Contains seven essays from Handbook of oral history, published in 2006.

Part III and IV of Handbook of Oral History, now available in paper for classroom use.

This book illuminates a little-known but tremendously significant twentieth-century crisis in the Soviet Union. Drawing on archival materials declassified since the fall of communism, Nicholas Ganson situates the famine of 1946-47 at the crossroads of Soviet social and political history, World War II, the Cold War, ideology, and famine in the modern world. He sheds light on the perspectives of Soviet elites and gives voice to the famine s victims. In revealing the multi-causality of the postwar hunger, this ambitious work challenges the received wisdom about the relationship between politics and famine.

In her author's note, Marion Winik writes that in Mexico on the Day of the Dead, people build altars to their loved ones . . . they go to the cemetery and stay all night, praying, singing, drinking, wailing. They tell the sad stories and the nob...

The birth of rock 'n roll ignited a firestorm of controversy--one critic called it "musical riots put to a switchblade beat"--but if it generated much sound and fury, what, if anything, did it signify? As Glenn Altschuler reveals in All Shook Up, the rise of rock 'n roll--and the outraged reception to it--in fact can tell us a lot about the values of the United States in the 1950s, a decade that saw a great struggle for the control of popular culture. Altschuler shows, in particular, how rock's "switchblade beat" opened up wide fissures in American society along the fault-lines of family, sexuality, and race. For instance, the birth of rock coincided with the Civil Rights movement and brought "race music" into many white homes for the first time. Elvis freely credited blacks with originating the music he sang and some of the great early rockers were African American, most notably, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. In addition, rock celebrated romance and sex, rattled the reticent by pushing sexuality into the public arena, and mocked deferred gratification and the obsession with work of men in gray flannel suits. And it delighted in the separate world of the teenager and deepened the divide between the generations, helping teenagers differentiate themselves from others. Altschuler includes vivid biographical sketches of the great rock 'n rollers, including Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly--plus their white-bread doppelgangers such as Pat Boone. Rock 'n roll seemed to be everywhere during the decade, exhilarating, influential, and an outrage to those Americans intent on wishing away all forms of dissent and conflict. As vibrant as the music itself, All Shook Up reveals how rock 'n roll challenged and changed American culture and laid the foundation for the social upheaval of the sixties.

Originally part of the Bergen County area known as Godwinville and then Ridgewood, Glen Rock voted to become a borough in 1894. The rock from which the borough took its name was deposited at the end of the last ice age by a retreating glacier. Local folklore tells of Native Americans, the Lenni Lenape, holding meetings on the rock. Early settlers used the rock as a landmark in deeds for the farms they created out of the heavily wooded land. Local streams powered gristmills and sawmills. By 1842, trains brought goods to the area, and within a decade, passenger trains carried the first of the daily commuters to and from New York City. Glen Rock, a photographic journey, documents the growth of the community from the late 1880s through the late 1950s. The early strawberry fields, farms, mills, and hotels made way for today's stores and homes. The dirt roads once used by horse and buggy, stagecoach, and bicycle were paved for early automobiles. The original schools became too small to hold the growing number of children, and new schools were built. Glen Rock's leaders created municipal departments, civic organizations, emergency services, businesses, and places of worship. Parades, picnics, and pageants entertained Glen Rockers. Wars and the Great Depression brought citizens together, and residents gathered to help each other and the nation.