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Exploring the history, challenges, and promise of a changing South through the legacy of Wayne Flynt.

This collection of essays on the social and political history of the modern South consider the region’s poor, racial mores and race relations, economic opportunity, Protestant activism, political coalitions and interest groups, social justice, and progressive reform. History and Hope in the Heart of Dixie illuminates the dual role of historian and public advocate in modern America. In a time when the nation’s eyes have been focused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita onto the vulnerability and dire condition of poor people in the South, the applicability of research, teaching, and activism for this voiceless element seems all the more relevant.

Responding to the example of Wayne Flynt, whose fierce devotion to his state of Alabama and its region has not blinded his recognition of the inequities and despair that define southern life for so many, the scholars assembled in this work present contributions to the themes Flynt so passionately explored in his own work.Two seasoned observers of southern history and culture—John Shelton Reed and Dan T. Carter—offer assessments of Flynt’s influence on the history profession as a whole and on the region of the South in particular.

First, Cohn proposes that Faulkner's appeal derives from Spanish American authors' perception of similarities between the South's history and the experiences of their own respective nations. She delineates historical experiences common to the South and Spanish America, including civil wars, defeat and dispossession, regional marginalization, and socio-economic hardship. She also suggests that Spanish American authors found in Faulkner a set of concerns with which they could identify and that, as a result, they were inspired to take up the stylistic innovations characteristic of his writing. The resulting assimilation and adaptation of Euro-American modernism through Faulkner has been an indispensable part of what is known as la nueva narrativa, "the new narrative," as well as of successive movements in Spanish American literature.

From another perspective, Cohn's book shows points of contact between works by other southern and Spanish American novelists without positing relations of influence. Specifically, after identifying common, recurrent themes in modern southern and Spanish American literature in general, Cohn reveals levels of a shared understanding of regional history in Faulkner and Mario Vargas Llosa, in Ralph Ellison and Isabel Allende, as well as in Katherine Anne Porter and Juan Rulfo. Her analyses compare and contrast these authors' shared attempts to provide correctives to official, mainstream historical discourse through alternate, parallel strategies for reconstructing, recording, and reclaiming the past.

In yoking together the South and Spanish America as neighboring spaces with similar personalities, Cohn advances a daring and controversial thesis that both narrows and enhances the frame of comparison between the literatures of the South and Spanish America.

There is a considerable difference between real history and discourse history - this book stems from this idea. The author points out that history is constantly reconstructed, adapted and sometimes mythified from the perspective of the present day, of present states of mind and ideologies. Boia closely examines the process of historical culture and conscience in nineteenth and twentieth century Romania, particularly concentrating on the impact of the national ideology on history. Based upon his findings, the author identifies several key mythical configurations and analyses the manner in which Romanians have reconstituted their own highly ideologized history over the last two centuries.

The strength of History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness lies in the author's ability to fully deconstruct the entire Romanian historiographic system and demonstrate the increasing acuteness of national problems in general, and in particular the exploitation of history to support national ideology.

The ruling elite in ancient Rome sought to eradicate even the memory of their deceased opponents through a process now known as damnatio memoriae. These formal and traditional practices included removing the person's name and image from public monuments and inscriptions, making it illegal to speak of him, and forbidding funeral observances and mourning. Paradoxically, however, while these practices dishonored the person's memory, they did not destroy it. Indeed, a later turn of events could restore the offender not only to public favor but also to re-inclusion in the public record.

This book examines the process of purge and rehabilitation of memory in the person of Virius Nicomachus Flavianus(?-394). Charles Hedrick describes how Flavian was condemned for participating in the rebellion against the Christian emperor Theodosius the Great—and then restored to the public record a generation later as members of the newly Christianized senatorial class sought to reconcile their pagan past and Christian present. By selectively remembering and forgetting the actions of Flavian, Hedrick asserts, the Roman elite honored their ancestors while participating in profound social, cultural, and religious change.

First published in Chile in 1969 as Interpretación del desarrollo social centroamericano, this classic is now available in English. The first attempt at an integrated analysis of modern Central America's socioeconomic structure, Torres Rivas's work traces the social development of Central America from independence (1871) up to the 1960s.

Using a dependency framework, but not limited by it, Torres Rivas describes the various divisions of Central American society and their evolution within the liberal development model that has been so much a part of the past century of Central American economic history. The book is compelling in its explanation of the relationship between foreign and native elements in the social development of the region. Torres Rivas describes and analyzes the resulting long-term problems this development has posed for Central America. With a new chapter added for the English edition, History and Society in Central America remains vital for readers interested in the region.

Ivan T. Berend is Distinguished Professor at the University of California Los Angeles, Director of the European Studies Program. He was one of the masterminds of regime change in Hungary. He made a career in Hungary as a university professor, Rector of the University of Economics (1973–79), and President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1985–90). He was President of the International Committee of Historical Sciences (1995–2000), and Vice-President of the International Economic History Association (1986–1994). His research interests are the complex economic, social, ideological, and cultural history of Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th–20th century; economic modernization; problems of European backwardness; transition from state socialism to capitalism. He published and 26 books and more than 120 studies.

Before he became a professor at UCLA, Ivan Berend had survived five regime changes and two revolutions in Hungary, had been in prison and German concentration camp in 1944–45.

His memoir offers an interesting case study, a subjective addition to the “objective” historical works on Central and Eastern European state socialism. It describes the hard choices of intellectuals in a dictatorial state: 1. remain in isolation, concentrate on scholarly works, and exclude politics in your personal life; 2. be in opposition, criticize and unveil the regime, accept discrimination and exclusion; 3. remain within the establishment and work for reforming the country using legal possibilities to criticize the regime and to achieve changes from within.

Berend’s book raises basic historical questions and debates, compares East European and American higher education systems, and presents an eyewitness’ insights on life in the United States.

This English translation of the second edition of Christian Frevel’s essential textbook Geschichte Israels (Kohlhammer, 2018) covers the history of Israel from its beginnings until the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE). Frevel draws on archaeological evidence, inscriptions and monuments, as well as the Bible to sketch a picture of the history of ancient Israel within the context of the southern Levant that is sometimes familiar but often fresh and unexpected. Frevel has updated the second German edition with the most recent research of archaeologists and biblical scholars, including those based in Europe. Tables of rulers, a glossary, a timeline of the ancient Near East, and resources arranged by subject make this book an accessible, essential textbook for students and scholars alike.