As I stated in the previous post I am a trained historian and a living, walking cliche. But enough of that. On to the graduate school edition of Weekly Recommendations.

I went through college concentrating on military and American Civil War history. I found myself getting a little bored with the subjects because I felt there was really nothing new or excited being done in the field. To me the scholarship of the Civil War had stagnated.

When I started graduate school I attended a course titled, American Public Policy, and it was taught by my soon to be mentor Professor Greenberg. Dr. Greenberg was a labor historian and had run the Botto House museum in Paterson, NJ as well as being the department head at University of Delaware’s history department.

We were assigned a book that made me shift focus from military history to labor and radical history. I have recommended before but I will list it once again. With that change in focus I went on to study more and more about radicalism, labor, and public policy in the United States. These few books I recommend this week are actually quite fitting with the state of affairs that is currently happening in the US. So here is the list.

Fighting Faiths, by Richard Polenberg

Aliens and Dissenters, by William Jr. Jr. Preston

Eugene V. Debs, by Nick Salvatore

Haymarket Tragedy, by Paul Avrich