Identity History

In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American institutions were in decay, as the state was progressively captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to “the people”, who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole.

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Economist, Financial Times, Inc., Prospect Magazine, and The Conversation “The most comprehensive and reasonable story of this shift that has yet been attempted . . . Mounk has told the story of the Great Awokening better than any other writer who has...

The groundbreaking guide to trans history in America, revised and updated for a new political era. Transgender History is the modern classic on transgender life in America since the nineteenth century, encompassing the major movements, writings, and events that shape today’s gender revolution...

Canada is a land renowned for its stunning beauty and abundant natural resources but is rarely considered to have a particularly captivating history. Its people, stereotyped as polite and friendly, are seldom viewed as they are: the products of an intricate and complex struggle. Yet in truth, Canada and its people are the results of centuries of cultural collisions, compromises, and collaborations.

Reflecting on family, identity and nature, Belonging is a personal memoir about what it is to have and make a home. It is a love letter to nature, especially the northern landscapes of Scotland and the Scots pinewoods of Abernethy—home to standing dead trees known as snags, which support the overall health of the forest. Belonging is a book about how we are held in thrall to elements of our past. It speaks to the importance of attention and reflection, and will encourage us all to look and observe and ask questions of ourselves.

The ‘culture wars' have generated ferocious argument, but little clarity. This book takes the long view, explaining the real origins of ‘race' in Western thought, and tracing its path from those beginnings in the Enlightenment all the way to our own fractious world. In doing so, leading thinker Kenan Malik upends many assumptions underpinning today's heated debates around race, culture, whiteness and privilege.

The story of Christine Jorgensen, America's first prominent transsexual, narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives. Their erasure from trans history masks the ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-19th century to present-day anti-Black and anti-trans legislation and violence.

What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? This sweeping history of the United States told through fifteen speeches relives the battle over American identity, from a New York Times bestselling author and one of President Barack Obama’s former speechwriters. For 250 years, we have...

Romila Thapar is one of the most important indian academics writing today. Well-researched and thoroughly accessible, this volume is sure to become essential listening for those interested in Indian history and religion. It includes her experience of writing history textbooks for school, analysis of ancient history and interpretations of the epics, and the role history plays in contemporary politics.

Identity Crisis takes listeners from the bruising primaries to an election night whose outcome defied the predictions of the pollsters and pundits. The book shows how fundamental characteristics of the nation and its politics - the state of the economy, the Obama presidency, and the demographics of the political parties - combined with the candidates' personalities and rhetoric to produce one of the most unexpected presidencies in history.

The Balkan area has historically been one of the world’s most combustible regions. Home to several national groups and at a crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, the Balkans have exerted an outsized role on world affairs. Infamously, the 1914 assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serb nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, was the final straw that led to World War I. The Balkans, however, had been flammable long before Princip’s bullets murdered the Austrian monarch-in-waiting.

In White Identity Politics, Ashley Jardina offers a landmark analysis of emerging patterns of white identity and collective political behavior, drawing on sweeping data. Where past research on whites' racial attitudes emphasized out-group hostility, Jardina brings into focus the significance of in-group identity and favoritism. Jardina shows that disaffected whites are not just found among the working class; they make up a broad proportion of the American public - with profound implications for political behavior and the future of racial conflict in America.

Not many people peer over the abyss, but Elke Babicki's family did. Her German grandfather objected to Hitler and as a result, ended up in a concentration camp while her mother’s family became destitute. Elke's father, Alex, who was born into a well-educated and wealthy Jewish family in Poland, spent five years in concentration camps before making his escape just before the end of the war.

This essay comes from the NPR series This I Believe, which features brief personal reflections from both famous and unknown Americans. The pieces that make up the series compel listeners to rethink not only what and how they have arrived at their beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others.

Argentina's coup d'tat in 1976 led to one of the bloodiest dictatorships in its history - 30,000 people were abducted, tortured, and subsequently "disappeared". And hundreds of babies born to pregnant political prisoners were stolen from their doomed mothers and given to families with military ties or who were collaborators of the regime. "Anala" was one of those children, raised without suspecting that she was adopted.

Familiarity and dishonor kill the anointing. The Jews, being the fathers and mothers of the faith, were dishonored and replaced by other church fathers that, along with Emperor Constantine, crafted a religious system that dishonors the Jews and all things Jewish. As a result, the anointing left, and miracles ceased. This distorted religious system affects many Christians until this day.

Only one performance style has dominated the lexicon of the casual moviegoer: "Method acting." The first reception-based analysis of film acting, Imagining the Method investigates how popular understandings of the so-called Method—what its author Justin Rawlins calls "methodness"—created an exclusive brand for white, male actors while associating such actors with rebellion and marginalization. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book maps the forces giving shape to methodness and policing its boundaries.

The Shaping of Black Identities explores the generations of African Americans who have lived in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and the impact that living in the United States has had on them. Jimmie R. Hawkins examines how identity is formed and shaped by internal and external forces. He investigates collective memory and the stories told to each succeeding generation about the lives of the preceding generations. But most of all, this book is about belonging.

In the second book of the Queer History Project, The Gender Binary Is a Big Lie: Infinite Identities around the World, author Lee Wind uses historical evidence and primary sources—poetry, ancient burial sites, firsthand accounts, and news stories—to explore gender roles and identities.

A great many Jewish holidays and practices, in their earliest understanding, reflect the great innovation of Biblical religion. The Bible emphasized historical events in contrast to nature. Other ancient Near Eastern religions stressed the latter. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel noted, in the Jewish tradition, faith is memory. The observances of Jewish holidays and various Jewish practices articulate theological ideas reflective of collective Jewish memory.