{"id":26925,"date":"2026-02-10T10:31:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T15:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/history\/?p=26925"},"modified":"2026-02-10T10:32:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T15:32:26","slug":"prof-david-mayers-publishes-new-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/history\/2026\/02\/10\/prof-david-mayers-publishes-new-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Prof David Mayers Publishes New Book"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/history\/profile\/david-a-mayers\/\">Professor David Mayers<\/a> recently published a new book,\u00a0<em>Seekers and Partisans: Americans Abroad in the Crisis Years, 1935-1941.<\/em> <span>This book recounts the tales of individual Americans, some well-known and some not, who strove to understand their nation and its place in the world in the roiled years 1935\u201341. David Mayers identifies these individuals as &#8216;seekers&#8217; and &#8216;partisans.&#8217; Primarily disillusioned idealists, both on the left and right, they hurried from America to explore and be part of a different world. Among those featured are John Robinson, a Black aviator who in 1935 led the Ethiopian air force against the Italian invasion; Agnes Smedley, who joined the Chinese communists during the Sino-Japanese war; eminent Black civil rights theorist W. E. B. Du Bois; Helen Keller, an advocate of the seeing- and hearing-impaired; architect Philip Johnson; Ezra Pound, a lauded poet who championed Mussolini; and Anna Louise Strong, drawn to Stalin&#8217;s USSR. The lives and stories of this diverse group shed light on the contested nature of American ambitions, aims, and national purpose, and destabilize what it means to be &#8220;American.&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/us\/universitypress\/subjects\/history\/twentieth-century-american-history\/seekers-and-partisans-americans-abroad-crisis-years-19351941?format=HB&amp;isbn=9781009629874\">Click here<\/a> to view and purchase the book.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/us\/universitypress\/subjects\/history\/twentieth-century-american-history\/seekers-and-partisans-americans-abroad-crisis-years-19351941?format=HB&amp;isbn=9781009629874\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/history\/files\/2026\/02\/9781009629874jvs01.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"439\" height=\"666\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-26928\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/history\/files\/2026\/02\/9781009629874jvs01.jpg 439w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/history\/files\/2026\/02\/9781009629874jvs01-419x636.jpg 419w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/history\/files\/2026\/02\/9781009629874jvs01-395x600.jpg 395w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 439px) 100vw, 439px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Professor David Mayers recently published a new book,\u00a0Seekers and Partisans: Americans Abroad in the Crisis Years, 1935-1941. This book recounts the tales of individual Americans, some well-known and some not, who strove to understand their nation and its place in the world in the roiled years 1935\u201341. David Mayers identifies these individuals as &#8216;seekers&#8217; and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23821,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26925"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23821"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26925"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26929,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26925\/revisions\/26929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}