Product Description
In the first comprehensive study of American working-class recreation, Professor Rosenzweig takes us to the saloons, the ethnic and church picnics, the parks and playgrounds, the amusement parks, and the movie houses where industrial workers spent their leisure hours. Focusing on the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, he describes the profound changes that popular leisure underwent. Explaining what these pastimes and amusements tell us about the nature of working-class culture and class relations in this era, he demonstrates that in order fully to understand the working class experience it is necessary to explore the realm of leisure. For what workers did in the corner saloon, the neighbourhood park, the fraternal lodge hall, the amusement park, and the nickelodeon had a good deal of bearing on what happened inside the factories, the union halls, and the voting booths of America's industrial communities. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Labor and Leisure
Rosenzweig asked us to analyze labor through its counterpoint - leisure. Using statistics, public statements, and secondary sources Rosenzweig uses a Birmingham School look at the Worcester working class. Rosenzweig explores not in opposition but more curious about the `alternative' cultures. The question he asks is, "How does leisure change in Worcester over time"? The insights are attached to the book's finale by the suggestions that the contest over the use of leisure "became an arena of class struggle," with the reader being cautioned not to "be deceived into thinking that Worcester was a city without class conflicts" (Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will 225). In the first broad study of American working-class recreation, Rosenzweig takes us to the saloons, the ethnic and church picnics, the parks and playgrounds, the amusement parks, and the movie houses where industrial workers spent their leisure hours.

Centering on the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, he illustrates the deep transformation that popular leisure underwent. Explaining what these pastimes and amusements tell us about the nature of working-class culture and class relations in this era, Rosenzweig articulates that in order fully to comprehend the working class experience it is indispensable to investigate the realm of leisure. For what workers did in the corner saloon, the neighborhood park, the fraternal lodge hall, the amusement park, and the nickelodeon had a good deal of bearing on what happened inside the factories, the union halls, and the voting booths of America's industrial communities.

An in-depth look into the history of Worcester
This book is a helpful resource for anyone wishing to understand the history of Worcester, MA from the 1880s until the 1920s. The theory is that the investigation of leisure time has been overlooked, and this book is an effort to remedy this. It's written in an academic tone, so it's not for everyone. It goes into detail about the changing nature of work, how the local tycoons pitted the workers against one another by deliberately recruiting people from antagonistic ethnic and religious backgrounds, but the book shows that the workers sometimes banded together and won out. It describes the nature and use of saloons, movie theatres, amusement parks, and 4th of July celebrations in a day and age when most workers toiled for 10 hours a day, six days a week, with about 3 holidays a year.

Leisure Among the Working Class
It is interesting how the focus of leisure has changed among social historians to include elements of working-class leisure.In Eight Hours for What We Will:Workers & Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 by Roy Rosenzweig.Rosenzweig first offers theories as to why labor historians have traditionally shied away from studying leisure as an academic subject, citing the silliness and frivolity old-fashioned academics associate with the subject.After referring to these types of intellectuals as "narrow-minded,' Rozenzweig continues to use the town of Worcester, Massachusetts to discover what constituted pastimes and amusement for Worcester workers by asking three questions.The first asks what have been the traditional values among the American working class, the second asks about the character of interclass relations in America's industrial communities, and the third question asks how class culture and relations changed from the nineteenth century to the twentieth.By examining these questions, Rosenzweig believes that a town like Worcester "offers the best opportunity for capturing workers' lives in all their complexity."(Rosenzweig, 3)
The first two sections of Eight Hours for What We Will are concerned with the saloon and the effect of temperance on workers as well as the use of July Fourth celebrations "to mark out [Worcester's immigrants'] cultural distance not only from the city's elite and native middle class but also from fellow immigrants.(Rosenzweig, 65-86)
Eventually, Rosenzweig writes about how interrelationships of workers led to the rise of a leisure market, an outgrowth of both the saloon and Fourth of July celebrations.One of Rosenzweig's main arguments is that the development of amusement park, continual importance of saloons as leisure arenas, and the beginning of a film culture were all a gradual process that grew with the Worcester community itself.Less a study on the nature of leisure, Rosenzweig effectively indicates how leisure is transformed within the bounds of a working class community. ... Read more

Product Description
"A very dangerous woman" is what Martha Coffin Wright’s conservative neighbors considered her, because of her work in the women’s rights and abolition movements. In 1848, Wright and her older sister Lucretia Mott were among the five brave women who organized the historic Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention. Wright remained a prominent figure in the women’s movement until her death in 1875 at age sixty-eight, when she was president of the National Woman Suffrage Association. At age twenty-six, she attended the 1833 founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society and later presided over numerous antislavery meetings, including two in 1861 that were disrupted by angry antiabolitionist mobs. Active in the Underground Railroad, she sheltered fugitive slaves and was a close friend and supporter of Harriet Tubman.

In telling Wright’s story, the authors make good use of her lively letters to her family, friends, and colleagues, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. These letters reveal Wright’s engaging wit and offer an insider’s view of nineteenth-century reform and family life. Her correspondence with slaveholding relatives in the South grew increasingly contentious with the approach of the Civil War. One nephew became a hero of the Confederacy with his exploits at the Battle of Fredericksburg, and her son in the Union artillery was seriously wounded at Gettysburg while repelling Pickett’s Charge.

Wright’s life never lacked for drama. She survived a shipwreck, spent time at a frontier fort, experienced the trauma of the deaths of a fiancé, her first husband, and three of her seven children, and navigated intense conflicts within the women’s rights and abolition movements. Throughout her tumultuous career, she drew on a reservoir of humor to promote her ideas and overcome the many challenges she faced. This accessible biography, written with the general reader in mind, does justice to her remarkable life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A Lively and Interesting Woman
"No matter what a wife's annoyances may have been during the day, her countenance must always be wreathed in smiles on the approach of her husband."
-- Martha Wright, excerpt from a satirical newspaper piece.

"Just get hold of life's reverses & disappointments in a ridiculous point of view, & it helps along wonderfully - there is a great deal of fun, among all the annoyances, if one can only find it."
-- Martha Wright, excerpt from a letter to a relative.

The first women's rights convention, held in July, 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York, was organized by five women, two of which have achieved nigh-sainthood in women's rights history: Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.Lesser known is Martha Wright, Lucretia Mott's younger sister, also one of the Seneca Falls organizers, and the great-great-grandmother of author James D. Livingston.Livingston and his wife Sherry H. Penney have sought to shed light on Wright's life and work with the publication of their book, "A Very Dangerous Woman."

Twenty-first century readers might find the book's title highly ironic when encountering the self-effacing, thoroughly domestic, and humorous Martha Wright within the pages of "Dangerous Woman."But set within the framework of 19th century America, Martha Wright -- who not only promoted abolition and repeatedly provided hospitality to Frederick Douglass, but whose home was also part of the underground railroad; who not only promoted the idea of female suffrage but also the concept of fair divorce and wage laws -- was indeed deemed quite dangerous.

During the numerous women's conventions that followed Seneca Falls, Wright served in various capacities but her main contribution was that of writer and the copious inclusion of her lively personal letters in "Dangerous Woman" sheds light not only on her variegated personality, the numerous women's rights and abolitionist conventions she took part in, but also on the characters of 19th century luminaries who she encountered.For instance, after a visit from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Wright was charmed: "We all fell in love with Mrs. Stanton, the merry twinkle of her eye and her genuine hearty laugh."

After the war, when Harriet Tubman was settled in Auburn, she and Wright became quite close and when Tubman missed a chance to see Wright's visiting daughter Ellen (married to the son of William Lloyd Garrison, one of Tubman's heroes) and her new baby, Wright notes that Tubman was "so disappointed that her eyes filled with tears.She [had] never shed a tear in telling me of all her troubles."

When she visited the Boston transcendentalists after the war (Bronson Alcott, father of the famed author, among them), she was unimpressed and wrote "Just between ourselves I think those radical meetings a great humbug.Each essayist, in turn, trying to see how obscure he can make his meaning, by wrapping it, like a mummy, in spiced cloths, and then aping Emerson in the reading."

Penney and Livingston spend a good deal of time on the civil war and its affect both on the women's movement in general (the push to grant suffrage to freed male slaves basically shelved the women's suffrage movement) and on Martha specifically.Her tolerance of those with differing opinions and her peaceable nature is evident in her continued correspondence with her confederate relations from her first marriage, even when war was looming.When one of these young relatives expressed his approval of the vicious attack on Senator Charles Sumner in retaliation for Sumner's critical speech of a South Carolina senator, Martha reproved the young man thus: "I felt very sorry that you should justify the murderous attack on Sumner, & that you should be willing to endorse the sentiment, so unworthy an American citizen, that personal violence, under any circumstances, was allowable, for words uttered in debate . . . "

Yet, she signed off the correspondence thus: "I shall always be happy to hear from you & I trust that more mature reflection, & the generous impulses of youth, will lead you to judge wisely on this momentous question wh. is destined to shake the Union from centre to circumference."

However, the war became close and personal when her own son joined the Union forces and it affected the generous nature of Quaker-born Wright: "I dread any misplaced `magnanimity' towards the leaders of the Rebellion, & the murderers of our prisoners.I would not have one hanged, but disfranchised & their land confiscated."Later she wrote even more pointedly, "I for one wd. rather the war wd. last till the South is depopulated."

Her attitude says more about the war's powerful influences than it does about Martha's character because for the most part, Wright was a renowned peacemaker especially within the ranks of the sometimes divided woman's movement.Attempting to make peace between these warring factions she once quipped: "What's the difference between a bird with one wing & a bird with two? A mere difference of a pinion."Indeed, her humor was such an intrinsic part of her nature that William Lloyd Garrison, writing an obituary after Wright's death in 1875, said that "Beneath [Wright's] habitual gravity there lurked a keen sense of the ludicrous, her wit and humor being always at command."

"A Very Dangerous Woman," like its subject, is intelligent but accessible, a long overdue biography on a very interesting - if occasionally, dangerous -- woman.

A fascinating read and one I highly recommend.
A Very Dangerous Woman
Martha Wright and Women's Rights
by Sherry H. Penney and James D. Livingston
ISBN # 1-55849-447-2
University of Massachusetts Press
315 Pages

Though I am not typically a history buff, per se, I am a Christian and I enjoy learning more about past events that reflect on the political and social injustices, both human and animal related, and how we were able to surpass and/or overcome those. I chose to review this particular book because for one, I recognized the name - Martha Wright - however, I had no recollection that she had been directly involved with the women's rights movements or abolishing slavery.

The authors (a husband and wife team) have brilliantly weaved Martha's story in with not only the history behind this woman and her role in it, but have added photographs and references to where the information can be found. It was a unique and fascinating way to lure in even the average reader, such as I, who normally would not veer into the historical lessons. In summary, it is written as a story about the life of Martha Wright and her involvement in not only the women's rights movements, but also how she became a part of the few brave and often unknowns who assisted the slaves in reaching freedom from a cruel society who believed "owning" a person was proper.

The photographs entwined between the chapters only lend an even deeper understanding because you could actually see the person involved. And the inclusions of references on record nicely polished off the invaluable lesson learned from reading about this family's history.

Another reason I was drawn to read this book was the fact that one of the authors, Mr. Livingston, is a descendant of Martha Wright. Learning about one's genealogical flow in history has always been a fascination of mine and I was impressed with learning more about the family and their role in history.

Martha was actually not very well known for her part in all of this critical participation. I have a feeling that at the time, she didn't really mind her role in the shadows as it actually wound up being to her advantage and she was able to do more than even she thought she was capable of accomplishing, given the restraints of that era in time.

A fascinating read and one I highly recommend. I also believe this particular book should play an important role in schooling the children of our political future. Well done!

Reviewed by: Cindy Bauer - [...]

[...]

BookPleasures in an international community of over 40 reviewers that come from all walks of life and that review all genres. The site has been in existence for over 5 years, receives 7000 unique visitors per week, and has posted over 4000 book reviews and over 500 author interviews.

Cindy Bauer is the well-seasoned author of the Memory Box Trilogy (Chasing Memories, Shades of Blue and Crystal Clear), an Inspirational Fiction series. She is an avid reader, a freelance writer and editor, and reviews books for [...]. She's also a volunteer staff member at Visual Arts Junction and contributes articles on writing, publishing and marketing works.

Very well done indeed
This book is a model for a relatively concise but thorough biography of an under-appreciated historical figure.The writing is skillful, and the text benefits immensely from extensive quotations from Wright's voluminous letters.Wright's voice is lively and witty and she makes very good company for the 7 or 8 hours required to read this book.

In the eyes of history, Wright has been overshadowed by her older sister Lucretia Mott and her contemporaries Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.But her central participation in both the woman's rights and anti-slavery causes secures her a place as one of the giants of the mid-19th century.Wright believed strongly in the benefits of free expression and complete tolerance even of shocking views expressed by others.She thus anticipated many intellectual currents of the late 20th century.

This book is very much worth reading.

Interesting History
I am a descendent of Martha Coffin Wright and I had not know about her illustrious history before I read this book. I felt compelled to educate myself about her and her daughter Ellen who is my great grandmother. I had received a call from the National Park Service to ask me how I felt about being a relative of Martha Coffin Wright and did I know about the National Monument at Seneca Falls, New York and that then Mrs. Clinton would speak at the official celebration of the signing of the Women's Rights Manefesto. I was ignorant of the association of my family with the signers of the Document as I had been blinded by the weight of my patriarchal lineage from the Garrison side. I was thrilled to learn of the depth of the involvement of Martha Wright and Lucretia Coffin Mott, her older sister, and her daughter Ellen and their many adventures with the Underground Railway, especially through their deep connection with Sojourner Truth.
I have since met James Livingston and connected with him about our relationship and I enjoy being open to a whole new aspect of my family history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The city is Worcester, Ma.
This book should really contain the name of the city (Worcester, Massachusetts ) in the subtitle. This reader believes an intimate knowledge of the city of Worcester is central to appreciating this book, otherwise the locations mentioned within the text will just appear as an unconnected litany of place names..The book painstakingly plots the spread of the Irish immigrant community across the city landscape, parish by parish. It explains the political tightrope walk the Irish-American and the American-Irish developed with the host culture and with the newer immigrant cultures also attempting to assimilate.The author has done his homework.Quotes from leading figures, Irish community newspapers and political speeches are exhaustive. One interesting point that agrees with Andrew Greely's book on Irish-Americans is that the Irish outside of New York City and the Boston area. assimilated quickly into the melting pot, but the ethnic identity and more mature, less vibrant, industrial economies of the Northeast cities made the immigrant battle for a "piece ofpie" more difficult, than in cities to the West. .The book shows that the history of the St. Patrick's DayParade in Worcester is a pretty effective barometer that highlighted the conflicts within the Irish-American community. The author is to be commended on the research, but any purchaser of this book should know that a knowledge of the city of Worcester and its institutions would be especially helpful to appreciate this book fully.I gave it a three star rating because the quotes and research became a little too tedious in some sections. ... Read more

Product Description
David Ruggles (1810-1849) was of one of the most heroic--and has been one of the most often overlooked--figures of the early abolitionist movement in America. Graham Russell Gao Hodges provides the first biography of this African American activist, writer, publisher, and hydrotherapist who secured liberty for more than six hundred former bond people, the most famous of whom was Frederick Douglass. A forceful, courageous voice for black freedom, Ruggles mentored Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and William Cooper Nell in the skills of antislavery activism. As a founder of the New York Committee of Vigilance, he advocated a "practical abolitionism" that included civil disobedience and self-defense in order to preserve the rights of self-emancipated enslaved people and to protect free blacks from kidnappers who would sell them into slavery in the South.

Hodges's narrative places Ruggles in the fractious politics and society of New York, where he moved among the highest ranks of state leaders and spoke up for common black New Yorkers. His work on the Committee of Vigilance inspired many upstate New York and New England whites, who allied with him to form a network that became the Underground Railroad.

Hodges's portrait of David Ruggles establishes the abolitionist as an essential link between disparate groups--male and female, black and white, clerical and secular, elite and rank-and-file--recasting the history of antebellum abolitionism as a more integrated and cohesive movement than is often portrayed.

David Ruggles (1810-1849) was of one of the most heroic--and has been one of the most often overlooked--figures of the early abolitionist movement in America. Graham Russell Gao Hodges provides the first biography of this African American activist, writer, publisher, and hydrotherapist who secured liberty for more than six hundred former bond people, the most famous of whom was Frederick Douglass. A forceful, courageous voice for black freedom, Ruggles mentored Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and William Cooper Nell in the skills of antislavery activism. As a founder of the New York Committee of Vigilance, he advocated a "practical abolitionism" that included civil disobedience and self-defense in order to preserve the rights of self-emancipated enslaved people and to protect free blacks from kidnappers who would sell them into slavery in the South.



... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Very Brave Man
The Author of this book does a nice job telling the story of a great but largely forgotten man.This could not have been an easy book to write.David Ruggles was a very brave man whose story needed to be told and it is an interesting book indeed.Graham Russell Hodges does a clever job writng this tale,pieced together from many different sources.He puts together a narrative of what it was like in New York and the surrounding areas in the days of the abolitionist movement and the underground railroad.He tells how one man dedicated his life to help others,often at his own risk.He brings you back to a time in New York where black men were kidnapped and brought south to be sold into slavery.David Ruggles would fight the oppressors and he had much success.Read the book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

What's in a relationship?
Apparently not sex-necessarily.In this book, Brehony and Rothblum explore the lives of lesbian women who, for whatever reason, omit sex from their relationships.The authors' inclusion of theoretical models, personal accounts, and discussants effectively illustrates portraits of real people who make conscious decisions about their sexuality- not women who are controlled or defined by existing social constructions.The book powerfully raises philosophical questions about the nature of relationships in general- for example, what is a relationship without sex?The book calls all people to question the nature and purpose of their own sexuality.I omit one star simply for its lack of historical and statistical data.However, the book serves its purpose- recognizing and attempting to understand relationships that have previously been undiscussed. ... Read more

Product Description
In any age and any given society, cultural practices reflect the material circumstances of people's everyday lives. According to Joel Dinerstein, it was no different in America between the two World Wars—an era sometimes known as the "machine age"—when innovative forms of music and dance helped a newly urbanized population cope with the increased mechanization of modern life. Grand spectacles such as the Ziegfield Follies and the movies of Busby Berkeley captured the American ethos of mass production, with chorus girls as the cogs of these fast, flowing pleasure vehicles.

Yet it was African American culture, Dinerstein argues, that ultimately provided the means of aesthetic adaptation to the accelerated tempo of modernity. Drawing on a legacy of engagement with and resistance to technological change, with deep roots in West African dance and music, black artists developed new cultural forms that sought to humanize machines. In "The Ballad of John Henry," the epic toast "Shine," and countless blues songs, African Americans first addressed the challenge of industrialization. Jazz musicians drew on the symbol of the train within this tradition to create a set of train-derived aural motifs and rhythms, harnessing mechanical power to cultural forms. Tap dance and the lindy hop brought machine aesthetics to the human body, while the new rhythm section of big band swing mimicked the industrial soundscape of northern cities. In Dinerstein's view, the capacity of these artistic innovations to replicate the inherent qualities of the machine—speed, power, repetition, flow, precision—helps explain both their enormous popularity and social function in American life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

understanding the techno-dialogic
Fabulous book. Dinerstein ties together architecture, tap dancing, West African drummers, the lindy hop, John Henry and Fred Astaire in this exploration of what he calls the "techno-dialogic" embedded in big band/swing music.He argues that African American artists put the industrial rhythms of the era in popular music.In this analysis, dancing to the big band wasn't just about entertainment, it was about using one's body to keep pace with the machine.Until you've read Dinerstein and considered how dance/movement/sound contribute to cultural change, you haven't understood American modernity.

Comprehensive, Readable, Enlightening, Important
This book weaves together several important and somewhat familiar stories in a startlingly new and brilliant way. We know that music and dance exploded in powerful new forms in the 1930s. And we know the "streamlined" and "futuristic" themes of techno-optimism dominated other cultural expressions in the 1930s. And we know there was a current of "techno-anxiety" that expressed itself in everything from Chaplin films to the Frankfurt School. But Joel Dinerstein has shown that these phenomena intimately informed each other. We will never view early-20th century American culture the same way after this book. Buy it. Read it. Assign it to your students. It should win many major awards. ... Read more