ALBERT

Description: This book reviews the course of NATO policy on German reunification from the perspective of West German preferences and Bonn's endeavors to have them respected in the diplomatic efforts of the major allies. With its accession to NATO, the West German government under Adenauer continued its policy of rehabilitating the German people in the eyes of the Western political community by playing a willing and sometimes leading role in joint ventures whose purpose was said to transcend the nation-state.

Description: Originally published in 1974. Focusing on a set of Jewish communities, Robert Chazan tells how, by the eleventh century, French Jews had created for themselves a role as local merchants and moneylenders in adapting to the political, economic, and social limits imposed on them. French society, striving to become more powerful and civilized, was willing to extend aid and protection to the Jews in return for general stimulation of trade and urban life and for the immediate profit realized from taxation. While the authorities were relatively successful in protecting the Jews from others, there was no power to impose itself between the Jews and their protectors. The political and social well-being of the Jews was, therefore, dependent on the will of the governing authorities who taxed their holdings and regulated their activities. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the position of the Jews was constantly under attack by reform elements in the church concerned with Jewish moneylending and blasphemous materials in Jewish books; these reformers were eventually devoted to a serious missionizing effort within the Jewish community. The Jews' situation was further complicated by deep popular animosity, expressing itself in a damaging set of slanders and occasionally in physical violence. Despite the impressive achievements of the Jews in medieval northern France, by the thirteenth century their community was increasingly constricted; and in 1306, they were expelled from royal France by Philip IV. Overcoming the handicap of a lack of copious source material, Chazan analyzes the Jews' political status, their relations with key elements of Christian society, their demographic development, their economic outlets, their internal organization, and their attitudes toward the Christian environment. As it highlights aspects of French society from an unusual perspective, Medieval Jewry in Northern France should be of special interest to the historian of medieval France as well as to the student of Jewish history. This story is also significant for all who are fascinated by the capacity of human groups to respond and adapt creatively to a hostile and limiting environment.

Description: The Eve of Spain demonstrates how the telling and retelling of one of Spain’s founding myths played a central role in the formation of that country’s national identity. King Roderigo, the last Visigoth king of Spain, rapes (or possibly seduces) La Cava, the daughter of his friend and counselor, Count Julian. In revenge, the count travels to North Africa and conspires with its Berber rulers to send an invading army into Spain. So begins the Muslim conquest and the end of Visigothic rule. A few years later, in Northern Spain, Pelayo initiates a Christian resistance and starts a new line of kings to which the present-day Spanish monarchy traces its roots.Patricia E. Grieve follows the evolution of this story from the Middle Ages into the modern era, as shifts in religious tolerance and cultural acceptance influenced its retelling. She explains how increasing anti-Semitism came to be woven into the tale during the Christian conquest of the peninsula—in the form of traitorous Jewish conspirators. In the sixteenth century, the tale was linked to the looming threat of the Ottoman Turks. The story continued to resonate through the Enlightenment and into modern historiography, revealing the complex interactions of racial and religious conflict and evolving ideas of women’s sexuality.In following the story of La Cava, Rodrigo, and Pelayo, Grieve explains how foundational myths and popular legends articulate struggles for national identity. She explores how myths are developed around few historical facts, how they come to be written into history, and how they are exploited politically, as in the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 followed by that of the Moriscos in 1609. Finally, Grieve focuses on the misogynistic elements of the story and asks why the fall of Spain is figured as a cautionary tale about a woman’s sexuality.

Description: Originally published in 1978. Millions of immigrants seeking a better life came to New York City in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Ronald H. Bayor's study details how the relative tranquility among the city's four major ethnic groups was disturbed by economic depression, political divisions arising out of ties with the Old Country, and factional strife stirred up by local politicians seeking ethnic votes. Also evaluated are the effects of such emotional and political issues such as Nazism and Fascism upon the allegiances of Germans and Italians; the rift in the ethnic community caused by the communist scare; and the influence of such figures such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Father Charles Coughlin, and Fiorello La Guardia.

Description: Craig's study of McAdoo and Baker illuminates the aspirations and struggles of two prominent southern Democrats.In this dual biography, Douglas B. Craig examines the careers of two prominent American public figures, Newton Diehl Baker and William Gibbs McAdoo, whose lives spanned the era between the Civil War and World War II.Both Baker and McAdoo migrated from the South to northern industrial cities and took up professions that had nothing to do with staple-crop agriculture. Both eventually became cabinet officers in the presidential administration of another southerner with personal memories of defeat and Reconstruction: Woodrow Wilson. A Georgian who practiced law and led railroad tunnel construction efforts in New York City, McAdoo served as treasury secretary at a time when Congress passed an income tax, established the Federal Reserve System, and funded the American and Allied war efforts in World War I. Born in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, Baker won election as mayor of Cleveland in the early twentieth century and then, as Wilson's secretary of war, supervised the dramatic build-up of the U.S. military when the country entered the Great War in Europe.This is the first full biography of McAdoo and the first since 1961 of Baker. Craig points out similarities and differences in their backgrounds, political activities, professional careers, and family lives.Craig's approach in Progressives at War illuminates the shared struggles, lofty ambitions, and sometimes conflicted interactions of these figures. Their experiences and perspectives on public and private affairs (as insiders who nonetheless were, in some sense, outsiders) make their lives, work, and thought especially interesting. Baker and McAdoo, in league with Wilson, offer Craig the opportunity to deliver a fresh and insightful study of the period, its major issues, and some of its leading figures.

Description: Originally published in 1979. The idea of the "South" has its roots in Romanticism and American culture of the nineteenth century. This study by Michael O'Brien analyzes how the idea of a unique Southern consciousness endured into the twentieth century and how it affected the lives of prominent white Southern intellectuals. Individual chapters treat Howard Odum, John Donald Wade, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Frank Owsley, and Donald Davidson. The chapters trace each man's growing need for the idea of the South—how each defined it and how far each was able to sustain the idea as an element of social analysis. The Idea of the American South moves the debate over Southern identity from speculative essays about the "central theme" of Southern history and, by implication, past the restricted perception that race relations are a sufficient key to understanding the history of Southern identity.

Description: Chivalry denotes the ideals and practices considered suitable for a noble. The word itself is reminiscent of the aristocratic society of medieval France dominated by mounted warriors. As early as the eleventh century, several different views of chivalric standards and behavior had appeared. During the next four hundred years, these conceptions of the ideal nobleman were developed by and for the feudal ruling class. Sidney Painter studies chivalry from the perspectives of both social history and the history of ideas. The first chapter provides readers unfamiliar with medieval history the background required for understanding the chapters on chivalry.

Description: Lacking the warlike bluntness of his predecessor, Richard the Lionheart, John came to the throne of England at a time when economic forces in the realm were threatening to undermine the very basis of feudal power. His attempts to adjust a political system to cope with this threat and at the same time to assert the hegemony of the monarchy over its chief rivals—the barons and the church—made his reign one of particular importance and significance in English history.

Description: French Huguenots made enormous contributions to the life and culture of colonial New York during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Huguenot craftsmen were the city's most successful artisans, turning out unrivaled works of furniture which were distinguished by unique designs and arcane details. More than just decorative flourishes, however, the visual language employed by Huguenot artisans reflected a distinct belief system shaped during the religious wars of sixteenth-century France.In Fortress of the Soul, historian Neil Kamil traces the Huguenots' journey to New York from the Aunis-Saintonge region of southwestern France. There, in the sixteenth century, artisans had created a subterranean culture of clandestine workshops and meeting places inspired by the teachings of Bernard Palissy, a potter, alchemist, and philosopher who rejected the communal, militaristic ideology of the Huguenot majority which was centered in the walled city of La Rochelle. Palissy and his followers instead embraced a more fluid, portable, and discrete religious identity that encouraged members to practice their beliefs in secret while living safely—even prospering—as artisans in hostile communities. And when these artisans first fled France for England and Holland, then left Europe for America, they carried with them both their skills and their doctrine of artisanal security.Drawing on significant archival research and fresh interpretations of Huguenot material culture, Kamil offers an exhaustive and sophisticated study of the complex worldview of the Huguenot community. From the function of sacred violence and alchemy in the visual language of Huguenot artisans, to the impact among Protestants everywhere of the destruction of La Rochelle in 1628, to the ways in which New York's Huguenots interacted with each other and with other communities of religious dissenters and refugees, Fortress of the Soul brilliantly places American colonial history and material life firmly within the larger context of the early modern Atlantic world.

Description: Award for Best Research in the Field of Record Labels or Manufacturers from the Association for Recorded Sound CollectionsWinner of the Kenneth W. Baldridge Prize from the Phi Alpha Theta Honor Society, Hawaii Region Between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth century, technology transformed the entertainment industry as much as it did such heavy industries as coal and steel. Among those most directly affected were musicians, who had to adapt to successive inventions and refinements in audio technology—from wax cylinders and gramophones to radio and sound films. In this groundbreaking study, James P. Kraft explores the intersection of sound technology, corporate power, and artistic labor during this disruptive period.Kraft begins in the late nineteenth century's "golden age" of musicians, when demand for skilled instrumentalists often exceeded supply, analyzing the conflicts in concert halls, nightclubs, recording studios, radio stations, and Hollywood studios as musicians began to compete not only against their local counterparts but also against highly skilled workers in national "entertainment factories." Kraft offers an illuminating case study in the impact of technology on industry and society—and a provocative chapter in the cultural history of America.