History Reading Group

Reading Group: History

For over 20 years, Nora Mandel has been in a monthly Reading Group for urban/ethnic/women’s/American history. Originally part of the alternative academic organization the Institute for Research in History, our group of about ten women has outlasted the institution by decades.

Here's a littering shred
Of linen left behind--a vile reproach
To all good housewifery. Right glad am I
That no neat lady, train'd in ancient times
Of pudding-making, and of sampler-work,
Hath happen'd here to spy thee. She, no doubt,
Keen looking through her spectacles, would say,
"This comes of reading books."
-- from "Shred of Linen," by Lydia Huntley Sigourney (1849)

We love it when members such as Betty Boyd Caroli, the late Marilyn Williams, and the late Selma Berrol let us preview and comment on first drafts of their excellent books. Irene Tichenor is a welcome recent addition to our group. Otherwise, we have found that for discussion, monographs by historians are the best for a Feast of Reason and the Flow of Soul (per Alexander Pope’s 1736 “Satire I” imitation of Horace - thanks to Rebecca for the correct citation). We wait until the books are out in paperback to make them easier to obtain.

The book we are reading for September 24, 2010 is:
Gordon-Reed, Annette, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, 800 pages, 2008, Norton (Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Douglass Book Prize and George Washington Book Prize)

I'm waiting to hear if there's a group consensus to recommend

Woodward, C. Vann (editor), Mary Chesnut's Civil War, Yale University Press (5/21/1999)

Annotated Reading List
Compiled as of June 16, 2010 (publication dates are of the initial hard cover). Thanks to Jane Allen for providing many of the italicized dates as the historical record of when we read the books. (Sorry my bibliographical formatting is inconsistent.)

Abelson, Elaine S., When Ladies Go A-Thieving: Middle Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store, 304 pages, 1992, Oxford U Press (11/1993)

Ambrose, Stephen, Undaunted Courage: Meriweather Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, Touchstone paperback edition 1997 -- has an additional two ethnographic chapters than the original 1996 hard copy, 521 pages (We read it in honor of the centennial, though several members of our group had zero interest in the frontier; those who did enjoy reading about wilderness liked it as a saga, though not all appreciated the author's very personal style.) (9/23/2004)

Anbinder, Tyler, Five Points: The 19th Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum, 544 pages, 2001,Free Press (While some felt there was too much detail in a non-thematic profile of a neighborhood, others felt it was a thoroughly researched--with excellent footnotes-- very readable, revealing portrait of change in NYC, especially about ethnic succession and the dispelling of long-held myths.) (2/4/2005)

Applegate, Debby, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, 560 pages, 2006, Doubleday (Pulitzer Prize) (While we questioned his theological significance and the gushing superlatives, we were impressed by her parsing of Protestant divisions and the rise of the hypocritical celebrity evangelist in American culture.) (12/11/2009)

Azuma, Eiichiro, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America, 320 pages, 2005, Oxford U Press (Runner Up for OAH’s Turner Award for an author’s first book dealing with some significant phase of American history) (While some members had trouble getting a copy and all were uncomfortable with the academic-ese language – what the heck are "vernacular newspapers"?—and the too cursory consideration of the internments as outside his time frame, all learned a lot from his thesis on unique immigrants and research in the U.S. and Japan.) (1/30/2009) (Also recommended is a related documentary The Cats of Mirikitani)

Ball, Edward, Slaves in the Family, 505 pages, 1998, Ballantine (Some in the group thought the organization was too confusing and too inclusive of every possible bit of information about the Ball family and their slaves and descendants, while others found it a fascinatingly open acceptance of how the past is never dead when it comes to race in America as oral histories were matched up with documentary evidence.)(4/6/2001) (The documentary Moving Midway I reviewed at New Directors/New Films at Film Society of Lincoln Center/MoMA, deals visually with similar issues.)

Baltzell, E. Digby, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia, Beacon Press, 585 pages, 1979

Barth, Gunther, City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in 19th Century America, Oxford U Press, 289 pages, 1980 (While several recent monographs on this list have overtaken the generalizations about such commercial developments as vaudeville, baseball, apartments, department stores, and tabloids, this is still an interesting compendium on entrepreneurs' role in popular urban culture.)(2/23/2001)

Benson, Susan Porter, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890-1940, 1986

Berkin, Carol, First Generations: Women in Colonial America, 256 pages , 1997 (We were all various degrees of disappointed that this turned out to be an overly generalized rehash of recent research intended for introductory undergraduate courses -- this certainly should not be a model for students on footnotes.) (4/8/2005)

Berlin, Ira, Many Thousand Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, Harvard University Press, 512 pages, 2000 (An essential - a thorough compendium of research on slavery before our Gone With the Wind stereotypes, divided by geography and time period, a bit repetitive and PC with vague citations in the footnotes, but lots of reference information.)(9/13/2002)

Bernstein, Iver, The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War, Oxford U Press, 384 pages, 1991 reprint of 1990 edition

Borchert, James, Alley Life in Washington: Family, Community, Religion, and Folklife in the City, 1850 - 1970

Boris, Eileen, Home To Work: Motherhood and the Politics of Industrial Homework in the U.S., Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993, 383 pages (3/15/1996)

Boydston, Jeanne, Home and Work: Housework, Wages and the Ideology of Labor in the American Republic, Oxford U Press, 222 pages, reprint 1994 (6/9/2000)

Blackmar, Elizabeth, Manhattan for Rent, 1785-1850, 1991 (1/15/1999)

Blackmar, Elizabeth and Roy Rosenzweig, The Park and The People: A History of Central Park, Cornell Univ. Press, 600 pages, 1992 (1994)

Blumin, Stuart, Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1790 - 1900, 1989 (11/1996)

Branch, Taylor, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65, 768 pages, 1998 (Part 2 in the Simon & Schuster-published trilogy) (While we queried the inclusion of personal trivia that seemed to be TMI, felt it was hard to keep track of lesser-known participants across the chapters, and questioned if this was more compilation of available information than analysis, we all found it novelistic and revealing reading and learned something.) (9/26/2008)

Bridges, Amy, A City in the Republic: Antebellum New York and the Origins of Machine Politics, 1984 (5/12/1989)

Breen, Timothy, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, 400 pages, 2004, Oxford U Press (While some felt he exaggerated the importance of his case, most were intrigued by his detailed meshing of economic with social history to explore how changes in perception of the importance of manufactured and supposedly luxury goods, particularly by women, led the radical revolutionaries to be able use tea as the flashpoint to rally support against the British political and mercantile empire.) (3/10/2006)

Brinkley, Alan, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War, 371 pages, 1995, Knopf (mixed review) (4/10/1997)

Brooks, James F., Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands, 432 pages, 2001, U of North Carolina Press (Bancroft Prize, Gilder Lehrman Institute‘s Douglass Second Prize for outstanding book on slavery or abolition, Turner Award, Francis Parkman Prize, Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize, W. Turrentine Jackson Prize) (While we had difficulty with the new-to-us anthropological, tribal, and Spanish terms, we were fascinated to learn about complicated slavery among Native Americans and between the Spanish, with discussion about gradations for women from chattel slavery to freedom of choice.) (5/28/2010)

Brown, Kathleen M., Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia, 512 pages, 1996 (While this slow-read repetitive thesis-style that several couldn't slog through, the feminist theme of tracing through how colonial Virginia, and our founding fathers, got from The New World to a prologue of Gone With the Wind made intriguing points, from both original and secondary sources.) (5/19/2006

Brumberg, Joan Jacob, Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease, 1988 ( 10/17/1990)
_________________, The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, Vintage, 336 pages, 1998 (which I reviewed for LILITH Magazine) (While some felt that histories of how menstruation, acne, exercise, and dieting have been dealt with were not legitimate foci for analysis, others found it quite interesting.) (10/2000)

Bushman, Richard L. The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities, 1992 (5/11/1998)

Cameron, Ardis, Radicals of the Worst Sort: Laboring Women in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1860-1912, 1995, University of Illinois Press (2/28/1997)

Camp, Helen, Iron in Her Soul: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the American Left, 1995 (The author was a member of our reading group for awhile.) (12/1/1995)

Caro, Robert A., The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate , Vintage Books, 1232 pages, 2002 (volume 3 of the biography series) (While some thought it needed tough editing to remove repetitive details-especially those who didn't finish reading it- others thought it was a real page-turner and the lengthy context-setting background sections quite relevant and fascinating, including the staggering minutiae on Congressional committee negotiations and votes. Those who'd read the earlier volumes felt Caro had eased up on LBJ.)(9/12/2003)

Caroli, Betty Boyd, The Roosevelt Women, Basic Books, 512 pages, 1999 (We got the inside dope on the trials and tribulations of the research and writing.) (5/18/2001)

Chambers-Schiller, Lee Virginia, Liberty: A Better Husband - Single Women in America, the Generations of 1780-1840 (12/1990)

Chernow, Ron, Titan : The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., 832 pages, 1999, Vintage Books (The long read did do justice for an extraordinary long and psychologically complex life in a way that parsed the differences among generations of robber barons.) (9/8/2005)
___________, Alexander Hamilton, 832 pages, 2004, Penguin Books, (While we all learned a lot about the most forward-looking, urban immigrant Founding Father who sure seemed like a manic-depressive to us --as well as showcasing how un-unique Clinton's peccadilloes were-- Chernow is over-the-top in favoritism and psychoanalyzing his subject with only negativity about Jefferson and Adams.) (9/8/2006)

Chesler, Ellen, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America, 1992 (4/15/1994)

Clark, Emily, Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727-1834, 312 pages, 2007, U of North Carolina Press (Southern Association of Women Historians' Julia Cherry Spruill Prize, Williams Prize in Louisiana History, Historic New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana Historical Association and Spruill Prize of the Southern Association for Women Historians for the best book in southern women’s history) (While we felt they were a small footnote to feminist history, we were impressed by her use of bi-lingual original sources to put them in a complicated, international colonial context, though we wanted more analysis of how the individual women affected their policies.) (4/16/2010)

Cleary, Patricia, Elizabeth Murray: A Woman's Pursuit of Independence in Eighteenth-Century America, 296 pages, 2000 (While Clearly probably did impute more feelings and opinions to her subject than the record strictly supported, we thoroughly enjoyed reading the unusually well documented life of this unusual Scottish immigrant, from an early "she-merchant," to her pre-nups through her 3 husbands, her mentoring of nieces and friends' daughters, and standing up to Colonial and British Armies engulfing her properties -- let alone her husbands and brothers--for a new, unideological, perspective on living during Revolutionary times. So will Boston's Museum of Fine Arts now properly clean her portrait by Copley?) (1/6/2006)

Clinton, Catherine, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom, 272 pages, 2004 (While we learned a lot about the life of a mythic, fascinating figure, whose illiteracy left difficult research problems, the author’s stated goal to rescue her from the world of young adult books only seemed to raise the bar to undergraduate women’s/black history month reading list.)( 12/15/2006)

Cohen, Lizabeth, Making A New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago 1919 - 1939, Cambridge U Press, 544 pages, 1991

Cohen, Miriam, From Workshop to Office: Two Generations of Italian Women in NYC 1900 -1950, Cornell University Press

Cook, Blanche Wiesen, Eleanor Roosevelt Volume 1: 1884 - 1932 , Viking Penguin, 608 pages, 1992 (1/1993)
_________________, Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume 2, The Defining Years, 1933-1938 , Penguin USA, 704 pages, 1999 (It is useful to read Volume 1 before this catalog raisonne of each long day of these five eventful years. It surely needed editing and better footnotes, particularly for unsubstantiated interpretations, but has a whole lotta information on an extraordinary woman and political partnership.) (9/17/2000)

Coontz, Stephanie, Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage, Penguin, 448 pages, 2005 (Aimed at a college audience to prove that the 1950’s were the exception in the history of humanity not the golden mean, we all thought she either left out some important considerations or illustrations while dwelling too much on the obvious generalizations or the elites, but each of us managed to learn something.) (1/25/2008)

Cordery, Stacy A., Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker, 608 pages, 2007 (While debating whether the significance of a woman's salon rises to the subtitle, even in terms of The Jewish Museum exhibition on The Power of Conversation, we mostly agreed she was a trivial celebrity for the subject of such a long book of details.) (5/15/2009)

Cordier, Mary Hurlbut, Schoolwomen of the Prairies and Plains: Personal Narratives from Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska, 1860S-1920s, University of New Mexico Press, 378 pages, 1997 (4/16/1999)

Cott, Nancy, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman’s Sphere" in New England, 1780 - 1835, Yale University Press, 1977

_________, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation, Harvard U Press , 304 pages, 2001 (Her original research on regulation of the Freedmen’s Bureau and Mormon polygamy were stand-outs, along with her re-interpretation of changes in definitions of morality from the colonial period to the Clintons.) (12/14/2007)

Cowan, Ruth Schwartz, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave, Basic Books/Harper, 257 pages, 1983 (1/1989)

Cronon, William, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, 1991 (4/5/1995)

Dallek, Robert, Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President, 396 pages, Oxford U Press, 2004 (one-volume abridgement of out of print Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961 – 1973, 784 pages, 1999, Oxford U Press and Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908 – 1960, 754 pages, 1992 reissue, Oxford U Press) (While our discussion greatly benefited from Betty Caroli’s supplementary summary of the longer volumes and additional resources, such as the LBJ phone tapes, we were disappointed not only in the white-washing and superficial explanations for LBJ’s presidential contradictions, but the lack of footnotes to check quotes and other sources.) (10/24/2008)

Degler, Carl N., At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present, Oxford University Press, 527 pages, 1980

D’Emilio, John and Estelle Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, Harper & Row, 428 pages, 1988 (4/1991)

Demos, John, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America, Vintage, 310 pages, 1995 (one of our favorites!) (10/1996)
__________, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England, Oxford University Press, 558 pages, 1982

Diner, Hasia, Erin’s Daughters: Irish Immigrant Women in the 19th Century, 1983 (3/26/1987)

Dubinsky, Karen, The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooners, Heterosexuality, and the Tourist Industry at Niagara Falls, Rutgers University Press, 288 pages, 1999 (Good discussion about our widely different-- positive and negative-- reactions to the bit disorganized and biased themes, which are as much "gender studies" as leisure and geographic history) (2/21/2003)

DuBois, Ellen Carol, Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage, 364 pages, 1998, Yale U Press (AHA’s Kelly Prize in Women's History) (Though some had difficulty getting hold of the book, we were all fascinated by a forgotten, 2nd generation heroine of tactics and strategy for state-by-state and federal electoral empowerment of women, using fresh original sources.) (12/5/2008)

Dublin, Thomas, Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826 - 1860, 1979 (4/21/1988)

Ellis, Joseph, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, 304 pages, 2000, Vintage Books (We enjoyed the lively read, with a fresh interpretation of the revolutionary generation's leaders as flesh and blood politicians) (4/4/2002)

_________, American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic, 304 pages, 2007, Vintage Books (We again enjoyed his readability—including his veiled mea culpa about past plagiarism and insistence he has now actually read the Founders' papers as well as new biographies- that makes history into a discussion of points of view amongst real people then and now, though I wasn't convinced he had dealt with all the PC-issues he claimed to refute.) (6/16/2010)

Elshtain, Jean Bethke, Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy: A Life, 336 pages, 2002, Basic Books, (Thumbs down on the organization, repetition, breezing over of influences and assistants, and the insertion of the author's personal information, but an interesting, revisionist intellectual history approach to an influential woman's philosophy.) (2/5/2004))

Emerson, Ken, Doo Dah!: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture, Da Capo Press, 416 pages, 1998 (While there were objections to a lack of musical analysis and too many psychological suppositions, we enjoyed the intermingling of pop music history, particularly on minstrelsy, with biography and a gallery of ancillary colorful characters)(2/22/2002)

Enstad, Nan, Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the 20th Century, Columbia University Press, 320 pages, 1999 (An original reinterpretation of other people's original research to try and get inside the heads of the "lady" factory workers of the Lower East Side to understand how fashion, dime novels and the movies motivated them to go out on an extraordinary strike, but needed editing as to repetition and common sense use of language.)(11/19/2004)

Ewen, Elizabeth, Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars: Life and Culture on the Lower East Side, 1890 - 1925 (5/1986)

Faust, Drew Gilpin, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slave-Holding South in the American Civil War, University of North Carolina Press, 308 pages, 1996 (3/30/1998)
______________, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, 368 pages, 2008 (Such a fascinating analysis through an accumulation of military, social and cultural details overlooked to link by other historians that we wished she'd done more in each chapter.) (2/27/2009)

Finney, Jack, Time and Again, Simon & Schuster, 1970, 399 pages (fiction)

Foner, Eric, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877, Harper & Row, 1989

Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women in the South, 1989 (Some good information buried under an avalanche of shrill Marxist political rhetoric)

Freedman, Estelle B., Their Sister's Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830 - 1930, University of Michigan Press, 248 pages, 1981 (1/12/1997)

Freeman, Joanne, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic, Yale U Press, 384 pages, 2001 (Though a bit repetitive, fresh explanation of how the Founding Fathers used gossip, letters, pamphlets, newspapers, challenges and duels to balance being a gentleman with rough pre-party democratic politics.) (2/29/2008)

Friedman, Tom, From Beirut to Jerusalem, 1989 (The book that decided us to not do any more off-topic books by journalists.) (9/20/1991)

Gilfoyle, Timothy J., City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790 - 1920, Norton, 429 pages, 1992 (Interesting original research but needed streamline editing--and was he being naive or droll to claim that the majority of 19th century prostitutes were French?) (2/26/1999)

Gilje, Paul, A., The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763 - 1834, University of North Carolina Press, 1987 (Fascinating analysis of "riots" through the years)

Ginzberg, Lori D., Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics and Class in the 19th Century U.S., Yale U Press, 230 pages, 1990 (2/25/2000)

Goodfriend, Joyce D., Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York, 1664 - 1730, Princeton University Press, 1992 (1995)

Goodwin, Doris Kearns, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 1987 (9/1987)
__________________,No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt - The Home Front in World War II, 1994 (1/1996)

__________________,Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Simon & Schuster, 944 pages, 2005 (Though rather hagiographic about Lincoln, showcasing his interactions with his colleagues in Illinois and Washington was interesting enough to get through a very long book, with smooth inclusion of the women in their lives.) (9/28/2007 )

Gordon, Linda, Heroes of their Own Lives: The Politics & History of Family Violence, Penguin, 402 pages, 1989 (2/1994)
___________, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction, Harvard University Press, 2001, 456 pages (Split vote -- with half feeling that the incident is too slight to withstand the gender, racial, ethnic and religious analysis piled on top of it, and the other half feeling the nexus was fascinating)(9/26/2001)

Grabaccia, Donna, From the Other Side: Women, Gender, and Immigrant Life in the United States, 1880 - 1990, 1994 (9/1995)

Greenberg, Cheryl Lyn, "Or Does It Explode?" Black Harlem in the Great Depression, Oxford University Press, 317 pages, 1991 (9/11/1998)

Gregory, James N., American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California, Oxford University Press, 248 pages, '91 reprint of '89 edition (10/30/1992)

Grossman, James R., Land of Hope: Black Southerners, Chicago and the Great Migration, University of Chicago Press (5/30/1997)

Halttunen, Karen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870, Yale University Press, 262 pages, 1982 (A majority felt that the title was misleading and the author didn't quite prove her thesis about a progressive change in standards from the romantic sincerity of antebellum life to the hypocrisy of high Victoriana, but we enjoyed learning about trends in fashions and customs, such as mourning rituals.) (11/21/2003)

_____________, Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination, Harvard University Press, 368 pages, 2000 (While it needed editing to reduce repetition and took awhile to make its theme clear --the conclusion is the most clearly written section of the book though it helps to have seen the movies Seven and Dead Man Walking-- it is an entertaining look at the changes in how Americans have grappled with murder, from colonial assumptions of sin to the pornographization of women victims to the medicalization of insanity, but she seems unfamiliar with the long tradition of murder ballads.) (6/17/2005)

Hammack, David C., Power and Society: Greater New York at the Turn of the Century, Columbia University Press, 422 pages, 1987

Harris, Leslie M., In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863, 256 pages, 2003 (We read this in combination with visiting the New-York Historical Society exhibition on Slavery in New York. Turns out the author was on the advisory board for the exhibition, but this excellent book wasn't in the gift shop. The opening chapters are a re-interpretation of exhaustive nuggets from other historians' work that some of us found a bit slow, but she uses it as necessary background for her original and fresh research and insights on the complex black perspectives on the Northern, urban slave experience, class, abolition and relationships with white owners and philanthropists. The exhibition was mostly way too simplistic, except for the explicit discussion and images of the forgotten history of NYC's involvement in the slave trade.) (11/18/2005)

Hawes, Elizabeth, New York, New York: How the Apartment House Transformed the Life of the City, 1869 - 1930, Owl/Holt, 285 pages, 1993 (An extended New Yorker piece so it's well-researched, entertaining journalism with a lot of superficial trivia that is interesting to people who are familiar with Manhattan)(3/5/2004)

Hedrick, John D., Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life, 1994 (1996)

Hershkowitz, Leo, Tweed’s New York: Another Look, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 409 pages, 1978

Himmelfarb, Gertrude, Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians, Vintage, 475 pages, 1991 (Unbeknownst to us when we selected this dense, slow, thoroughly and staggeringly researched intellectual history of late 19th century British helping people out of poverty philosophies from philanthropy to socialism, it is a response to Gareth Stedman's Outcast London that we read many years ago. She provides essential background to models for the U.S. progressive movement and mostly stays objective, saving her conservative political attacks on the genesis of the Welfare State and humorous barbs on hypocrisy for the footnotes.)(5/14/2004)

Hodes, Martha, White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth Century South, 352 pages, 1999 (recommended by the late Marilyn Williams) (I didn't read the book yet: per Jean Mensch - "general consensus that it was very good, very interesting but quantifiers wouldn't be happy. Too much repetition. Could perhaps be a class issue especially in early examples where it appeared that both sides were often working in the same household. This however was not true of plantation white ladies taking up with Afro-Americans.") (5/16/2003)

Hood, Clifton, 722 Miles: The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995 (11/13/1997)

Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz, Rereading Sex: Battles Over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth-Century America, 528 pages, 2002 (OAH’s Curti Award for the best book published in American social, intellectual, or cultural history) (While we all felt it was repetitive and too long, each found something new and/or interesting – details of vernacular sporting life, how the Civil War unleashed censorship, how the YMCA unleashed Comstock, and conceptions of obscenity.) (3/12/2010)

Hunter, Tera W., To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War, Harvard University Press, 336 pages, 1997 (We all learned something new.)(12/3/1999)

Jackson, Kenneth, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, Oxford University Press, 1986 (12/1987)

Jacobs, Harriet, edited by L. Maria Child, edited and with an introduction by Jean Fagan Yellin, Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl, Harvard University Press, 1987 (One of our favorites! Why hasn't anyone turned this life into a movie?)

Jacoby, Susan, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, 365 pages of text, 2004 (With the usual problem of a journalist taking on history with broad generalizations and under-researched polemics, but still uncovers insightful perspectives from the Founding Fathers, through neglected 19th century influentials to more contemporary culture wars.)(10/21/2005)

Jeffrey, Julie Roy, Frontier Women: The Trans-Mississippi West, 1979 (1/1990)

Johnson, Susan Lee, Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush, 464 pages, 2001 (Bancroft Prize winner) (While it needs editing, is written in several different styles, and is perplexing in its emphasis on a legendary bandito for symbolism of gender, class, and ethnic analysis, the revelations about the multi-ethnic gold diggers are quite interesting. There's fodder for at least one movie here! Though, yeah, when men live together someone has to cook- so what?)(4/18/2003)

Jones, Gareth Stedman, Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society, Pantheon, 1971

Jones, Jacqueline, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present, Random House, 330 pages, 1986 (12/5/1992)

Kasson, John F., Rudeness and Civility: Manners in 19th Century Urban America, Noonday Press, 1990 (Those who felt the topic of the development of genteel etiquette rules was of value thought this was well-done and enjoyable.) (1/2000)

Katzman, David, Seven Days A Week: Women in Domestic Service, U of Illinois Press, 1978 (2/13/1991)

Kerber, Linda K., Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America, U of N. Carolina Press, 318 pages, 1980 (A classic, germinal revelation on how the "Revolutionary War" was anything but a "revolution" for women, a bit dry on the legal history but thoroughly researched) (12/1/2000)
_____________, No Constitutional Right to be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship, Hill & Wang, 432 pages, 1999 (Each chapter is an essay on women's roles in legal relationships in the U.S. that have not been looked at elsewhere, such as paying property taxes without voting rights, jury duty, and military service. An interesting mix of thorough historical documentation and oral histories of more recent legal cases, including from Ruth Bader Ginzburg.)(1/19/2001)

Kessler-Harris, Alice, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States, Oxford University Press, 1982 (1/1993)
________________, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America, Oxford U Press, 386 pages, 2001 (AHA Kelly Prize in Women's History) (Despite uneven, unconnected chapters of varying quality, contradictions and explanatory detail, we did learn more about the role of social/maternal/protectionist feminists in the details of key, complicated legislative efforts, but our discussion devolved into personal explorations of trying to comprehend the zeitgeist of gender discrimination awareness.) (10/27/2006)

Kessner, Thomas, Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York, 1989 (9/14/1990)
_____________, Capital City: New York City and the Men Behind America’s Rise to Economic Dominance, 1860 – 1900, 416 pages, 2003 (Mixed vote -- some bought his thesis about extraordinary men who made economic history due to unique NYC conditions, some felt it was buried amidst lengthy biographical anecdotes better covered in other books we'd already read. While his explanations of how the robber barons actually pulled off their canny deals were very clear, his omissions were odd, such as of real estate moguls.) (2/3/2006)

Kunzel, Regina G., Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890 - 1945, Yale University Press, 264 pages, 1995 (Some objections to the lack of ethnic distinction among the clients and the telescoping of the chronology of the service providers, but otherwise an interesting depiction of changing attitudes towards an issue that's been around a long time.)

Landau, Sara Bradford and Carl W. Condit, Rise of the New York Skyscraper, 1865-1913, Yale U Press, 496 pages, 1996 (1/8/2004 (The definitive, exhaustive, detailed architectural history that could have used some more definitions of technical architecture and engineering terms, but the photographs are terrific.)

Lane, Roger, Roots of Violence in Black Philadelphia, 1860-1900, Harvard U Press, 1986 edition, 224 pages (One of our favorites!) (1/19/1995)

Lankewich, George J. and Howard B. Funes, A Brief History of New York City), 1984 (1986)

Larson, Edward J., Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, Harvard University Press, 318 pp. (A ripping good read but generated virtually no discussion.) (10/22/1999)

Lautenberg, William, In the Shadow of FDR (1/1985)

Lebsock, Suzanne, The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town 1784-1860, Norton, 1985 (One of our favorites!)

Lepore, Jill, New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan, 323 pages – amended edition post-August 2006 only (Terrific descriptive and detective work on a neglected scandal of legal hysteria, but very mixed verdict on whether she otherwise proved her political claims. It does make you think about the guys whose streets bear the names we walk in Lower Manhattan.) (6/15/2007)

Lieberman, Richard, Steinway and Sons, Yale University Press, 384 pages (Amounts to an official history from a marvelous archive, but no context.) (For a contemporary, ahistorical view see the documentary Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037.) (1/8/1998)

Markel, Howard, Quarantine!: East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892, Johns Hopkins U Press, 262 pages, 1999 (Some thought it slight and slighted other immigrant groups for comparison, but all admired the thorough research in untangling contemporary scientific knowledge vs. prejudice in administering public health policy.) (6/26/2009)

Marshall, Megan, The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism, Mariner Books, 624 pages, 2005 (Real self-taught intellectual feminist lives with astounding epistolary documentation that were so much like a Jane Austen novel that the author closes the mother/daughters story, prematurely some of us thought, at a virtual double wedding – and deserve a movie.) (5/18/2007)

May, Elaine Tyler, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era, 1988 (11/1990)

McCullough, David, Truman, 1992 (10/23/1993)
_______________, Mornings on Horseback, Simon & Schuster , 444 pages, 1981
_______________, The Great Bridge, Avon, 630 pages, 1972
_______________, 1776, Simon & Schuster, 400 pages, 2005 (While we were very frustrated by the inadequate footnotes, which led to a lively discussion about public vs. academic historians, we enjoyed finally understanding military tactics as conducted by real human beings here in the NYC area.) (4/18/2008)

McElvaine, Robert G., The Great Depression: America, 1929 - 1941, 1984 (9/22/1989)

McManus, Edgar J., A History of Negro Slavery in New York, 1966 (10/9/1987)

McMurry, Linda O., To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells, Oxford, 416 pages, 2000 (Though we all found the first half slow going with a too simplistic style, the second half was fascinating about the personal and politics of an ambitious and determined African-American woman anti-lynching activist we had known little about.) (10/18/2002)

Miles, Tiya Alicia, Ties that Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom, University of California Press, 327 pages, 2006 (OAH’s Frederick Jackson Turner Award for an author’s first book dealing with some significant phase of American history) (Though we had trouble obtaining the book, and felt it badly needed editing for repetition and flights of fancy at including quotes from fiction as evidence, we were all impressed and educated by the revelatory, detailed pre-DNA-ID family and contextual research—with excellent footnotes and appendices—that provided balance to myths even as the descendants made the news while we were reading the book – and the author should have been quoted in the press for background, but reporters too probably couldn’t get hold of the book.) (3/16/2007)

Miller, Kerby A., Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America, Oxford University Press, 684 pages, 1988 (an essential) (4/1990)

Mintz, Stephen, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood, Harvard U Press, 464 pages, 2004 (Most of us were dismayed that this compendium of contradictory, unsynthesized facts and repeated anecdotes had received OAH’s Merle Curti Award for the best book published in American social, intellectual, or cultural history, though we did appreciate learning some new tidbits here and there amidst useful myth debunking.) (1/19/2007)

____________and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life, 1988 (10/1989)

Moore, Deborah Dash, At Home in America: Second Generation New York Jews, Columbia University Press, 303 pages, 1981

Morgan, Edmund, S., Benjamin Franklin, Yale University Press, 368 pages, 2002 (While the footnotes are inadequate for anything other than references to Franklin's letters, it has little personal information--and Morgan seems determined to counter the current John Adams hagiography-- we felt this is a highly readable introduction to Franklin the man, with lots to learn about his opinions, infuence, and long career.) (10/17/2003)

Nasaw, David, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements, 320 pages, 1995 (and also in a 1999 reprint), Harvard U Press (While we learned miscellaneous trivia about the technology and entrepreneurs behind commercial entertainment in early 20th century urban America, we were all very disappointed in the lack of original research to extend the work much beyond others’ previous work on NYC, lack of comparisons to earlier periods or places, the over-generalizations and inconsistency in focus and theme, and his repetitive shock, shock that African-Americans faced discrimination as audiences.) (5/23/2008)

__________, Andrew Carnegie, 896 pages, Penguin Press, 2007 (New-York Historical Society American Book Prize) (While there were interesting tidbits among the overwhelming amount of details, despite typos, we were very disappointed in the lack of depth, insight, analysis, or contemporary reaction.) (9/25/2009)

Ngai, Mae M., Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America, Princeton U Press, 400 pages, 2003 (OAH’s Turner Award for an author’s first book dealing with some significant phase of American history) (Primarily a legal history that some thought was too dry in contrast to the prologue and epilogue that they thought included too PC language that viewed our immigration attitudes through a racial lens plus it's the usual kitchen sink dissertation adaptation, but this does provide essential background and context to the current immigration debate -- we learned a lot, particularly about Filipinos and Mexican braceros, and more details on other Asians.) (6/30/2006)

Norton, Mary Beth, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women 1750-1800, 1980 (2/1987)
______________, In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692, Vintage, 448 pages, 2002 (All were impressed by her meticulous research, including genealogical, political and theological explanations -- let alone that so much documentary evidence survives -- but several thought the chronological detail was overwhelming and her central thesis that the attack by the invisible world was incited by the attacks from Native Americans on the New England frontier not convincing as but one contributing cause of the mass hysteria and official executions.) (5/13/2005)

O’Connor, Stephen, Orphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed, U of Chicago Press, 384 pages, 2001 (A bit breezily written by a non-historian who did not use original or in-depth sources, it is more a history of the conceptual groundwork for the present foster care mess than a biography, but it has interesting information to correct many misunderstandings about Brace and orphan trains.)(12/17/2004)

Orleck, Annelise, Common Sense and A Little Fire: Women and Working Class Politics in the United States 1900-1995, University of North Carolina Press, 384 pages, 1995 (One of our favorites!) (10/1995)

Oshinsky, David, Polio: An American Story, 342 pages, 2005, Oxford U Press (A terrific read, well-researched with personalities coming alive for lively insight into the intersection of science, sociology and politics in the 1940’s – 1950’s) (2/16/2007)

Pagan, John Ruston, Anne Othwood's Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia, Oxford University Press, 256 pages, 2002 (We learned a lot in a surprising enlivening of what could have been dry colonial legal history through personalities and biographical interconnections-- amazingly well-researched about individuals and illegitimacy, but there were some complaints that the footnotes were confusingly floated.) (4/21/2006)

Painter, Nell Irvin, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol, W.W. Norton, 348 pages, 1997 (The historiography is the best part--will documentary histories of African-Americans and feminists now print her true speeches or stick with her mythical ones?) (11/1998)

Peiss, Kathy, Cheap Amusements: Working Women & Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York, Temple University Press, 256 pages, 1986

Perry, Elizabeth Israels, Belle Moskowitz: Feminine Politics and the Exercise of Power in the Age of Alfred E. Smith, 1987 (3/5/1990)

Perry, Mark, Lift Up Thy Voice: The Grimké Family's Journey From Slaveholders to Civil Rights Leaders, Penguin Putnam, 432 pages, 2002 (Though written as popular history with wholly inadequate footnotes and context with an odd revisionist claim, we still learned a lot we hadn't known about an unusual family, particularly the later lives of the famed abolitionist/feminist sisters and the younger generation.) (4/9/2004)

Reverby, Susan, Ordered to Care: The Dilemma of American Nursing, 1850-1945, Cambridge University Press, 286 pages, 1987 (3/1987)

Rink, Oliver A., Holland on the Hudson: An Economic and Social History of Dutch New York, 1986 (2/1989)

Rose, Elizabeth R., A Mother’s Job: The History of Day Care, 1890 – 1960, Oxford University Press, 296 pages, 1998 (While all felt that it was repetitive, had some gaps about the impact of child psychology on early childhood education, and the typography was very hard on the eyes, we all learned quite a bit, especially about maternalism, mothers' pensions, perceptions of working mothers, how the split between day care and nursery schools originated, and charitable vs. government responses to the issue.)(10/22/2004)

Rosen, Ruth, The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America 1900-1918, John Hopkins, University Press, 245 pages, 1982

Rothman, Barbara K., In Labor: Women and Power in the Birthplace, 1991 (3/1995)

Rothman, Ellen K., Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America, 1991 (5/1987)

Rubin, Anne Sarah, A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868, U of N. Carolina Press, 336 pages, 2005 (OAH’s Avery O. Craven Award for the most original book on the coming of the Civil War, the Civil War years, or the era of Reconstruction, with the exception of works of purely military history.) (Mixed vote on the compendium gleaning, while we all learned about Confederate ideology and feelings, some felt the emphasis was too much on slave owners and those who could leave behind written records.) (See the documentary Banished for what happened next to free African-Americans.) (10/27/2007)

Ryan, Mary P., Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865, Cambridge U Press, 336 pages

Rybczynski, Witold, Home: A Short History of an Idea, 1986 (2/1992)

Santmyer, Helen Hooven, And the Ladies of the Club (fiction)

Schama, Simon, An Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, U of California Press, 706 pages, 1988 (Everything you always wanted to know about the how the notorious tulip bulb crisis sprouted.)

____________,Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution, Harper Perennial, 496 pages, 2006 (While we thought sometimes he didn't let the facts and sliding numbers get in the way of good –pro-British-- storytelling, it is a fascinating story.) (4/3/2009) (Amazing Grace dramatizes some of the same characters in the English anti-slavery movement.)

Schiff, Stacy, A Great Improvisation; Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, Henry Holt & Company, 512 pages, 2005 (George Washington Book Prize winner)(While we thought this needed editing due to repetition and way too much detail, it is a highly entertaining revisionist, i.e. anti-Adams, view of the Revolution from France's POV and how Franklin synched into that, culturally and politically as a diplomat.) (11/17/2006)

Schlereth, Thomas J., Victoria America: Transformation in Everyday Life, 1876 - 1915, 1991 (A compendium of research.) (3/1994)

Scott, Anne Firor, Making the Invisible Woman Visible, University of Illinois Press, 387 pages, 1984 (A collection of essays from a leader in women's social history on the development of her germinal thinking about the role of southern women, which the group thought she lionizes too much, leading to an interesting discussion of comparisons between N and S.) (11/30/2001)

Sklar, Kathryn Kish, Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830-1900, Yale Univ Press, 456 pages, 1997 (Well-researched and readable first volume on a long and fascinating life that went from Main Line Philadelphia to European Socialism to Chicago's Hull House and would make a terrific movie.) (9/17/1999)

Sleeper, James, The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York, 1990 (journalism) (1/1992)

Srebnick, Amy Gilman, The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers: Sex and Culture in 19th Century New York, Oxford University Press, 240 pages, 1997 ("Yes" to the history, but a resounding "no" to the editing, organization, and Foucaltian analysis.) (12/4/1998)

Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America, Oxford University Press, 357 pages, 1985

Snyder, Robert W., The Voice of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York, Oxford, 1989 (1/6/1994)

Spann, Edward K., The New Metropolis: New York City, 1840-1857, Columbia University Press, 546 pages, 1981

Stansell, Christine, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789 - 1860, Knopf, 1986 (1/1988)
______________, American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century, Owl/Holt, 432 pages (A collective biography that is a fascinating and readable trove of information, even if her glorification of the talky "New Men" and "New Women" of the 1910's isn't 100% justified and convincing. Made us want to re-watch Reds now that we know more about all those characters. We protest the confusing footnotes!) (11/15/2002)

Starr, Paul, Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry, Basic Books, 514 pages, 1984

Stauffer, John, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and Transformation of Race, 384 pages, 2002, Harvard U Press (Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History‘s Frederick Douglass Book Second Prize for outstanding book on slavery or abolition) (Getting past the academic jargon of the first couple of chapters, we were all very impressed by this revelatory and informative joint biography of four hitherto not recognized as close-working colleagues, two African-American, Frederick Douglass and Dr. James McCune Smith, and two white, John Brown and Gerrit Smith, and wondered if today they would be considered terrorists.) (1/22/2010)

Sterling, Dorothy, Ahead of Her Time: Abby Kelly and the Politics of Antislavery, Norton, 387 pages, 1994 (2/23/1998)

Strasser, Susan, Never Done: A History of American Housework, Pantheon, 1982

Strom, Sharon Hartman, Beyond the Typewriter: Gender, Class, and the Origins of Modern America, 1900 - 1930, 1992

Strouse, Jean, Morgan: American Financier, Harper Perennial Library, 816 pages, 2000 (While this was a l-o-n-g, slow read, we all marveled at how much we learned, not only about J. Pierpont Morgan, and all the legendary and fascinating and very flesh and blood revealed people around him, but also about economics, banking, trusts and art collecting, in a new appreciation for how the Robber Barons created modern American capitalism and cultural institutions.) (9/21/2001)

Takaki, Ronald T., Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian America, 1989 (5/6/1991)

Taylor, Alan, William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic, Vintage, 549 pages, 1996 (9/25/1997)

Tomes, Nancy, The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life, Harvard University Press, 351 pages, 1999 (While we were a bit confused about fact vs. fiction in public health fads, we enjoyed and learned from this survey of the social aspects of public health education related to scientific exploration and understanding of the roles of germs and of women in society.) (5/10/2002)

Tone, Andrea, Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America, 384 pages, 2001 (Factually fascinating as a technology and business history, with much more insight on men's usage of birth control than other women's studies, but didn't generate much discussion.) (3/4/2005)

Truman, Harry S., Dear Bess: Letters, 1983 (2/1985)

Tsai, Shi-shan Henry, The Chinese Experience in America, 1986

Tuchman, Barbara W., Practicing History: Selected Essays, Knopf, 306 pages, 1981

Thatcher Ulrich, Laurel, Good Wives: Image and Reality in Northern New England, 1650 - 1750, Vintage, 1991, 281 pages (5/1990)
_________________, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812, Knopf, 1991 (one of our favorites!) (1/11/1991)
________________, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth, Random House, 501 pages, 2001 (Despite some quibbles on the lack of a summary and an increasingly kitchen sink approach, most of us really enjoyed learning colonial, particularly neglected women's, history from textiles, especially in terms of economics, gender relations, and the influence of Native Americans.) (1/10/2003)

Wexler, Alice, Emma Goldman in America, 1984 (11/7/1988)

Wharton, Edith, Age of Innocence (fiction)

Winston, Diane H., Red-Hot and Righteous: The Urban Religion of the Salvation Army, Harvard University Press, 304 pages, 1999 (Despite disorganization and repetition, an interesting look at the NY operations, up to 1950, of an over-looked organization with powerful roles for women.)(1/11/2002)

White, Shane, Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770-1810, 1991 (9/21/1994)

Wyman, Mark, Round Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880-1930, Cornell University Press, 1996 (5/5/2000)

Wright, Gwendolyn, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America, MIT Press, 1981 (10/20/1989)

Yans-McLaughlin, Immi, Virginia, Family and Community: Italian Immigrants in Buffalo, 1880-1930, Cornell University Press, 1982

Yellin, Jean Fagan, Harriet Jacobs: A Life, 394 pages, 2003, Basic Books (the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History‘s Frederick Douglass Book Prize for an outstanding book published on the subject of slavery or abolition) (While we were disappointed that Dr. Yellin wasn't able to join us as planned due to an unavoidable scheduling conflict, we continued to be impressed at her diligence to rescue Jacobs from history by convincingly piecing together evidence from an astounding range of archives and correspondence, particularly to document Jacobs' post-slavery activities.) (10/30/2009)

Reading Group: History

We’re only immortal for a limited time. – from “Dreamline” by Rush (words by Neil Peart, music by Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, from Roll The Bones)