An in-depth study of non-elite white families in Alabama—from the state’s creation through the end of the Civil War

The Failure of Our Fathers: Family, Gender, and Power in Confederate Alabama examines the evolving position of non-elite white families in Alabama during one of the most pivotal epochs in the state’s history. Drawing on a wide range of personal and public documents reflecting the state’s varied regions and economies, Victoria E. Ott uses gender and family as a lens to examine the yeomanry and poor whites, a constituency that she collectively defines as “common whites,” who identified with the Confederate cause.

Ott provides a nuanced examination of how these Alabamians fit within the antebellum era’s paternalistic social order, eventually identifying with and supporting the Confederate mission to leave the Union and create an independent, slaveholding state. But as the reality of the war slowly set in and the Confederacy began to fray, the increasing dangers families faced led Alabama’s common white men and women to find new avenues to power as a distinct socioeconomic class.

Ott argues that family provided the conceptual framework necessary to understand why common whites supported a war to protect slavery despite having little or no investment in the institution. Going to war meant protecting their families from outsiders who threatened to turn their worlds upside down. Despite class differences, common whites envisioned the Confederacy as a larger family and the state as paternal figures who promised to protect its loyal dependents throughout the conflict. Yet, as the war ravaged many Alabama communities, devotion to the Confederacy seemed less a priority as families faced continued separations, threats of death, and the potential for starvation. The construct of a familial structure that once created a sense of loyalty to the Confederacy now gave them cause to question its leadership. Ott shows how these domestic values rooted in highly gendered concepts ultimately redefined Alabama’s social structure and increased class distinctions after the war.
 

The remarkable and improbable story of the utopian single-tax social experiment that gave rise to one of the most unique and colorful communities along the Gulf Coast

Paul E. and Blanche R. Alyea’s Fairhope, 1894–1954, first published in 1954, is the history of this unique and improbable community and the single-tax social experiment that gave rise to it. This new edition offers an introduction by historian and Fairhope resident Tennant McWilliams, giving invaluable context and entertaining anecdotes not just regarding Fairhope’s founding but about the Alyeas themselves—all to the abiding value of their story for today’s residents and visitors.

On November 15, 1894, a small group of men and women met on a remote stretch of Mobile Bay’s eastern shore to establish a colony. It was a decidedly utopian undertaking in a period characterized by many similar social experiments and ideal communities, most of them failures. This group, which gathered at “Stapleton’s pasture” to found Fairhope, hoped to demonstrate the benefits of the single tax as a means of curing social and economic evils, making a practical test of the doctrines of economist Henry George.

Today, the wealth of parks, public and private schools, art galleries, and restaurants, combined with quaint shops and residential areas and a vibrant nautical life, all attest to Fairhope’s unique position among many older communities in the same region. Its residents represent a diverse array of interests and talents, and with a strong civic regard for individualism and creativity, Fairhope is also a haven for painters, potters, writers, and musicians.

 

Faith is more than a personal choice; it’s a generational story. This study reveals when and why religious transmission succeeds or fails within families.

How does religion—or the lack of it—pass from one generation to the next? Families and Religion studies the intergenerational shifts in faith and secularism in Germany, Italy, Hungary, Finland, and Canada, depicting when, how, and why religious beliefs change.

Using a mixed-methods approach, the book looks into the role of family and historical context in shaping religious affiliation and identity, specifically focusing on adolescence as a key period of transformation. Comparing diverse social settings, the authors uncover the subtle yet powerful forces influencing whether religious traditions persist or fade across generations. A vital contribution to the study of religious change, this volume offers new insights for scholars of sociology and religious studies, and for those interested in understanding how faith may be passed down within families.
 

A biography of Henry Edward Armstrong, an underappreciated maverick in the history of chemistry.
 
Fifth Business is a biography of the English chemist, educator, and scientific critic Henry Edward Armstrong. Today, Armstrong, who was a central figure in the development of the science of chemistry between 1885 and 1914, is more remembered for his campaigns to improve the teaching of chemistry, and science generally, and less for his theory of residual affinity and reverse electrolysis—or his hostility toward physical chemistry. However, right up until his retirement, Armstrong was a significant and prolific organic chemist, as well as a major figure in the academic and social life of the Chemical Society.
 
Fifth Business is structured as chronologically as possible, with Armstrong’s life and achievements as an active chemist in Part I (1848–1911) and as a critic in his long retirement in Part II (1911–1937). Brock’s authoritative biography provides a unique inside look at its subject, allowing us to better understand the history of British science, scientific institutions, scientific education, pedagogical theory, and social relations of science during the last third of the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth.

In The Future of Futurity, Purnima Mankekar and Akhil Gupta examine the lives and experiences of call center agents in India’s business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, who live in Bengaluru and work for customers in the Global North. Mankekar and Gupta show how futurity—an affective-temporal potentiality and mode of being that emphasizes the unfolding of time—enables BPO workers to strive for hopeful futures despite their experiences of growing inequality, volatility, and violence. Drawing on long-term fieldwork with managers, owners, and workers of BPO companies, the authors explore how workers find pathways for navigating a globalized world and for imagining their futures in it. They point to the heterogeneous lives, yearnings, and anxieties of BPO workers, foregrounding the disjunctions and conjunctions between labor, corporeality, intimacy, family life, and mobility. Mankekar and Gupta show how workers’ daily lives and imaginings of the future point to the relationships between futurity, capital, and technology as well as futurity’s imbrications with contemporary racial capitalism. In so doing, the authors insist on the transformative potential of futurity even in conditions of extreme precarity.