{"id":11393,"date":"2026-02-20T16:38:59","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T21:38:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/polisci\/?p=11393"},"modified":"2026-02-20T16:38:59","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T21:38:59","slug":"professor-david-mayers-publishes-new-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/polisci\/2026\/02\/20\/professor-david-mayers-publishes-new-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor David Mayers Publishes New Book"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Professor David Mayers has published a new book, <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\"><em>Seekers and Partisans: Americans Abroad in the Crisis Years, 1935\u20131941<\/em><\/a>, that r<span>ecounts 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. Professor 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 &#8216;American.&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Professor David Mayers has published a new book, Seekers and Partisans: Americans Abroad in the Crisis Years, 1935\u20131941, that 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. Professor Mayers identifies these individuals as &#8216;seekers&#8217; and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21874,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1679,1647,1649],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/polisci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11393"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/polisci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/polisci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/polisci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21874"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/polisci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/polisci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11394,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/polisci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11393\/revisions\/11394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/polisci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/polisci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/polisci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}