The Mexican Revolution in Chicago

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Mark S. Weiner

"Americans Without Law shows how the racial boundaries of civic life are based on widespread perceptions about the relative capacity of minority groups for legal behavior, which Mark S. Weiner calls "juridical racialism." The book follows the history of this civic discourse by examining the legal status of four minority groups in four successive historical periods: American Indians in the 1880s, Filipinos after the Spanish-American War, Japanese immigrants in the 1920s, and African Americans in the 1940s and 1950s."--BOOK JACKET.

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Jill Stephenson

Overview: This fascinating book examines the position of women under the Nazis. The National Socialist movement was essentially male-dominated, with a fixed conception of the role women should play in society; while man was the warrior and breadwinner, woman was to be the homemaker and childbearer. The Nazi obsession with questions of race led to their insisting that women should be encouraged by every means to bear children for Germany, since Germany's declining birth rate in the 1920s was in stark contrast with the prolific rates among the 'inferior' peoples of eastern Europe, who were seen by the Nazis as Germany's foes. Thus, women were to be relieved of the need to enter paid employment after marriage, while higher education, which could lead to ambitions for a professional career, was to be closed to girls, or, at best, available to an exceptional few. All Nazi policies concerning women ultimately stemmed from the Party's view that the German birth rate must be dramatically raised.

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Luisa Passerini

This book is based on the oral life histories of about 70 men and women workers, born between the end of the last century and 1920, which are combined with sources such as police reports, documentary films and judicial documents. The interviewees recount their visions of life, of history, and of themselves; they call to memory the fascist period, and the ambivalent relationship between the Duce and the masses. A picture of resistance emerges, through such minor episodes as jokes and graffiti, wearing a red tie or whistling an old socialist tune, and through major issues such as abortions carried out in direct opposition to state propaganda. Acquiescence is also recalled, however, in the enrollment of children in fascist youth organisations or in the use of new state-controlled social services. The final chapter reconstructs an event which acquired great symbolic meaning: the eloquent and unexpected silence of the Fiat workers before Mussolini in 1939 at the inauguration of the Miraflori factory.

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L.C.B. Seaman

This classic text examines the story of European affairs and international relations from 1850 to 1920. Authoritative and concise, it emphasizes interpretation rather than the chronological narrative of the facts.