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Review of Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy (2021)

This is no ordinary work of history. That’s a good thing. As opposed to many scholarly studies, this book has an author with real-world experience in his field. Martin Indyk, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Israel and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs under Clinton and Special Envoy for Middle East Peace under Obama, knows the Middle East like the back of his hand.

The same could not be said of his biographical subject before the Yom Kippur War. While orchestrating détente with the Soviet Union and an end to America’s presence in Vietnam, Henry Kissinger had his mind elsewhere and spared few thoughts for the Middle East. But that changed abruptly when Israel and its Arab foes took up arms once again in October 1973.

Thereafter Kissinger went above and beyond in his regional outreach. Master of the Game documents how over the next two years, the secretary of state held many meetings with Arab and Israeli interlocutors in seeking a lasting peace. From his shuttle diplomacy came a string of disengagement agreements: two between Israel and Egypt and one between Israel and Syria. In Kissinger, Indyk sees a brilliant practitioner of statecraft whose pragmatic, incremental approach succeeded where others had failed.

Driving Kissinger’s relentless diplomacy was a particular vision for the Middle East. This vision, argues Indyk, modeled itself on the order Metternich, Castlereagh, and Talleyrand forged for post-Napoleonic Europe (the subject of Kissinger’s dissertation-cum-monograph A World Restored). The question of whether a bespectacled academic well-versed in European statecraft could apply his wisdom to the Middle East was soon answered.

Although Indyk is mainly interested in American decision-making, Arab and Israeli officials are not mere bystanders in his story. He writes at length about how the likes of Ismail Fahmy, Yitzhak Rabin, and Hafez al-Assad sized Kissinger up, not just the other way around. No number of American carrots and sticks could make both sides come to terms with one another. Those were decisions they alone could make. Present and prospective policymakers should bear in mind that however strong the United States may be, Middle Eastern countries can always push back.

*Henry Kissinger meeting King Faisal in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to review the Middle East peace process and bilateral relations on March 19, 1975. Source: Saudi Press Agency*

Indyk shares lessons he has drawn from Kissinger’s accomplishments. One of these is the role of domestic politics. In the United States, Kissinger faced pressure from pro-Israel voices to be as generous as possible toward the Jewish state. Israel witnessed a premiership change during the period in question (due to Golda Meir’s perceived weakness) and had many constituencies to placate. The Egyptian and Syrian governments were not democratic but nonetheless were mindful of public opinion.

Some of the strongest lessons are those unique to Israeli-Palestinian peacemakers. As Indyk observes, Washington cannot make things happen on its own. All the more so when it eagerly pushes Arab and Israeli officials to the negotiating table where “a sense of urgency is often absent” (304). The fact that Americans are keen to strike deals does not mean Arabs and Israelis are.

Although he does not deify Kissinger, Indyk risks overstating his importance. Kissinger clearly played an important role in bringing Arabs and Israelis together and negotiating the details of their agreements, but is it fair to anoint him “Master of the Game?” Calling him as much masks Kissinger’s considerable shortcomings in his shuttle diplomacy.

These are shortcomings that Indyk acknowledges. For instance, Kissinger’s ignorance of Middle Eastern politics made him “underestimate the importance of the Palestinian issue in the legitimation of his American-led order” and sideline King Hussein and the Jordanians when they could have been invaluable peace brokers (554). Kissinger’s amoral realism left little room for matters beyond power politics, but he would learn the hard way that Arab leaders were willing to go to the mat for the Palestinians.

That realism was the only reason why Kissinger was in the Middle East in the first place. In facilitating these Arab-Israeli negotiations, he sought to wrest Egypt, and to a lesser extent Syria, from the Soviet sphere. In so doing, he also hoped to create a stable balance of power that would avert wars like the one in 1973.

Ultimately, Israel grew strong enough to resist pressure to give concessions to Arab adversaries, and it has neither concluded a peace treaty with the Syrians nor a final-status agreement with the Palestinians. Yet Indyk shows convincingly that Kissinger did not intend for Israel to turn into the regional superpower it became. Such an outcome was discordant with his Metternechian worldview and did not redound to his goal of making Egypt and Syria centerpieces in a new U.S.-aligned Middle East. Then as it does now, self-interest mainly explained America’s presence in that far afield place.

For all of Indyk’s criticisms of Kissinger, his admiration of the man is palpable. Indyk’s service in two administrations that failed to achieve a final Israeli-Palestinian peace deal has helped him appreciate how extraordinary Kissinger’s diplomatic accomplishments in this part of the world were. As Indyk shows in Master of the Game, negotiation, and diplomacy require considerable skill.

Those at odds with Indyk’s methodological approach might say he gives too much importance to Kissinger the individual. Why not give credit to the legions of government staff and civil-society actors who worked so hard to make these agreements happen? Does Kissinger truly deserve the star billing he gets? These are genuine questions, but, in my view, the choice to make Kissinger the central figure in this story stands up to scrutiny. Arab and Israeli leaders negotiated through him. No one else spent more time in conversation with them or diplomatic capital in bringing both sides together. Kissinger undoubtedly was the sine qua non.

On a separate note, this book puts the lie to charges that the United States has given Israel whatever it wants. To the contrary, there is ample evidence of U.S.-Israel friction. The Israeli side often frustrated Kissinger. The barbs traded with Prime Minister Golda Meir could be ferocious. She could not believe a fellow Jew could be so dismissive of Israel’s security interests, while he resented Israeli intransigence. Under Rabin’s government, too, the Americans and Israelis gave each other an earful over seemingly minute details. Thanks to plentiful American and Israeli sources, Indyk makes exchanges like these lively and engaging. In this way, Master of the Game is the latest installment in a literature that has cast the U.S.-Israel relationship as one of tension and compromise rather than harmony. See Dennis Ross’ Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israel Relationship from Truman to Obama (2015) for another example.

Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy: Indyk, Martin: 9781101947548

Evidence in the book should also dispel the view that Kissinger was heartless. On his way out of Israel without a peace treaty in March 1975, Kissinger started crying after declaring “we have no other goal except to enable the young people in this area to grow up without the fear of war” (478). While he has been criticized for his alleged callousness, this book shows that Kissinger, albeit unwaveringly devoted to his craft, was not immune to emotion.

Those who’ve had enough of America’s misbegotten adventures in the Middle East might be tempted to skip this book. That would be their loss. Master of the Game tells the story of an overall successful policy of negotiation. A superpower got many of its sought-after objectives by engaging a handful of middle powers. As great-power rivalry returns to Asia, Europe, and elsewhere, American policymakers would do well to learn from Kissinger’s example.

In telling a remarkable story, Master of the Game proves it is possible to write well without sacrificing scholarly standards. The book includes its fair share of colloquial gems—Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan “sounded like an excited bro planning a fraternity party” while talking to Kissinger, we’re told (256). Forgoing the heavy prose that can mar academic writing, Indyk makes this book accessible to the lay reader. That might be a function of his time in the government, where it pays to shun the abstract for the concrete.

At the same time, Indyk’s book is firmly grounded in historical evidence. Among the archives Indyk consults are the Nixon and Ford Presidential Libraries, the Department of State’s Office of the Historian, and the Israel State Archives. He gives the sources their due. Policymakers in search of historical background and practical advice would do well to read this book. Inside they will find a road map for remedying seemingly intractable disputes, not only in the Middle East but perhaps in the world beyond.

Daniel J. Samet is a Ph.D. student in History at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is a Graduate Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Review of Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism (2021)

Over the last decade, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has grown into the most profitable media franchise in history. As of January 2022, the MCU accounted for four of the top ten-grossing films of all time. The expansive collection of films ranging from Iron Man (2008) to Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) has captured the imagination of new generations of viewers and taken the genre to new heights of commercial and critical success. In Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism, Paul Hirsch explores the origins of these superheroes who have experienced such a profound renaissance in recent years. Hirsch examines comic books as instruments of American empire and unpacks the complicated relationship between government and publishers that have shaped these comic books’ imagery and messages over their eighty-year history.

book cover for Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism

Hirsh’s book marks an impressive effort to elucidate the political, cultural, and diplomatic legacies of an artifact that has been regarded by many as “trash.” Such attitudes have meant that cartoons’ history has “been obscured through shame, malice, and benign indifference.” Yet, Hirsch has turned up treasures through his tenacious research and the full-page, full-color reprints splendidly illustrate his analysis throughout.

Pulp Empire traces the dynamic relationship between the industry and state and federal governments, a connection that influenced comic books’ development throughout the twentieth century. Hirsch characterizes the emergence of comic books in the 1930s as products that exploited the creative energies of marginalized men and women. Writers and artists were stingily compensated for their work, while publishers began profiting handsomely as the pamphlet’s popularity rose. American entry into World War II led the industry in a new direction as the US government sought to use comic books as propaganda to generate support for the war effort and promote racial stereotypes about the nation’s adversaries. The government largely stopped regulating the medium following the war and, during subsequent decades, the industry began to depict darker stories as American society lived under the pall of nuclear warfare. Pages were soon filled with gruesome images of crime, violence, and the destructive effects of atomic explosions.

cover for "The Fighting Yank," on the cover of Startling Comics — *“The Fighting Yank,” on the cover of Startling Comics #10, Sept. 1941. Art by Elmer Wexler. Source: Digital Comic Museum*

Such seedy scenes and pervasive racist attitudes in comic books invited criticism on several fronts. Hirsch profiles anti-comic campaigners who decried these pamphlets as corrupting influences on American youth that contributed to rises in crime and juvenile delinquency. Others took a different tack and warned that stories effused with racial enmity eroded American credibility as a beacon of hope and democracy abroad during the intensifying ideological conflict of the Cold War. Hirsch shows how these efforts ultimately resulted in self-imposed censorship. New covert collaboration between the government and publishers crafted fresh characters and narratives to serve as propaganda designed to condemn communism and improve attitudes toward the United States. Several superheroes who have gained acclaim in recent films, such as Iron Man, Thor, and Spider-Man, were born from this public-private partnership and acted as implicit (or in some cases explicit) agents of US foreign policy.

Pulp Empire is filled with fascinating anecdotes and incisive analysis of the ephemera of the US empire. This book offers something for an array of audiences, from fervent comic book fans to historians of American foreign policy. Hirsch deftly deals with several dimensions of comics’ hidden history, from their perpetuation of racist and sexist tropes to their use as a unique tool of soft power popular abroad across class lines. Finally, Hirsch’s analysis of the debates over the atomic age played out in comic book pages proves both entertaining and enlightening. Pulp Empire effectively interrogates the intersection between politics and popular culture and profiles how superheroes have been deployed to serve American expansionist goals.

Jon Buchleiter is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He studies United States history with particular interest in US foreign policy of the Cold War. His current research examines the institutionalization of arms control and disarmament efforts and successive administrations approached and prioritized arms control initiatives. At UT, Jon is a Graduate Fellow with the Clements Center for National Security and Brumley Fellow with the Strauss Center for International Security and Law. Jon received his BA in Peace, War, and Defense and Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Review of The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era (2022)

While most Americans are likely to think of President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) in connection with the Vietnam War, Johnson himself wanted to be remembered in terms of his domestic achievements in the form of the Great Society. Lacking in many accounts of LBJ are his policies toward the rest of the world. In The End of Ambition, Mark Atwood Lawrence brings into focus U.S. foreign policy during the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations, by focusing on the Third World, with the notable exclusion of Vietnam, during LBJ’s tenure. Few scholars are better positioned to undertake this study. Lawrence is currently the Director of the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum and an accomplished scholar specializing in the Vietnam War and more broadly in the history of U.S. foreign policy in the 1960s and 1970s. As an historian steeped in the politics of the era, Lawrence addresses an important shortfall in scholarship on the Johnson Administration and U.S. foreign policy in general.

book cover for The End of Ambition : The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era

Lawrence begins by considering the legacy bequeathed to LBJ by John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK). Johnson began his presidency by committing to JFK’s agenda and maintained much of his team. This proved problematic as JFK had often failed to establish clear objectives or priorities and seemed to lack a fixed set of guiding principles. In Lawrence’s words the Kennedy administration was a “conglomeration of tendencies, rather than [an] executor of a core set of ideas.” Lawrence reviews the Kennedy Administration’s approach to four countries—Brazil, India, Iran, Indonesia—and one region—Southern Africa—to provide context for his investigation of the Johnson administration’s approach. Supporters of Kennedy might object to Lawrence’s critical portrayal of the JFK administration as lacking context and depth. However, considering Lawrence’s focus on LBJ’s foreign policy pertaining to the Third World, he does an admirable job in providing the right amount of context critical to a nuanced exploration of LBJ’s approach to the third world, without overwhelming the reader.

LBJ’s ambitions in the domestic context were clear, as was his desire to focus on domestic affairs over foreign policy. In line with this basic intent, the Johnson administration adopted a distinct approach to the Third World that, for better or worse, resolved the ambiguities of JFK’s administration. LBJ sought to lower U.S. ambitions in the Third World and reduce risk while shoring up U.S. control over global affairs by establishing or bolstering cooperative regimes. Despite the judgment of many, including LBJ himself, that he lacked foreign policy expertise, LBJ’s approach to international affairs was rooted in intellectual tendencies distinct from those of JFK, not ignorance. Where JFK sought to transform, LBJ sought to manage. Still, Lawrence points out that LBJ was more visionary than JFK in areas that today we refer to as transnational issues. Further, while LBJ’s ambitions in foreign policy may have been tempered by his desire to focus on domestic affairs, he nonetheless displayed the state-building impulse of the 1930s in both the domestic and foreign arenas. This might be expected based on LBJ’s admiration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and LBJ’s desire to bring to full fruition the wider new deal program.

Five case studies form the heart of Lawrence’s book, covering U.S. policy toward Brazil, India, Iran, Indonesia, and Southern Africa. Central to LBJ’s foreign policy in each of these case studies was a desire to minimize U.S. burdens so as to not further distract from efforts in Vietnam as well as Johnson’s broader goal of advancing the Great Society program. This was the key driver in the LBJ administration’s bringing to power, or enhancing relations with, often authoritarian regimes that could effectively govern and reduce the potential for conflict or communist advances while acting in concert with U.S. interests more broadly. In Brazil, LBJ presided over transformative events and constructed a new relationship with a military regime that effectively dismantled Brazilian democracy. The administration’s patterns and policies in Brazil informed his approach to the Third World for the duration of his tenure. These tendencies included favoring the development of constructive change and democracy over the long-term by countering the danger’s posed by communist movements.

A general labeled "anti democratic rulers" says to President Johnson: "Where I'm in charge, there's absolutely no danger of democratic government being subverted." — This cartoon by Herb Block was published in the Washington Post on May 3, 1965, a few days after U.S. Marines landed in the Dominican Republic to bolster a friendly regime. The cartoon hints at the Johnson administration’s attraction to reliable authoritarian leaders across the Third World. Source: The Herb Block Foundation

With India, LBJ shared Kennedy’s hope that resistance to Chinese expansion would serve as a basis for cooperation, but by early 1966 he was losing hope for reasons including India’s lack of support for U.S. actions in Vietnam. In LBJ’s approach toward India, we see another principle emerge: the emphasis on economic development more so than military assistance. This certainly held true in the case of U.S. policy toward Iran. There was also a China angle in enhancing relations with Tehran as a hedge against Islamabad’s improving relations with China.

In Indonesia, the rise to power of the military led to the “evisceration of the world’s third-largest communist party.” Still, among the countries explored, Indonesia was the most resistant to U.S. influence. The Johnson administration wisely opted for a low-key approach, playing the long game by building influence in select elements of the Indonesian military and society. LBJ and his team viewed Indonesia as a success story that gave American leaders renewed confidence that the Vietnam War was achieving important results even absent a clear military victory. Johnson felt that if the United States had not taken a stand in Vietnam the countercoup in Indonesia in 1965 and the defeat of communism would not have come to pass.

A meeting of the National Security Council on January 7, 1964, reached consensus on the need to keep providing aid to Indonesia despite Sukarno’s provocations. CIA Director John McCone sits at the far end of the table, with Budget Director David Bell to his right and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to his left. Around the table in a clockwise direction are Undersecretary of State W. Averell Harriman, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, President Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, Assistant Secretary of Defense William Bundy, Air Force General Curtis LeMay, an unidentified official, and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy. Source: LBJ Library photo by Yoichi Okamoto

Even though Southern Africa held less strategic importance to the United States, it provoked more political controversy. This was based on intersections with the U.S. domestic context, specifically civil rights. Here Lawrence’s case study differs in that it involves a region, not just a nation, though Rhodesia is the primary focus. Despite the differences, the same patterns and policies were clearly in evidence including a desire to minimize U.S. direct involvement, particularly any type of military involvement. Vietnam was certainly a consideration, but one can also appreciate a sense of realistic assessments and expectations regarding the importance of the region and what U.S. power could accomplish. Although one could argue that an appreciation of U.S. constraints emerged only due to Vietnam, such a judgment seems to underestimate LBJ’s priorities. It is likely that LBJ would have opted for such an approach even absent Vietnam as his priority was the Great Society. In fact, Lawrence’s work supports the contention that LBJ had across a broad basis a preference for restraint overseas and action on the home front.

Lawrence not only covers this history of foreign policy during a critical period in American history, but he also considers patterns and precedents. The title of the book may be mildly misleading in this regard. Lawrence asserts that the United States is shaped by the competing impulses of worldmaking and self-interest. In this context Lawrence asserts that the United States has faced multiple inflection points in which it curbed its worldmaking ambitions in favor of a narrower pursuit of its self-interest. It might be more accurate to say that the United States tempered its ambition, but that the pattern that Lawrence alludes to in the ebbing and flowing of American ambition remains intact and returned with a vengeance in the 1990s.

Lawrence’s volume raises many important issues including the relationship between domestic and foreign policy that in total represent the national interest. There are few case studies as potentially rich in this regard as LBJ’s basic dilemma – Vietnam vs the Great Society. Such a study would provide additional context and understanding of the priorities and rationale guiding how the Johnson administration faced the rest of the world, aside from Vietnam. For scholars of the Cold War, the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies, and U.S. foreign policy toward the third world more generally, Lawrence’s The End of Ambition makes an invaluable and much needed contribution.

Bryan Port is a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin and a civil servant with the Department of the Army assigned to U.S. Army Futures Command as a strategist. He is a historian of the United States focusing on U.S. intellectual history. His research interests include the construction and application of the idea of national interest as well as grand strategy. Bryan holds a M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University and a M.S. in National Security Strategy from the National War College. His ongoing research centers on American progressive leaders and thinkers of the first half of the 20th century.

Review of The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams, and their Clash over America’s Future (2021)

In 1914, the United States was an emerging world power. Many of its citizens looked forward to a future defined by more extensive American involvement in global affairs. However, their growing optimism also masked profound disagreements about the kind of role Americans should play on the world stage. Some wanted their country to challenge the political, economic, and military dominance of its European and Japanese rivals. Others hoped that American leaders would ensure perpetual peace by extending the scope of international law, liberal democracy, or corporate capitalism. Rival policy agendas vied for attention in the halls of power and the popular press, sparking heated public debates that touched on virtually every aspect of American foreign relations. The debates themselves, which highlight the broad spectrum of possibilities open to American foreign policymakers at the dawn of the “American Century,” are endlessly fascinating. But because of their variety and complexity, they are also quite difficult to study.

book cover for The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams, and their Clash over America’s Future

The Approaching Storm, a forthcoming book by popular historian Neil Lanctot, attempts to solve this problem by focusing exclusively on the contentious debate over the possibility of American intervention in the First World War. The outbreak of war in Europe at the end of July 1914 dramatically intensified the rivalry between hawks and pacifists in the United States, bringing their worldviews—and the differences between them—into much sharper focus. The ensuing “clash over America’s future” pitted some of the country’s most influential politicians and thought leaders against one another. Three of them occupy center stage in Lanctot’s book: President Woodrow Wilson; his archrival Theodore Roosevelt, who became the leading advocate of military preparedness and war with Germany; and Jane Addams, a world-renowned social reformer and pacifist. The Approaching Storm colorfully describes their involvement in the intervention debate. More ambitiously, it also tries to locate the source of their profound disagreements about the future of American foreign policy. Lanctot contends that his protagonists’ “starkly different” responses to the First World War reflected their “unique visions of what America could and should be” (21).

Although The Approaching Storm is based on extensive archival research, it is primarily intended for popular consumption and eschews extensive engagement with relevant historical scholarship. Nevertheless, professional historians and policy experts will find plenty to admire in Lanctot’s accessible and engaging book. The author is at his best when he writes about Addams, whose pacifism seems a logical extension of her commitment to social justice and her faith in the meliorative power of expertise. His portraits of Roosevelt and Wilson are less analytically rich, but they’re still incisive. The Approaching Storm hints at a relationship between Roosevelt’s obsession with manliness, his assertive approach to domestic politics, and his eagerness for war. It also calls attention to Wilson’s “Machiavellian” political savvy, subtly challenging outdated realist caricatures, which cast the President as a hapless idealist.

*Lillian Wald (left) and Jane Addams (right) speak with press correspondents, circa 1916.*
*Source: Library of Congress*

Lanctot’s boldest and most provocative intervention may be his decision to reframe the wartime intervention debate as a three-cornered contest. Much has been written about the rivalry between Roosevelt and the more cautious Wilson, who initially supported American neutrality. Yet in The Approaching Storm, it is not Wilson but Addams who draws the sharpest contrast with the hawkish “TR.” Long before Wilson began touting his plans for a League of Nations, Addams envisioned and tried to execute an ambitious, dynamic peacekeeping strategy. Her ultimate goal was to place the United States at the head of a conference of neutral powers capable of ending the war in Europe by diplomatic rather than military means. Lanctot takes this plan very seriously, praising Addams’ pragmatism and pointing out how close she came to winning allies in high places.

Addams, of course, did not emerge victorious from the intervention debate. Instead, in April 1917, Congress—to Roosevelt’s delight and at Wilson’s request—declared a “war to end all wars” against Germany. It was a fateful decision, signaling that the United States was now willing to use armed force against perceived threats to world order. But as The Approaching Storm makes clear, the choice for war was far from preordained. By presenting Addams’ pacifism as a viable policy agenda, Lanctot’s book reminds us that the seemingly inevitable transformation of the United States into a great military power was not, in fact, inevitable at all. Between 1914 and 1917, American leaders could have steered their country down a very different path, committing themselves to forging world peace without fighting Wilson’s “war to end all wars.” Today, as shifts in the global balance of power make American military supremacy increasingly difficult to maintain, that’s something worth thinking about.

John Gleb is an America in the World Consortium Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs in Washington, D. C. He is also a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his MA in May 2020. John received his BA at the University of California, Berkeley, from which he graduated with High Honors and Highest Distinction in 2017. At UT, he is a Graduate Student Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security and has appeared as a guest on The Slavic Connexion, a podcast affiliated with the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies. He is also fluent in French. John’s research focuses on the rise of the American national security state and on the relationship between foreign and domestic politics in the United States. He is especially interested in the concept of political consensus, a yearning for which has decisively shaped the worldview and activities of American foreign policymakers since the turn of the twentieth century. John’s dissertation will examine attempts to forge a foreign policy consensus both inside and outside the halls of government between 1900 and 1950. Thanks to those early consensus-building campaigns, the national security state that emerged during the Cold War would consist of more than just a cluster of institutions: as John will show, it also encompassed (and continues to encompass) a system of shared values and ideas from which those institutions had to draw power in order to compensate for their formal weakness.

Review of Hungry for Revolution: The Politics of Food and the Making of Modern Chile (2021)

More than fifty years ago, Chile began a democratic path toward socialism with the election of Salvador Allende. President Allende promised that the country’s revolution would taste of “empanadas and red wine.” These quintessentially Chilean staples represented his pledge to ensure social welfare. In Hungry for Revolution: The Politics of Food and the Making of Modern Chile, historian Joshua Frens-String explores this relationship between revolutionary politics, food security, and nutrition science in twentieth-century Chile. He concludes that the Allende years signified the culmination of decades-long popular struggles to position food security as a basic right of democratic citizenship.

Over seven chronological chapters, Frens-String weaves together political, social, and economic history to reveal how Chile’s food system reflected larger inequalities within society. The book’s first two chapters chronicle the rise of workers’ organizations in the urban capital of Santiago and the mining camps of northern Chile. Despite distinct economic contexts, both regions grappled with high prices and food shortages. Frens-String uses profiles of individual labor organizers to drive the narrative. He shows that these actors identified hunger as clear evidence of working-class exploitation and demanded popular access to dietary staples. Through decades of campaigns against the rising cost of living, Chilean workers made it clear that food security was central to a functional national economy.

In chapters three and four, Hungry for Revolution shifts the focus from the streets to the halls of government offices. This section traces how state actors responded to the left’s politicization of food. In particular, Frens-String’s attention to gendered ideas is a significant strength of these chapters. Government officials, social scientists, and medical doctors often blamed mothers for poor nutritional outcomes. Thus, educational outreach targeted poor and working-class women. Public health officials in the 1940s offered cooking classes and consumer handbooks to teach new food preparation methods and to encourage new eating habits. In the countryside, the state urged rural women to participate in agrarian reform by embracing sacrifice and frugality. Government officials pushed women to plant small family gardens, preserve their own vegetables, and switch to composting to conserve scarce fertilizers. The state’s focus on female consumers in its efforts to alter Chile’s nutritional habits reflected gendered beliefs about work and domesticity.

Allende supporters walk toward the government palace to hear his speech on International Workers Day, 1973. Source: Biblioteca Nacional

The concluding chapters of Hungry for Revolution demonstrate that state intervention in food production and distribution fueled both a socialist revolution and a far-right counterrevolution in the 1960s and 1970s. Rural landowners, urban merchants, and female consumers rejected the government’s interference in their decisions to produce or consume certain foods. As food demand outpaced supply, the Allende government encouraged consumers to replace traditional staples, such as red meat, with unconventional substitutes, like merluza fish. The state’s failure to ensure consumer abundance led to anxiety and frustration, which the opposition harnessed to demand an end to state intervention. Rising social unrest would pave the way for the military coup that overthrew Allende in 1973, which in turn led to the dismantling of the Chilean welfare state.

Hungry for Revolution is a fascinating account of national development in twentieth-century Chile. Using food politics as a lens into larger debates about what democratic states can and should provide their citizens, Frens-String traces how Chileans came to see food security as a basic right of citizenship. He illustrates that popular mobilization around consumer issues furthers our understanding of social welfare and economic justice. This book will appeal to historians of modern Chile as well as food historians. However, Hungry for Revolution offers insight to scholars broadly interested in national development, democratization, and social welfare in the Americas.

Gabrielle Esparza is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a historian of Latin America with a focus on twentieth-century Argentine history. Her current research interests include democratization, transitional justice, human rights, and civil-military relations. Gabrielle holds a B.A. in History and Spanish from Illinois College and received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Argentina in 2017. At the University of Texas at Austin, Gabrielle has served as a graduate research assistant at the Texas State Historical Association and contributed to the organization’s Handbook of Texas. She served as co-coordinator of the Symposium on Gender, History, and Sexuality in 2020-2021. Currently, she is the Associate Editor of Not Even Past.

Review of Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration (2018)

In Undocumented Lives, Ana Raquel Minian explores the inner world of undocumented Mexican migrants in the United States from 1965 to the present. While detailing the harsh realities that these migrants faced, Minian also demonstrates how the migrants’ perceptions of their lives differed significantly from those of the state and how the draconian migration policies of the United States and Mexico were not just detrimental to the interests of the migrants but also of the governments. Foregrounding the voices and the choices of the migrants, Minian argues that while the undocumented Mexicans in the United States maintained transnational connections between the United States and Mexico, they were unable to claim full belonging in either place. By displaying the subjectivity of the undocumented lives, Minian challenges the dominant rhetoric in the present day that often characterizes migrants as agentless people who are completely subjugated by the power of the nation-state without their own sets of priorities, sense of belonging, emotionality, and other elements that are fundamental of being human.

By foregrounding the perspectives of undocumented migrants, Minian contests common stereotypes. She shows that most Mexican migrants simply wanted to look for work in the United States and were not drug dealers. They did not gain social benefits from the U.S. government and instead created their own transnational welfare system that supported their communities in Mexico. Women preferred to stay in Mexico and raise children rather than giving birth in the United States to produce anchor babies. Gay men also preferred to stay in the more conservative Mexico rather than moving to the more liberal United States.

Perhaps the most significant myth that Minian debunked was that undocumented migrants had a fixed place where they could call home. Although many believe that Mexican migrants had full substantive citizenship in Mexico, making their migration to the United States unnecessary, such an assumption, as Minian shows, is far from the truth. In Mexico, the poor economy damaged these migrants, depriving them of reasonable livelihood and making emigration the only viable option for them to survive. Meanwhile, the Mexican government did not treat these migrants as full citizens and instead considered them to be superfluous to the country. Following such logic, Mexican officials believed that out migration could alleviate the pressure of domestic unemployment as these “extras” departed Mexico and competed in the U.S. job market. Therefore, while the undocumented migrants encountered discrimination in the United States as “illegal aliens,” they also faced marginalization in the country of their citizenship and were unable to establish roots in their communities in Mexico.

Minian further shows that without attending to the motivation and the reality of the Mexican migrants, the U.S. government devised and implemented faulty immigration policies that were detrimental to both the migrants as well as its own interests. Minian points out that Mexican migrants frequently engaged in circular migration to maintain their transnational belonging. Therefore, their movement between Mexico and the United States was frequent and few wanted to stay in the United States permanently. However, because policymakers failed to understand such migration pattern, not only did they formulate laws that created excessive hardships for the migrants and their families, but they also, ironically, harmed the interest of the U.S. government. Between 1965 and 1986, the U.S. government legislated multiple immigration laws that aimed to reduce the number of undocumented migrants within the United States. However, these laws, by the hardening of the U.S.-Mexico borders, actually increased the number of “illegal aliens” as the Mexicans ceased to circularly migrate because they were afraid of being detained and deported at the borders.

Demonstrators with signs, most in Spanish protesting the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration bill in Los Angeles, Calif., 1983 — *Demonstrators with signs, primarily in Spanish, protest the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration bill in Los Angeles, California, 1983.*
*Source: UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections*

Despite encountering severe discriminations in the United States, national unbelonging in Mexico, and the local pressure to exit, Mexican migrants challenged their marginal status in all three spaces. In the United States, these undocumented people fought for their rights and protested their “illegal alien status” with help from various organizations. Meanwhile, they demonstrated their importance to the Mexican economy by funding welfares in their hometowns. While physically distant from their families, they preserved their transnational households through letter writing, photo exchanging, and circular migration. By asserting their rights and presence, these migrants maintained partial belonging to the United States, Mexico, and their local communities.

Minian’s work points to the importance of using oral historical interviews to uncover the stories of those whose voices that are so often absent in the archives. To present the history of undocumented migrants from their own perspectives, Minian discovered and examined privately held documents including letters, photographs, and pamphlets. By using these personal/family documents, Minian successfully foregrounded the perspectives of the migrants. She also supplemented her research with an impressive 250 oral historical interviews with the migrants and their families. While oral history can be problematic as the interviewee might withhold, distort, or simply forget certain information, Minian mitigated such issue by distilling the broader patterns within these accounts rather than focusing on any single story. A collective experience narrated from the migrants’ perspectives therefore emerged. Undoubtedly, these methods are useful for future historians looking to incorporate the voices of the marginalized in their studies. Overall, insightful and groundbreaking, Undocumented Lives will appeal to scholars interested in migration studies, borderlands history, and Mexican American studies.

Jian Gao is a third-year PhD student at UT Austin. His primary research focuses on the transnational history of Chinese in Mexico during the first half of the twentieth century, and his secondary research focuses on the global dynamics of Latin America during the Cold War era. His works have appeared in The Latin Americanist, Asian Journal of Latin American Studies, The International Report on Drug Studies, and most recently History Compass. His papers have won multiple awards from Latin American Studies Association (LASA), Rocky Mountain Council on Latin American Studies (RMCLAS), Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies (SECOLAS), and the World History Association (WHA).

Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America before the Second World War – a debate between suffering and medical knowledge for the greater good

banner image for Review of Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America before the Second World War

Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America before the Second World War by Susan Lederer explores the production of medical knowledge through human experimentation and animal vivisection. Lederer’s contextualization of the subject and her well-chosen examples enlighten readers and allow us to explore the intersection between politics, economy, medicine, and, of course, issues of ethical and moral character. One of the core topics in the book is the debate between the arguments of vivisectionists and antivivisectionists, vivisection being the practice of operating on live animals for the pursuit of scientific knowledge.[1] Through this discussion, one sees that the debate between the advancement of science, the greater good of society, and concerns about causing harm to the most vulnerable characterized the dialogue about human experimentation and animal vivisection in the early 20^th century.

Lederer considers three interlocking questions: why “did American physicians routinely perform non-therapeutic experiments on their patients?” and “who served as the subject of these experiments and what risks did they encounter?”.[2] These questions are essential to the historical significance of the book. Although the Nuremberg trials generated awareness of human experimentation and the consequences it could have while also establishing a set of rules and regulations, we cannot understand human experimentation without first understanding what happened before these trials. As Lederer put it, the Nuremberg trials are not the start of human experimentation but, instead, part of it.[3] That is why it is valuable to understand human experimentation before the Second World War. It allows us to understand the influence of technological developments and historical events like the X-ray and the Great Depression on what research is today. This is one of Lederer’s main arguments, which she addresses in the introduction and chapter one.

Scientists test yellow fever serum by injecting it into white mice. USPHS (United States Public Health Service) Rocky Mountain Laboratory, Hamilton, Montana circa 1942. Source: Library of Congress

The second chapter focuses on the claim that human experimentation must be looked at in the context of animal protection.[4] According to Lederer, antivivisectionists argued “it is not a question of animals or human beings, it is a question of animals and human beings”[5], showing how concerns for human experimentation started when the public became worried about animal welfare. The main argument was that “no progress in medicine… was worth the pain inflicted in laboratories by physicians and physiologists”.[6] Starting in 1866 with the establishment of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) by Henry Bergh and, later, the creation of various societies for the protection of children in New York and Pennsylvania in the 1870s, concerns over human experimentation were characterized by a preoccupation over those who were most vulnerable and did not have a voice.[7] These ideas circulated within the context of Darwinism, which fostered wider “acceptance of human and animal kinship”.[8]

In chapters three and four, Lederer poses a debate between the ideas of vivisectionists and antivivisectionists.[9] She refers to Hideyo Noguchi’s experiments, where healthy children and hospital patients were used to develop a luetin diagnostic test for syphilis.[10] She also talks about Arthur H. Wentworth’s “experimental tapping of the subarachnoid space,” which, according to Wentworth himself, caused “momentary pain” and “some children to shrink back and cry aloud”.[11] These types of experiments—which inflicted pain among vulnerable people like children—caused controversy among antivivisectionists. For example, Diana Belais, the president of the New York Antivivisection Society, claimed that medical knowledge was placed before the wellbeing of the most vulnerable. She along with lawmakers, like Republican senator Jacob H. Gallinger, tried to pass laws regulating vivisection.

Dr. Hideyo Noguchi (with back to camera) works in a research lab while William Alexander Young and Helen Russell watch. — *Dr. Hideyo Noguchi (with back to camera), William Alexander Young, and Helen Russell at the Medical Research Institute in Accra, Ghana circa 1928. Source: Wellcome Collection*

Meanwhile, in addressing vivisectionists’ arguments, Lederer talks about the American Medical Association (AMA) and Abraham Flexner’s survey of medical education, Charles W. Eliot’s reforms at Harvard Medical School, and the surge of research as the gold standard for creating medical knowledge. [12] Her sources rely on public statements from William H. Welch, the dean of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, and William W. Keen, the president of the AMA from 1899 to 1900. In contrast to antivivisectionists, vivisectionists’ main argument was that physicians had the obligation to generate medical knowledge, “to heal the sick, to check disease and to prevent death”, all of which could be achieved through vivisection and by having fewer restrictions in the law.[13]

The author also discusses issues that, despite being interesting because of their historical relevance, are incredibly heartbreaking. In chapter five, she delves deeper into the use of the most vulnerable—namely children, prisoners, soldiers, the poor, and those socially marginalized—as subjects for human experimentation. Experiments like those performed by J. Marion Sims on “black female slaves… to test his discovery of a repair for vesico-vaginal fistula”[14] are disturbing because of the intersection between social and political conditions with medicine. However, this discussion could have benefitted from a more in-depth discussion of race, social hierarchies, and inequality. Although Lederer used sources like articles from the Journal of Experimental Medicine, quotes from multiple figures, extracts from the magazine Life, and statements from the American Humane Association, she could have included a more human perspective from those who were experimented on, especially since the history of medicine deals with emotions and not just bodies and medical knowledge. Chapter five’s focus on the subjects of human experimentation introduces sub-arguments related to the issue of consent and whether we can justify experimentation on people whose consent cannot be obtained (like children) or is dependent on political or economic factors.

Despite debates on the ethics of human experimentation, chapter six demonstrates that research and “the discovery of insulin, sulfa drugs, and new treatments for pernicious anemia” eventually helped inspire confidence in medical researchers and doctors.[15] They began to be seen as heroes, as “those who survived their bouts with laboratory-acquired infections earned praise”.[16] There is a special mention of Walter Reed—who proved yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitoes—and Jesse Lazear—who was in Reed’s group and died from yellow fever as a result of self-experimentation.[17] This conclusion allows readers to see how research “became an integral part of [the] academic medicine”[18] and how it was influenced by everything that was discussed in previous chapters, further illuminating the historical relevance of the book.

*A scientist dispenses yellow fever vaccine into ampules. USPHS (United States Public Health Service) Rocky Mountain Laboratory. Hamilton, Montana circa 1942. Source: Library of Congress*

Lederer’s book brilliantly explores what human experimentation was like before the Second World War by making reference to important figures like William W. Keen, William H. Welch, Diana Belais, and Jacob Gallinger and using sources like extracts from scientific journals and quotes from those involved. It is enlightening to read as it gives readers an insight into the arguments of both vivisectionists and antivivisectionists. Also, the idea that human experimentation cannot be understood without knowing what happened before the Nuremberg trials is valuable because the history of human experimentation does not have a beginning or an end: it is embedded in an ebb and flow of political, economic, and social circumstances. This book should be read by anyone who seeks to understand the complexities behind human experimentation. It is through books like this that we become aware of the implications of the creation of scientific knowledge and better understand ourselves as humans.

Juliana Márquez is a sophomore at the Johns Hopkins University majoring in Molecular & Cellular Biology. She has always been interested in the connections between epistemology and history. Since taking a class on the History of Modern Medicine, Juliana immediately found a passion for understanding how scientific and medical knowledge is created. She hopes to use this understanding to have a more human-based approach to science.

References

Goodman, Jordan, Anthony McElligott, and Lara Marks. “Making Human Bodies Useful: Historicizing Medical Experiments in the Twentieth Century.” Essay. In Useful Bodies: Humans in the Service of Medical Science in the Twentieth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

“vivisection.” In Concise Medical Dictionary, edited by Law, Jonathan, and Elizabeth Martin. : Oxford University Press, 2020. https://www-oxfordreference-com.proxy1.library.jhu.edu/view/10.1093/acref/9780198836612.001.0001/acref-9780198836612-e-10814.

Lederer, Susan. 1995. Subjected To Science: Human Experimentation In America Before The Second World War. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

[1] Jonathan Law and Elizabeth Martin, “vivisection”, 2020

[2] Susan Lederer, Subjected to Science, XV

[3] Jordan Goodman, Anthony McElligott and Lara Marks, “Making Human Bodies Useful”, 3

[4] Lederer, XV

[5] Lederer, 101

[6] Lederer, 42

[7] In this chapter, Lederer alludes to the heartbreaking case of Mary Ellen Wilson, a 9-year-old girl who got beaten by her stepmother, as a catalyst for a growing concern for children and the creation of societies that cared about the wellbeing of the most vulnerable; Lederer, 28

[8] Lederer, 30

[9] Since there are various perspectives around human experimentation, Lederer does not only have one central argument. Instead, she addresses the perspective of both sides to contextualize human experimentation as a whole and go deep into what human experimentation was like before the Second World War.

[10] Lederer, 83

[11] Lederer, 62

[12] Lederer, 54-55

[13] Lederer, 100

[14] Lederer, 115

[15] Lederer, 126

[16] Lederer, 130

[17] Lederer, 18

[18] Lederer, 127

Review of The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority (2015)

In the current era of #StopAsianHate, there have been numerous conversations regarding the unique position occupied by Asian and Asian Americans in America’s wider ethnic and racial hierarchies. Importantly, these conversations have examined the origins of the so-called the ‘model minority’ myth. Esteemed Asian American historian Madeline Hsu incisively captures that history in The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority (2015). In nine well-researched chapters, Hsu walks readers chronologically through the sociopolitical processes that propelled the incorporation of a privileged class of Asian migrants and how liberal immigration policy facilitated the transition from ‘yellow peril’ to ‘model minority.’ Hsu’s overall argument emphasizes that the contemporary favorable positioning of Asian immigrants in the United States is not strictly a product of cultural traits. Instead, she points to foreign and domestic policies that prioritized the entry of highly skilled, educated, Westernized Asian immigrants.

Cover of The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority; a large group of Asian immigrants poses for a group photo as they debark a Pan Am flight

In the book’s early chapters, Hsu historically situates the entry of privileged Chinese migrants during the height of America’s racial exclusion. It is important to note that Chinese were the only group identified specifically by race for immigration exclusion. United States law prohibited Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States and obtaining naturalized citizenship. Hsu examines the contrasting experiences of the exempted classes (students, diplomats, businesspersons) of Chinese migrants who were able to enter the United States for educational purposes in what Hsu classifies as the ‘side door policy’ (36). With a special focus on exchange students, Hsu shows readers that the earliest Chinese travelers in Western countries were brought by missionaries usually as students and converts.

Chinese students were not spared xenophobic encounters and racial antagonism, but according to Hsu, they nonetheless benefited from attending American universities to foster economic development in China. Additionally, U.S. educated Chinese immigrants like Meng Zhi played an instrumental role in enhancing Sino-American partnerships by establishing cultural exchange programs like the China Institute in America to advocate for Chinese educational interests abroad. Though not explicitly stated by Hsu, the advocacy of Chinese educational interests represents early examples of transnational and diasporic politics. The political activities conducted by this privileged class of migrants laid the foundation for the elimination of America’s restrictive immigration policies in subsequent decades.

Through Chapters 4 to 7, Hsu emphasizes how Cold War politics facilitated the piecemeal but eventual elimination of America’s racially exclusionary immigration policies. During the Chinese Civil War, many Chinese students studying in the United States became stateless persons with the emergence of a communist government. This reality compelled the United States government to allow Chinese students to adjust their legal status. State and private actors began privileging the voices and experiences of educated Chinese students, who were deemed to be of economic value and assimilable because of their exceptional educational attainment and shared political ideologies with the U.S. After decades of extensive advocacy from privileged Chinese immigrants, the United States government passed the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965, which abolished racial and national origin preferences in immigration. During this period the yellow peril designation began to shift to the model minority framework. While the Hart-Cellar Act was a major milestone in U.S. immigration policy, Hsu reminds readers that the act continued to selectively screen for highly educated, highly skilled immigrants in an effort to fulfill the United States economic interests. Thus, contemporary U.S. immigration policy maintained its inherently exclusive nature and reinforced U.S. racial hierarchies.

Miss April Lou, a teacher in Manhattan, poses with six Chinese children, recent arrivals from Hong Kong and Formosa, who are holding up placards giving his or her Chinese name (both in ideographs and in transliteration) and the name to be entered upon the official school records. Source: Library of Congress, photo by Fred Palumbo.

Hsu’s concluding chapters discuss the social and cultural consequences of this new racial positioning of Asian American communities in the United States after the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965. Asian Americans, specifically Chinese American communities, became celebrated for entering professional and white-collar employment. However, Hsu reminds readers that the class status of certain Asian immigrants in the United States was due to the fact that they came from privileged backgrounds thus facilitating their middle- and upper-middle class respectability in the United States. The increased visibility of Asian immigrants in the private and public spheres is due to contemporary immigration policies screening immigrants for their economic capital and employment potential for entry.

The Good Immigrants is not only a must read but serves as an invaluable contribution to the field of Critical Race Studies because it details how different groups have different relationships with America’s ethnic and racial hierarchies. The emphasis on the perceived assimilation of Asian Americans has prevented U.S. institutions from addressing the ongoing effects of racial marginalization, which the #StopAsianHate movement examines. More importantly, The Good Immigrants shows the role post-Civil Rights neoliberal public policy has played in maintaining structural racial inequality. This book illustrates how migrants with socioeconomic status and social capital have complicated perspectives regarding American racial politics and racial inequality. While many conservatives and to some degree liberals may argue that race is no longer a factor in determining someone’s success, The Good Immigrants successfully counters popular narratives about individual responsibility and ‘cultural values’ by highlighting the structural factors that produce inequitable racial outcomes for neoliberal purposes.

Review of Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science (1997) by Christopher Sellers

In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson pioneered the public discussion of the dangers of toxic substances present in the environment as a result of industrial activity. Christopher C. Sellers investigates the type of scientific knowledge about toxic substances that Rachel Carson built upon and popularized in this famous study. The book follows the development of industrial work-related illnesses from the 1890s through the early 1950s. First understood as “bodily idiosyncrasies” (28) that were outside the main concern of employers, or that should be endured by masculine workers, knowledge about occupational disease underwent significant transformations over the course of the early 20^th century.

Cover of Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science

Sellers’ work is tightly woven and tracks multiple factors that contributed to the development of environmental health science. First, his work follows a series of key studies across the American industrial landscape: phosphorus poisoning from match factories, lead poisoning from a number of industries, silicosis from mining, radium poisoning from watch-making, and others. These demonstrate the slow development of the objects of study for this field. His study also traces changes in who had the expertise and authority to comment on the underlying causes of the illnesses, who should bear the brunt of these diseases, and the impact that this kind of medical science had for both industry, the medical profession, the state, and the lives of workers. Among the many scientists that Sellers writes into the history of environmental health science, Alice Hamilton stands out as a key advocate for the social (and political) purpose of the field and its development. Her work is important even if other contemporary physicians (such as David Edsall at the Harvard Division of Industrial Hygiene) overlooked it because it did not meet their standards for depoliticized science.

Dr. Alice Hamilton (1869-1970), an expert in occupational health issues, was Assistant Professor of Industrial Medicine at Harvard Medical School. After graduating from the University of Michigan, Hamilton did additional research in Germany and then began a lifelong effort to apply bacteriology, pharmacology, and toxicology to public health. Source: Acc. 90-105 – Science Service, Records, 1920s-1970s, Smithsonian Institution Archives

The scope of the book is clearly-defined and the chapter sequence is well-structured. Sellers frames the presentation of his research with a question containing an easy touchstone for anyone interested in environmental humanities and environmentalism: where did Rachel Carson’s knowledge of toxins come from? Sellers starts his narrative with the 1893 Chicago exhibition, by drawing our attention to the lead that was present in much of its white paint. The book is presented with a great deal detail, which makes for a somewhat slower read, but the subject necessitates the slow, methodical weaving he sets out to do.

Sellers is writing about the nature of the production of knowledge, and the implications that it had for industry, American public policy, and medical education. Even if he doesn’t specifically highlight the voices of the workers, Sellers’ work illuminates what the stakes were them. Many industrial workers distrusted the physicians who examined them, for they could be deemed unfit to work, thus hampering their chances to earn a living. When he does return to Carson’s work towards the end of the book, it is easy to understand her work as inheriting this rich history.

Sellers’ work is unique in that it first brought together medical and environmental history. In the wake of Hazards of the Job, a number of other studies of the environmental and health impacts of economic activity have followed, including Michelle Murphy’s Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience and Women Workers (2006); David Naguib Pellow’s Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago (2004); and Geoffrey Tweedale’s Magic Mineral to Killer Dust: Turner & Newall and the Asbestos Hazard (2000).

Book cover of Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers by Michelle Murphy

Book cover of Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago by David Naguib Pellow

Within the fields of Environmental history and the History of science, Sellers’ book makes another key historiographical intervention. Given that industrial diseases could not be studied only in the laboratory because a) their cause wasn’t always known and b) often it was a combination of environmental factors along with the pollutants themselves which produced the illness, the type of medical and environmental knowledge produced required study in industrial settings. In this regard, the early industrial work-place was neither a “field”, such as we might find in environmental histories of particular geographic regions, nor “the laboratory”, in the case of a specific type of invention or discovery.

Beyond these two fields, Sellers makes wider contributions. By looking at the specific hazards that workers were exposed to, his work contributes to histories of labor, as well as histories of public health as it outlines specific tensions between medical education and industrial activity.

When we eventually meet Rachel Carson’s book, as the book draws to an end, we are able to understand not only the specific historical processes that resulted in increasing knowledge of toxins like DDT, but also the peculiar relationships of research between industry and health professionals. These research activities served to confirm the “benignity” (232) of American commodities in the latter part of the 20^th century. This helps the reader understand, for example why even though knowledge of lead poisoning was common, leaded gasoline boomed in production until its eventual-phase out in the 1970s.

Ultimately, Sellers’ book is a valuable contribution to multiple fields and there is much within it that can be mined depending on one’s interest. It is a a challenging but rewarding read for anyone interested in the history of environmentalism.

Review of From Angel to Office Worker: Middle-Class Identity and Female Consciousness in Mexico, 1890-1950 (2018) by Susie S. Porter

In this fabulous book, historian Susie S. Porter examines the material conditions of working women between 1890 and 1950 and the consequent formation of middle-class female identity in Mexico City. To highlight the historical existence of this social class in Mexican society, the author focuses her attention on the ways that societal practices and debates helped construct it. Porter’s class-based analysis of the early twentieth century Mexican women’s movement considers and engages both with public debate over the role of women in society as well as with women’s rights activism. Furthermore, she frames her research as part of a broader transnational history of women and gender that accounts for the contextually differentiated development of the “feminization of bureaucracy”. Taking into consideration the global feminist movements, the author represents how women’s work and feminist movements played out at the turn of the century, how they engaged and negotiated their position during and after the Revolution, and how they organized to demand improvements in their working and living conditions.

book cover for From Angel to Office Worker cover features a woman with a 1920s bob sitting at a typewriter.

From Angel to Office Worker is a history of labor feminism. Porter’s primary contribution to this scholarship lies in her focus on the middle and working classes as a combined unit of analysis rather than as separate entities fighting different battles within the struggle for women’s rights. In doing so, she makes a case for the inclusion of the middle classes into labor studies as a whole. Porter’s study highlights the role of women’s schools and women’s later incorporation in the post-revolutionary bureaucratic system in office jobs, such as typists, archivists, and administrative secretaries. She later contends that their employment informed their activism. In constructing her argument in this way, Porter draws from a long line of feminist literature that asserts the importance of the written word (cultura escrita) in the political empowerment of women.

This, of course, links her research with female activism for the right to education, a history she traces in the implementation of schools for girls in the city, with a particular focus on the Miguel Lerdo de Tejada Commercial School for Young Ladies, inaugurated in 1903 under the governance of Porfirio Díaz. The importance Porter gives to commercial schools is an essential aspect of the book. She presents them as places of socialization where girls gained social and cultural through which they were able to find jobs and form networks of employed and educated women. These would become the nexus of feminist organized struggles.

One of the book’s most important contributions is the history Porter presents of the concept of feminism. As any sociopolitical concept, feminism has a conceptual history of its own that reflects how the concept has been used and defined depending on the historical, cultural, and social contexts it has been applied in. Thought the book, the author traces this conceptual history and in doing so explains the importance this has in the production of women’s history in Mexico. Hence, the book has a second function aside from studying the development of Mexican middle-class identity, namely tracing this concept’s incursion into Mexican society through its use and application to certain female-related practices. Susie Porter traces these practices through a meticulous analysis of the press. Her primary sources are mostly newspapers, both feminine and national ones. Media (film) is only consulted in the last chapter due to the study’s temporal focus. There is a book there waiting to be written.

*Feminist march in Mexico City, circa 1940s. Source: D.R. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México.*

The book is divided in seven chronological chapters, each of which that trace the Mexican history of the concept of feminism and of middle-class identity formation in parallel. Although From Angel to Office Worker concludes before women won the right to vote in 1955, the last two chapters engage with the early stages of suffrage activism. The book begins by tracing the discursive and material conditions of class in Mexico at the turn of the century. Thus, the first chapter conceptualizes the author’s class-based analysis and contribution. From there, Porter engages with women’s education and their incursion into the workplace (Chapter 2-3). Changes in women’s employment led to a shift from teaching, the feminine profession per excellence, to working in the bureaucratic system (Chapter 4-6). In these three chapters, the author studies and analyzes the female organizations led by women, which pressured the government to take into consideration and to apply reforms for women in order to benefit for the revolutionary government. The author’s historical analysis is impressive since the history of Mexican feminisms is a highly understudied topic. Finally, the book finishes off with an analysis of Sarah Batiza Berkowitxz’s book Nosotras las taquígrafas, and its filmographic adaptation by Emilio Gómez Muriel which the author argues exemplify the general concerns and perceptions of female workforces at a pivotal moment when a backlash aimed at removing women from the bureaucratic workforce struck.

Today, organized feminist struggles are at the core of political mobilization in favor of social justice in Mexico. One need only skim the news to see the pressure both government and society are under to dramatically modify the power structures that have historically oppressed women and feminized bodies. From Angel to Office Worker demonstrates that organized feminisms and the struggles for women’s inclusion in the workplace and society in Mexico is a century-old battle that has gone through many different stages, of which the book analyzes only one. By taking up the book, the reader can be certain that they will deepen their knowledge on the fundamental role women have historically played in the consolidation and creation of history, citizenship, and society in Mexico. More importantly, the readers will be surprised to see Mexican revolutionary and postrevolutionary history in a completely different light, one which separates itself from its highly masculine characters, premises, and common places.

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