Chapter 2 examines Joel Augustus Rogers’ semi-autobiographical debate novel From “Superman” to Man (1917), which features an erudite Pullman porter methodically debunking the anti-Black racist arguments of a Southern senator traveling on his route. Signifying on the pseudoscientific foundations of Jim Crow bigotry, the New Negro porter turns what Eric Lott calls the “black mirror” back on the senator to reveal, ultimately, the utter abjection of white supremacy. Having already “proved” the Negro’s humanity through his erudition, the porter’s explicit reading of a gruesome lynching becomes a catalyst for the senator’s “liminal crucible” moment, a moral transformation great enough that he offers the porter a job in his film studio now devoted to producing some films that “create a better understanding of the Negro.” By examining the revisions Rogers made to his 1917 novel in his 1923 serialization, I reveal Rogers’ increasing anger over the growing brutality and frequency of white mob violence as well as the race-baiting newspapers that fomented it.

Chapter 3 launches into the Tesla wars with an inside account of the first big battle in New Jersey in 2014. It shows how the dealers tried to pivot from the original dealer protection motivation of the state laws to a consumer protection justification and the tactics the dealers used to advance their position. Drawing on public choice theory, the chapter also answers the question of why the dealers have managed to cling onto their protected position for so long, despite business, technological, and political changes that have entirely undermined the original purposes of the franchise dealer laws.

The alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Second World War has often been seen by Americans as at best a temporary necessity to defeat Nazi Germany. In contrast, this chapter emphasizes how much American and Soviet attitudes changed during the war and how many people in both countries came to believe the wartime collaboration would be a foundation for postwar cooperation. While many American politicians, journalists, and historians have downplayed or even forgotten the vital Soviet role in the crushing of German armies, during the war most Americans were keenly aware of the enormous sacrifices made by the Soviet people. By the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in early 1943, mainstream media in the United States lionized not only the Red Army but even Joseph Stalin. The massive US Lend–Lease aid to the USSR was not crucial to the Soviet survival of German offensives in 1941 and 1942, as some have claimed, but it did significantly enhance the Red Army’s mobility and communications, thereby hastening the joint allied victory in Europe by May 1945.

In the early 1980s, relations between the superpowers deteriorated from severely strained to acutely confrontational, and fears of nuclear war gripped people in both countries. Yet by 1989 relations improved so much that most informed observers believed the Cold War was ending. This chapter goes beyond conventional explanations of the transformation that have focused on the policies of President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. It demonstrates that citizen activists also played important roles. In the early 1980s, a very popular nuclear freeze movement compelled the Reagan administration to change its harsh rhetoric and to show greater interest in negotiations with the Soviet Union. Then, large-scale exchanges of Soviet and American citizens, which both Reagan and Gorbachev came to support, challenged demonic stereotypes and humanized the supposed enemies. The chapter also describes how American and Soviet films reflected and contributed to the dramatic changes, from the nightmarish depiction of a communist invasion of the United States in Red Dawn (1984) to the dramatization of a partnership between Soviet and American police officers in Red Heat (1988).

This chapter focuses on the two Russian revolutions in 1917 and US responses to them. The Wilson administration enthusiastically welcomed the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy in March, quickly recognized the new Provisional Government, and extended large loans in the hope that a democratic Russia would stay in the war against Germany. But after radical, antiwar socialists seized power in November, the United States refused to recognize the new Soviet regime, provided covert aid to anti-Bolshevik (“White”) armies, and sent small military expeditions to Archangel and Vladivostok. Contrary to earlier studies, the chapter shows that the United States sought to speed the demise of the Bolshevik regime. US forces fought directly against the Red Army in northern Russia and battled Red partisans in the Far East, while the American Relief Administration, American Red Cross, and Young Men’s Christian Association all aided White armies. Despite the interventions by the United States and its allies, the Bolsheviks prevailed. The legacies of these events included the US rejection of diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia until 1933 and Soviet conceptions of Russia as a “besieged fortress.”

Chapter 1 explores the early relationship between Russia and America, defined by parallel colonial endeavors, development of mutual perceptions, and the beginnings of diplomacy. Initial encounters revealed shared approaches as both nations expanded into challenging territories. Throughout the eighteenth century, economic and cultural exchanges flourished, with Enlightenment ideals shaping Russia’s view of America as a symbol of liberty. Russian radicals saw America as a challenge to their regime, concerning Empress Catherine the Great. Conversely, Americans fluctuated between viewing Russia as despotic and as a potential ally. Russian expansion into the Northwest of the American continent led to competition with American traders, though relations remained relatively peaceful. The formal establishment of diplomatic relations in the early nineteenth century reflected mutual interests during the French revolutionary wars. By 1807, trade and diplomatic ties continued to grow, supported by cautious admiration and strategic alignment. This period laid the groundwork for a complex relationship, marked by ambivalence yet a shared commitment to commerce and diplomacy.

During the era of détente, Soviet and US leaders pursued common interests in controlling the spread of nuclear weapons, limiting the cost of the arms race, and expanding trade. Summit meetings brought agreements on nuclear non-proliferation, arms limitation, and space exploration. Yet, after a high point of friendly negotiation in the early 1970s, friction and competition overshadowed cooperation. While the unraveling of détente has often been blamed on Soviet adventurism in the “Third World,” this chapter presents a more balanced explanation. It notes that the United States too intervened around the world, argues that geopolitical competition was not the sole cause of tension, and highlights how domestic political dynamics disrupted relations between the superpowers. After the divisive and destructive US war in Vietnam, many Americans yearned to recover faith in their moral superiority. Denunciations of Soviet human rights violations, including restrictions on Jewish emigration and repression of dissidents, contributed to a revival of confidence in American virtues while irritating Soviet leaders. Long before the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979, acrimony eclipsed partnership.

Chapter 9 calls the direct sales wars in Tesla’s favor. It has sold over 2 million cars without using a dealer, established a national footprint, and obtained a loyal customer following that vouches for its direct sales approach. This chapter pulls together the fifty-state story of the direct sales wars, showing where each state stands on the issue and how Tesla used creative tactics like locating on Native American lands to circumvent remaining restrictions in holdout states.

Chapter 1 traces the history of the franchise dealer model of car distribution, from the early wild west days of the internal combustion automobile to the political confrontations between Detroit’s Big Three and the “mom and pop” car dealers during the mid-twentieth century. The chapter examines the thinking of legendary management figures such as Henry Ford and Alfred P. Sloan, explains the dealer protection rationale behind state franchise dealer laws, and shows how the legacy car companies largely acquiesced in those laws until Tesla’s entry onto the scene.

The chapter explores US–Russia relations in the years before Russia entered her second revolution in February 1917 and America joined the First World War in April 1917. This period was complicated by discrimination against Jews and other ethnic minorities in Russia, by ideological differences between American democracy and Russian autocracy, and by geopolitical disagreements. Yet these elements of conflict did not hamper the two states’ rapprochement, which began at the end of 1914 and at times resembled the euphoria of a honeymoon. This chapter emphasizes that the surprising thaw in US–Russia relations cannot be explained only by the convergence of the two governments’ interests: namely, that the Russian Empire desperately needed to buy American supplies for its armed forces, while Americans were eager to sell their surplus products. Interactions between Imperial Russia and the United States call for more comprehensive consideration, with a particular focus on the changes in mutual representations and the intensified process of Russians and Americans studying each other. This is precisely what this chapter sets out to provide.

In the first years of the twenty-first century, Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush sought to develop a strategic and economic partnership. Yet by 2007 US–Russian relations were marked by friction, and after 2012 they deteriorated into bitter enmity. This chapter argues that blaming the degeneration of relations on the KGB background, paranoia, and imperial ambitions of Putin is too simple and one-sided. It shows that the United States also spurred the decline by supporting “color revolutions” in countries around Russia, promoting NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, pushing regime change in countries such as Syria, Libya, and Venezuela, and placing missile defense systems in Eastern Europe. Although Russia and the United States cooperated on a strategic arms reduction treaty, Russian entry into the World Trade Organization, and restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program, conflict increasingly overshadowed such collaboration. That outcome was not inevitable. Instead, unwise policy choices led to clashes, dishonest statements eroded trust, needlessly provocative rhetoric exacerbated tensions, and media sensationalism inflamed antipathies between Americans and Russians.

In Chapter 4, I consider the third and most controversial and canonical novel in the Pittsburgh Courier’s anti-lynching trilogy, Walter White’s The Fire in the Flint (1924). Rather than presenting white transformation, the novel ends with the bitterness of a failed cooperative initiative and the lynching of both of its New Negro protagonists. When the New Negro physician’s culminating gesture of selfless professionalism is misconstrued by the town’s Klansmen, a white mob – another such mob had already murdered his more radical New Negro brother – ambushes and kills him. Loosely based on White’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) lynching investigations of the 1919 Elaine massacre, the novel is the only work of fiction I examine that generated a published letter to the editor criticizing it. Considered within the montaged paratextual elements that surrounded it, women’s voices gain significantly more agency. In particular, the advertisements for guns around the serial installments emphasize the “ghostly” presence of Ida B. Wells’ anti-lynching militance. In addition, just one month before the serialization of White’s novel appeared in January of 1926, the Courier began publishing a column by anti-lynching activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson.

The legacy Detroit manufacturers were between a rock and a hard place. Having just emerged from near-death experiences during the 2008–09 financial crisis, they now had to face the onslaught not only of EV technology that they had long resisted but also of a company that refused to play by the settled rules on how cars are sold and serviced. Led by General Motors (GM), the legacies decided that their best tactic was to stand with their dealers and argue that Tesla should be denied direct sales, which would not only prevent Tesla from getting ahead but could keep Tesla far behind. This “raising rivals’ costs” strategy ultimately backfired, as Tesla got the right to sell direct in most states, and the legacies missed the chance to get their own right to compete with Tesla on a level playing field.

In Chapter 3, I examine Joshua Henry Jones, Jr.’s By Sanction of Law, serialized in the Pittsburgh Courier and Baltimore Afro-American. By including a white man, a pregnant Black woman, and a New Negro character as among the lynching victims, describing the lynchings in the novel’s real time, crafting his lynching scenes as “liminal crucibles” propelling dramatic white racial reckonings, and depicting what appears as an interracial romance, Jones offers a more radical antilynching vision than does Rogers. In direct opposition to the dictates of white supremacist eugenicists, Jones evokes Israel Zangwill’s melting pot as the remedy to America’s lynch logic. Although the novel does not directly mention twenties-era racial-purity campaigns or the nativism and interracial marriage bans they generated, within the context of the newspapers, it deeply engages these movements. Like Rogers, Jones emphasized both the essential performative nature of American identity, epitomized by the New Negro’s education, demeanor, and work ethic, but unlike Rogers, Jones raised the nativist specter of radical immigrant agitators.

The Harlem Renaissance Weekly asks that we consider the largely overlooked newspaper serial fiction of the 1920s in relation to, and sometimes in direct response to, events of daily interest to Black people, and especially Black women, who likely constituted its primary readers. By recentering Black newspapers and by reading them as part of a reader-generated weekly montage, I show how this broad-based popular form helped readers renegotiate the cultural work of New Negroes, refiguring civil rights protest as they navigated the pleasures and dangers of the Jazz Age. At the same time, I demonstrate how the twenties New Negro Woman featured in the Pittsburgh Courier increasingly dominated racial representation and contested patriarchal Black leadership. If the New Negro Man led the race on the editorial page, the New Negro Woman represented the race on the front page. It was not Alain Locke’s implicitly male New Negro who defined the Harlem Renaissance week to week, but rather the New Negro Woman, who, almost invariably in the context of a heterosexual love plot, propelled narratives, spurred sales, and defined a distinctly modern Black sociopolitical consciousness.