Relentless Reformer

Josephine Roche (1886–1976) was a progressive activist, New Deal policymaker, and businesswoman. As a pro-labor and feminist member of Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, she shaped the founding legislation of the U.S. welfare state and generated the national conversation about health-care policy that Americans are still having today. In this gripping biography, Robyn Muncy offers Roche’s persistent progressivism as evidence for surprising continuities among the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society. Muncy explains that Roche became the second-highest-ranking woman in the New Deal government after running a Colorado coal company in partnership with coal miners themselves. Once in office, Roche developed a national health plan that was stymied by World War II but enacted piecemeal during the postwar period, culminating in Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s. By then, Roche directed the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund, an initiative aimed at bolstering the labor movement, advancing managed health care, and reorganizing medicine to facilitate national health insurance, one of Roche’s unrealized dreams. In Relentless Reformer, Muncy uses Roche’s dramatic life story—from her stint as Denver’s first policewoman in 1912 to her fight against a murderous labor union official in 1972—as a unique vantage point from which to examine the challenges that women have faced in public life and to reassess the meaning and trajectory of progressive reform.

Rafshoon, Bianca Rowlett, Sarah B. Rowley, Ana Stevenson, Barbara Winslow, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Nancy Beck Young

Where does the New Deal fit in the big picture of American history? What does it mean for us today? What happened to the economic equality it once engendered? In The Great Exception, Jefferson Cowie provides new answers to these important questions. In the period between the Great Depression and the 1970s, he argues, the United States government achieved a unique level of equality, using its considerable resources on behalf of working Americans in ways that it had not before and has not since. If there is to be a comparable battle for collective economic rights today, Cowie argues, it needs to build on an understanding of the unique political foundation for the New Deal. Anyone who wants to come to terms with the politics of inequality in the United States will need to read The Great Exception.

An Empire of Regions is a refreshing interpretation of British American history that demonstrates how the thirteen British mainland colonies grew to function as self-governing entities in distinct regional clusters. In lucid prose, Eric Nellis invites readers to explore the circumstances leading to the colonies' collective defense of their individual interests, and to reevaluate the founding principles of the United States. There is considerable discussion of social conditions and of the British background to the colonies' development. Extensive treatment of slavery, the slave trade, and native populations is provided, while detailed maps illustrate colony boundaries, settlement growth, and the impact of the Proclamation Line. This absorbing and compelling narrative will captivate both newcomers to and enthusiasts of American history.