Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

The issues affecting Italy in the years 1943-48 centered on ambitious political and social expectations regarding the future. Benito Mussolini's defeat and execution surely meant the end of Fascism. Moreover, civil war and Germany's defeat (1943-45) and liberation promised a new regime for Italy, one free from the weight of very disappointing internal and international histories, both recent and stemming from unification in 1871. Political differences, sharpened by the rapid emergence of the Cold War, shaped the new republic, despite much extravagant rhetoric about a new beginning. But for many intellectuals and writers, the past persisted in the present, and they argued that key questions about Italy's history as a nation and support for Fascism were being masked or ignored. Old issues and habits, supposedly confined to history, were thus very much in open evidence, according to those writers and intellectuals. This remarkable, challenging work explores and analyzes, from multiple perspectives, the intense contributions to these questions by several celebrated authors and their signal works, including Elsa Morante, Carlo Levi, and Curzio Malaparte. The notes and bibliography are uncommonly extensive and informative.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Elegant avenues, sprawling parks, properly functioning sewers, and brilliantly conceived canals to tame a regularly overflowing river: these are just some of the massive public-works projects commonly associated with Napoleon III and his prefect Georges-Eugene Haussmann. However, urban renewal came at a very high cost, as Meyer (emer., Princeton Univ.), who also goes by da Costa Meyer, shows in this remarkable study of 19th-century Paris. Relying on a wide range of sources--memoirs, newspapers, literature, art--and her in-depth knowledge of architecture, urbanism, and social change, da Costa Meyer shows how the extraordinary renovation of Paris during the Second Empire was built on the backs of the poor in an atmosphere of sustained violence and at the expense of thousands of laborers, many of whom came from France's vast colonial empire. Haussmann's main objective, as the author shows, was to make Paris safe for capitalism; he used space as an instrument of power. Original and illuminating, this magnificently illustrated book lays bare not only the devastating social effects of Haussmann's projects on the citizens of Paris but also the long-term implications of the "Haussmannization" of cities ever since. This is an important, timely piece of scholarship by an authority in the field.Summing Up: Essential. General readers through faculty.

This fascinating study fills an important gap in the historiography of the German Jewish experience from 1933 to 1941. By focusing on men's experiences, Huebel (Univ. of the Fraser Valley, Canada; Alexander College, Canada) challenges previous claims about men's gendered responses to Nazi persecution, which have generally painted them as passive victims. A careful analysis of memoirs reveals how German Jewish men reacted to attacks on their masculinity. The Nazi regime attempted to emasculate Jewish men as veterans, workers, fathers, and husbands, depriving them of opportunities to fulfill socially accepted gendered roles as soldiers and as providers for and protectors of their families. However, as Huebel points out, German Jewish men asserted their masculinity to the extent they could as the regime persecuted and defamed them. This resistance also created opportunities for German Jewish men to fulfill their roles as providers and protectors by creating closer emotional bonds with their wives and children. This is a story of the gradual adaptations German Jewish men and their families made in the face of increasing legal restrictions, defamation, and violence. Huebel tells it very well. This is crucial reading.Summing Up: Essential. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

Gauchet (emer., Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France) analyzes Maximilien Robespierre's revolutionary career (1789-94), arguing that the French Revolution made Robespierre the embodiment of the ideals of 1789 and the policy of terrorism. Gauchet explores paradoxes, his interpretations resting on Robespierre's speeches and writings. He examines Robespierre's career chronologically, beginning with his defense and internalization of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. For Gauchet, the Revolution was an exceptional rational experiment in manufacturing legitimate government based on rights. The author attributes Robespierre's greatness to his attempt to incarnate the ideals of liberty, equality, and public interest and explains Robespierre's drift toward authoritarianism by drawing attention to his erroneous view of a unified people and of virtue as unconditional sacrifice of individuality for the public good. The "Incorruptible," as Robespierre was known, evolves into an isolated, cruel, self-righteous, inflexible, and unaware despot identified with unending purges. Gauchet's Robespierre personifies the archetypal hero on a sacred quest. Martyrdom colors the end. Gauchet insists Robespierre and the French Revolution are still relevant, and his superb tableau conveys the Revolution from different actors' perspectives. This is a tour de force of political and intellectual history.Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers and advanced undergraduates through faculty.

Harp (Univ. of Akron) weaves together various approaches--urban, environmental, labor, and immigration history--to present a rich, nuanced portrait of France's Riviera in the postwar era. In so doing, he complicates the triumphalist narrative of France's trente glorieuses (the economic boom of 1945-75) by showing the human and environmental costs of modernization. From an exclusive destination for rich northern Europeans to spend the winter in grand hotels, the Riviera was transformed into a site for summer beach vacations for the masses. Cities such as Nice and Cannes struggled to keep up with the demand for housing; to provide clean water and sanitation services; and to deal with the impact of traffic jams, trash removal, and beach erosion. Harp demonstrates that North African labor was central to the construction of this holiday paradise but kept hidden and shunted aside because of racial prejudice, and slum clearance and gentrification squeezed immigrants and the native-born poor alike. This book makes a tremendous contribution to the historiography of postwar France. Specialists will learn much from Harp's innovative research and eclectic use of sources, and lay readers will find the book accessible.Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty.