanding of political equality that requires rulers to cast their lot with the ruled as equal users of the goods and services that they have a duty to provide for all. He proposes an original way of aligning the interest of rulers and subjects that would mitigate the principal-agent problem in politics and also make societies intrinsically more just.

Authoritarianism is on the rise. What is to be done? Political philosophers are back in the business of thinking seriously and creatively about the design of better political institutions, but their ingenuity remains confined to the choice of decision-making schemes, neglecting the importance of decision-bearing rules. This book makes the case for an original idea that expands the limits of our political imagination.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Politics of Informality"

New from the University of Texas Press: The Politics of Informality: Housing and Planning in Mexico City by Emilio de Antuñano.

About the book, from the publisher:

An examination of the central role and political power of informal neighborhoods in Mexico City.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Mexico City was tightly bounded, with a population of about half a million people. By the end of that century, it was an unfathomable megalopolis of some 20 million. It had also become exhibit A in an “urban crisis” decried by demographers, NGOs, and the Mexican government. Mexico City’s greatest sin was its shantytowns―informal neighborhoods built in defiance of regulations and viewed as incurably disordered.

The Politics of Informality is an illuminating political and intellectual history, examining how these neighborhoods have figured in Mexican life and in the ideologies underlying urban planning. Prior to the Mexican Revolution of 1910, urban experts saw Mexico City as a tidy modern capital in-waiting. But during the interwar period, informal neighborhoods boomed, as working-class families asserted claims to housing under the revolution’s framework of citizenship and social justice. Then, amid Cold War realignments, a new cohort of urban experts pathologized Mexico City, turning it into a transnational laboratory for the study of poverty, migration, and overpopulation. Tracing a fascinating evolution, The Politics of Informality underscores the stubborn opposition between technocratic modernism and revolutionary, extralegal politics.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Still Seeking the Magic Mushroom"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Still Seeking the Magic Mushroom: Fungi, Pharmaceuticals, and Mysticism Without Religion by Hugh B. Urban.

About the book, from the publisher:

A sweeping cultural history of our yearning for psychedelics to free us from both modern life and traditional religion.

In 1957, Life Magazine published an article called “Seeking the Magic Mushroom” about a Mexican healing ritual centered on an obscure psychedelic: Psilocybe mushrooms. Readers raced to experiment with the drug for their own spiritual, therapeutic, and recreational purposes until a psychedelic wave swept the nation. Today, though psilocybin has been transformed from a sacred fungus into a pharmaceutical product, many people still turn to the enigmatic mushroom to encounter profound spiritual experiences without the baggage of traditional religion.

In Still Seeking the Magic Mushroom, Hugh B. Urban examines the alluring promise of mysticism without religion. With psychedelics, one need not fast, flagellate, or even worship a god to encounter the transcendent; a carefully timed ingestion of psilocybin will suffice. But, Urban argues, stripping the trip from its religion came at a cost: the erasure of Indigenous culture and the eventual commercialization and scientification of the psychedelic underground. Urban shows that psychedelic mushrooms, far from the fringe or countercultural margins, have been central players in shaping American attitudes toward religion and science over the last century. He argues that our love affair with the intoxicating fungus reveals a deep frustration with a disenchanted world, desire for meaning beyond religion, yearning for nature amid ecological crisis, faith in science to save us, and the relentless power of capitalism to turn everything into commodities.

The Page 99 Test: Zorba the Buddha.

The Page 99 Test: The Path of Desire.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Remember the Tuscania"

New from Cornell University Press: Remember the Tuscania: The Sinking, Its Aftermath, and a Century of Public Memory by Steven Trout.

About the book, from the publisher:

Remember the Tuscania plunges readers into the night of February 5, 1918, when a German U-boat's torpedo found a crowded US troopship in the North Atlantic―and into the century of argument, propaganda, and remembrance that followed. At its heart are the Baraboo Twenty-One, citizen-soldiers from a Wisconsin town who survived the sinking that became the deadliest U-boat attack on Americans in the First World War and the nation's first mass-casualty event of the conflict.

Steven Trout braids military history and cultural history with a dramatic pulse. He reconstructs the voyage and catastrophe in detail. Then he follows the aftershocks across newspapers, posters, cartoons, poems, and sheet music as the home front seizes on a new rallying cry―"Remember the Tuscania!"―and turns the dead into usable symbols. Trout also exposes a War Department fiasco over casualty lists that helped force reforms to identification practices (serial numbers on dog tags; rosters kept at hand aboard transports).

Remember the Tuscania draws attention to how people memorialize dramatic wartime events: the isle of Islay's windswept "American Monument," improvised funerals beneath a hastily sewn Stars and Stripes, the formation of the National Tuscania Survivors Association, and a twenty-first-century resurrection of the story back in Baraboo. Trout shows how myth overtook messy reality and how private grief often resisted public pageantry.

Trout's narrative is a riveting, deeply researched investigation that showcases the meaning for Americans of a nearly forgotten disaster and the unbreakable ties of transatlantic remembrance that it left behind.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Harnessing Disruption"

New from Oxford University Press: Harnessing Disruption: Building the Tech Future Without Breaking Society by Sarah E. Kreps.

About the book, from the publisher:

A timely and thought-provoking exploration of technological disruption, drawing on history's most transformative innovations--from nuclear power to AI--to offer a vital roadmap for navigating the future of technology.

In Harnessing Disruption, Sarah E. Kreps--a national security expert and military veteran--offers a fresh, clear-eyed framework for understanding the social and political dynamics that shape technological change. From nuclear weapons to AI, cryptocurrency, and social media, breakthrough innovations rarely arrive without backlash. Disruption is not collapse. History shows it is part of a recurring pattern.

With unmatched insight and authority, Kreps traces a five-stage cycle that technologies follow: emergence, early warnings, crisis, agenda-setting, and institutional response. Drawing on decades of research and real-world policy experience, she argues that disruption is neither inherently dangerous nor inherently self-correcting. Rather, it's a process we can steer, if we learn to see the signs and act decisively.

Harnessing Disruption challenges fatalistic narratives that cast AI and other technologies as uncontrollable forces. It makes the case for cautious optimism: that institutions can adapt, societies can recalibrate, and technologies can be governed in ways that protect both innovation and the public good. Timely, incisive, and grounded in both historical precedent and contemporary case studies, this book provides the tools for anyone, including policymakers, entrepreneurs, and citizens, to understand where we are in the cycle of disruption and how to shape what comes next.

Writers Read: Sarah E. Kreps (January 2011).

--Marshal Zeringue

"The River That Made Texas"

New from The University of North Carolina Press: The River That Made Texas: A Forgotten History of the Trinity by Scot McFarlane.

About the book, from the publisher:

Today, half of Texas’s expanding population, including the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston, depends on the Trinity River, a river that has shaped the state’s politics, economy, and environment for centuries. From the prairies of North Texas to the Gulf of Mexico, the Trinity established Native nations, foiled Spanish and French imperialism, stood at the center of the Texas plantation system, and fueled the growth of the state’s largest cities.

In the first history of this vital river, historian Scot McFarlane illuminates how the Trinity has defined Texas history. Its floods enriched the soil and destroyed crops, its channel served as both a route and barrier to freedom, and its once-polluted waters now sustain a significant portion of the state. McFarlane’s captivating narrative brims with stories of the people who called the Trinity home over the centuries: the Comanche, steamboat pilots, enslaved and freed people, sharecroppers, inmates, and millions of urban residents. The result is a fresh perspective on economic development, slavery, and the environment—revealing the Trinity not as a backdrop to Texas history but as a force that shaped it.

Visit Scot McFarlane's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Last Invasion of England"

New from Princeton University Press: The Last Invasion of England: 1688 and the Dutch Armada by Arthur der Weduwen.

About the book, from the publisher:

An electrifying narrative history that reframes Britain’s constitutional revolution as a full-scale Dutch invasion

In popular accounts of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the autocratic Catholic King James II was ousted by his subjects and replaced by his Protestant daughter Mary Stuart, wife of James’s nephew, the Dutch William III of Orange. Devoted to her husband, Mary would not accept the crown alone, and so William and Mary were crowned together, securing a smooth dynastic succession. The Last Invasion of England recounts the forgotten campaign that carried William and his army to English shores and led directly to James’s fall, bringing a revolutionary age vividly to life—and rewriting the history of Britain, Europe and the transatlantic world more widely.

In this bold work of revisionist history, Arthur der Weduwen tells the momentous story of the Dutch Armada, describing the immense risks and near failures of the last seaborne invasion of England—which occurred exactly one hundred years after the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The sixteen thousand Dutch troops who accompanied William were not on hand for moral support. They came with sword, musket and cannon. Der Weduwen argues that the political revolution in Britain could not have been achieved without the willpower, might and resources of William and the Dutch nation, and explains why the Dutch Republic, a small state that celebrated peace and commerce above all else, would dare to undertake a reckless preemptive military strike on its more powerful neighbour.

Transforming our understanding of the Glorious Revolution and Britain’s ascendancy as a global powerhouse, The Last Invasion of England relies entirely on contemporary sources, many from leading protagonists who prepared and executed the invasion, evoking the historical realities of the women and men who lived during turbulent and uncertain times.

Visit Arthur der Weduwen's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Gender Is a Weapon"

New from the University of Michigan Press: Gender Is a Weapon: Liberalism, Difference, and US Counterinsurgency by Elizabeth Mesok.

About the book, from the publisher:

Following the end of the draft in 1973, the US military increasingly offered women the opportunity to transform their lives—to obtain an education, receive healthcare, provide for their families, and prove their worth to the nation. By the time the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan at the turn of the twenty-first century, the labor of women—and Black women in particular—was critical to the military’s ability to simultaneously wage two wars. Within the context of counterinsurgencies fought amid civilian populations, the US military discovered the value of women’s gender difference as a weapon of war.

Through ethnographic and archival research with women soldiers and Marines, as well as military and government officials, Gender Is a Weapon contextualizes women’s service in Iraq and Afghanistan against the promises of liberal inclusion unfolding throughout the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Centered on narratives of Black and Indigenous women, women of color, immigrant women, and queer women, the book analyzes the transformations of martial citizenship; the racialized language of cultural difference in the US’s revitalized counterinsurgency doctrine; the gendered performances of women in combat and civilian engagement missions; and ultimately, the irreparable injuries of body and mind with which these women returned home. The epilogue discusses the recent dismantling of DEI in the military and US government more broadly, reflecting on what we can learn from the violent history of military liberal inclusion to help us better understand our contemporary moment. By carefully attending to both the discursive construction and performative enactment of gender in militarized and securitized contexts, the book advances theoretical frames for studying gender in state militaries, militarism, and late liberalism.

Visit Elizabeth Mesok's website.

--Marshal Zeringue