Books like Moral Contagion — picked by fans

Thoroughly researched, elegantly written, and deeply humane, Expelling the Poor shows how poverty—and Irish poverty in particular—shaped American immigration policy.

Until the late nineteenth century, Hidetaka Hirota demonstrates, individual states and cities controlled their own borders. They regulated, taxed, excluded, and removed the Irish poor, thereby laying the groundwork for the national policy that emerged in the 1880s.

By examining the impact of nativist sentiment, Hirota reveals how policies directed at the Irish-born poor, alongside the exclusion of Chinese laborers, explain the origins of immigration policy in the United States.

Why did anti-Chinese violence continue to rise even after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, reaching a terrible peak in 1885 and 1886?

In a powerful reinterpretation of Chinese exclusion, Beth Lew-Williams reveals how the 1882 act was deliberately limited in scope, poorly funded, and loosely enforced—because immigration policy at this time was still governed by diplomacy. Only in the late 1880s, with China perceived as weak, did the US unilaterally abrogate its treaty obligations and move toward outright exclusion.

The chronology really matters here: for Chinese immigrants it was a question not just of entry or exclusion, but of life and death. Deftly situating anti-Chinese violence in overlapping regional, national, and international contexts, Lew Williams shows how the idea of the immigrant “alien” emerged in tandem with national citizenship during the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction. 

I am related by ancestry to Fr John O’Sullivan, the parish priest of Kenmare, Co. Kerry, who worked hard during the Great Irish Famine to save the lives of his parishioners. Many of his flock died or felt obliged to flee to America on flimsy vessels, so-called “coffin-ships”. That is why I find this book so interesting.

Its gripping factual account of the multicultural nature of immigration in nineteenth-century New York makes it clearer to me what happened to those who fled famine in Ireland. Anbinder points out that Five Points in Manhattan was a principal destination for migrants from around Kenmare.

Bridging the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in a sweeping, transnational history, Alien Nation provides a compelling account of Chinese migration to the Americas from the 1840s through World War II.

In vivid prose, Young tells the story of how Chinese laborers mined gold, built railroads, and harvested sugar cane; how anti-Chinese restrictionists demonized these workers as “coolies”; and how nationalist movements throughout the Americas enflamed anti-Chinese sentiment.

Alien Nation explains how different national governments borrowed from one other in crafting policies regulating and controlling Chinese immigration, but also how these policies clashed and diverged. Within this transnational framework, Elliott Young recovers the agency of Chinese migrants, facing exclusion, deportation, and segregation, who circumvented government policies to form vibrant communities that transcended national borders.

Saddam Hussein – the dictator of Iraq – was the West’s defining turn-of-the-century uber-villain, an image which this book overturns on a deeply personal level. While Saddam is shown to be a monster (he casually laments how his sadistic sons took it a bit far), he nonetheless somehow wins the compassion of his American captors who fall to blubbering pieces as he proceeds to the gallows.

I have a vivid memory of opening the file on Britain’s efforts to bring America into the war, declassified only recently, and being astonished at the things that had gone on. Hemming’s book tells this amazing story and raises the ethical question of whether Britain’s end – defeating Hitler – was justified by its means – spreading fake news in the US and even interfering in its politics.

I think Maartje’s book has been transformational in the study of neutrality. As she rightly points out, the study of neutrals has been skewed by more modern ideas of neutrality being a passive concept. It shows that in the nineteenth century, it was held in ‘high regard’ in diplomacy and statecraft. She superbly describes how neutrality, far from being a sideshow outside of the main events, was at the center of political thinking and shaping of the period between the Vienna Congress and the First World War.

I like how Maartje shows that neutrality after the Napoleonic Wars was self-serving. States avoided conflicts that they did not need to enter, and overall, this prevented any conflicts that did arise (such as the Crimean War) from becoming wider European conflagrations. Some states, like Belgium, were ‘neutralized’ by the larger, more powerful states to avoid conflict, whereas other countries actively sought neutralization… show more.

As Jimmy Carter nears the end of his life – a life of contributions to the world – I want to thank him for his book. His book is part historical observation, saying what historians oft-times decline to say, while being prophetically correct in recounting of history and the predictable consequences the regions faced unless action is taken.

The book was published in 2006, long after Carter left the presidency, at a time saying what others were not saying about the region. He made me a participant–as a reader–telling historical truths that I was sure he would be profoundly criticized for – oh, was he. 

I love this book because Jimmy Carter’s book is a reminder that writing non-fiction can be fraught, the same as doing an act which does not make friends. He took a risk and used his credibility to tell the truth, and as a reader, I… show more.

Anytime I give a talk, someone asks, “Well, what was really going on with FDR? Why didn’t he do anything?” And the answer to that is always: it’s complicated. But Breitman and Lichtman do a great job explaining how FDR could be both beloved by the Jewish community in the 1930s and 1940s and blamed today for not welcoming Jewish refugees escaping Hitler. And the answer is partly our expectations. We want him to have been a humanitarian, but he was a politician who did some things when he could, but ultimately prioritized recovery from the Great Depression and victory in World War II. You’re going to leave the book more frustrated than when you started, but maybe that’s the answer? It was complicated.

This book explains why small states fail or succeed in world politics, and as such, set the parameters to assess Caribbean diplomacy and its promise and shortcomings. This book adds a compelling framework to my work, and I enjoyed reading this book, which was written "with clarity and rigor," according to noted scholar Anders Wivel.