The Smithsonian Institution has been America's museum since 1846. What do its vast collections -- from the ruby slippers to a piece of Plymouth Rock, first ladies' gowns to patchwork quilts, a Model T Ford to a customized Ford LTD low rider -- tell Americans about themselves? In this lavishly illustrated guide to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, Steven Lubar and Kathleen M. Kendrick tell the stories behind more than 250 of the museum's treasures, many of them never before photographed for publication. These stories not only reveal what America as a nation has decided to save and why but also speak to changing visions of national identity. As the authors demonstrate, views of history change over time, methods of historical investigation evolve and improve, and America's understanding of the past matures. Shifts in focus and attitude lie at the hearth of Legacies, which is organized around four concepts of what a national museum of history can be: a treasure house, a shrine to the famous, a palace of progress, and a mirror of the nation. Thus, the museum collects cherished or precious objects, houses celebrity memorabilia, documents technological advances, and reflects visitors' own lives. Taking examples from science and technology, politics, decorative arts, military history, ethnic heritage, popular culture and everyday life, the authors provide historical context for the work of the Smithsonian and shed new light on what is important, and who is included, in American history. Throughout its history, Lubar and Kendrick conclude, the museum has played a vital role in both shaping and reflecting America's sense of itself as a nation.

This collection revisits the complex subject of medieval visual representations of Jews and Judaism by themselves and by Christians. The topics range from questions of Jewish identity in Iberian illuminated Hebrew manuscripts (13th-14th centuries) to representations of Synagoga and Judas in the Bible Moralisée and cathedral sculpture, to early modern Jewish self-images. The essays are prefaced by a critical study of the discovery of medieval Jewish art among art historians and cultural activists ca. 1900-35. The volume will be of value to art historians, as well as medieval and early modern historians with an interest in Jewish culture and Jewish-Christian relations. Contributors include: Michael Batterman, Marc Michael Epstein, Eva Frojmovic, Thomas Hubka, Sara Lipton, Annette Weber, and Diane Wolfthal.

Tracing the paths of Jewish things across time, place, and culture, this collection reveals complex stories of individual and collective struggles to survive.

The Genealogy Annual is a comprehensive bibliography of the year's genealogies, handbooks, and source materials. It is divided into three main sections.p liFAMILY HISTORIES-/licites American and international single and multifamily genealogies, listed alphabetically by major surnames included in each book.p liGUIDES AND HANDBOOKS-/liincludes reference and how-to books for doing research on specific record groups or areas of the U.S. or the world.p liGENEALOGICAL SOURCES BY STATE-/liconsists of entries for genealogical data, organized alphabetically by state and then by city or county.p The Genealogy Annual, the core reference book of published local histories and genealogies, makes finding the latest information easy. Because the information is compiled annually, it is always up to date. No other book offers as many citations as The Genealogy Annual; all works are included. You can be assured that fees were not required to be listed.

Coming to Terms with America examines how Jews have long "straddled two civilizations," endeavoring to be both Jewish and American at once, from the American Revolution to today. In fifteen engaging essays, Jonathan D. Sarna investigates the many facets of the Jewish-American encounter--what Jews have borrowed from their surroundings, what they have resisted, what they have synthesized, and what they have subverted. Part I surveys how Jews first worked to reconcile Judaism with the country's new democratic ethos and to reconcile their faith-based culture with local metropolitan cultures. Part II analyzes religio-cultural initiatives, many spearheaded by women, and the ongoing tensions between Jewish scholars (who pore over traditional Jewish sources) and activists (who are concerned with applying them). Part III appraises Jewish-Christian relations: "collisions" within the public square and over church-state separation. Originally written over the span of forty years, many of these essays are considered classics in the field, and several remain fixtures of American Jewish history syllabi. Others appeared in fairly obscure venues and will be discovered here anew. Together, these essays--newly updated for this volume--cull the finest thinking of one of American Jewry's finest historians.

Jews are part and parcel of American history. From colonial port cities to frontier outposts, from commercial and manufacturing centers to rural villages, and from metropolitan regions to constructed communities, Jews are found everywhere and throughout four centuries of American history. From the early 17th century to the present, the story of American Jews has been one of immigration, adjustment, and accomplishment, sometimes in the face of prejudice and discrimination. This, then, is a narrative of minority-majority relations, of evolving norms and traditions, of ongoing conversations about community and culture, identity and meaning. Interpreting American Jewish History at Museums and Historic Sites begins with a broad overview of American Jewish history in the context of a religious culture than extends back more than 3,000 years and which manifests itself in a variety of distinctive American forms. This is followed by five chapters, each looking at a major theme in American Jewish history: movement, home life, community, prejudice, and culture. The book also describes and analyzes projects by history organizations, large and small, to interpret American Jewish life for general public audiences. These case studies cover a wide range of themes, approaches, formats. The book concludes with a history of Jewish collections and Jewish museums in North America and a chapter on “next practice” that promote adaptive thinking, continuous innovation, and programs that are responsive to ever-changing circumstances.

Homes of the Past tells the powerful story of how immigrant Jewish scholars in 1940s New York sought to build a museum to commemorate their lost worlds and people. Among the Jews who arrived in the United States in the early 1940s were a small number of Polish scholars who had devoted their professional lives to the study of Europe's Yiddish-speaking Jews at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Faced with the devastating knowledge that returning to their former homes and resuming their scholarly work there was no longer viable, they sought to address their profound sense of loss by continuing their work, under radically different circumstances, to document the European Jewish lives, places, and ways of living that were being destroyed. In pursuing this daunting agenda, they made a remarkable decision: they would create a museum to memorialize East European Jewry and educate American Jews about this legacy. YIVO scholars determinedly pursued this undertaking for several years, publicizing the initiative and collecting materials to exhibit. However, the Museum of the Homes of the Past was abandoned shortly after the war ended. With insight and clarity, Jeffrey Shandler draws upon the surviving archival sources to tell the story of the purpose, development, and ultimate fate of the Museum of the Homes of the Past. Homes of the Past explores this largely unknown episode of modern Jewish history and museum history and demonstrates that the project, even though it was never realized, marked a critical inflection point in the dynamic interrelations between Jews in America and Eastern Europe.

Becoming Ottomans is the first book to tell the story of Jewish political integration into a modern Islamic empire. It follows the efforts of Sephardi Jews from Salonica to Izmir to Istanbul to become citizens of their state during the final half century of the Ottoman Empire's existence.

While all history has the potential to be political, public history is uniquely so: public historians engage in historical inquiry outside the bubble of scholarly discourse, relying on social networks, political goals, practices, and habits of mind that differ from traditional historians. Radical Roots: Public History and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism theorizes and defines public history as future-focused, committed to the advancement of social justice, and engaged in creating a more inclusive public record. Edited by Denise D. Meringolo and with contributions from the field's leading figures, this groundbreaking collection addresses major topics such as museum practices, oral history, grassroots preservation, and community-based learning. It demonstrates the core practices that have shaped radical public history, how they have been mobilized to promote social justice, and how public historians can facilitate civic discourse in order to promote equality. "This is a much-needed recalibration, as professional organizations and practitioners across genres of public history struggle to diversify their own ranks and to bring contemporary activists into the fold." -- Catherine Gudis, University of California, Riverside. "Taken all together, the articles in this volume highlight the persistent threads of justice work that has characterized the multifaceted history of public history as well as the challenges faced in doing that work."--Patricia Mooney-Melvin, The Public Historian