Tara Zahra is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a professor of history at the University of Chicago. Recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she lives in Chicago, Illinois.
Against the World is a tour de force: Tara Zahra brings her formidable talents as a writer and scholar to this elegant, consistently surprising, and richly peopled book, which positively brims with relevance for our troubled times. Zahra convinces us that unless the defenders of open societies and open borders address head-on the inequalities at the heart of globalization, those who would put up walls are likely to triumph again. -- Sunil Amrith, author of Unruly Waters Deeply researched, timely, and erudite, Against the World illuminates why, after 1918, the world took an anti-global turn. Interrogating the myriad relationships between nationalism and globalization, Tara Zahra moves deftly between local histories and macro trends, producing a page-turning account that is a must-read for anyone interested in how and why the world's current conditions are not unique. -- Caroline Elkins, author of Legacy of Violence Every day brings another headline about the end of globalization but, as Tara Zahra shows us in her lively and learned new book, we have been here before. The years between the world wars also brought calls to bring the supply chains home and sparked efforts for local food security, domestic manufacturing, and even autarky. Through vivid portraits of contemporaries from Czech shoe baron Tomas Bat'a to Hungarian-born feminist Rosika Schwimmer she reminds us that the politics of separation spawn new conflicts of their own. - Quinn Slobodian, author of GLOBALISTS -- Quinn Slobodian, author of Globalists Uncovering for the first time the first ever popular revolt against globalism, Against the World represents a new and better kind of global history. Unusually rich with the lives and times of ordinary people and brimming with fresh interpretations and insights, this is the best book about the mass politics of globalization yet written. -- Jonathan Levy, author of Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States