BiblioVault - Books about Politics

Jacksonian America

Society, 0ality, and Politics

Edward Pessen

University of Illinois Press, 1985

A perennial choice for courses on antebellum America, Jacksonian America continues to be a popular classroom text with scholars of the period, even among those who bridle at Pessen's iconoclastic views of Old Hickory and his "inegalitarian society."

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The Jacksonian Conservatism of Rufus P. Ranney

The Politics and Jurisprudence of a Northern Democrat from the Age of Jackson to the Gilded Age

David M. Gold

Ohio University Press, 2016

Ohio’s Rufus P. Ranney embodied many of the most intriguing social and political tensions of his time. He was an anticorporate campaigner who became John D. Rockefeller’s favorite lawyer. A student and law partner of abolitionist Benjamin F. Wade, Ranney acquired an antislavery reputation and recruited troops for the Union army; but as a Democratic candidate for governor he denied the power of Congress to restrict slavery in the territories, and during the Civil War and Reconstruction he condemned Republican policies.

Ranney was a key delegate at Ohio’s second constitutional convention and a two-time justice of the Ohio Supreme Court. He advocated equality and limited government as understood by radical Jacksonian Democrats. Scholarly discussions of Jacksonian jurisprudence have primarily focused on a handful of United States Supreme Court cases, but Ranney’s opinions, taken as a whole, outline a broader approach to judicial decision making.

A founder of the Ohio State Bar Association, Ranney was immensely influential but has been understudied until now. He left no private papers, even destroying his own correspondence. In The Jacksonian Conservatism of Rufus P. Ranney, David M. Gold works with the public record to reveal the contours of Ranney’s life and work. The result is a new look at how Jacksonian principles crossed the divide of the Civil War and became part of the fabric of American law and at how radical antebellum Democrats transformed themselves into Gilded Age conservatives.

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Jamaica Genesis

Religion and the Politics of Moral Orders

Diane J. Austin-Broos

University of Chicago Press, 1997

How has Pentecostalism, a decidedly American form of Christian revivalism, managed to achieve such phenomenal religious ascendancy in a former British colony among people of predominately African descent? According to Diane J. Austin-Broos, Pentecostalism has flourished because it successfully mediates between two historically central yet often oppositional themes in Jamaican religious life—the characteristically African striving for personal freedom and happiness, and the Protestant struggle for atonement and salvation through rigorous ethical piety. With its emphasis on the individual experience of grace and on the ritual efficacy of spiritual healing, and with its vibrantly expressive worship, Jamaican Pentecostalism has become a powerful and compelling vehicle for the negotiation of such fundamental issues as gender, sexuality, race, and class. Jamaica Genesis is a work of signal importance to all those concerned not simply with Caribbean studies but with the ongoing transformation of religion andculture.

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Jane Austen

Women, Politics, and the Novel

Claudia L. Johnson

University of Chicago Press, 1988

"The best (and the best written) book about Austen that has appeared in the last three decades."—Nina Auerbach, Journal of English and Germanic Philology

"By looking at the ways in which Austen domesticates the gothic in Northanger Abbey, examines the conventions of male inheritance and its negative impact on attempts to define the family as a site of care and generosity in Sense and Sensibility, makes claims for the desirability of 'personal happiness as a liberating moral category' in Pride and Prejudice, validates the rights of female authority in Emma, and stresses the benefits of female independence in Persuasion, Johnson offers an original and persuasive reassessment of Jane Austen's thought."—Kate Fullbrook, Times Higher Education Supplement

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Japan Rearmed

The Politics of Military Power

Sheila A. Smith

Harvard University Press, 2019

Japan’s U.S.–imposed postwar constitution renounced the use of offensive military force, but, as Sheila Smith shows, a nuclear North Korea and an increasingly assertive China have the Japanese rethinking that commitment, and their reliance on United States security.

Japan has one of Asia’s most technologically advanced militaries and yet struggles to use its hard power as an instrument of national policy. The horrors of World War II continue to haunt policymakers in Tokyo, while China and South Korea remain wary of any military ambitions Japan may entertain. Yet a fundamental shift in East Asian geopolitics has forced Japan to rethink the commitment to pacifism it made during the U.S. occupation. It has increasingly flexed its muscles—deploying troops under UN auspices, participating in coercive sanctions, augmenting surveillance capabilities, and raising defense budgets.

Article Nine of Japan’s constitution, drafted by U.S. authorities in 1946, claims that the Japanese people “forever renounce the use of force as a means of settling international disputes.” When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe broke this taboo by advocating revision of Article Nine, public outcry was surprisingly muted. The military, once feared as a security liability, now appears to be an indispensable asset, called upon with increasing frequency and given a seat at the policymaking table.

In Japan Rearmed Sheila Smith argues that Japan is not only responding to increasing threats from North Korean missiles and Chinese maritime activities but also reevaluating its dependence on the United States. No longer convinced that they can rely on Americans to defend Japan, Tokyo’s political leaders are now confronting the possibility that they may need to prepare the nation’s military for war.

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Japan Rearmed

The Politics of Military Power

Sheila A. Smith

Harvard University Press

“Washington’s relationship with Tokyo is generally considered the most important of the United States’ 70-odd alliances. In this intimately knowledgeable book, Smith shows how that alliance looks to the Japanese: increasingly unreliable.”—Andrew J. Nathan, Foreign Affairs

“Masterfully traces the interplay of Japan’s military heritage, politics, national sentiment, threats, and alliance with the United States in the formation and development of the Self-Defense Force. Even experts will find new information and insights.”—Admiral Dennis Blair, US Navy (Ret.), former Commander-in-Chief, US Pacific Command

“A must-read for US policymakers responsible for Asia.” —J. Thomas Schieffer, former US Ambassador to Japan

“A highly readable and richly detailed account of Japan’s rearmament and the politics surrounding it.”—Journal of American–East Asian Relations

Japan has one of Asia’s most technologically advanced militaries, yet it has struggled to use its hard power as an instrument of national policy. The horrors of World War II continue to haunt policymakers in Tokyo, but a fundamental shift in East Asian geopolitics has forced Japan to rethink its commitment to pacifism. Its military, once feared as a security liability, now appears to be an indispensable asset.

In Japan Rearmed, Sheila Smith argues that Japan is not only responding to threats from North Korean missiles and Chinese maritime activities, it is fundamentally reevaluating its dependence on the United States as its leaders confront the very real possibility that they may soon need to prepare for war.

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Japanese Law in Context

Readings in Society, the Economy, and Politics

Curtis J. Milhaupt

Harvard University Press, 2001

This is a wide-ranging selection of 130 readings in Japanese law. The essays, extracted from previously published books and articles, cover subjects including historical context, the civil law tradition, the legal services industry, dispute resolution, constitutional law, contracts, torts, criminal law, family law, employment law, corporate law, and economic regulation. This unique collection of readings is accompanied by the texts of the Japanese constitution and other basic laws.

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Japan’s Renaissance

The Politics of the Muromachi Bakufu

Kenneth Alan Grossberg

Harvard University Press, 1981

Jefferson's Louisiana

Politics and the Clash of Legal Traditions

George Dargo

Harvard University Press, 1975

A Jewish Kapo in Auschwitz

History, Memory, and the Politics of Survival

Tuvia Friling

Brandeis University Press, 2014

Eliezer Gruenbaum (1908–1948) was a Polish Jew denounced for serving as a Kapo while interned at Auschwitz. He was the communist son of Itzhak Gruenbaum, the most prominent secular leader of interwar Polish Jewry who later became the chairman of the Jewish Agency’s Rescue Committee during the Holocaust and Israel’s first minister of the interior. In light of the father’s high placement in both Polish and Israeli politics, the denunciation of the younger Gruenbaum and his suspicious death during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war add intrigue to a controversy that really centers on the question of what constitutes—and how do we evaluate—moral behavior in Auschwitz. Gruenbaum—a Jewish Kapo, a communist, an anti-Zionist, a secularist, and the son of a polarizing Zionist leader—became a symbol exploited by opponents of the movements to which he was linked. Sorting through this Rashomon-like story within the cultural and political contexts in which Gruenbaum operated, Friling illuminates key debates that rent the Jewish community in Europe and Israel from the 1930s to the 1960s.

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Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel

Life History, Politics, and Culture

Edited by Ruth Kark, Margalit Shilo, and Galit Hasan-Rokem

Brandeis University Press, 2008

This fascinating interdisciplinary collection of essays brings gender issues to the foreground in order to redress a profound imbalance in the historiography of the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, and in the early years of the State of Israel. Although male discourse still dominates this field, some initial studies have begun to create an authentic and multifaceted Hebrew-Israeli voice by examining the activities and contributions of women. This research has led to a number of basic questions: What was the reality of life for women in Jewish society in Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine (Eretz Israel), and in the early years of the State? What was the contribution of women to the renewal of Israeli society and culture? What is the place of gender perceptions in the study of the new local identity? The original articles in this anthology forge an innovative response to one or more of these questions, and reflecting the state of research in the field.

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Jihadism, Sectarianism and Politics in a Changing Middle East

Adib Abdulmajid

Eburon Academic Publishers, 2021

An exploration of sectarianism, Islamism, and jihadism in the contemporary Middle East.

The emergence and growth of sectarian Islamist militant organizations, whether Sunni or Shia, is deemed to be the fruit of the emerging radical interpretations of the concept of jihad, and the evolution of Islamism in general. The main objective of this book is to help the reader understand the complex religio-political scene in today’s Middle East and the ideological principles and agendas of influential movements, whose beliefs and actions constitute a serious threat to cultural diversity in the region. It addresses the doctrinal tenets associated with the emergence of influential Islamist organizations and the challenges encountered by the culturally diverse populations that surround them. This book also delves into the historical events that have shaped the Middle East as we know it today. It further examines the key factors behind the rise of the most influential sectarian-guided, jihadi-based extremist groups in the recent years

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John Dee

The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance

William H. Sherman

University of Massachusetts Press, 1997

This book challenges the conventional image of John Dee (1527–1609) as an isolated, eccentric philosopher. Instead, William H. Sherman presents Dee in a fresh context, revealing that he was a well-connected adviser to the academic, courtly, and commercial circles of his day.

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John Edgar Wideman and Modernity

A Critical Dialogue

Michel Feith

University of Tennessee Press, 2019

The career of writer John Edgar Wideman has been the sort of success story on which America prides itself. Coming from an inner-city African American neighborhood, he studied at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Oxford; published his first novel at age twenty-six; won two PEN/Faulkner Awards, as well as a MacArthur “genius grant”; and has held several top teaching posts. But profound tragedy has also marked his life: both his brother and son received life sentences for murder, and a nephew was killed at home after a bar fight. His life thus illustrates how the strictures of “race” temper American notions of freedom and opportunity.

Wideman’s engagement with race and identity has been nuanced and complex, taking the form of what Michel Feith sees as a critical dialogue with modernity–a moment in history which gave birth not only to the Enlightenment but also to American slavery and the conundrum of “race.” Feith argues that the key work in the Wideman oeuvre is The Cattle Killing (1996), his only “historical novel,” whose threads include the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, the 1856–57 Cattle Killing prophecy, which wreaked havoc among the Xhosa tribe of South Africa, and the contemporary situation of black ghettos in the United States. Unfolding within the early days of the American Republic, the novel offers a window through which all of Wideman’s works and their central concerns—ghettoization, imprisonment, familial relationships, emancipation, and the diasporic sense of history—can be understood.

With clarity and theoretical sophistication, Feith offers provocative new readings of Wideman’s texts, from the “Homewood” books based on his youth in Pittsburgh to his haunting memoir Brothers and Keepers. In the “postmodern” era, Feith suggests, critics of modernity are not in short supply, but few have the depth, rigor, and thoughtfulness of John Edgar Wideman.

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