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  • Independent man: the life of Senator James Couzens

    First published in 1958 by Charles Scribner’s Sons, Independent Man is the only book-length biography of one of Michigan’s most remarkable men. His many careers embraced both the business and political spheres.

    Couzens was a prominent businessman who helped shape Ford Motor Company, but he left the company when he and Henry Ford clashed over politics. Upon leaving Ford, Couzens began his political career, first serving as Detroit’s police commissioner. He went on to a controversial term as ma…

  • The iron hunter

    Originally published in 1919, The Iron Hunter is the autobiography of one of Michigan's most influential and flamboyant historical figures: the reporter, publisher, explorer, politician, and twenty-seventh governor of Michigan, Chase Salmon Osborn (1860-1949). Making unprecedented use of the automobile in his 1910 campaign, Osborn ran a memorable campaign that was followed by an even more remarkable term as governor. In two years he eliminated Michigan's deficit, ended corruption, and produced t…

  • Maurice Sugar: law, labor, and the left in Detroit, 1912-1950

    It was Maurice Sugar, labor activist and lawyer for the United Auto Workers, who played a key role in guiding the newly-formed union through the treacherous legal terrain obstructing its development in the 1930s. He orchestrated the injunction hearings on the Dodge Main strike and defended the legality of the sit-down tactic. As the UAW's General Council, he wrote the union's constitution in 1939, a model of democratic thinking. Sugar worked with George Addes, UAW Secretary-Treasurer, to nurture…

  • All-American anarchist: Joseph A. Labadie and the labor movement

    All-American Anarchist chronicles the life and work of Joseph A. Labadie (1850-1933), Detroit's prominent labor organizer and one of early labor's most influential activists. A dynamic participant in the major social reform movements of the Gilded Age, Labadie was a central figure in the pervasive struggle for a new social order as the American Midwest underwent rapid industrialization at the end of the nineteenth century.

    This engaging biography follows Labadie's colorful career from …

  • American aliya: portrait of an innovative migration movement

    The major focus is on the who, when, and where of American immigration to Israel, but it is the "why" of this aliya which constitutes the core of the book. Waxman analyzes the relationship between Zionism, aliya, and the Jewish experience. Chapters include "Zion in Jewish culture," a synopsis of Zionism through the years, and "American Jewry and the land of Israel in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," an account of proto-Zionist ideas and movements in early America.

    Chaim I. Wa…

  • John Jacob Astor: business and finance in the early republic

    John Jacob Astor was the best-known and most important American businessman for more than a half-century. His career encompassed the country's formative economic years from the precarious days following the American Revolution to the emergence of an urban-centered manufacturing economy in the late 1840s. Change was the dominant motif of the period, and Astor either exemplified the varied economic, social, and political changes in his business career or he directly affected the course of event…

  • A bibliography of Jewish education in the United States

    This book contains entries from thousands of publications whether in English, Hebrew, Yiddish, and German—books, research reports, educational and general periodicals, synagogue histories, conference proceedings, bibliographies, and encyclopedias—on all aspects of Jewish education from pre-school through secondary education

  • No haven for the oppressed: United States policy toward Jewish refugees, 1938-1945

    No Haven for the Oppressed is the most thorough and the most comprehensive analysis to be written to date on the United States policy toward Jewish refugees during World War II. Friedman draws upon many sources for his history, significantly upon papers which have only recently been opened to public scrutiny. These include State Department Records at the National Archives and papers relating to the Jewish refugee question at the Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park. Such documents serve as the foun…

  • Witness through the imagination: Jewish American Holocaust literature

    Criticism of Holocaust literature is an emerging field of inquiry, and as might be expected, the most innovative work has been concentrated on the vanguard of European and Israeli Holocaust literature. Now that American fiction has amassed an impressive and provocative Holocaust canon, the time is propitious for its evaluation. Witness Through the Imagination presents a critical reading of themes and stylistic strategies of major American Holocaust fiction to determine its capacity to render the…

  • The forerunners: Dutch Jewry in the North American diaspora

    Between 1800 and 1880 approximately 6500 Dutch Jews immigrated to the United States to join the hundreds who had come during the colonial era. Although they numbered less than one-tenth of all Dutch immigrants and were a mere fraction of all Jews in America, the Dutch Jews helped build American Jewry and did so with a nationalistic flair. Like the other Dutch immigrant group, the Jews demonstrated the salience of national identity and the strong forces of ethnic, religious, and cultural instit…

  • Going Greek: Jewish college fraternities in the United States, 1895-1945

    Going Greek offers an unprecedented look at the relationship between American Jewish students and fraternity life during its heyday in the first half of the twentieth century. More than secret social clubs, fraternities and sororities profoundly shaped the lives of members long after they left college—often dictating choices in marriage as well as business alliances. Widely viewed as a key to success, membership in these self-governing, sectarian organizations was desirable but not easily access…

  • From new Zion to old Zion: American Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine, 1917-1939

    American Aliyah (immigration to Palestine) began in the mid-nineteenth century fueled by the desire of American Jews to study Torah and by their wish to live and be buried in the Holy Land. His movement of people-men and women-increased between World War I and II, in direct contrast to European Jewry’s desire to immigrate to the United States. Why would American Jews want to leave America, and what characterized their resettlement? From New Zion to Old Zion analyzes the migration of American Jew…

  • Prayer & community: the havurah in American Judaism

    Riv-Ellen Prell spent eighteen months of participant observation field research studying a countercultural havurah to determine why these groups emerged in the United States during the 1970s. In her book, she explores the central questions posed by the early havurot and their founders. She also examines the havurah as a development of American Judaism, continuing—rather than rejecting—many of the previous generations' ideas about religion. Combining history and ethnography, Prell uses current th…

  • Uppermost Canada: the Western District and the Detroit frontier, 1800-1850

    The publication of this volume in a freely accessible digital format has been made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation through their Humanities Open Book Program.

  • The Israeli-American connection: its roots in the yishuv, 1914-1945

    The Israeli-American Connection examines the ways in which the American experience influenced some of the major leaders of the yishuv, the Jewish settlement in Palestine, during and between the world wars. In six biographical chapters, Michael Brown studies Vladimir Jabotinsky, Chaim Nahman Bialik, Berl Katznelson, Henrietta Szold, Golda Meir, and David Ben-Gurian, focusing on each leader's involvement with and image of America, as well as the impact of America on their lives and careers.

  • Jewish agricultural utopias in America, 1880-1910

    Brook Farm, Oneida, Amana, and Nauvoo are familiar names in American history. Far less familiar are New Odessa, Bethlehem-Jehudah, Cotopaxi, and Alliance—the Brook Farms and Oneidas of the Jewish people in North America.

    The wealthy, westernized leaders of late nineteenth-century American Jewry and a member of the immigrating Russian Jews shared an eagerness to "repeal" the lengthy socioeconomic history in which European Jews were confined to petty commerce and denied agricultural experience…

  • United States Jewry, 1776-1985. volume I

    In United States Jewry, 1776–1985, the dean of American Jewish historians, Jacob Rader Marcus, unfolds the history of Jewish immigration, segregation, and integration; of Jewry’s cultural exclusiveness and assimilation; of its internal division and indivisible unity; and of its role in the making of America. Characterized by Marcus’s impeccable scholarship, meticulous documentation, and readable style, this landmark four-volume set completes the history Marcus began in The Colonial American Jew,…

  • United States Jewry, 1776-1985. volume II. the Germanic period

    In United States Jewry, 1776–1985, the dean of American Jewish historians, Jacob Rader Marcus, unfolds the history of Jewish immigration, segregation, and integration; of Jewry’s cultural exclusiveness and assimilation; of its internal division and indivisible unity; and of its role in the making of America. Characterized by Marcus’s impeccable scholarship, meticulous documentation, and readable style, this landmark four-volume set completes the history Marcus began in The Colonial American Jew,…

  • United States Jewry, 1776-1985. volume III. the Germanic period, part 2

    In United States Jewry, 1776–1985, the dean of American Jewish historians, Jacob Rader Marcus, unfolds the history of Jewish immigration, segregation, and integration; of Jewry’s cultural exclusiveness and assimilation; of its internal division and indivisible unity; and of its role in the making of America. Characterized by Marcus’s impeccable scholarship, meticulous documentation, and readable style, this landmark four-volume set completes the history Marcus began in The Colonial American Jew,…

  • United States Jewry, 1776-1985. volume IV. the East European period, the emergence of the American Jew, epilogue

    In United States Jewry, 1776–1985, the dean of American Jewish historians, Jacob Rader Marcus, unfolds the history of Jewish immigration, segregation, and integration; of Jewry’s cultural exclusiveness and assimilation; of its internal division and indivisible unity; and of its role in the making of America. Characterized by Marcus’s impeccable scholarship, meticulous documentation, and readable style, this landmark four-volume set completes the history Marcus began in The Colonial American Jew,…