Reviewing History

Book Review: Linda Gordon’s Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America (1976).

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 Linda Gordon traces the development of the birth control movement from the 1870s to the 1970s. In the process she weaves together material from a range of topics including feminism, socialism, psychology, and eugenics. Ultimately, Gordon unearths the threads of various ideas that influenced the struggle for reproduction control. Gordon also places birth control within a broader social and political framework through an examination of a variety of sources such as the American Birth Control League papers, local and national Planned Parenthood archives, medical journals, diaries, and letters. In the end, Gordon contends that reproductive freedom is central to the struggle for social justice.

Gordon argues that the history of birth control must be placed in a larger social, political, and ideological context. “Reproductive patterns,” she explains, “are determined by sexual morality, by the overall-status of women, by class formations, and by the nature of the struggles for social change.”[1] In Gordon’s view, the struggle for reproductive freedom should not be separated from class systems, capitalist economics, male-dominated politics, and sexual relations. Moreover, according to Gordon, birth control is a symptom and a cause of various elements and patterns in American history.

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Book Review: Gary Gerstle’s Working-Class Americanism (1989)

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The Power of Americanism

How should we understand the labor movements of the mid-twentieth century? Were they ultimately radical or conservative in nature? In Working-Class Americanism, Gary Gerstle looks at how progressive working-class leaders in Woonsocket, Rhode Island were more pragmatic than radical while their traditionalist counterparts were more innovative than conservative.[1] By presenting a community study with a close analysis of political language, Gerstle illuminates the conception of Americanism, underscores the diversity in mid-twentieth century labor unions, and demonstrates the transformative ideological nature of the 1940s. In the end, Gerstle’s work raises significant questions about the construction of political language.

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Review: Lizabeth Cohen’s A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, 2003.

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Lizabeth Cohen connects a number of elements to illustrate what she understands to be America’s postwar obsession with mass consumption. By examining government documents, sociological surveys, marketing research, and historical monographs, Cohen shows how the Progressive and New Deal eras’ emphasis on consumerism as the cornerstone of citizenship changed in post-World War II America. Cohen ties together federal policy, business cycles, reform movements, marketing strategies, and the local history of northern New Jersey to chart the rise of mass consumerism in American society. In the end, Cohen presents a history of mass consumerism’s effects on race, gender, class, and politics.

Put simply, Cohen’s overreaching thesis is that the way we buy shapes the way we understand ourselves as citizens. As Cohen maintains, “I am convinced that Americans after World War II saw their nation as the model for the world of a society committed to mass consumption…consumption did not only deliver wonderful things for purchase…It also dictated the most central dimensions of postwar society.” Consumerism, Cohen contends, influences public life as much as it responds to private needs. For Cohen, American values, attitudes, and behaviors are attached to consumerism; moreover, she argues that public policy and mass consumption mutually reinforce each other. Ultimately, Cohen suggests that communal identities spring from modes of consumption, and not modes of production.

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Book Review: Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings (1998)

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Book Review: Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1998).

In Atlantic Crossings, Daniel Rodgers discusses American social politics from the Gilded Age through the New Deal. In the process, he uncovers the international roots of social reforms such as city planning, workplace regulation, rural cooperatives, municipal transportation, and public housing. For Rodgers, ideas shaped progressive social politics while individuals carried those ideas back in forth across the Atlantic. Rodgers examines an array of sources, including doctoral dissertations, magazine and newspaper articles, books, and public documents, to describe the tapestry that was trans-Atlantic world of social politics in the Progressive Era.[1] Ultimately, Rodgers seeks to unearth a distinct trans-Atlantic period in America’s past.[2]

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Escape from Los Angeles? A Look at Mike Davis’s City of Quartz

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On the surface Los Angeles seems to be a beacon for dreamers. Here, the conventional myth recites, Cinderella realities are constructed on Hollywood back lots. The ugly become beautiful, the poor become rich, and the undesirable becomes desirable. In all, it appears, Los Angeles is the epicenter of the American dream. Yet, these Cinderella realities are quickly dismissed when one digs below the glimmering surface. In his work, City of Quartz, Mike Davis examines the socioeconomic history of Los Angeles. Moreover, Davis pulls the curtain back from the L.A. fairytale by showing us that the city is anything but an emerald city. Specifically, Davis looks at how physical and social space contribute to the formation of communal identities. In particular, Davis draws attention to Los Angeles’s culture industry, architecture, and power structures. In Davis’s illustration, Los Angeles is depicted as an “economic colony” for the globalized World economy.[1] Furthermore, for Davis, the City of Angels is a melting pot for various social and racial tensions. Importantly, this melting pot is on the verge of boiling over.

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