Books

In an unusually powerful book that will appeal to the general reader as well as to the specialist, Louis A. Perez, Jr., recounts the story of the critical years when Cuba won its independence from Spain only to fall in the American orbit.

In 1986, with little warning, the USX Homestead Works closed. Thousands of workers who depended on steel to survive were left without work. A Town Without Steel looks at the people of Homestead as they reinvent their views of household and work and place in this world.

This innovative collection features studies of iconography in Mexico, telenovelas in Venezuela, drama in Chile, cinema in Brazil, comic strips and tango in Argentina, and ceramics in Peru. From the studies of these popular arts the idea of nationality in Latin America is revealed to be a problematic, divided one, worthy of further study.

With unprecedented use of local and national sources, Lauria-Santiago presents a more complex portrait of El Salvador than has ever been ventured before. Using thoroughly researched regional case studies, Lauria-Santiago challenges the accepted vision of Central America in the nineteenth century and critiques the “liberal oligarchic hegemony” model of El Salvador. He reveals the existence of a diverse, commercially active peasantry that was deeply involved with local and national networks of power.

A highly original study of the Putilov Works—the most famous industrial conglomerate in the Russian Empire during the late 19th century, and a major challenge to conventional wisdom on the nature of the Russian economy in the years before the Bolshevik revolution.

Conquering Nature, the only book-length analysis of the environmental situation in Cuba after four decades of socialist rule, is based on extensive examination of secondary sources and informed by the study of development and environmental trends in former socialist countries as well as in the developing world.

Winner of the 2002 Warren Dean Memorial Award from Environmentl History of Latin America.

This is the first work in English to discuss the social and political history of lawyers in a Latin American country. By exploring the lives of lawyers, Uribe-Uran is also able to focus on a general history of Latin America, while exploring key social and political changes and continuities from 1780 to 1850.

Models of Nature studies the early and turbulent years of the Soviet conservation movement from the October Revolution to the mid-1930s—Lenin’s rule to the rise of Stalin. This new edition includes an afterword by the author that reflects upon the study’s impact and discusses advances in the field since the book was first published.

Rebecca J. Scott explores the dynamics of Cuban emancipation, arguing that slavery was not simply abolished by the metropolitan power of Spain or abandoned because of economic contradictions. Instead, she explains, slave emancipation was a prolonged, gradual and conflictive process unfolding through a series of social, legal, and economic transformations.

In this interdisciplinary and controversial work, Igal Halfin takes an original and provocative stance on Marxist theory, and attempts to break down the divisions between history, philosophy, and literary theory.

Kenneth Serbin uncovers the existence of secret talks between generals and Roman Catholic bishops at the height of Brazil’s military dictatorship. It illuminates the complicity of the Catholic Church in the military’s subversive PR campaigns, abductions, and torturings.

From prehistoric midden building to late twentieth century industrial pollution, Transforming New Orleans and Its Environs traces through history the impact of human activity upon the environment of this fascinating and unpredictable region.

Matthew Payne details the building and impact of the Turkestano-Siberian Railroad, one of the major construction projects of Stalin’s first Five Year Plan.

Choi Chatterjee analyzes both Bolshevik attitudes towards women and the invented state rituals surrounding Women’s Day to demonstrate the ways these celebrations helped construct gender notions in the Soviet Union.

The Steel Workers remains a readable and timeless account of labor conditions in the early years of the steel industry. An introduction by the noted historian Roy Lubove places the book in political and historical context.