As two of the leading social scientists of the twentieth century, Alva and Gunnar Myrdal tried to establish a harmonious, “organic” Gemeinschaft [community] in order to fight an assumed disintegration of modern society. By means of functionalist architecture and by educating “sensible” citizens, disciplining bodies, and reorganizing social relationships they attempted to intervene in the lives of ordinary men. The paradox of this task was to modernize society in order to defend it against an “ambivalent modernity.” This combination of Weltanschauung [world view], social science, and technical devices became known as social engineering. The Myrdals started in the early 1930s with Sweden, and then chose the world as their working field. In 1938, Gunnar Myrdal was asked to solve the “negro problem” in the United States, and, in the 1970s, Alva Myrdal campaigned for the world's super powers to abolish all of their nuclear weapons. The Myrdals successfully established their own "modern American" marriage as a media image and role model for reform. Far from perfect, their marriage was disrupted by numerous conflicts, mirrored in thousands of private letters. This marital conflict propelled their urge for social reform by exposing the need for the elimination of irrational conflicts from everyday life. A just society, according to the Myrdals, would merge social expertise with everyday life, and ordinary men with the intellectually elite. Thomas Etzemüller's study of these two figures brings to light the roots of modern social engineering, providing insight for today's sociologists, historians, and political scholars.

In it, she creates an intimate, impassioned portrait of one of the great women of the 20th century.

A fascinating biography of the New York socialite who played a surprising role in the fight for suffrage. Born in the middle of the nineteenth century, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont was known to be domineering, temperamental, and opinionated. She married two millionaires, and pressured her daughter to wed an aristocrat. This resolve to get her own way regardless of the consequences stood her in good stead when she joined the American woman suffrage movement in 1909. Thereafter, she used her wealth, her administrative expertise, and her social celebrity to help convince Congress to pass the 19th Amendment and then to persuade the exhausted leaders of the National Woman’s Party to initiate a worldwide equal rights campaign. In this book, Sylvia D. Hoffert argues that Belmont was a feminist visionary and that her financial support was crucial to the success of the suffrage and equal rights movements. She also shows how Belmont’s activism, and the money she used to support it, enriches our understanding of the personal dynamics of the American woman’s rights movement. Drawing upon and analyzing Belmont’s own memoirs, she illustrates how this determined woman went about the complex and collaborative process of creating her public self. “Engaging . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice

Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl and His Legacy provides a much-needed overview of the life, work, and contribution of an important seventeenth-century historian. The volume explores the complexities of Alva Ixtlilxochitl's life and works, revising and broadening our understanding of his racial and cultural identity and his contribution to Mexican history.

This book is about the importance of nuclear disarmament and the work pursued by Alva Myrdal, a pioneering social activist, diplomat, cabinet minister, and disarmament negotiator. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982 together with Alfonso García Robles "for their work for disarmament and nuclear and weapon-free zones". Prominent academics, politicians and practitioners have contributed reflections on Myrdal’s achievements and their impact on the world today. Furthermore, a sample of Myrdal’s own writings on nuclear disarmament are included, as well as significant speeches and a bibliography of her publications on nuclear matters. Alva Myrdal was born in Uppsala, Sweden, in 1902, graduated from college in Stockholm in 1924, and continued higher education at Uppsala University in the 1930s. She was a prolific author and reformer, specializing in social affairs, women’s roles and nuclear disarmament. She was Sweden’s Ambassador to India in the 1950s, for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1960s and 1970s, and a member of the Cabinet 1967-1973. Her most well-known works are "The Game of Disarmament" (1976), "Nation and Family" (1941), and "Women's Two Roles" (1956, with Viola Klein). Her book "The Game of Disarmament" (1976) is a key work in disarmament. The Alva Myrdal Centre for Nuclear Disarmament was set up at Uppsala University in 2021 to contribute new ideas and concrete measures towards the elimination of nuclear weapons. Both editors are associated with the Centre, Professor Peter Wallensteen as a member of the board and leader of one of its working groups, and Dr. Armend Bekaj as a researcher. - This book is relevant for students of international relations and policy-makers on issues of peace and conflict. - It provides background documentation on the difficulties in achieving disarmament. - It illustrates the significant role women can play to infuse new ideas into a men’s world. - It displays the importance of persistence, rationality, ingenuity and knowledge in furthering nuclear disarmament. - It shows that Alva Myrdal’s efforts can be an inspiration for new generations.

Alva and Gunnar Myrdal are the only couple ever awarded Nobel prizes as individuals: Gunnar won the prize in Economics in 1974, and Alva won the Peace Prize in 1982. This dual biography examines their work as architects of the modern welfare state and probes the connections between the public and private dimensions of their lives. Drawing on their extensive personal correspondence and diaries between their electrifying first meeting in 1919 and their protracted marital crisis in the early 1940s, this book presents the psychologist and the economist as they sought to combine love and work in an equal partnership. Alva and Gunnar simultaneously experimented with a new kind of intimate relationship and designed the social supports necessary for women both to bear and raise children and to contribute their talents and energies to society. Like all genuine revolutionaries, they struggled to free themselves from the burdens of their upbringings; to evaluate their own actions with what they called "unsparing honesty," and to test their policy recommendations in practice, measuring everything against the values they shared.

Well mighty Abigale this is not over.' Anastasia thought at her roommate's door as she picked up a tea cup that had been obliterated and reconstituted in a span of a few seconds. 'Indeed, you may very well be the key to my success. Not the Abigale you pretend to be, but the true Abigale. That Abigale is the strongest of the Guardian Alva. It may take me awhile but I will be good enough to challenge you. I will discover all your secrets; take away every mental hiding place you have. When next we spar, I will pull out that power you keep hidden. And when I defeat you at your strongest, I will know that I have the power to never fail again.'

In this book Leisa A. Kauffmann takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the writings of one of Mexico’s early chroniclers, Fernando de Alva Ixtilxochitl, a bilingual seventeenth-century historian from Central Mexico. His writing, especially his portrayal of the great pre-Hispanic poet-king Nezahualcoyotl, influenced other canonical histories of Mexico and is still influential today. Many scholars who discuss Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s writing focus on his personal and literary investment in the European classical tradition, but Kauffmann argues that his work needs to be read through the lens of Nahua cultural concepts and literary-historical precepts. She suggests that he is best understood in light of his ancestral ties to Tetzcoco’s rulers and as a historian who worked within both Native and European traditions. By paying attention to his representation of rulership, Kauffmann demonstrates how the literary and symbolic worlds of the Nahua exist in allegorical but still discernible subtexts within the larger Spanish context of his writing.

Modern Language Association's Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize, Honorable Mention, 2016 Born between 1568 and 1580, Alva Ixtlilxochitl was a direct descendant of Ixtlilxochitl I and Ixtlilxochitl II, who had been rulers of Texcoco, one of the major city-states in pre-Conquest Mesoamerica. After a distinguished education and introduction into the life of the empire of New Spain in Mexico, Ixtlilxochitl was employed by the viceroy to write histories of the indigenous peoples in Mexico. Engaging with this history and delving deep into the resultant archives of this life's work, Amber Brian addresses the question of how knowledge and history came to be crafted in this era. Brian takes the reader through not only the history of the archives itself, but explores how its inheritors played as crucial a role in shaping this indigenous history as the author. The archive helped inspire an emerging nationalism at a crucial juncture in Latin American history, as Creoles and indigenous peoples appropriated the history to give rise to a belief in Mexican exceptionalism. This belief, ultimately, shaped the modern state and impacted the course of history in the Americas. Without the work of Ixtlilxochitl, that history would look very different today.