New from UNC Press Blog Today we welcome a guest post from Amanda Brickell Bellows, author of American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination, out now from UNC Press. The abolition of Russian serfdom in 1861 and American slavery in 1865 transformed both nations as Russian peasants and African Americans gained new rights as subjects and citizens. During the second half of the long nineteenth century, Americans and Russians responded to these societal transformations through a fascinating array of new cultural productions. Analyzing portrayals of African Americans and R ..read more

New from UNC Press Blog Today we welcome a guest post from Venus Bivar, author of Organic Resistance:  The Struggle over Industrial Farming in Postwar France. France is often held up as a bastion of gastronomic refinement and as a model of artisanal agriculture and husbandry. But French farming is not at all what it seems. Countering the standard stories of gastronomy, tourism, and leisure associated with the French countryside, Venus Bivar portrays French farmers as hard-nosed businessmen preoccupied with global trade and mass production. With a twin focus on both the rise of big agricul ..read more

New from UNC Press Blog Today we welcome a guest post from Céline Carayon, author of Eloquence Embodied: Nonverbal Communication among French and Indigenous Peoples in the Americas, out now from UNC Press and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. Taking a fresh look at the first two centuries of French colonialism in the Americas, this book answers the long-standing question of how and how well Indigenous Americans and the Europeans who arrived on their shores communicated with each other. French explorers and colonists in the sixteenth century noticed that Indigenous ..read more

New from UNC Press Blog We welcome to the blog a guest post by Robert G. Parkinson, author of The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution. When the Revolutionary War began, the odds of a united, continental effort to resist the British seemed nearly impossible. Few on either side of the Atlantic expected thirteen colonies to stick together in a war against their cultural cousins. In this pathbreaking book, Parkinson argues that to unify the patriot side, political and communications leaders linked British tyranny to colonial prejudices, stereotypes, and ..read more

New from UNC Press Blog Anne Skorecki Levy, whose story of survival and fight against anti-semitism, racism, and religious persecution is told in Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke’s Louisiana by Lawrence N. Powell, is the recipient of an honorary doctorate from Loyola University New Orleans. The doctorate citation reads: “educator, humanitarian and truth-teller.” Praise for the award winning and critically acclaimed Troubled Memory, now in its second edition: “Troubled Memory is the riveting story of a not particularly famous woman, Anne Levy, and the ways history sha ..read more

New from UNC Press Blog In Hungary’s Cold War: International Relations from the End of World War II to the Fall of the Soviet Union, Csaba Békés provides the first multi-archive based synthesis concerning the international relations of the Soviet Bloc, covering the entire Cold War period. Based on Békés’s extensive research over the past three decades, he aims at proving that the East-Central European states have played a much more important role in shaping both the Soviet bloc’s overall policy and the East–West relationship itself than previously assumed. Similarly, the relationship between M ..read more

New from UNC Press Blog It was so good to be back in-person at OAH 2022! If you missed seeing us in Boston, please visit our virtual booth to browse our recent American history titles, learn more about our great book series, or connect with one of our acquisitions editors. Award winning author Lorien Foote with her book’s editor, Mark Simpson-Vos Cathy Kelly from the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture with award winning author Samantha Seeley Samantha Rosenthal posing with Living Queer History Anne Gray Fischer posing with The Streets Belong to Us, along with mentor Way ..read more

New from UNC Press Blog The following is an excerpt from Chris Miller’s Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia. When Vladimir Putin first took power in 1999, he was a little-known figure ruling a country that was reeling from a decade and a half of crisis. In the years since, he has reestablished Russia as a great power. How did he do it? What principles have guided Putin’s economic policies? What patterns can be discerned? In this new analysis of Putin’s Russia, Chris Miller examines its economic policy and the tools Russia’s elite have used to achieve its goals. Miller argues that d ..read more

New from UNC Press Blog If you’ve been following recent events, you may have seen that Russia has invaded Ukraine. Last week, Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, one of its neighbors to the southwest. It marked a major escalation between the countries, which had been in a state of conflict since 2014. Russia and Ukraine were also two of the largest republics responsible for founding the now dissolved Soviet Union. The recommended reading list below will give you some insight into the history between Russia and the former Soviet Union. If you’re interested in making donations to ..read more

New from UNC Press Blog First and foremost, I’d like to say that this post isn’t about painting Haiti as a picture of continued extreme turmoil, trouble and disaster. Haiti has such a beautifully rich and inspiring culture, but has been plagued with fits of corruption, natural disaster and political unrest through the country’s entire existence. Recently, Haiti has been featured in the news more frequently due to these incidents taking place so closely together in time: the assassination of their President Jovenel Moïse in early July, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake with a death toll of over 2,000 ..read more