America’s antagonistic relations with the Soviet Union can be traced to the U.S. response to the Bolshevik Revolution. Within weeks of the revolution, the State Department was considering the military intervention that set the stage for future troubled relations. Raymond Robins stepped forward in 1917 voicing a minority view that the new regime was sustained by vast support, responding to the needs of workers and peasants. He and other observers believed that friendship and cooperation with Communist Russia would best serve Allied interests. At Theodore Roosevelt’s suggestion, Robins was appointed to the American Red Cross Commission to Russia in 1917, arriving in Petrograd to witness the last two months of the Provisional Government and the Bolshevik Revolution. He was then appointed first in command and took the initiative to discuss with Trotsky and Lenin the fate of American and other Allied representatives and all other key issues in the new United States-Soviet relationship.

During the latter half of the nineteenth and the first decade of the twentieth centuries, books, periodicals, and newspapers were rich in discussions related to women’s roles, health, beauty, and dress. Many believed that restrictive and unwieldy women’s fashions compromised health, distorted women’s true physical beauty, and curtailed the potential role of women in society. Reforming Women’s Fashion, 1850–1920 focuses on the efforts toward reforming women’s dress that took place in Europe and America during this period and the types of garments adopted by women to overcome the challenges posed by fashionable dress.

Sayer’s three main accomplishments serve as the organizing principle of this book: first, her transformation of the modern detective story into a serious novel of social criticism and moral depth; second, her penetrating critique of the situation of modern women; and finally her compelling work as a lay theologian and interpreter of Christianity. Thus, the book proceeds not only in roughly chronological order, but also from the work that most readers know best what they know least. The author assumes some familiarity with Sayer’s fiction, but The Remarkable Case of Dorothy L. Sayers is not intended for specialists alone. Indeed, it is appropriate for the same reader that DLS had in mind when she wrote. It will appeal to those who already admire her work, and it may bring others to appreciate her as a literary figure of importance.

Since the early nineteenth century, Cleveland and the surrounding region have benefited from the emigration of European Jewry. A unique anthology of essays, short stories, and poems, A Cleveland Jewish Reader gathers for the first time rare and previously inaccessible writings about the Jewish experience in Northeast Ohio. Dating from the late 1800s to the 1980s, this collection is organized along five major themes—arts and culture, civic life, work and business, continuity, and philanthropy and service. The editors present a variety of voices that discuss the Jewish cultural gardens, Yiddish theater, socialism in the working class and women’s role in the Garment Strike, the cigar industry and Jewish farming, the Alsbacher Document, philanthropic efforts by the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, and many other topics.

Remembering the Boys brings to life the correspondence of Western Reserve Academy alumni serving in World War II. In these eloquent letters, most of them written to the Academy’s headmaster, Joel Hayden, the story of the loneliness of war is told by the men serving on the front lines as well as by those waiting anxiously at home in Hudson, Ohio.

Renaissance Fantasies is the first full-length study to explore why a number of early modern writers put their masculine literary authority at risk by writing from the perspective of femininity and effeminacy. Prendergast argues that fictions like Boccaccio’s Decameron, Etienne Pasquier’s Monophile, Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, and Shakespeare’s As You Like It promote an alternative to the dominate, patriarchal aesthetics by celebrating unruly female and effeminate male bodies.

Employing previously unexamined archival evidence, Kyvig calls attention to a little-known but broad-based bipartisan movement led by the Associated Against the Prohibition Amendment and the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform. These organizations ad their allies amassed political power, particularly within the Democratic path. In the midst of the Great Depression they engineered a complicated, yet very democratic process of formal constitutional change, in the end achieving the only amendment reversal in U.S. constitutional history.

“Let us once again transform the American continent into a vast crucible of revolutionary ideas and efforts…” urged President John F. Kennedy on March 13, 1961. “Let us once again awaken our American revolution until it guides the struggle of people everywhere—not with an imperialism of force or fear, but the rule of courage and freedom and hope for the future of man.” Similar calls stirred Latin America. In Brazil, it came from left-wing politicians, intellectuals, labor leaders, and students. The revolution on April Fool’s Day, 1964 was not exactly the one the Brazilian Left had sought. Nor was the uncontested military coup the victory of courage and freedom and hope that Kennedy had called for.

Resplendent Faith is a richly illustrated compendium of the typical objects found within medieval church treasuries and includes a discussion of their form and function and their significance in the medieval religious service. Fliegel places this survey of the medieval liturgical treasury within its broad historical framework and considers the art representative of the most significant sacral objects produced during the Middle Ages. Supported by exquisite illustrations as well as a glossary and bibliography, Resplendent Faith will appeal to art historians, those interested in the history of religion and liturgical practices, and nonspecialists who appreciate medieval art or religious icons and reliquaries.

Resurrection of the Wild: Meditations on Ohio’s Natural Landscape wins the 2020 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay by this year’s judges—Jelani Cobb, Daniel Menaker, and Judith Thurman!