Books in the Critical Perspectives On The P series

During the nineteenth century, leisure industries emerged to provide recreation and entertainment to Americans of all classes. Entertainment has become a multi-billion dollar industry. The essays collected here explore the transformation this wrought in leisure and analyze its effects on class relations in American society.

The Reo Motor Car Company operated in Lansing, Michigan, for seventy years, and encouraged its thousands of workers to think of themselves as part of a factory family. This book tells the Reo story from the workers' perspective on the vast social, economic, and political changes that took place in the first three quarters of the twentieth century.

Starting with the premise that it is possible to say something significantly new about the 1960s and the New Left, this title features contributors who trace the social roots, the various paths, and the legacies of the movement that set out to change America. It is suitable for seasoned scholars as well as students of the 1960s.

Explores the relationship between the well-established practice of oral history and the burgeoning field of memory studies. This title explains the processes by which oral histories move beyond interviews with individual people to become articulated memories shared by others.

Offers a collection of essays which consider the history as well as the historiography of the queer identities and struggles that developed in the United States in the midst of widespread upheaval and change.

A biography of Florence Luscomb, it presents her story against the backdrop of Boston politics and struggles for social justice. It suggests that although women were excluded from the activities and sites associated with conventional politics, they did political work that gave purpose to their lives and affected political thinking.

Traces the history of workers' theater from its grassroots origins to the Federal Theater Project of the WPA under Roosevelt and into unions' recreational programs. This book shows that the significance of workers' theater lies not only in the plays produced but also in the audiences' experience.

The American Association of University Women (AAUW) is one of the nation's oldest and most influential voices for equality in education, the professions, and public life. Tracing the history of the AAUW, this title provides a perspective on the meaning of feminism for women in mainstream liberal organizations.

A new generation of scholars addresses the current themes and questions in interpreting American history

A book about why history matters. It shows how popularized historical images and narratives deeply influence Americans' understanding of their collective past.

More than at any time since the 1920's the issues of immigration and ethnicity have become central to discussions of American society and identity. This book addresses this debate, bringing together essays written by college students, exploring their ethnic roots from the experiences of their forbears to the place of ethnicity in their lives.

The life story of a grassroots, civil rights activist

Starting with the American Indian settlements and the early days when the southern-most tip of Manhattan held little more than a bleak outpost of Dutch fur traders, this title tracks the economic development and journeys north, from the Village's beginnings as a refuge from dreaded summer fevers to the Dominican enclave of Washington Heights.

Presents both a history of 'the other Baltimore' and a tour guidance to places in the city that are important to labor, African American, and women's history. Based on a popular local bus tour conducted by public historians, the People's History Tour of Baltimore, that began in 1982, this book records and adds sites to that tour.

Presents the essential background information and methods for effective teaching and writing on cross-cultural history. This title charts the advances in understanding in their fields of concentration, revealing both specific findings and broad patterns that have emerged.

Probing the paradoxes of "the long twentieth century"--from unprecedented human opportunity and deprivation to the rise of the United States as a hegemon

Probing the paradoxes of "the long twentieth century"--from unprecedented human opportunity and deprivation to the rise of the United States as a hegemon

In recent years, history has been increasingly popularized through television docudramas, history museums, paperback historical novels, grassroots community history projects, and other public representations of historical knowledge. This title offers a collection of essays which is the examination of the growing field called "public history."

Zora Neale Hurston's ethnographies, plays, and fiction focused on the day-to-day life in all-black social spaces and 'the Negro farthest down' in labor camps. This book shows how Hurston's work coincides with the historical record to demonstrate the extent to which folklore and stories provide an account of Black folk as active human subjects.

Tells the author's story of moral courage and commitment to social change. This memoir focuses on the formative experiences that made her an activist for social justice before her academic career began. Hers is a story about surviving hardship and summoning the courage to live according to one's convictions.

When the locals and the rest of the world say 'New York', they mean Manhattan, a crowded island of commercial districts and residential neighborhoods, skyscrapers and tenements, fabulously rich and abjectly poor cheek by jowl. This title tells the story of the dreams that inspired the changes in the landscape and the problems that eluded solution.

Presents the attacks on the United States in historical perspective. This volume comments on the dangers of seeing the events of September 11 as splitting the nation's history into "before" and "after." It argues eloquently that no useful understanding of the present is possible without an unobstructed view of the past.

St Louis' story stands for the story of all those cities whose ambitions and civic self-image, forged from the growth of the mercantile and industrial eras, have been dramatically altered over time. This book scrutinizes the everyday landscape streets, houses, neighborhoods, and public buildings as it evolved in a classic American city.

Introduces readers to the cross-cultural study of ancient and classical civilizations. This book surveys methodologies and critical interpretations that have been essential to the development of comparative historical analysis. It focuses on regional patterns in the dissemination of ideas, institutions, and material culture.

Combining personal memoir and historical narrative, this title argues for a reassessment of unionism in American life during the second half of the twentieth century and a recasting of "official memory." It traces the history of union steelworkers after World War II.

The end of the Cold War should have been an occasion to reassess its origins, history, significance, and consequences. This book is a collection of essays that offers a complex and nuanced analysis of Cold War history. It widens the discussion of the Cold War's place in post-war history and intellectual life.

Traces the origins of women in police work, explaining how pioneer policewomen's struggles to gain secure footholds in big city police departments ironically helped to make modern policework one of the most male dominated occupations in the United States. This book shows how female officers handled the complex gender politics of their work.

In the popular stereotype of post-World War II America, women abandoned their wartime jobs and contentedly retreated to the home. This work unveils the diversity of postwar women, showing how far women departed from this one-dimensional image.

Since ancient times, the pundits have lamented young people's lack of historical knowledge and warned that ignorance of the past surely condemns humanity to repeating its mistakes. This book demolishes the conventional notion that there is one true history and one best way to teach it.

Explores the relationship between the well-established practice of oral history and the burgeoning field of memory studies. This work explains the processes by which oral histories move beyond interviews with individual people to become articulated memories shared by others.