Synopses & Reviews
In 1933 Americans did something they had never done before: they voted to repeal an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Eighteenth Amendment, which for 13 years had prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, was nullified by the passage of another amendment, the Twenty-First. Many factors helped create this remarkable turn of events. One factor that was essential, Kenneth D. Rose here argues, was the presence of a large number of well-organized women promoting repeal.
Even more remarkable than the appearance of these women on the political scene was the approach they took to the politics of repeal. Intriguingly, the arguments employed by repeal women and by prohibition women were often mirror images of each other, even though the women on the two sides of the issue pursued diametrically opposed political agendas. Rose contends that a distinguishing feature of the women's repeal movement was an argument for home protection, a social feminist ideology that women repealists shared with the prohibitionist women of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. The book surveys the women's movement to repeal national prohibition and places it within the contexts of women's temperance activity, women's political activity during the 1920s, and the campaign for repeal.
While recent years have seen much-needed attention devoted to the recovery of women's history, conservative women have too often been overlooked, deliberately ignored, or written off as unworthy of scrutiny. With American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition, Kenneth Rose fleshes out a crucial chapter in the history of American women and culture.
Review
"Useful, insightful, and finely balanced. . . . Of the many books on the Prohibition, Rose's is among the best."
"Though neglected by historians, the prohibition-repeal movement loomed large in U.S. politics in the late twenties and early thirties. In this very readable and well-researched study, Kenneth Rose explores the roles of women's organizations in this struggle. In the process he restores some once-influential women to their rightful place; challenges some widely held assumptions; and reminds us that women's history, like all history, can surprise us by its rich diversity and unexpected twists."
"Rose forcefully demonstrates that in the debate over the repeal of prohibition many of the women involved (notwithstanding marked differences in class, religion, or party affiliation) shared a common moral vision based on the protection of the American home. With commendable intellectual integrity, he refuses to rest with the simplified conclusions some scholars resort to in order to make an attractive and politically tidy case for 'their kind of woman.'"
"Rose writes with relish and humor and contributes an important set of insights to the American experience with Prohibition, an experiment that still haunts the country over sixty years after Repeal."
"Unique in [its] emphasis on the role of women's organizations in both prohibition and repeal, and how the arguments used by women's organizations to promote the Eighteenth Amendment in 1923 were used by opponents to repeal it in 1933. . . . The author is dedicated to recovering the history of politically conservative women who have been traditionally ignored or dismissed in other historical studies."
Review
"Useful, insightful, and finely balanced. . . . Of the many books on the Prohibition, Rose's is among the best."-W. J. Rorabaugh,Pacific Northwest Quarterly
Review
"Though neglected by historians, the prohibition-repeal movement loomed large in U.S. politics in the late twenties and early thirties. In this very readable and well-researched study, Kenneth Rose explores the roles of women's organizations in this struggle. In the process he restores some once-influential women to their rightful place; challenges some widely held assumptions; and reminds us that women's history, like all history, can surprise us by its rich diversity and unexpected twists."-Paul Boyer,University of Wisconsin-Madison
Review
"Rose forcefully demonstrates that in the debate over the repeal of prohibition many of the women involved (notwithstanding marked differences in class, religion, or party affiliation) shared a common moral vision based on the protection of the American home. With commendable intellectual integrity, he refuses to rest with the simplified conclusions some scholars resort to in order to make an attractive and politically tidy case for 'their kind of woman.'"-Martha Banta,University of California, Los Angeles
Review
"Unique in [its] emphasis on the role of women's organizations in both prohibition and repeal, and how the arguments used by women's organizations to promote the Eighteenth Amendment in 1923 were used by opponents to repeal it in 1933. . . . The author is dedicated to recovering the history of politically conservative women who have been traditionally ignored or dismissed in other historical studies."-Book News,
Review
"Rose writes with relish and humor and contributes an important set of insights to the American experience with Prohibition, an experiment that still haunts the country over sixty years after Repeal."-Robert E. Burke,Professor Emeritus of History
University of Wisconsin
Review
"An extraordinary collection of literary, artistic, and historical work which fills the huge gap in what Americans know about their nation's relationship to the Philippines, in war and peace."-Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States
Review
"[An] undercurrent of urgency is still true today and it runs through the pages of this anthology, brilliantly organized by Shaw and Francia. It is truly an anthology that "breathes." And I too hope that Vestiges of War will inspire others to engage in similar projects and expand on what the editors have initiated."-American Studies International,
Review
"Through forceful poems, archival phots, art, visual essays, plays and memoirs, three dozen contributors. . .weigh in against the glossed over or repressed history of the war and its aftermath in the Philippines. . . . If more textbooks were written like this, there might be fewer wars." -The Japan Times,
Review
"It is the rich variety of sources, the many ways of expressing the dilemma and duality of the "special relationship," that is the strength in this volume."-H-Net,
Review
"The collection illuminates Filipinos' long and complicated relationship with the United States through the successive tragedies of paleo-, neo-, and postcolonialism."-The Journal of American History ,
Synopsis
In 1933 Americans did something they had never done before: they voted to repeal an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Eighteenth Amendment, which for 13 years had prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, was nullified by the passage of another amendment, the Twenty-First. Many factors helped create this remarkable turn of events. One factor that was essential, Kenneth D. Rose here argues, was the presence of a large number of well-organized women promoting repeal.
Even more remarkable than the appearance of these women on the political scene was the approach they took to the politics of repeal. Intriguingly, the arguments employed by repeal women and by prohibition women were often mirror images of each other, even though the women on the two sides of the issue pursued diametrically opposed political agendas. Rose contends that a distinguishing feature of the women's repeal movement was an argument for home protection, a social feminist ideology that women repealists shared with the prohibitionist women of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. The book surveys the women's movement to repeal national prohibition and places it within the contexts of women's temperance activity, women's political activity during the 1920s, and the campaign for repeal.
While recent years have seen much-needed attention devoted to the recovery of women's history, conservative women have too often been overlooked, deliberately ignored, or written off as unworthy of scrutiny. With American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition, Kenneth Rose fleshes out a crucial chapter in the history of American women and culture.
Synopsis
U.S. intervention in the Philippines began with the little-known 1899 Philippine-American War. Using the war as its departure point in analyzing U.S.-Philippine relations,
Vestiges of War retrieves this willfully forgotten event and places it where it properly belongs—as the catalyst that led to increasing U.S. interventionism and expansionism in the Asia Pacific region. This seminal, multidisciplinary anthology examines the official American nationalist story of "benevolent assimilation" and fraternal tutelage in its half century of colonial occupation of the Philippines.
Integrating critical and visual art essays, archival and contemporary photographs, dramatic plays, and poetry to address the complex Philippine and U.S. perspectives and experiences, the essayists compellingly recount the consequences of American colonialism in the Philippines. Vestiges of War will force readers to reshape their views on what has been a deliberately obscure but significant phase in the histories of both countries, one which continues to haunt the present.
Contributors include: Genara Banzon, Santiago Bose, Ben Cabrera, Renato Constantino, Doreen Fernandez, Eric Gamalinda, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Jessica Hagedorn, Reynaldo Ileto, Yong Soon Min, Manuel Ocampo, Paul Pfeiffer, Christina Quisumbing, Vicente Rafael, Daniel Boone Schirmer, Kidlat Tahimik, Mark Twain, and Jim Zwick.
About the Author
Angel Velasco Shaw is a film and video maker and teaches in the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program at New York University.
Luis H. Francia's many books include Flippin': Filipinos on America, Eye of the Fish and Brown River, White Ocean.