Cambridge University Press - 2009 Finalists in the National Jewish Book Awards

American History > 2009 Finalists in the National Jewish Book Awards

Cambridge University Press congratulates authors Stephen H. Norwood and Eli Lederhendler on being selected as Finalists in the 2009 National Jewish Book Awards.

Recognized as one of the longest running and most prestigious North American awards program of its kind, The National Jewish Book Awards has had a significant impact on American Jewish cultural life since it began in 1948. The awards, presented by category, are designed "to celebrate outstanding books, to stimulate writers to further literary creativity, and to encourage the reading of worthwhile titles."

This year, Stephen Norwood's The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses was chosen as a finalist for the Holocaust category of notable non-fiction.

Eli Lederhendler's Jewish Immigrants and American Capitalism, 1880-1920: From Caste to Class was chosen as a finalist for the American Jewish Studies, Celebrate 350 Award for a non-fiction book about the Jewish experience in North America. The Celebrate 350 Committee commemorated 350 years of Jewish life in America with a year-long series of celebrations; this award provides the opportunity to honor books that will contribute to the next major milestone.

The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower
Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses

Stephen H. Norwood

This is the first systematic exploration of the nature and extent of sympathy for Nazi Germany at American universities during the 1930s. Universities were highly influential in shaping public opinion and many of the nation’s most prominent university administrators refused to take a principled stand against the Hitler regime. Universities welcomed Nazi officials to campus and participated enthusiastically in student exchange programs with Nazified universities in Germany. American educators helped Nazi Germany improve its image in the West as it intensified its persecution of the Jews and strengthened its armed forces. The study contrasts the significant American grass-roots protest against Nazism that emerged as soon as Hitler assumed power with campus quiescence, and administrators' frequently harsh treatment of those students and professors who challenged their determination to maintain friendly relations with Nazi Germany.

Jewish Immigrants and American Capitalism, 1880–1920
From Caste to Class

Eli Lederhendler

Eli Lederhendler’s Jewish Immigrants and American Capitalism, 1880–1920: From Caste to Class reexamines the immigration of Russian Jews to the United States around the turn of the 20th century – a group that accounted for 10 to 15 percent of immigrants to the United States between 1899 and 1920 – challenging and revising common assumptions concerning the ease of their initial adaptation and image as a “model” immigrant minority. Lederhendler demonstrates that the characteristics for which Jewish immigrants are commonly known – their industriousness, “middle-class” domestic habits, and political sympathy for the working class – were, in fact, developed in response to their new situation in the United States. This experience realigned Jewish social values and restored to these immigrants a sense of status, honor, and a novel kind of social belonging, and with it the “social capital” needed to establish a community quite different from the ones they came from.