Books

Comprised of essays by geologists, ecologists, and historians, this study examines the development of Los Angeles as an example of the complex interactions between urban planning and nature.

Often referred to as “the Big Tomato,” Sacramento is a city whose makeup is significantly more complex than its agriculture-based sobriquet implies. In River City and Valley Life, the contributors reveal the major transformations to the natural and built environment that have shaped Sacramento and its suburbs, residents, politics, and economics throughout its history. This environmental history provides a compelling case study of urban and suburban development in California and the American West.

Spanish King of the Incas tells the fascinating story of a Spanish commoner who participated in the conquest of Latin America, then changed loyalties. He declared himself a king among the Calchaqui Indians and was eventually executed for his role in an Inca rebellion in 1667.

This book explores little-known dimensions of the Holocaust on Soviet territory: how the Soviet state and citizens reacted to the annihilation of the Jewish population and how to understand the role of local participants.

The devastation of World War II left the Yugoslavian capital of Belgrade in ruins. Communist Party leader Josip Broz Tito saw this as a golden opportunity to recreate the city through his vision of socialism. In Designing Tito’s Capital, Brigitte Le Normand analyzes the unprecedented planning process called for by the new leader, and the determination of planners to create an urban environment that would benefit all citizens.

Robert D. Lifset offers an original case history of a major event in environmental history—when a small group of local residents initiated a landmark case of ecology versus energy production and challenged the construction of the Storm King pumped-storage hydroelectric power plant on the Hudson River in the 1960s.

New in Paper

Allegheny City, known today as Pittsburgh’s North Side, was the third-largest city in Pennsylvania when it was controversially annexed by the City of Pittsburgh in 1907. Dan Rooney, a longtime North Side resident, joins local historian Carol Peterson in creating this highly engaging history of the cultural, industrial, and architectural achievements of Allegheny City from its humble beginnings until the present day. The authors cover the history of the city from its origins as a colonial outpost to its emergence alongside Pittsburgh as one of the most important industrial cities in the world. Supplemented by historic and contemporary photos, the authors take the reader on a fascinating and often surprising street-level tour of this colorful, vibrant, and proud place.

Kinga Pozniak shows how the political, economic, and social upheavals in Nowa Huta, Poland have profoundly shaped the memory of these events in the minds of three generations of people who lived through them since the end of the Second World War.

New in Paper

Collection of essays by prominent historians, political scientists, and professors of literature that examine the political, social, and cultural impact of Zionism and Bundism on Jewish society.

Winner, 2016 Southern Cone Studies Section Social Sciences Book Award, Latin American Studies Association

This book examines the dramatic forms of social mobilization, state-directed repression, mass development projects, and socioeconomic exclusion that have marked struggles over low-income urban housing in Santiago, Chile, during the past half-century.

This edited collection examines the connections between the new face of progressive, civil reform in Latin America and new kinds of openness to reform on the part of the private sector. It is the first to focus on the response of business to reform efforts arising from civil society.

This edited volume shows how the function of sport as a historical and cultural marker is particularly relevant in Latin America. From the late nineteenth century to the present, the contributors reveal how sport opens a wide window into local, regional, and national histories. The essays examine the role of sport as a political vehicle, in claims to citizenship, as a source of community and ethnic pride, as a symbol of masculinity or feminism, as allegorical performance, and in many other purposes.

Winner, 2016 Historia Nova Book Prize for best book on Russian Intellectual and Cultural History

Crossing Borders deconstructs contemporary theories of Soviet history from the revolution through the Stalin period, and offers new interpretations based on a transnational perspective. To Michael David-Fox, Soviet history was shaped by interactions across its borders. By reexamining conceptions of modernity, ideology, and cultural transformation, he challenges the polarizing camps of Soviet exceptionalism and shared modernity and instead strives for a theoretical and empirical middle ground as the basis for a creative and richly textured analysis.

This book analyzes the origins and development of Eurasianism, an intellectual movement that proclaimed the existence of Eurasia, a separate civilization coinciding with the former Russian Empire. The essays explore the historical roots, the heyday of the movement in the 1920s, and the afterlife of the movement in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods.

This pioneering study, prepared by the officially sanctioned Polish-Russian Group on Difficult Matters, is a comprehensive effort to document and fully disclose the major conflicts and interrelations between the two nations from 1918 to 2008. This is the English translation of this major study, which has received acclaim for its Polish and Russian editions. The chapters offer parallel histories by prominent Polish and Russian scholars who recount each country’s version of the event in question. Among the topics discussed are the 1920 Polish-Russian war, the origins of World War II and the notorious Hitler-Stalin pact, the infamously shrouded Katyn massacre, the communization of Poland, Cold War relations, the Solidarity movement and martial law, and the renewed relations of contemporary Poland and Russia.