I'm fascinated with material culture – studying the things we make and use – and what they tell us about our history. My particular passion is for nineteenth-century Black material culture, often the only tangible history of enslaved and newly-emancipated Black lives. The books on my list educated me of the historical realities for African Americans, from emancipation to Jim Crow – providing critical context for deciphering the stories embedded in historical artifacts. Overall, the gendered (and harrowing) history these books provide on the contributions of African-American women to civil rights and social justice should be required reading for everyone.
“Slave women’s transition to freedom, while deeply desired, prayed for, and actively pursued, was a treacherous and ambiguous process.” With these words, Leslie Schwalm goes on to detail the activist role Black women played in securing emancipation and shaping a different future for themselves and their families, from slavery to freedom.
Schwalm uses oral narratives to capture their experiences before, during, and after the Civil War, and examines how social, racial, and political realities influenced the lives of Black women. This book is a must read on how African American women continuously challenged the barriers to free labor, family autonomy, and legal rights, in their quest to “define and defend freedom”.
African-American women fought for their freedom with courage and vigor during and after the Civil War. Leslie Schwalm explores the vital roles of enslaved and formerly enslaved women on the rice plantations of lowcountry South Carolina, both in antebellum plantation life and in the wartime collapse of slavery. From there, she chronicles their efforts as freedwomen to recover from the impact of the war while redefining their lives and labor.
Freedwomen asserted their own ideas of what freedom meant and insisted on important changes in the work they performed both for white employers and in their own homes. As Schwalm…
I trained as a chartered public finance accountant because I have a mathematics degree and I wanted to work in public service. After 20 years of that I became a freelance consultant and got into teaching public financial management after volunteering for a project in South Sudan. I have taught here in the UK and in other countries, including Kazakhstan, South Sudan, Uganda, and Sri Lanka. The lack of a good textbook about managing public money that was not aimed at accountants led me to write one in 2010. The third edition of it will be published in 2023. (I am still waiting for my novel to find a publisher.)
Billy Bragg has long been my favourite musician. I have all his albums including his 1986 offering, Talking With the Taxman About Poetry.
I included this book because it is about the importance of accountability. This is an important concept for managing public money. The wish for our governments to operate in an honest and fair way requires there being a way to judge their performance. This means that the politicians, civil servants, and everyone else who is involved in government must be willing to be accountable for what they do, and also for what they omit to do. When I teach public financial management I say to my students that if they do not want to be accountable for their actions they should not work in public service.
At a time when opinion trumps facts and truth is treated as nothing more than another perspective, free speech has become a battleground. While authoritarians and algorithms threaten democracy, we argue over who has the right to speak.
To protect ourselves from encroaching tyranny, we must look beyond this one-dimensional notion of what it means to be free and, by reconnecting liberty to equality and accountability, restore the individual agency engendered by the three dimensions of freedom.
I was born and raised as both an anglophone Canadian and a diaspora Jew. After living in Montreal, Jerusalem, and New York for a total of about 15 years, I returned to my hometown of Toronto and took up the position of the J. Richard Shiff Chair for the Study of Canadian Jewry at York University, where I work as a professor of history. I teach undergraduate students, graduate students, fellow academics, community leaders, and the wide public about all sorts of dimensions of this very religiously diverse, culturally diverse, socio-economically diverse, and politically diverse community of 400,000+ souls, with its 260+-year-old history.
I love this book’s choc-a-block presentation of actual archival fragments from Jewish life in the British colonies that would eventually become Canada.
I also like that the book’s husband-wife, antiquarian, author team aimed to fuse together two objectives in one book: on the one hand, to paint a relatable picture of what Jewish life looked like during this period when Upper Canada was still being formed, and on the other hand, to account for the step-by-step process of Jews gaining civil rights in the new world.
When I teach Canadian Jewish history, I not only read this book with my students but also bring them into the archives that contain Godfrey’s trove of archival fragments of early Jewish Canadiana, which they collected before and while writing the book.
Mapping the history of Canadian Jews from the arrival of the first settlers before 1750 through to the 1860s, Search Out the Land introduces a new set of colourful players on Canada's stage. Ezekiel Solomons, John Franks, Jacob Franks, Chapman Abraham, Rachel Myers, Moses David, Samuel Hart, Elizabeth Lyons, and a host of others now take their appropriate place in Canadian history. Focusing on the significant role played by Jews in British North America in the fight for civil and political rights, the authors compare the development of Canadians' rights with that in other British jurisdictions of the time and…
History is learned in the worst way by most, through textbooks. Textbooks are written heavy on dates, timelines, and synopsizing events for multiple-choice, maybe a few, essay questions in schools. Whose facts are they? To paraphrase Frederick Douglass, what does the Fourth of July mean when you’re black? History is taught in these fact silos. But that’s not how it happens. History happens in layers that build under pressure, erupt, and shift like rock sediment evolving over time. I chose these five nonfiction books because they unapologetically show the fault lines and pressures that make American history. These books also uncover the hidden gems created by those societal pressures.
What I found most rewarding about this book by Wilma King is the way she widened the research net to include the ways women communicated with each other through diaries, letters, and various church records. This makes sense and creates tremendous value because newspaper reporters of this period weren’t knocking on the doors of Maria Stewart or other black female leaders for their opinions.
Thanks to King's diligent work, I got a much better sense of the important role these underrepresented women played in the antislavery and early civil rights movement.
Before 1865, slavery and freedom coexisted tenuously in America in an environment that made it possible not only for enslaved women to become free but also for emancipated women to suddenly lose their independence. Wilma King now examines a wide-ranging body of literature to show that, even in the face of economic deprivation and draconian legislation, many free black women were able to maintain some form of autonomy and lead meaningful lives. ""The Essence of Liberty"" blends social, political, and economic history to analyze black women's experience in both the North and the South, from the colonial period through emancipation.…
I’ve been fascinated by the Civil War my entire life. As a boy, I met a man in my Ohio hometown who spent his own youth visiting with the last, wrinkled survivors of the Union armies. His memories at once made the Civil War real and immediate for me. I soon devoured every book and walked every battlefield I could find. After earning an undergraduate degree in Civil War Studies at Gettysburg College, I completed my Ph.D. at Yale. I have authored six books on the conflict—one of which was a runner-up for the Pulitzer in History—and teach courses on the Civil War at Sam Houston State University.
This book recovers—through diligent archival spadework and keen historical empathy—the human realities of emancipation for freedom-seeking enslaved persons. Emancipation, Taylor demonstrates, was a humanitarian refugee crisis acted out amidst the uncertainties of civil warfare. Embattled Freedom supplies a sweeping survey of a complex historical process, but it does so on a human scale—tracking a small group of protagonists as they wind their way to the uncertain asylum of slave refugee (“contraband”) camps. The author’s close attention to the material realities of “contraband” camps—hunger, shelter, and clothing—builds a sense of intimacy and emotional connection. Scholars have established that emancipation was a process, and that the enslaved played a vital role in their own liberation; here is the best account of how that struggle was lived.
The Civil War was just days old when the first enslaved men, women, and children began fleeing their plantations to seek refuge inside the lines of the Union army as it moved deep into the heart of the Confederacy. In the years that followed, hundreds of thousands more followed in a mass exodus from slavery that would destroy the system once and for all. Drawing on an extraordinary survey of slave refugee camps throughout the country, Embattled Freedom reveals as never before the everyday experiences of these refugees from slavery as they made their way through the vast landscape of…
I am an intercultural educationalist, having many years of direct Prime Ministers, Culture Ministers, Ambassador of Nepal to the UK/Ireland/Malta, experts, and grassroots community organizations relationships with Nepal and Nepali diasporas (UK and Ireland) regarding research, reports, and major intercultural projects, as well as a published writer on Nepali culture and editor and lead content contributor for internationally respected online Nepal culture information resources (see Nepali Cultural Heritage and Foods of Nepal). An active member of the decolonization movement, I have provided live BBC TV News interviews on the UK Government–Gurkha dispute and led the enablement of a historically important Nepal–England football match.
I was privileged to read Dr O’Brien’s book at his personal invitation before its formal launch. This arose from a shared interest in past/historical through to current threats to the achievements of inclusive, prejudice-free values, freedom of thought and expression, and respecting liberal values in parliamentary democracies.
Through ground-breaking research and masterly thought-provoking analysis of findings, this book evaluates the threats posed by totalitarian and authoritarian non-inclusive ideologies, political forces, and their justifiers and apologists.
It also examines the crucial role of supportive, disingenuous yet effective propaganda—from today's "fake news" (Trumpian, Brexit, anti-Trans, etc.) to state forces manipulating populist sentiments—enabling brutal and ethically unacceptable phenomena such as colonialism/neo-colonialism, 20th-century Nazism, Stalinism, and current menaces.
Authoritarian nationalism is on the rise in Europe and elsewhere. Freedom is endangered in Eastern Europe. In the Middle East, militant Islam threatens peace, stability, and liberty. The US has recently faced an existential crisis, with the rise of populism and the unprecedented polarization of Left and Right. Brexit has endangered the integrity of the EU, which has hitherto operated as a defender of peace and freedom. At the same time, threats have arisen in the West to the traditional value of free speech.
With the fall of the Soviet Union decades ago, liberal capitalism seemed to be consolidating on…
I graduated from Wheaton College, MA, at the time, a women’s college where I developed a heightened appreciation of the power of women’s abilities to strive for more and achieve more. After learning about an ancestor’s involvement in founding the first women’s only medical school, I knew those graduates’ stories needed to be unearthed from the shadows of history by writing my book. Every March, to coincide with Women’s History Month, I celebrate these women, other glass-ceiling smashers, and the authors who write about them through my list of #31titleswomeninhistory. I have presented to the American Medical Women’s Association, local chapters of AAUW, ADK sorority, and Soroptimist International, among others.
I sincerely thank Ruth P. Watson for sharing Maggie Lena Walker's story to celebrate Walker’s accomplishments, including being the first African American woman to charter a bank and serve as a bank president.
I stood in awe learning about this unknown woman of history: an entrepreneur, civic leader, philanthropist, and visionary who believed in the power of people. I love historical fiction because a talented author like Watson can also weave in references to other people and historical events.
Watson succeeds in this respect when she mentions other influential African Americans like W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington as she highlights Walker’s role in challenging Jim Crow-era norms.
In the vein of The Personal Librarian and The House of Eve, a “remarkable and stirring novel” (Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times bestselling author) based on the inspiring true story of Virginia’s Black Wall Street and the indomitable Maggie Lena Walker, the daughter of a formerly enslaved woman who became the first Black woman to establish and preside over a bank in the United States.
Maggie Lena Walker was ambitious and unafraid. Her childhood in 19th-century Virginia helping her mother with her laundry service opened her eyes to the overwhelming discrepancy between the Black residents and her mother’s affluent…
I’ve spent my life in North American higher education as a student and professor, so I have experienced many of the cultural shifts associated with “woke” culture. These books share the virtues of deep scholarship, sensible advice, and sprightly writing—virtues I have tried to emulate in my own writing. I have tried hard over my career (I’m in my 60s now) to be open and fair toward even the most diverse of my students and colleagues. These books have helped me do so—and I hope they have improved my teaching and writing along the way.
Political scientists don’t always write with verve and insight, but the late Glenn Tinder did. This book takes the ever-challenging theme of liberty and shows me how to understand it as more than an Independence Day slogan.
Tinder provoked me to consider how my freedom should be about more than me but used instead to assist others less resourced than I am. I found this book a refreshing change from the selfish agenda of so many authors writing about liberty and freedom without also considering responsibility and community.
Liberty is a dangerous concept. It's sure to be misused and, if left unchecked, will likely bring not social harmony and happiness but their opposites. Nonetheless, liberty is absolutely necessary: without it there can be no authentic community. People are not free to do the right thing unless they are free to do the wrong thing; if they can't be wrong, they can't be right. Thus does Glenn Tinder argue emphatically for "negative liberty" - the liberty that wants primarily to be left alone, with the authorities interfering as little as possible in the lives of people - and against…
Jeffrey Miron has taught a popular course on libertarian principles at Harvard for 17 years, explaining how to apply libertarianism to economic and social affairs. Miron also serves as the Vice President for Research at the libertarian Cato Institute. Miron has a consistent track record of defending libertarian policies, such as the legalization of all drugs, vastly expanded legal immigration (perhaps to the point of open borders), drastically reduced government expenditure, and substantial deregulation.
Capitalism and Freedom is the greatest exposition of the consequential case for libertarianism. In other words, Milton Friedman’s case for libertarian policies rests not on moral assumptions or “natural” rights but on showing that capitalism is important because it has positive consequences – it enables human prosperity and flourishment.
Perhaps as importantly, Capitalism and Freedom shows that economic freedom is a necessary condition not just for economic prosperity but for personal and political freedom. Thus, free markets are not only compatible with democracy (contra what many people claim), but a necessary condition for protecting democracy and personal freedoms.
This book’s outlook is probably the closest to the one articulated in my book. It is also the most recent one on the list, making it an easy read.
One of TIME magazine's All-TIME 100 Best Nonfiction Books One of Times Literary Supplement's Hundred Most Influential Books Since the War One of National Review's 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the Century One of Intercollegiate Studies Institute's 50 Best Books of the 20th Century How can we benefit from the promise of government while avoiding the threat it poses to individual freedom? In this classic book, Milton Friedman provides the definitive statement of an immensely influential economic philosophy--one in which competitive capitalism serves as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom.
I'm now retired. But like many historians of my generation, I've been lucky. Having gone to the University of California when there was no tuition and got through graduate school thanks to the GI Bill, I then taught history for five decades, briefly at San Francisco State College and the University of Hawaii, and for a long stretch at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. During those years, I wrote eight books, one was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1987, and three won prizes—the Albert J. Beverage Award in 1970, the second-place Lincoln Prize in 2001, and the Langum Trust Prize in 2015. All but one deal with slavery and power.
This book is a corrective. For over two hundred years Americans have been taught that enlightened slaveholders—and especially Jefferson and Madison—were initially the main champions of liberty and equality. But was that truly what happened? This book offers a different take on that story, and in my mind it deserves more attention than it has received.
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