Kontextmaschine

5th June 2015

Question with 37 notes

Anonymous asked: Would you care to recommend (or review) some favorite history books? Any time & place, any topic—but ideally with the economic/structural-political angle you do so well; gotta have that grit.

Stuart Blumin, Emergence of the Middle Class - never actually read it but I probably picked most of it up (and a lot of these books, and a lot of everything I say) from his classes.

Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm and Nixonland - treatments of two Republican presidential candidates, one successful and one not (which one depending on your notion of “success”) that end up being used as a prism on the politics and culture of their times. Relies a bit much on period newspaper articles without making much effort to revise the “first draft of history”, but at least it’s not Foucault-level “this anecdote, and then this one from another country centuries later, therefore the true nature of power and sex” stuff. Can’t recommend The Invisible Bridge, I think Reagan’s still too close for him to get in perspective.

William Cronon, Changes in the Land - an enthralling history of Colonial America through the framework of ecology and land use.

Beth Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat - shifts in courtship in 20th Century America, ends up touching on shifts in everything in 20th Century America

Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier and Sam Warner, Streetcar Suburbs - together a comprehensive treatment of the development of American suburbs since the 19th century (including a lot of stuff that would be recognized as “city” today).

Robert Caro, The Power Broker - a biography about a master of governance and city politics that touches on everything related to politics, cities, and governance. A goddamn brick, and when Caro traces everything back to Moses’ overbearing mother you realize they weren’t lying about midcentury pop-Freudianism, you can skip those parts.

E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class - another brick, and a lot of it framed as an argument against works it’s long since displaced, but so good it’s influenced damn near everything to come after it.