Featured Reads

More on Modern Economic History
Joseph Schumpeter’s influence in modern economic thought cannot be overestimated and it turns up in some surprising and interesting places.

United States

Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas
Amilcar Shabazz has authored an intriguing account of the fight against Jim  Crow segregation in higher education in Texas.
The Republic of Nature (2012)
Flip through the pages of almost any American history textbook.

Europe

A Ferro e Fuoco: La Guerra Civile Europea, 1914-1945 (2008)
The period from 1914-1945 has sometimes been called a "European Civil War," but that concept has rarely been put to a systematic examination. Fortunately, Italian historian Enzo Traverso's recent work A Ferro e Fuoco, which can be loosely translated as Put to the Sword, offers some intriguing proposals for understanding the period as a continental civil war.
Co-Winner of April Essay Contest: They Would Never Hurt a Fly (2005)
In They Would Never Hurt a Fly, Slavenka Drakulic follows the stories of the Hague War criminals from the former Yugoslavia. Drakulic argues that ordinary men transformed into war criminals gradually through intensifying rhetoric containing a perfect storm of prejudice, myth, propaganda history and culture.

Latin America

Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia (1993)
Shortly after 1:00am on January 25, 1835, a contingent of African-born slaves and former slaves emerged from a house at number 2 Ladeira da Praça and overpowered the justice of the peace and a police lieutenant. Throughout the night approximately six hundred rebels ran through the streets fighting and vandalizing a number of municipal buildings.
Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred with the Virgin of Guadalupe (2011)
A Google image search for “Our Lady of Guadalupe” returns millions of images. This Catholic icon appears on paintings, coffee mugs, tattoos, and more. Her image is an international symbol for Catholics and non-religious alike.

Asia & Middle East

Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (2004)
Pakistani anthropologist Saba Mahmood began her field research among Muslim women’s revival (da’wa, Arabic “call”) movements in Cairo in 1995 with a number of admitted preconceptions.
The Ottoman Age of Exploration (2010)
 

Africa

Ordinary Egyptians: Creating The Modern Nation Through Popular Culture (2011)
On June 8, 2010 an Egyptian Google executive based in Dubai, named Wael Ghonim, was stunned by a YouTube video that featured a fellow citizen by the name of Khaled Said, bloodied and disfigured.
People Are Not the Same: Leprosy and Identity in Twentieth Century Mali (1998)
This book follows an academic tradition that illuminates the historical experience of everyday people, particularly individuals and groups hidden from the limited vision of African nationalist historiography.

Transnational

War Along the Border: The Mexican Revolution and the Tejano Communities (2012)
The Mexican Revolution knew no borders. Mexicans migrated north seeking refuge from its tumult, Tejanos, (Mexican-American Texans) assisted the fight by supplying weapons and incorporating these new immigrants into their communities. Other Tejanos and African Americans from Texas even joined the Mexican revolutionary forces.
Co-Winner of April Essay Contest: Another Face of Empire: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Indigenous Rights, and Ecclesiastical Imperialism (2007)
Bartolomé de Las Casas has been long renowned as a religious reformer, champion of indigenous rights and an advocate of the freedoms of the Indians in the Americas.  He has been lauded as the “Father of America” and “noble protector of the Indians.” Conversely, he has also been much disparaged and criticized by historians.