Set includes revised editions of some issues.

In a book that fundamentally challenges our understanding of race in the United States, Neil Foley unravels the complex history of ethnicity in the cotton culture of central Texas. This engrossing narrative, spanning the period from the Civil War through the collapse of tenant farming in the early 1940s, bridges the intellectual chasm between African American and Southern history on one hand and Chicano and Southwestern history on the other. The White Scourge describes a unique borderlands region, where the cultures of the South, West, and Mexico overlap, to provide a deeper understanding of the process of identity formation and to challenge the binary opposition between "black" and "white" that often dominates discussions of American race relations. In Texas, which by 1890 had become the nation's leading cotton-producing state, the presence of Mexican sharecroppers and farm workers complicated the black-white dyad that shaped rural labor relations in the South. With the transformation of agrarian society into corporate agribusiness, white racial identity began to fracture along class lines, further complicating categories of identity. Foley explores the "fringe of whiteness," an ethno-racial borderlands comprising Mexicans, African Americans, and poor whites, to trace shifting ideologies and power relations. By showing how many different ethnic groups are defined in relation to "whiteness," Foley redefines white racial identity as not simply a pinnacle of status but the complex racial, social, and economic matrix in which power and privilege are shared. Foley skillfully weaves archival material with oral history interviews, providing a richly detailed view of everyday life in the Texas cotton culture. Addressing the ways in which historical categories affect the lives of ordinary people, The White Scourge tells the broader story of racial identity in America; at the same time it paints an evocative picture of a unique American region. This truly multiracial narrative touches on many issues central to our understanding of American history: labor and the role of unions, gender roles and their relation to ethnicity, the demise of agrarian whiteness, and the Mexican-American experience.

Medical Licensing and Discipline in America traces the evolution of the U.S. medical licensing system from its historical antecedents in the 18th and 19th century to its modern structure. David A. Johnson and Humayun J. Chaudhry provide an organizational history of the Federation of State Medical Boards within the broader context of the development of America’s state-based system. As the national organization representing the interests of the individual state medical boards, the Federation has been at the forefront of developments in licensing, discipline, and regulation impacting the medical profession, medical education, and health policy within the United States. The narrative shifts between micro- and macro-level developments in the evolution of America’s medical licensing system, blending national context with state-specific and Federation initiatives. For example, the book documents such milestones as the national shift toward greater public accountability by state medical boards as evidenced by California’s inclusion of public members on its medical board, New Mexico’s requirement for continuing medical education by physicians as a condition for license renewal and the Federation’s policy development work advocating for both initiatives among all state medical boards. The book begins by examining the 18th and 19th century origins of the modern state-based medical regulatory system, including the reinstitution of licensing boards in the latter part of the 19th century and the early challenges facing boards, e.g., license portability, examinations, physician impostors, inter-professional tensions among physicians, etc. Medical Licensing and Discipline in America picks up the story of the Federation and its role in the major issue of licensing and discipline in the 20th century: uniformity in medical statute, evaluation of international medical graduates, nationally administered examinations for licensure, etc.