On the morning of April 27, 1935, Louis N. Hammerling fell to his death from the nineteenth floor of an apartment in New York City, where he lived alone. Hammerling was one of the most influential Polish immigrants in turn-of-the-century America and the leading voice and advocate of the Eastern Europeans who had come to the country seeking a better life. He was also a pathological liar, a crook, a swindler, a ruthless entrepreneur, and a patriot—of which nation he could never decide. In the United States, Hammerling rose from the poverty of his youth to the heights of wealth and power. He was a timberman and mule driver in the Pennsylvania coal mines, an indentured worker in the Hawaiian sugar fields, one of the major behind-the-scenes powers in the United Mine Workers, an employee of the Hearst newspaper chain, an influential figure in the Republican Party, the owner of an advertising agency that made him a millionaire, a correspondent of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, and a senator of the Polish Republic. A Jew whose conversion to Catholicism did not protect him from anti-Semitism, Hammerling was monitored by state and federal agencies and was, in the words of his pursuers, "the most dangerous German agent in America." M. B. B. Biskupski consulted more than forty archives in four countries, using trial testimony, intelligence reports, and blackmail correspondence to reconstruct Hammerling's story. The life of this mysterious man offers a window through which to see larger themes: labor and immigration politics in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, espionage during World War I, the birth of modern Polish politics, and the tragic struggle of a poor immigrant striving for success in America. Scholars and general readers alike will be interested in this fascinating book.

Eugenics and scientific racism are experiencing a resurgence, and an understanding of the ideas of Aleš Hrdlička can help combat them. Today, the racial science of the early twentieth century is both untenable and contemptible. This book is about an arch figure of that period: Aleš Hrdlička served as Curator of Physical Anthropology at the prestigious Smithsonian Institution from 1910 to 1941. Although his ideas about race are today considered pseudoscience, the uncomfortable truth is that he was an internationally respected scientist in his own day. The Perils of Race-Thinking advances a bold new interpretation of modern racial ideology by exploring Hrdlička’s intellectual world. Using previously untapped Czech-language sources, Brandon irrevocably alters the discussion about this important figure by placing Czech nationalism at the center of his racial thinking. Defying disciplinary categories, Perils of Race-Thinking joins critical analysis of this key American anthropologist with an incisive revisionist perspective of interwar Czechoslovakia to unearth transnational racial presumptions lurking behind the worst crimes of the twentieth century. At the center of Hrdlička’s race beliefs was his commitment to Czech and Slovak unity and independence. From this center, his next level of concern was what he believed to be a millennial racial struggle between Germans and Slavs. On a global scale, he viewed the Slavs, and especially the Soviet Union, as a eugenic bastion of White strength holding off the “rising tide of color.” Step by step, Perils of Race-Thinking mercilessly dismantles Hrdlička’s racial system and exposes it as mysticism dressed up in the language of science. Convinced that human individuals belonged “naturally” in racial groups, Hrdlička embraced a revolutionary program of reordering the globe according to a harrowing morality of “Darwinist” struggle. Yet despite a lifetime of measuring body parts, even Hrdlička could not decide how many races there were or how to tell them apart.

Impressively researched and eloquently argued, former special agent Mike German’s Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide tells the story of the transformation of the FBI after the 9/11 attacks from a law enforcement agency, made famous by prosecuting organized crime and corruption in business and government, into arguably the most secretive domestic intelligence agency America has ever seen. German shows how FBI leaders exploited the fear of terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11 to shed the legal constraints imposed on them in the 1970s in the wake of Hoover-era civil rights abuses. Empowered by the Patriot Act and new investigative guidelines, the bureau resurrected a discredited theory of terrorist “radicalization” and adopted a “disruption strategy” that targeted Muslims, foreigners, and communities of color, and tarred dissidents inside and outside the bureau as security threats, dividing American communities against one another. By prioritizing its national security missions over its law enforcement mission, the FBI undermined public confidence in justice and the rule of law. Its failure to include racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and xenophobic violence committed by white nationalists within its counterterrorism mandate only increased the perception that the FBI was protecting the powerful at the expense of the powerless. Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide is an engaging and unsettling contemporary history of the FBI and a bold call for reform, told by a longtime counterterrorism undercover agent who has become a widely admired whistleblower and a critic for civil liberties and accountable government.

James K. McGuire is often overlooked as a key figure of Irish nationalist politics, yet the issue defined his life for over three decades. As the title implies, he had multiple careers, each overlapping the others.

Examines how Charles Lindbergh's support for Nazi militarism and U.S. isolationism and Henry Ford's business dealings with Germany tarnished their idealized images. Drawing on original lsources, Wallace brings out some pertinent connections between the two men's anti-Semitism and their ties with the rising Nazi regime. Their influence culminated in an abuse of power that helped strengthen Hitler's regime and undermined the Allied war effort.

The New York Times said of Józef Hieronim Retinger that he was on intimate terms with most leading statesmen of the Western World, including presidents of the United States. He has been repeatedly acknowledged as one of the principle architects of the movement for European unity after the World War II, and one of the outstanding creative political influences of the post war period. He has also been credited with being the dark master behind the so-called "Bilderberg Group," described variously as an organization of idealistic internationalists, and a malevolent global conspiracy. Before that, Retinger involved himself in intelligence activities during World War II and, given the covert and semi-covert nature of many of his activities, it is little wonder that no biography has appeared about him. This book draws on a broad range of international archives to rectify that.

A biography of the historian and public intellectual Sir Lewis Namier from his origins in a secular Jewish family in Poland to recognition as the most important historian of his day, whose ‘revolutionary’ method was enshrined in the verb to Namierise.

Nazi Germany's efforts to weaken the United States by subversion failed miserably. Bungling spies were captured and half-hearted efforts at sabotage came to nothing. Yet anyone who lived through WWII remembers the chilling posters warning Americans that "Enemy Agents Have Big Ears" and "Loose Lips Sink Ships." Even Superman joined the struggle against these insidious foes. In 1940, polls showed that 71% of Americans believed a Nazi Fifth Column had penetrated the country. Almost half were convinced that spies, saboteurs, dupes, and rumor-mongers lurked in their own neighborhoods and work-places. These fears extended to the White House and Congress. In this book, Francis MacDonnell explains the origins and consequences of America's Fifth Column panic, arguing that conviction and expedience encouraged President Roosevelt, the FBI, Congressmen, Churchill's government, and Hollywood to legitimate and exacerbate American's fears. Gravely weakening the isolationists, fostering Congress's role in rooting out Un-American activities, and instigating the creation of the modern intelligence establishment, the Fifth Column scare did far more than sell movie tickets, comic books, and pulp fiction. Insidious Foes traces the panic from its origins in the minds of reasonable Americans who saw the vulnerability of their open society in an age of encroaching totalitarianism.