Subject: History / General

Subject: History / General

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Seeing Reds

|9780822958215|Federal Surveillance of Radicals in the Pittsburgh Mill District, 1917–1921| During World War I, fear that a network of German spies was operating on American soil justified the rapid growth of federal intelligence agencies. When that threat proved illusory, these agencies, staffed heavily by corporate managers and anti-union private detectives, targeted antiwar and radical labor groups, particularly the Socialist party and the Industrial Workers of the World. Seeing Reds, based largely on case files from the Bureau of Investigation, Military Intelligence Division, and Office of Naval Intelligence, describes this formative period of federal domestic spying in the Pittsburgh region. McCormick…

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To Hell With Paradise

|9780822958239|A History Of The Jamaican Tourist Industry| In the course of the nineteenth century, Jamaica transformed itself from a pestilence-ridden “white man’s graveyard” to a sun-drenched tourist paradise. Deftly combining economics with political and cultural history, Frank Fonda Taylor examines this puzzling about-face and explores the growth of the tourist industry into the 1990s. He argues that the transformations in image and reality were not accidental or due simply to nature’s bounty. They were the result of a conscious decision to develop this aspect of Jamaica’s economy. Jamaican tourism emerged formally at an international exhibition held on the island in…

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Inventing a Soviet Countryside

|9780822961758|State Power and the Transformation of Rural Russia, 1917–1929| Following the largest peasant revolution in history, Russia's urban-based Bolshevik regime was faced with a monumental task: to peacefully “modernize” and eventually “socialize” the peasants in the countryside surrounding Russia's cities. To accomplish this, the Bolshevik leadership created the People's Commissariat of Agriculture (Narkomzem), which would eventually employ 70,000 workers. This commissariat was particularly important, both because of massive famine and because peasants composed the majority of Russia's population; it was also regarded as one of the most moderate state agencies because of its nonviolent approach to rural transformation.Working from recently…

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Pennsylvania Constitutional Development

|9780822958185| Pennsylvania Constitutional Development has proven to be the definitive study of the history of Pennsylvania’s constitution in its first four incarnations. Rosalind Branning’s critique, first published in 1960, reflects the movement that led to the constitution of 1968. After tracing the history of the 1776 constitution and its earliest revisions–in 1790 and 1838–Branning primarily focuses on the constitutional convention of 1872-73 and the resulting document of 1874, which endured for almost a century. She uses the published <I>Debates</I>, newspaper files, and the observations of contemporary writers and statesmen to provide a detailed and engaging study of the politics and…

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Landscapes Of Struggle

|9780822958383|Politics Society And Community In El Salvador| During the 1980s, El Salvador’s violent civil war captured the world’s attention. In the years since, the country has undergone dramatic changes. Landscapes of Struggle offers a broad, interdisciplinary assessment of El Salvador from the late nineteenth century to the present, focusing on the ways local politics have shaped the development of the nation. Proceeding chronologically, these essays-by historians, political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists-explore the political, social, and cultural dynamics governing the Salvadoran experience, including the crucial roles of land, the military, and ethnicity; the effects of the civil war; and recent transformations,…

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