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WINNER, 2023 Illinois State Historical Society Certificate of Excellence in “Books, Scholarly”!

Uncovering the social revolution led by Black women in the heartland 
 
In this first study of Black radicalism in midwestern cities before the civil rights movement, Melissa Ford connects the activism of Black women who championed justice during the Great Depression to those involved in the Ferguson Uprising and the Black Lives Matter movement. A Brick and a Bible examines how African American working-class women, many of whom had just migrated to “the promised land” only to find hunger, cold, and unemployment, forged a region of revolutionary potential.
 
A Brick and a Bible theorizes a tradition of Midwestern Black radicalism, a praxis-based ideology informed by but divergent from American Communism. Midwestern Black radicalism that contests that interlocking systems of oppression directly relates the distinct racial, political, geographic, economic, and gendered characteristics that make up the American heartland. This volume illustrates how, at the risk of their careers, their reputations, and even their lives, African American working-class women in the Midwest used their position to shape a unique form of social activism.
 
Case studies of Detroit, St. Louis, Chicago, and Cleveland—hotbeds of radical activism—follow African American women across the Midwest as they participated in the Ford Hunger March, organized the Funsten Nut Pickers’ strike, led the Sopkin Dressmakers’ strike, and supported the Unemployed Councils and the Scottsboro Boys’ defense. Ford profoundly reimagines how we remember and interpret these “ordinary” women doing extraordinary things across the heartland. Once overlooked, their activism shaped a radical tradition in midwestern cities that continues to be seen in cities like Ferguson and Minneapolis today.

A group of Central European communists, most of them Hungarians, in the interwar period served the world communist movement as international cadres of the Comintern, the Moscow-based Communist International. As an important member of this cohort, József Pogány played a major role in the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, the "March Action" in Germany in 1921, and, under the name of John Pepper, in the development of the American Communist Party of the 1920s. During the 1920s he was an important official in the Comintern apparatus and undertook missions on three continents. A prolific writer and effective organizer, he was one of the most flamboyant and controversial communists of his era. Some of his comrades praised him as "the Hungarian Christopher Columbus." Others, like Trotsky, called him a "political parasite."This study is based on newly available primary sources from Hungary, Russia, and the United States; it is the first ever written about this colorful and well-travelled Hungarian communist. Examines Pogány's development as a socialist and communist, the influence of his Jewish origins on his career, the reasons for his remarkable success in the United States, and the circumstances that led to his arrest and execution in the Stalinist terror.

Not long ago, Marxist philosophy flourished. Yet in recent years theorists have turned away from Marxism. This book aims to revive Marxist theory, and show how it offers a rich foundation for radical socialist thinking in the forseeable future.

To do this, Andrew Levine examines two recent departures in Marxist thought -- Althusserian and Analytical Marxism. The former is currently defunct; the latter, very nearly so. He assesses the shortcomings of each, while emphasising their considerable, and still timely, merits. The discussion is framed against an analysis of socialism's place in the political life of the past two centuries. Levine assesses the apparent historical defeat of the Left generally since the consolidation of the Reagan-Thatcher era and speculates on current signs of renewal.

He argues that both Althusserian and analytical Marxism represent new and deeply important philosophical departures within the Marxist tradition as they force a rethinking of Marxism's scientific and political project. For all their differences in style and substance, these strains of Marxist thought share important thematic and sociological features and Levine concludes that both traditions provide a legacy upon which a revived Left can build.

In the aftermath of Bulgaria’s liberation from Ottoman rule, a cohort of young men and women found a home in the European arts. This book follows the lives and works of the post-1878 generation of cultural producers who defined Bulgarian identity. A sweeping narrative of social and political change and personal adaptation, the book explores the country’s evolving literary and artistic scene from the 1890s to the 1950s. It traces the impact of wars and coups, ideological shifts and state policies. The book highlights the contributions of key figures and professional associations, their struggles for artistic autonomy, and their efforts to bridge the gaps between high culture and mass entertainment, national and universal art. A portrait of a generation that transformed Bulgarian culture as it navigated the tumult of the early twentieth century, this book offers insights into the broader patterns of transformation, disruption, and cultural negotiation in modern Europe.

In A Wide Net of Solidarity, Anne Garland Mahler traces the impact of the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas (LADLA, Liga Antimperialista de las Américas) on racial justice and anti-extractive struggles from the early twentieth century to the present. Founded in 1925 in Mexico City by a group of multinational activists, LADLA brought together trade unions, agrarian organizations, and artist groups across fourteen chapters in the Americas, with highest activity in the Greater Caribbean and United States. Within two years, LADLA activists joined the League Against Imperialism, formed at the 1927 Brussels Congress, where they met with US Black activists and anticolonial leaders from Africa and Asia. Drawing on extensive archival research, Mahler uncovers LADLA’s role in fostering Black, Indigenous, and immigrant-led resistance movements while positioning these struggles within a broader hemispheric and global struggle against the racialized accumulation of capital. By unearthing LADLA’s multiracial analysis of capitalist exploitation as well as its emphasis on mutual solidarity across difference, Mahler shows us how the organization provides vital insight for social movements fighting racial and economic injustice today.

Alternatives to Democracy in Twentieth-Century Europe examines the historical examples of Soviet Communism, Italian Fascism, German Nazism, and Spanish Anarchism, suggesting that, in spite of their differences, they had some key features in common, in particular their shared hostility to individualism, representative government, laissez faire capitalism, and the decadence they associated with modern culture. But rather than seeking to return to earlier ways of working these movements and regimes sought to design a new future – an alternative future – that would restore the nation to spiritual and political health. The Fascists, for their part, specifically promoted palingenesis, which is to say the spiritual rebirth of the nation. 

A revisionist history of anti-communism in Britain during the early Cold War.
 
The Cold War produced in many countries a form of political repression and societal paranoia which often infected governmental and civic institutions. In the West, the driving catalyst for the phenomenon was anti-communism. While much has been written on the post-war American red scare commonly known as McCarthyism, the domestic British response to the “red menace” during the early Cold War has until now received little attention. Anti-communism in Britain During the Early Cold War is the first book to examine how British Cold War anti-communism transpired and manifested as McCarthyism raged across the Atlantic.

Drawing from a wealth of archival material, this book demonstrates that while policymakers and politicians in Britain sought to differentiate their anti-communist initiatives from the “witch hunt hysteria” occurring in the United States, they were often keen to conduct—albeit less publicly—their own hunts as well. Through analyzing how domestic anti-communism exhibited itself in state policies, political rhetoric, party politics, and the trade union movement, Matthew Gerth argues that an overreaction to the communist threat occurred. In striking detail, this book describes a nation at war with a specific political ideology and its willingness to use a variety of measures to either disrupt or eradicate its influence.