A lively examination of Yiddish theatre during the Great Depression.

Scholars of Jewish performance and those interested in theater history will appreciate this wide-ranging volume.

This timely volume illustrates how and why the fight against quackery in modern America has largely failed, laying the blame on an unlikely confluence of scientific advances, regulatory reforms, changes in the medical profession, and the politics of consumption. Throughout the 20th century, anti-quackery crusaders investigated, exposed, and attempted to regulate allegedly fraudulent therapeutic approaches to health and healing under the banner of consumer protection and a commitment to medical science. Quack Medicine: A History of Combating Health Fraud in Twentieth-Century America reveals how efforts to establish an exact border between quackery and legitimate therapeutic practices and medications have largely failed, and details the reasons for this failure. Digging beneath the surface, the book uncovers the history of allegedly fraudulent therapies including pain medications, obesity and asthma cures, gastrointestinal remedies, virility treatments, and panaceas for diseases such as arthritis, asthma, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS. It shows how efforts to combat alleged medical quackery have been connected to broader debates among medical professionals, scientists, legislators, businesses, and consumers, and it exposes the competing professional, economic, and political priorities that have encouraged the drawing of arbitrary, vaguely defined boundaries between good medicine and "quack medicine."

An acclaimed writer on her mother’s tumultuous life as a Jewish immigrant in 1930s New York and her life-long guilt when the Holocaust claims the family she left behind in Latvia A story of love, war, and life as a Jewish immigrant in the squalid factories and lively dance halls of New York’s Garment District in the 1930s, My Mother’s Wars is the memoir Lillian Faderman’s mother was never able to write. The daughter delves into her mother’s past to tell the story of a Latvian girl who left her village for America with dreams of a life on the stage and encountered the realities of her new world: the battles she was forced to fight as a woman, an immigrant worker, and a Jew with family left behind in Hitler’s deadly path. The story begins in 1914: Mary, the girl who will become Lillian Faderman’s mother, just seventeen and swept up with vague ambitions to be a dancer, travels alone to America, where her half-sister in Brooklyn takes her in. She finds a job in the garment industry and a shop friend who teaches her the thrills of dance halls and the cheap amusements open to working-class girls. This dazzling life leaves Mary distracted and her half-sister and brother-in-law scandalized that she has become a “good-time gal.” They kick her out of their home, an event with consequences Mary will regret for the rest of her life. Eighteen years later, still barely scraping by as a garment worker and unmarried at thirty-five, Mary falls madly in love and has a torrid romance with a man who will never marry her, but who will father Lillian Faderman before he disappears from their lives. America is in the midst of the Depression, Hitler is coming to power in Europe, and New York’s garment workers are just beginning to unionize. Mary makes tentative steps to join, despite her lover’s angry opposition. As National Socialism engulfs Europe, Mary realizes she must find a way to get her family out of Latvia, and she spends frenetic months chasing vague promises and false rumors of hope. Pregnant again, after having submitted to two wrenching back-room abortions, and still unmarried, Mary faces both single motherhood and the devastating possibility of losing her entire Eastern European family. Drawing on family stories and documents, as well as her own tireless research, Lillian Faderman has reconstructed an engrossing and essential chapter in the history of women, of workers, of Jews, and of the Holocaust as immigrants experienced it from American shores.

In Mystics and Messiahs--the first full account of cults and anti-cult scares in American history--Philip Jenkins shows that, contrary to popular belief, cults were by no means an invention of the 1960s. In fact, most of the frightening images and stereotypes surrounding fringe religious movements are traceable to the mid-nineteenth century when Mormons, Freemasons, and even Catholics were denounced for supposed ritualistic violence, fraud, and sexual depravity. But America has also been the home of an often hysterical anti-cult backlash. Jenkins offers an insightful new analysis of why cults arouse such fear and hatred both in the secular world and in mainstream churches, many of which were themselves originally regarded as cults. He argues that an accurate historical perspective is urgently needed if we are to avoid the kind of catastrophic confrontation that occurred in Waco or the ruinous prosecution of imagined Satanic cults that swept the country in the 1980s. Without ignoring genuine instances of aberrant behavior, Mystics and Messiahs goes beyond the vast edifice of myth, distortion, and hype to reveal the true characteristics of religious fringe movements and why they inspire such fierce antagonism.

A leading scholar sheds light on the experiences of ordinary Cubans in the unseating of the dictator Fulgencio Batista In this important and timely volume, one of today’s foremost experts on Cuban history and politics fills a significant gap in the literature, illuminating how Cuba’s electoral democracy underwent a tumultuous transformation into a military dictatorship. Lillian Guerra draws on her years of research in newly opened archives and on personal interviews to shed light on the men and women of Cuba who participated in mass mobilization and civic activism to establish social movements in their quest for social and racial justice and for more accountable leadership. Driven by a sense of duty toward la patria (the fatherland) and their dedication to heroism and martyrdom, these citizens built a powerful underground revolutionary culture that shaped and witnessed the overthrow of Batista in the late 1950s. Beautifully illustrated with archival photographs, this volume is a stunning addition to Latin American history and politics.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- Introduction. A History That Dare Not Be Told: Political Culture and the Making of Revolutionary Cuba, 1946-1958 -- 1 Cuba on the Verge: Martyrdom, Political Culture, and Civic Activism, 1946-1951 -- 2 El Último Aldabonazo: Fulgencio Batista's "Revolution" and Renewed Struggle for a Democratic Cuba, 1952-1953 -- 3 Los Muchachos del Moncada: Civic Mobilization and Democracy's Last Stand, 1953-1954 -- 4 Civic Activism and the Legitimation of Armed Struggle Against Batista, 1955-1956 -- 5 Complicit Communists, Student Commandos, Fidelistas, and Civil War, 1956-1957 -- 6 Clandestinos, Guerrillas, and the Making of a Messiah in the Sierra Maestra, 1957-1958 -- Epilogue. Revolutionary Cuba: December 1958 and Beyond -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

As we approach the Millennium, apocalyptic expectations are rising in North America and throughout the world. Beyond the symbolic aura of the millennium, this excitation is fed by currents of unsettling social and cultural change. The millennial myth ingrained in American culture is continually generating new movements, which draw upon the myth and also reshape and reconstruct it. Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem examines many types of apocalypticism such as economic, racialist, environmental, feminist, as well as those erupting from established churches. Many of these movements are volatile and potentially explosive. Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem brings together scholars of apocalyptic and millennial groups to explore aspects of the contemporary apocalyptic fervor in all orginal contributions. Opening with a discussion of various theories of apocalypticism, the editors then analyze how millennialist movements have gained ground in largely secular societal circles. Section three discusses the links between apocalypticism and established churches, while the final part of the book looks at examples of violence and confrontation, from Waco to Solar Temple to the Aum Shinri Kyo subway disaster in Japan. Contributors: James Aho, Dick Anthony, Robert Balch, Michael Barkun, John Bozeman, David Bromley, Michael Cuneo, John Dimitrovich, John Hall, Massimo Introvigne, Philip Lamy, Ronald Lawson, Martha Lee, Barbara Lynn Mahnke, Vanessa Morrison, Mark Mullins, Ansun Shupe, Susan Palmer, Thomas Robbins, Philip Schuyler and Catherine Wessinger.

This fascinating and richly detailed new biography of Hitler reinterprets the known facts about the Nazi Fuehrer to construct a convincing, realistic portrait of the man. In place of the hollow shell others have made into an icon of evil, the author sees a complex, nuanced personality. Without in any way glorifying its subject, this unique revision of the historical Hitler brings us closer to understanding a pivotal personality of the twentieth century.

'Moving chronologically over 150 years of Afro-American history, Moses discusses the religio-political positions of diverse historic figures and the messianic themes of several novels. It's obvious that he has read exhaustively and reflected seriously. Fresh insights abound. His assertion, for example, that David Walker's Appeal is more a jeremiad than a protonationalist tract is a convincing rereading. He sardonically demonstrates that the 'Uncle Tom' ideal, correctly understood, has exerted a lasting appeal not only upon integrationists but upon separatists as well....An impressive study of an important myth in Afro-American and American culture.' -Albert J. Raboteau, The Journal of Southern History