Podcasts by New Books in American Studies

Above the Veil: Beyond Segregationism and Assimilationism from 2023-01-29T09:00

The work of Ibram X. Kendi distinguishes between two forms of racism: segregationism and assimilationism. Segregationists argue that some groups are inferior by nature; assimilationists, on the oth...

Climate of Denial: Why Do Americans Doubt Climate Change? from 2023-01-23T09:00

Human-caused climate change is real and growing in impact. Yet many Americans see climate change as a belief that they can opt out of. Two belief structures are to blame: American Protestantism and...

Progressive Souls: Religion and the Pursuit of a Just Society (Part 2) from 2023-01-22T09:00

Religious people have played an important role in progressive politics in the US for its entire history. Contemporary leftists should look to build bridges and include religious voices in the pursu...

Progressive Souls: Religion and the Pursuit of a Just Society (Part 1) from 2023-01-21T09:00

Religious people have played an important role in progressive politics in the US for its entire history. Contemporary leftists should look to build bridges and include religious voices in the pursu...

Apocalyptic Politics: What Do Evangelical Voters Want? from 2023-01-15T09:00

Evangelical voters made up a significant portion of Donald Trump’s base in the 2016 presidential election. Their political agenda may not be peace or prosperity, but instead bringing us closer to t...

Demeritocracy: Should We Still Believe in Meritocracy? from 2023-01-10T09:00

Total faith in meritocracy leads to the dangerous belief that all social winners and losers are wholly deserving. Instead, we need an economy of grace. GuestsVictor Tan Chen, assistant professor of...

White Balance: How Do Race and Class Intersect? from 2023-01-06T09:00

Understanding race in America requires understanding its relationship to class. GuestsJoshua Bennett, writer and poet Julian Bourg, Professor of History at Boston CollegeNancy Isenberg, author of ...

Generation Why?: Do We Need "Generations?" from 2023-01-04T09:00

Who gets to define generational cohorts and do they obscure more than illuminate? GuestsNeil Howe, author of Generations Tony Tulathimutte, author of Why There’s No ‘Millennial’ NovelLearn more a...

Seriously Funny: Politics and Comedy from 2023-01-03T09:00

What happens when politics becomes comedy and the jester becomes the king? GuestsEmily Nussbaum, television critic for The New Yorker Avi Steinberg, writerKwesi Mensah, comedian Learn more about...

Seriously Funny: Politics and Comedy from 2023-01-03T09:00

What happens when politics becomes comedy and the jester becomes the king? GuestsEmily Nussbaum, television critic for The New Yorker Avi Steinberg, writerKwesi Mensah, comedian Learn more about...

On James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time" from 2022-12-05T09:00

The writer and activist James Baldwin grew up in a majority white America that saw white American lives as standard and universal, and Black American lives as different and particular. But in his 1...

On John Rawl's "A Theory of Justice" from 2022-12-01T09:00

How do you create a fair society? Who deserves to rule? What rights do citizens have? How are those rights protected? What does it mean to act morally within society? These are the kinds of questio...

On Toni Morrison's "Beloved" from 2022-11-09T09:00

In 1987, Toni Morrison published her fourth novel, Beloved, based on the story of Margaret Garner, a woman who escaped slavery with her child. Garner and her daughter were discovered by slave catch...

On "The U.S. Constitution" from 2022-11-07T09:00

The story of the Constitution of the United States began long before the American Revolutionary War. This document was influenced by centuries old English law, and the final product was the result ...

On Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" from 2022-10-21T08:00

By the early 19th century, slavery was still a brutal reality in southern U.S. states, and a growing movement to abolish slavery nationwide was taking hold. In 1851, Harriet Beecher Stowe published...

On John Hersey's "Hiroshima" from 2022-10-07T08:00

In August of 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Less than a year later, American journalist John Hersey traveled to Hiroshima and intervi...

On Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" from 2022-10-03T08:00

In the 1770s, the American colonies were working up to a revolution. But while the colonists were increasingly dissatisfied with British rule, there was no general consensus on what to do about it....

On "The Book of Mormon" from 2022-09-13T08:00

In 1827 a young farmer named Joseph Smith was visited by an angel. The angel led him to a hillside where he uncovered a set of ancient gold plates written in strange characters in an ancient langua...

On Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" from 2022-08-29T08:00

It makes sense that historian Nathanial Philbrick calls Moby-Dick the “American Bible.” Along with being a story of adventure and danger, it’s also a celebration of pluralism and a critique of soci...

On W. E. B. DuBois' "The Souls of Black Folk" from 2022-08-16T08:00

Nearly 40 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, American writer, sociologist and civil rights activist W. E. B. DuBois shed light on Black life in America and what it meant to be se...

On Frederick Douglass from 2022-08-15T08:00

When Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in 1818, it was illegal for him to learn the alphabet. Slave masters feared the power of a literate slave, so Douglass vowed to read. He became one of ...

On Frederick Douglass from 2022-08-15T08:00

When Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in 1818, it was illegal for him to learn the alphabet. Slave masters feared the power of a literate slave, so Douglass vowed to read. He became one of ...

On Walter Lippmann's "Public Opinion" from 2022-08-10T08:00

What is the role of the press in a democracy? For nearly a century, scholars, media critics, and politicians have debated this question—in a large part thanks to Walter Lippmann. Lippmann’s 1922 bo...

On "Black Elk Speaks" from 2022-08-08T08:00

In many ways, Black Elk and John Neihardt lived very different lives. Black Elk was an Oglala Lakota holy man. Neihartd was a European-American literary critic. Black Elk performed for Queen Victor...

Michael Rectenwald, "Beyond Woke" (New English Review Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A few short years ago, Michael Rectenwald was a Marxist professor at NYU, pursuing his career and contemplating becoming a Trotskyist, when the political climate on campus - victimology, cancel-cul...

Sarah Burns, "The Politics of War Powers: The Theory and History of Presidential Unilateralism" (UP of Kansas, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sarah Burns’ new book The Politics of War Powers: The Theory and History of Presidential Unilateralism (University Press of Kansas, 2020) pulls together distinct threads in analyzing the theoretica...

David Farber, "Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A shattering account of the crack cocaine years from award-winning American historian David Farber, Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed (Cambridge University Press, 2019...

J. Dyck and E. Lascher, "Initiatives without Engagement: A Realistic Appraisal of Direct Democracy’s Secondary Effects" (U Michigan Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ballot initiatives offer voters the chance to directly determine the outcome of state policy change. Do Americans who vote on initiatives grow in political efficacy and participate more in the futu...

David C. Posthumus, “All My Relatives: Exploring Lakota Ontology, Belief, and Ritual” (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In All My Relatives: Exploring Lakota Ontology, Belief, and Ritual (University of Nebraska Press, 2018), David C. Posthumus, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Native American Studies at the U...

R. Shep Melnick, “The Transformation of Title IX: Regulating Gender Equality in Education” (Brookings Institution Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When thinking of Title IX, most people immediately associate this important education policy with either athletics or a general idea of increasing opportunities for women in education. Rarely do th...

Josh Chafetz, “Congress’s Constitution: Legislative Authority and the Separation of Powers” (Yale UP, 2017). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Josh Chafetz‘s new book, Congress’s Constitution: Legislative Authority and the Separation of Powers (Yale University Press, 2017), examines Congress as a branch and the powers of the legislature ...

Karl Jacoby, “The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Millionaire” (Norton, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

To his contemporaries in Gilded Age Manhattan, Guillermo Eliseo was a fantastically wealthy Mexican, the proud owner of a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, a busy Wall Street office, and s...

Louis DeSipio and Rodolfo de la Garza, “U.S. Immigration in the Twenty-First Century” (Westview Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this week’s podcast, we hear from an author and an editor. First, Louis DeSipio and Rodolfo de la Garza are authors of U.S. Immigration in the Twenty-First Century: Making Americans, Remaking Am...

Peter Savodnik, “The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union” (Basic Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For many people, the most important questions about the Kennedy assassination are “Who killed Kennedy?” and, if Lee Harvey Oswald did, “Was Oswald part of a conspiracy?” This is strange, because we...

Jay Cost, “Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic” (Broadside Books, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic (Broadside Books, 2012), Jay Cost, a political analys...

Caridad Svich, "Mitchell and Trask’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch" (Routledge, 2019 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mitchell and Trask’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Routledge, 2019) is Caridad Svich’s love letter to the 1998 musical that introduced the world to its favorite East German ex-pat genderqueer rock sta...

Jonathan Hopkin, "Anti-System Politics: The Crisis of Market Liberalism in Rich Democracies" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Should we understand the rise of Trump or the success of Brexit in terms of populism? Culture? Xenophobia? Do the same political forces produce Sanders and Trump? In his new book Anti-System Politi...

Lara Saguisag, "Incorrigibles and Innocents: Constructing Childhood and Citizenship in Progressive Era Comics" (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Histories and criticism of comics note that comic strips published in the Progressive Era were dynamic spaces in which anxieties about race, ethnicity, class, and gender were expressed, perpetuated...

Jennifer Thomson, "The Wild and the Toxic: American Environmentalism and the Politics of Health" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The first wealth is health, according to Emerson. Among health’s riches is its political potential. Few know this better than environmentalists. In her debut book, The Wild and the Toxic: American ...

Stefan M. Wheelock, “Barbaric Culture and Black Critique: Black Antislavery Writers, Religion, and the Slaveholding Atlantic” (U Virginia Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Barbaric Culture and Black Critique: Black Antislavery Writers, Religion, and the Slaveholding Atlantic (University of Virginia Press, 2015), Dr. Stefan M. Wheelock analyses a little-discussed e...

Japonica Brown-Saracino, “How Places Make Us: Novel LBQ Identities in Four Small Cities” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Many of us move to a new place at some point in our lives for a variety of reasons: for a job, to be with a partner, to attend school, for a change of scenery, to retire. When we have a choice, we ...

Gary Kulik, “War Stories: False Atrocity Tales, Swift Boaters, and Winter Soldiers” (Potomac Books, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

One often hears stories of World War II and Korean War veterans who came back from the war and refused to talk about what they had experienced in combat. They neither wanted folks at home to know w...

Meredith Conroy, “Masculinity, Media, and the American Presidency” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Meredith Conroy is the author of Masculinity, Media, and the American Presidency (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015). Conroy is assistant professor of Political Science at California State University, San B...

Kathryn Cramer Brownell, “Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life” (UNC Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We are all aware how important professional movie makers are to modern campaigns. Many trace this importance to John F. Kennedy’s presidential victory in 1960. Yet, as Kathryn Cramer Brownell shows...

Nicholas Hartlep, “The Model Minority Stereotype: Demystifying Asian American Success” (Information Age, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nicholas Hartlep is the author of The Model Minority Stereotype: Demystifying Asian American Success (Information Age, 2013). Dr. Hartlep is an Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations at Ill...

John Cheng, “Astounding Wounder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John Cheng‘s new book Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) uncovers the material and social circumstances that creat...

Lesly-Marie Buer, "RX Appalachia: Stories of Treatment and Survival in Rural Kentucky" (Haymarket, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Using the narratives of women who use(d) drugs, this account challenges popular understandings of Appalachia spread by such pundits as JD Vance by documenting how women, families, and communities c...

Larry Wolff, "Woodrow Wilson and the Reimagining of Eastern Europe" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, where the victorious Allied powers met to reenvision the map of Europe in the aftermath of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson's influence on the remapping of ...

David D. Vail, "Chemical Lands: Pesticides, Aerial Spraying, and Health in North America’s Grasslands since 1945" (U Alabama Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Over fifty years ago, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) scolded the agricultural industry for its profligate spread of “poison” and pesticides “indiscriminately from the skies.” Now, in Chemical...

Max Edelson, "The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America before Independence" (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When we think of the history of the British empire we tend to think big: oceans were crossed; colonies grew from small settlements to territories many times larger than England; entire Continents, ...

Susan Carruthers, “The Good Occupation: American Soldiers and the Hazards of Peace” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, The Good Occupation: American Soldiers and the Hazards of Peace (Harvard University Press, 2016), Dr. Susan Carruthers, professor of American Studies at the University of Warwick, ...

Natasha Zaretsky, “Radiation Nation: Three Mile Island and the Political Transformation of the 1970s” (Columbia UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What if modern conservatism is less a reaction to environmentalism than a mutation of it? Historian Natasha Zaretsky’s latest book, Radiation Nation: Three Mile Island and the Political Transformat...

Tom Adam Davies, “Mainstreaming Black Power” (U. Cal Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is Black Power? Does it still exist in the so-called post-racial 21st Century? How does Black Power relate to similar movements, like Black Lives Matter? There as so many questions, but there ...

Eid Mohamed, “Arab Occidentalism: Images of America in the Middle East” (I.B. Tauris, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Edward Said’s 1978 book, Orientalism, dramatically shifted how people think about the production of knowledge and representations of the Other. His ideas have been championed and critiqued with doz...

Kimberly Phillips-Fein, “Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal” (W. W. Norton, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we’ll focus on the history of resistance to the New Deal. In her book Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal (W. W. Norton,2010), Kimberly Phillips-Fein details how m...

Isaac Martin, “Rich People’s Movement: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Isaac Martin is the author of Rich People’s Movement: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent (Oxford UP 2013). He is professor of sociology at University of California, San Diego. Martin’s ...

Erin D. Chapman, “Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s” (Oxford University Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Whoever states the old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words” grossly underestimates. So Erin D. Chapman shows in Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s (Oxford Un...

Melissa J. Wilde, "Birth Control Battles: How Race and Class Divided American Religion" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Although it has largely been erased from the collective memory of American Christianity, the debate over eugenics was a major factor in the history of 20th-century religious movements, with many ch...

Jennifer E. Gaddis, "The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There’s a problem with school lunch in America. Big Food companies have largely replaced the nation’s school cooks by supplying cafeterias with cheap, precooked hamburger patties and chicken nugget...

Wendy Brown, "In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Neoliberalism is one of those fuzzy words that can mean something different to everyone. Wendy Brown is one of the world’s leading scholars on neoliberalism and argue that a generation of neolibera...

Peter B. Josephson and R. Ward Holder, "Reinhold Niebuhr in Theory and Practice: Christian Realism and Democracy in America in the Twenty-First Century" (Lexington Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Peter Josephson and Ward Holder collaborated on their second book on theologian and political theorist Reinhold Niebuhr in producing this new book, specifically focusing on the questions of “why Ni...

Robert Fink, Melinda Latour, and Zachary Wallmark, “The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music (Oxford University Press, 2018), editors Robert Fink, Melinda Latour, and Zachary Wallmark curate a wide-ranging collection of essays abou...

Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, “Politics at Work: How Companies Turn Their Workers into Lobbyists” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Alexander Hertel-Fernandez is the author of Politics at Work: How Companies Turn Their Workers into Lobbyists (Oxford University Press, 2018). He is an assistant professor of political science at C...

Andre Sirois, “Hip-Hop DJs and the Evolution of Technology: Cultural Exchange, Innovation, and Democratization” (Peter Lang, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the role of the deejay in shaping hip-hop? Did deejays shape the technology that is used to create the music or were they simply consumers of mixers, faders, and microphones? What is the re...

Roger Daniels, “Franklin D. Roosevelt: Road to the New Deal, 1882-1939” (U Illinois Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For all that has been written about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, many misconceptions about the man and his achievements continue to persist. Roger Daniels seeks to correct these in a new two-volume b...

Caroline Lee, et al., “Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemma of the New Public Participation” (NYU Press 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Caroline Lee, Michael McQuarrie, and Edward Walker are the editors of Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemma of the New Public Participation (NYU Press 2015). Lee is associate professor of sociology a...

Mark R. Cheathem, “Andrew Jackson, Southerner” (Louisiana State University Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What do most Americans know about Andrew Jackson, apart from that he’s on the $20 bill and that he apparently had great hair? Probably not much. Maybe that he was a two-term president who pioneered...

Gregory McNamee, “The Only One Living to Tell: The Autobiography of a Yavapai Indian” (University of Arizona Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Late in 1872, as the United States sought to clear the newly incorporated Southwest of its indigenous inhabitants, a company under Capt. James Burns came upon an encampment of Kwevkepayas (a branch...

Michael A. Olivas, "Perchance to DREAM: A Legal and Political History of the DREAM Act and DACA" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why did the DREAM Act (for the Development, Relief, and Education of Alien Minors) never pass Congress – even though it was popular with Republicans and Democrats? What does the political and legal...

Justin Nystrom, "Creole Italian: Sicilian Immigrants and the Shaping of New Orleans Food Culture" (U Georgia Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Justin Nystrom about his latest book, Creole Italian: Sicilian Immigrants and the Shaping of New Orleans Food Culture, published in 2018 by the Univ...

T. L. Bunyasi and C. W. Smith, "Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Tehama Lopez Bunyasi and Candis Watts Smith have written an accessible and important book about the #BlackLivesMatter social movement and broader considerations of, essentially, how we got to where...

Diane Tober, "Romancing the Sperm: Shifting Biopolitics and the Making of Modern Families" (Rutgers UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The development of a whole suite of new reproductive technologies in recent decades has contributed to broad cultural conversations and controversies over the meaning of family in the United States...

Bradley W. Hart, “Hitler’s American Friends: The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, Hitler’s American Friends: The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States (Thomas Dunne Books, 2018), Bradley W. Hart, assistant professor at California State University, Fresno...

David A. Hollinger, “Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World and Changed America” (Princeton UP, 2017). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

David A. Hollinger‘s Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World and Changed America (Princeton University Press, 2017) offers a history of how American missionaries, their child...

Benjamin Heber Johnson, “Escaping the Dark, Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive-Era Conservation” (Yale UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The turn of the twentieth century caught America at a crossroads, shaking the dust from a bygone era and hurtling toward the promises of modernity. Factories, railroads, banks, and oil fields all r...

Laurent Dubois, “The Banjo: America’s African Instrument” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Most scholars of popular music use songs, artists, and clubs as the key texts and sites in their exploration of the social, cultural, political, and economic effects of music. Laurent Dubois‘ new b...

Leigh Ann Wheeler, “How Sex Became a Civil Liberty” (Oxford University Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Leigh Ann Wheeler is professor of history at Binghamton University. Her book How Sex Became a Civil Liberty (Oxford University Press, 2013), examines the role of the American Civil Liberties Union ...

Ken MacLeish, “Fort Hood: Life and Uncertainty in a Military Community” (Princeton UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ken MacLeish offers an ethnographic look at daily lives and the true costs borne by soldiers, their families, and communities, in his new book Making War at Fort Hood: Life and Uncertainty in a Mil...

Susan Harris, “God’s Arbiters: Americans and the Philippines, 1898-1902” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mark Twain called it “pious hypocrisies.” President McKinley called it “civilizing and Christianizing.” Both were referring to the U.S. annexation of the Philippines in 1899. Susan K. Harris‘ lates...

Sunny Stalter-Pace, "Imitation Artist: Gertrude Hoffman’s Life in Vaudeville and Dance" (Northwestern UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gertrude Hoffman is one of many entertainers who were big stars in vaudeville before World War I, but whose celebrity faded as the American public was seduced by radio and film after the Great War....

Rebecca E. Zietlow, "The Forgotten Emancipator: James Mitchell Ashley and the Ideological Origins of Reconstruction" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Though the story of emancipation is well known in American history, the roles of many of the key figures involved in it are often overlooked. Among them is James Mitchell Ashley, the Ohio congressm...

Lucas Richert, “Strange Trips: Science, Culture, and the Regulation of Drugs” (McGill-Queens UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Strange Trips isn’t only the title of Dr. Lucas Richert’s new book; it’s also a good description of the journey substances take from the black market to the doctor’s black bag—and, sometimes, back ...

Derrick Spires, "The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With talk about birthright citizenship and border walls running rampant in Trump’s America, there are many scholars reaching back to antebellum America to historically ground today’s citizens in de...

Tim Jelfs, “The Argument about Things in the 1980s: Goods and Garbage in an Age of Neoliberalism” (West Virginia UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Argument about Things in the 1980s: Goods and Garbage in an Age of Neoliberalism (West Virginia University Press, 2018), Tim Jelfs argues that debates about the nature of stuff—its moral val...

Jimmy Patino, “Raza Si, Migra No: Chicano Movement Struggles for Immigrant Rights in San Diego” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As immigration from Mexico to the United States grew through the 1970s and 1980s, the Border Patrol, police, and other state agents exerted increasing violence against ethnic Mexicans in San Diego’...

John P. Langellier, “Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo Soldiers in the Frontier Army” (Schiffer, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From the American Revolution to the present day, African Americans have stepped forward in their nation’s defense. Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo Solders in the Frontier Army (Schiffer, 2016) brea...

Alfred Frankowski, “The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization: Towards a Political Sense of Mourning” (Lexington Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How are cultural practices that suggest social inclusion at the root of marginalizing social suffering? In The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization: Towards a Political Sense of Mourning (Lexingto...

Leilah Danielson, “American Gandhi” (U Pennsylvania Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Leilah Danielson is an Associate Professor of History at Northern Arizona University and author of American Gandhi: A.J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the Twentieth Century (University of ...

Matthew L. Basso, “Meet Joe Copper: Maculinity and Race on Montana’s World War II Home Front” (University of Chicago Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the United States, World War II is now called “The Good War,” as opposed to bad ones, I suppose, like Vietnam. Moreover, the Americans who fought in World War II are now called “The Greatest Gen...

Kevin Whitehead, “Why Jazz? A Concise Guide” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kevin Whitehead‘s highly readable, informative and entertaining Why Jazz? A Concise Guide (Oxford University Press, 2011) is bookshelf “must have” for anyone who loves jazz – and he does it in a qu...

Aya Gruber, "The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Aya Gruber, a professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School, has written a history of how the women’s movement in America has shaped the law on domestic violence and sexual assault. In ...

Kathy Peiss, "The Information Hunters" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

While armies have seized enemy records and rare texts as booty throughout history, it was only during World War II that an unlikely band of librarians, archivists, and scholars traveled abroad to c...

Rafia Zafar, "Recipes for Respect: African American Meals and Meaning" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this this interview, Dr. Carrie Tippen talks with Rafia Zafar about her 2019 book Recipes for Respect: African American Meals and Meaning, from the University of Georgia Press. It’s part of the ...

Heather R. White, "Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the Rise of Gay Rights" (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With a focus on mainline Protestants and gay rights activists in the twentieth century, Heather R. White challenges the usual picture of perennial adversaries with a new narrative about America's r...

Stephanie L. Derrick, “The Fame of C. S. Lewis: A Controversialist’s Reception in Britain and America” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

C. S. Lewis remains one of the most popular religious writers, and one of the most widely discussed children’s writers. I had the chance to catch up with Stephanie L. Derrick about her new book, Th...

Chad Montrie, “The Myth of Silent Spring: Rethinking the Origins of American Environmentalism” (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Uncle Tom’s Cabin didn’t start the Civil War and Silent Spring didn’t start the environmental movement. In The Myth of Silent Spring: Rethinking the Origins of American Environmentalism (University...

William Walsh, “Forty-Four American Boys: Short Histories of Presidential Childhoods” (Outpost19, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Whether you’re on the right or the left of the political spectrum, I’ll bet that lately the Office of the President isn’t far from your mind. Every day, it seems, I encounter one, two, three, four ...

Jason Bivins, “Spirits Rejoice! Jazz and American Religion” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jazz is often dubbed the greatest American original art form. This claim might be difficult to contend. But a close exploration of the folks who created, listened, and participated in jazz environm...

Joan Kramer and David Heeley, “In the Company of Legends” (Beaufort Books, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There are a variety of great documentaries about famous films and film artists. Two of the most successful producers of these movies are Joan Kramer and David Heeley. Their book In the Company of L...

Arnie Bernstein, “Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German-American Bund” (St. Martin’s Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Occasionally you hear shrill news reports about American Nazis. Judging by the pictures of them, they are almost always skin-headed morons who can’t put two words together (other than “Sieg Heil” o...

Jonah Goldberg, “The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas” (Sentinel, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (Sentinel HC, 2012), Jonah Goldberg, founding editor of National Review Online and columnist for the Los Angeles Time...

David A. Harris, "A City Divided: Race, Fear and the Law in Police Confrontations" (Anthem Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do we move police forces from a warrior culture to connecting better with communities they serve? Today I talked to David A. Harris about his new book A City Divided: Race, Fear and the Law in ...

Mort Zachter, "Red Holzman: The Life and Legacy of a Hall of Fame Basketball Coach" (Sports Publishing, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Many books have been written about Willis Reed, Bill Bradley, Walt Frazier, Dave DeBusscherre and the other great players on the New York Knicks championship teams of the 1970s, though much less at...

Matthew Hitt, "Inconsistency and Indecision in the United States Supreme Court" (U Michigan Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The United States Supreme Court operates to resolve disputes among lower courts and the other branches of government, allowing elected officials, citizens, and businesses to act without legal uncer...

Aram Gousouzian, "The Men and the Moment: The Election of 1968 and the Rise of Partisan Politics in America" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The endlessly fascinating 1968 presidential race transformed American politics in ways that are still being felt. Aram Goudsouzian explores the characters who shaped that race in The Men and the Mo...

Michael Koncewicz, “They Said No to Nixon: Republicans Who Stood Up to the President’s Abuses of Power” (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is it possible for a president’s political appointees to rein in a president with a penchant for abusing power? Yes. Michael Koncewicz, who listened to hundreds of hours of the Nixon tapes, digs de...

Carl Cannon, “On This Date: From the Pilgrims to Today, Discovering America One Day at a Time” (Twelve, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Five days a week, Carl Cannon writes the Morning Note newsletter for Real Clear Politics, and includes a historical vignette about something in American history that happened on that date. Now he’s...

Bruce D. Haynes and Syma Solovitch, “Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family” (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Public scholarship takes many forms, from op-eds to activism to blog posts. In their new book, Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family (Columbia University Press, 2017), Associa...

Dianne Ashton, “Hanukkah in America: A History” (New York UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Hanukkah in America: A History (New York University Press, 2013), Dianne Ashton, professor of Religion Studies at Rowan University, delves into the history of Hanukkah in the United States to il...

Paula Kane, “Sister Thorn and Catholic Mysticism in Modern America” (UNC Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sister Thorn and Catholic Mysticism in Modern America (UNC Press, 2013) is a detailed journey into the life of Margaret Reilly, an American Irish-Catholic from New York who entered the Convent of t...

Robyn Rodriguez, “Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World” (University of Minnesota Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

While it has become typical to see Filipina/o migrants working in nursing or domestic work in the United States, many are surprised to see Filipina/os doing the same work in Hong Kong, Israel, and ...

Kathryn Lofton, “Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon” (University of California Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In December of 2011, Oprah Winfrey appeared on The Dr. Oz Show to talk about her new big plans and her inspirations for the future. Oprah replied, “For me at this particular time in my life I recog...

Brett Dakin, "American Daredevil: Comics, Communism, and The Battles of Lev Gleason" (Chapterhouse Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In American Daredevil: Comics, Communism, and The Battles of Lev Gleason (Chapterhouse Publishing, 2020), Brett Dakin, Gleason’s great-nephew delves into the life of his famous relative. Gleason ro...

Erika Engstrom, "Feminism, Gender, and Politics in NBC’s Parks and Recreation" (Peter Lang, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Erika Engstrom is Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her latest book, Feminism, Gender, and Politics in NBC’s Parks and Recreation (Peter Lang, 2017), analyz...

Nicole C. Kirk, "Wanamaker’s Temple: The Business of Religion in an Iconic Department Store" (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

"On Christmas Eve, 1911, John Wanamaker stood in the middle of his elaborately decorated department store building in Philadelphia as shoppers milled around him picking up last minute Christmas pre...

Henry Kissinger and Winston Lord, "Kissinger on Kissinger: Reflections on Diplomacy, Grand Strategy, and Leadership" (All Points Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In a series of riveting and in depth interviews, America's senior statesman, former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, discusses the challenges of directing foreign policy during times of great g...

Jeffrey D. Sachs, “A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism” (Columbia UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If you are tired of reading the same, Washington-based, consensus, ‘realist’ and or ‘neo-conservative’, critiques of American foreign policy, here is something to salivate on: Jeffrey D. Sachs’, A ...

Amy Bass, “One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together” (Hachette Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by Amy Bass, author of the book One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together (Hachette Books, 2018). This is the fourth book for Bass, who is dir...

“Latino City” Part I: An Interview with Dr. Erualdo Gonzalez from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Latino City: Urban Planning, Politics, and the Grassroots (Routledge 2017) Dr. Erualdo R. Gonzalez addresses the salient issue of gentrification and its effect on immigrant and working-class pop...

Daniel E. Dawes, “150 Years of ObamaCare” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Daniel E. Dawes has written 150 Years of ObamaCare (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016). Dawes is the executive director of health policy and external affairs at Morehouse School of Medicine and ...

Raluca Lucia Cimpean, “The JFK Image: Profiles in Docudrama” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Even long after his death, President John F. Kennedy continues to be a popular figure. In addition to documentaries, his influence appears in television and film. In her book The JFK Image: Profile...

Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, “Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda” (Time Books, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There are many books about the war against Al Qaeda. Most of these focus on counter-terrorism or counter insurgency military tactics or espionage operations. These books have become more frequent w...

Ellen F. Brown and John Wiley, Jr., “Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind” (Taylor Trade Publishing, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Much ink has been spilled in telling the story of the making of Gone With the Wind– be it the book, the movie, or the subsequent musicals and merchandise. So it’s not only refreshing but downright ...

Sarah B. Rodriguez, "The Love Surgeon: A Story of Trust, Harm, and the Limits of Medical Regulation" (Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dr. James Burt believed women’s bodies were broken, and only he could fix them. In the 1950s, this Ohio OB-GYN developed what he called “love surgery,” a unique procedure he maintained enhanced the...

Lana Dee Povitz, ?"Stirrings: How Activist New Yorkers Ignited a Movement for Food Justice" ?(UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the last three decades of the twentieth century, government cutbacks, stagnating wages, AIDS, and gentrification pushed ever more people into poverty, and hunger reached levels unseen since the ...

C. Strachan and L. Poloni-Staudinger, "Why Don?t Women Rule the World?: Understanding Women?s Civic and Political Choices" (Sage, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why Don?t Women Rule the World?: Understanding Women?s Civic and Political Choices (Sage, 2019) is a comprehensive and useful addition to the established literature on women and politics. This book...

Ali Michael, "Raising Race Questions: Whiteness and Inquiry in Education" (Teachers College Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, I talked with Ali Michael on her award-winning book, Raising Race Questions: Whiteness and Inquiry in Education (Teachers College Press, 2015). According to a 2014 report by the Na...

Ann Taves, “Revelatory Events: Three Case Studies of the Emergence of New Spiritual Paths” (Princeton UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I’ve often asked myself this question: “How do religions begin?” I don’t know about you, but I think I would be very, very skeptical if someone told me that they’d had just received a revelation, c...

Mikaela M. Adams, “Who Belongs?: Race, Resources, and Tribal Citizenship in the Native South” (Oxford University Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Native American” is unique among American racial categories in defining not just social status or historical lineage, but also an individual’s relationship to state and federal governments. In Who...

Susan Rubenstein DeMasi, “Henry Alsberg: The Driving Force Behind the New Deal Federal Writers’ Project” (McFarland, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Over the course of a long and adventurous life, Henry Alsberg was guided by the constancy of his passion for radical causes. This focus, as Susan Rubenstein DeMasi makes clear in Henry Alsberg: The...

Adam Ferziger, “Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism” (Wayne State UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism (Wayne State University Press, 2015), Adam Ferziger, S.R. Hirsch Chair for Research of the Torah with Derekh Erez Movement at Ba...

Trygve Throntveit, “William James and the Quest for an Ethical Republic” (Palgrave, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

William James (1842-1910) is one of the United States’ most far-reaching thinkers. His impact on philosophy, psychology, and religious studies is well documented, yet few scholars have considered J...

Dawn B. Mabalon, “Little Manila is in the Heart” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Read most any account of early Filipino America, and you’re likely to hear a story of roaming migrant bachelors who rarely settled. Yet if this was always the case, then how did third and forth gen...

Stephanie Coontz, “The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap” (Basic Books, 2000) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“My mother was a saint.” ” In my time, we pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps.” “A man’s home is his castle.” “The home is the foundation of society.” These are just some of the romantic catc...

Lindsay M. Chervinsky, "The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution (Harvard University Press, 2020), historian Lindsay M. Chervinsky traces the origins of the President’s c...

Lynn Neal, "Religion in Vogue: Christianity and Fashion in America" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christian imagery, symbols, and motifs have long been used and incorporated in fashion. Famous designers such as Coco Chanel, Gianni Versace, and Dolce and Gabbana have made Christianity trendy and...

Gregory P. Downs, "After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War" (Harvard UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On April 8, 1865, after four years of civil war, General Robert E. Lee wrote to General Ulysses S. Grant asking for peace. Peace was beyond his authority to negotiate, Grant replied, but surrender ...

Dan Golding, "Star Wars after Lucas: A Critical Guide to the Future of the Galaxy" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 2012 George Lucas shocked the entertainment world by selling the Star Wars franchise, along with Lucasfilm, to Disney. This is the story of how, over the next five years, Star Wars went from nea...

Brian VanDeMark, “The Road to Disaster: A New History of America’s Descent Into Vietnam” (Harper Collins, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Many books have been written on the tragic decisions regarding Vietnam made by the young stars of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Yet despite millions of words of analysis and reflection, ...

Jeanine Kraybill, “Unconventional, Partisan, and Polarizing Rhetoric: How the 2016 Election Shaped the Way Candidates Strategize, Engage, and Communicate” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Unconventional, Partisan, and Polarizing Rhetoric: How the 2016 Election Shaped the Way Candidates Strategize, Engage, and Communicate (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), Jeanine Kraybill, assistant...

Sarah Imhoff, “Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism” (Indiana UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017), Professor Sarah Imhoff explores the relationship between American identity and American Jewish depi...

Jonathon S. Kahn and Vincent W. Lloyd, editors, “Race And Secularism in America” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jonathon S. Kahn is an associate professor of religion at Vassar College. He is co-editor with Vincent W. Lloyd of a collection of essays entitled Race and Secularism in America (Columbia Universit...

Paula T. Connolly, “Slavery in American Children’s Literature, 1790-2010” (U of Iowa Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The “peculiar institution” upon which the US nation was founded is still rich for examination.Perhaps this is why it is a subject to which 21st century authors continue to return. In this explorati...

Jonathan D. Wells, “Women Writers and Journalists in the Nineteenth-Century South” (Cambridge UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It’s getting harder and harder to trailblaze in the field of American Studies. More and more, writers have to follow paths created by others, imposing new interpretations on old ones in never-endin...

Vershawn Young, “From Bourgeois to Boojie: Black Middle-Class Performances” (Wayne State UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does it mean to be black? In From Bourgeois to Boojie: Black Middle-Class Performances (Wayne State University Press, 2011) editor Vershawn Ashanti Young and assistant editor Bridget Harris Ts...

Ann Tucker, "Newest Born of Nations: European Nationalist Movements and the Making of the Confederacy" (UVA Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From the earliest stirrings of southern nationalism to the defeat of the Confederacy, analysis of European nationalist movements played a critical role in how southerners thought about their new so...

Maria Ryan, "Full Spectrum Dominance: Irregular Warfare and the War on Terror" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

America's war on terror is widely defined by the Afghanistan and Iraq fronts. Yet, as this book demonstrates, both the international campaign and the new ways of fighting that grew out of it played...

Paul Musselwhite, "Urban Dreams, Rural Commonwealth: The Rise of Plantation Society in the Chesapeake" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Early American colonialism is often distinguished by an urban and rural divide. Urban development was a sign of imperial progress. British writers frequently boasted about the size of early Boston ...

David Courtwright, "The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We are living in an age of addiction, from compulsive gaming and binge eating to pornography and opioid abuse. Today I talked with historian David Courtwright about the global nature of pleasure, v...

Deborah Jaramillo, “The Television Code: Regulating the Screen to Safeguard the Industry” (U Texas Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If you watch old movies or study film history, you may know that early 20th-century Hollywood operated under the Motion Picture Production Code, which dictated what could and couldn’t be portrayed ...

Julian Lim, “Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With the railroad’s arrival in the late nineteenth century, immigrants of all colors rushed to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, transforming the region into a booming international hub of economic and ...

Mary E. Adkins, “Making Modern Florida: How the Spirit of Reform Shaped a New State Constitution” (University Press of Florida, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mary E. Adkins has written Making Modern Florida: How the Spirit of Reform Shaped a New State Constitution (University Press of Florida, 2016), an account of the reformation of the Florida state co...

Todd Endelman, “Leaving the Jewish Fold: Conversion and Radical Assimilation in Modern Jewish History” (Princeton UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Leaving the Jewish Fold: Conversion and Radical Assimilation in Modern Jewish History (Princeton University Press, 2015), Todd Endelman looks across three centuries and on both sides of the Atla...

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, “Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture” (Oxford University Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The intersection between Spanish-bilingual education and sex education might not be immediately apparent. Yet, as Natalia Mehlman Petrzela shows in her new book, Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and ...

Sharon Ann Murphy, “Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Life insurance! The very word sends shivers of excitement down the spine. OK, maybe not . . . but Sharon Murphy‘s book on the development of the life insurance industry in the United States from it...

Matthew Dennis, “Seneca Possessed: Indians, Witchcraft, and Power in the Early American Republic” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The birth of the American republic produced immense and existential challenges to Native people in proximity to the fledgling nation. Perhaps none faced a greater predicament than the Six Nations o...

Sophie White, "Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In eighteenth-century New Orleans, the legal testimony of some 150 enslaved women and men--like the testimony of free colonists--was meticulously recorded and preserved. Questioned in criminal tria...

Michael Rechtenwald, "Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom" (New English Review, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his book about enormous sea changes brought about by digital technology, Michael Rectenwald begins and ends his Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom (New English R...

Cécile Vidal, "Caribbean New Orleans: Empire, Race, and the Making of a Slave Society" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Combining Atlantic and imperial perspectives,Caribbean New Orleans: Empire, Race, and the Making of a Slave Society (University of North Carolina Press and the Omohundro Institute, 2019), offers a ...

Karin Rosemblatt, "The Science and Politics of Race in Mexico and the United States, 1910–1950" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Karin Rosemblatt’s new book, The Science and Politics of Race in Mexico and the United States, 1910–1950 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), traces how U.S.- and Mexican-trained intellectua...

Treva Lindsey, “Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington D.C.” (U Illinois, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The New Negro Movement is typically seen as a Harlem-based project. Dr. Treva Lindsey’s important book, Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington D.C. (University of Illinois Press...

Frederick L. Brown, “The City is More Than Human: An Animal History of Seattle” (U Washington Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Not all city dwellers are bipedal, according to Frederick L. Brown, author of The City is More Than Human: An Animal History of Seattle (University of Washington Press, 2016). The history of Seattl...

Clyde Farnsworth, “Tangled Bylines: A Father and Son Cover the Twentieth Century” (U. Missouri Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Journalists intentionally leave themselves out of the stories they cover. In Clyde H. Farnsworth‘s book Tangled Bylines: A Father and Son Cover the Twentieth Century (University of Missouri Press, ...

Brooke Hauser, “Enter Helen: The Invention of Helen Gurley Brown and the Rise of the Modern Single Woman” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Women’s history, if they had any, consisted in their being beautiful enough to become events in male lives,” the feminist academic Carolyn R. Heilbrun noted in a series of 1997 lectures, suggestin...

Christopher J. Phillips, “The New Math: A Political History” (U of Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christopher J. Phillips‘ new book is a political history of the “New Math,” a collection of curriculum reform projects in the 1950s & 1960s that were partially sponsored by the NSF and involved hun...

Marga Vicedo, “The Nature and Nurture of Love” (University of Chicago Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Between WWII and the 1970s, prominent researchers from various fields established and defended a view that emotions are integral to the self, and that a mother’s love determines an individual’s emo...

Manning Marable, “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” (Penguin, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nearly 50 years after his death, Malcolm X remains a controversial figure. An 8th grade dropout (he ditched school when a white teacher told him it was unrealistic for a black kid to dream of being...

Amity Shlaes, "Great Society: A New History" (Harper, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

National concern about income inequalities. Race relations at a boiling point. Riots in the streets. Cries on the left for massive allocations of federal money for housing and poverty reduction pro...

Diana Lemberg, "Barriers Down: How American Power and Free-Flow Policies Shaped Global Media" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Since the 1940s, America’s relations with the rest of the world have been guided by the idea of promoting the free flow of information. It’s an idea that seems benign, perhaps even difficult to arg...

Perin Gürel, "The Limits of Westernization: A Cultural History of America in Turkey" (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In today’s podcast, host Robert Elliott speaks with Dr. Perin Gürel about her new book The Limits of Westernization: A Cultural History of America in Turkey(Columbia University Press, 2017), which ...

Carrie Baker, "Fighting the US Youth Sex Trade: Gender, Race, and Politics" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Campaigns against prostitution of young people in the United States have surged and ebbed multiple times over the last fifty years. Carrie Baker's Fighting the US Youth Sex Trade: Gender, Race, and...

K. Dittmar, K. Sanbonmatsu, and S. Carroll, “A Seat at the Table: Congresswomen’s Perspectives on Why Their Presence Matters” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Interviewing one member of Congress is a feat for most researchers. Interviewing nearly 100 and almost every women member of Congress is remarkable. Even more remarkable is what we can learn from t...

David Rapp, “Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Chicago Cubs and the Dream of Modern America” (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by David Rapp, author of the book Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Chicago Cubs and the Dawn of Modern America (University of Chicago Press, 2018). Rapp spent 30 years as a journa...

Michael Neagle, “America’s Forgotten Colony: Cuba’s Isle of Pines” (Cambridge UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Cuba’s Isle of Pines has a curious history. In the early twentieth century, hundreds of Americans moved there, hoping to get rich as citrus growers and hoping that one day the island would become p...

Ken Light, “Whats Going On? 1969 -1974” (Lighted Square Media, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What’s Going On? 1969 -1974 (Lighted Square Media, 2015) is Ken Light‘s ninth book. Ken started his professional life as a photojournalist at his college newspaper in 1969 and has developed a caree...

Emily Alice Katz, “Bringing Zion Home: Israel in American Jewish Culture, 1948-1967” (SUNY Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

World War Two and the establishment of the State of Israel significantly altered American Jewish attitudes toward Zionism. American Jews supported Israel during times of conflict, like the 1948 war...

Elizabeth Winder, “Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953” (Harper, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It is a struggle sometimes in biography to find new ways to write about subjects about whom many biographies have been written. This is particularly pronounced in the case of iconic figures of the ...

Paul Dickson, “Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick” (Walker & Company, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mention the name Bill Veeck to a baseball fan and what will likely come to mind is the back-and-white image of three-foot, seven-inch Eddie Gaedel at the plate of a Major League game, swimming in h...

Jan Doering, "Us versus Them: Race, Crime, and Gentrification in Chicago Neighborhoods" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With such high levels of residential segregation along racial lines in the United States, gentrifying neighborhoods present fascinating opportunities to examine places with varying levels of integr...

Ellen Griffith Spears, "Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town" (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Professor Ellen Griffith Spears of the University of Alabama, author of Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town (University of North Carolina Press, 2016) discusses t...

Marisol LeBrón and Yarimar Bonilla, "Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm" (Haymarket, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Marking the two year anniversary of Hurricane María making landfall in Puerto Rico, the September 2019 release of the anthology Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm (Haym...

Fernando Orejuela and Stephanie Shonekan, "Black Lives Matter and Music: Protest, Intervention, Reflection" (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Music has always been integral to the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, with songs such as Kendrick Lamar’s "Alright," J. Cole’s "Be Free," D’Angelo and the Vanguard's "The Charade,...

Jack Gilden, “Collision of Wills: Johnny Unitas, Don Shula, and the Rise of the Modern NFL” (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by Jack Gilden, author of the book Collision of Wills: Johnny Unitas, Don Shula, and the Rise of the Modern NFL (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). In this groundbreaking book...

Dahlia Schweitzer, “Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World” (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory as we prep for the zombie apocalypse. In her new book Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World (Rutgers University Press, 2018), Dahlia Schwei...

Christopher Mele, “Race and the Politics of Deception: The Making of an American City” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Urban sociologists typically use a few grand narratives to explain the path of the American city through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. These include industrialization, mass immig...

Ira Lit, “The Bus Kids: Children’s Experiences with Voluntary Desegregation” (Yale UP, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Many of us are familiar with the court-mandated bussing programs created in an effort to achieve school desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s. Far fewer of us realize there were also voluntary trans...

Christina Dunbar-Hester, “Low Power to the People: Pirates, Protest, and Politics in FM Radio Activism” (MIT Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For the past few decades a major focus has been how the Internet, and Internet associated new media, allows for greater social and political participation globally. There is no disputing that the I...

Stella M. Rouse, “Latinos in the Legislative Process: Interests and Influence” (Cambridge UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Stella M. Rouse is the author of Latinos in the Legislative Process: Interests and Influence (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Rouse is assistant professor of political science at the University ...

Robert K. Fitts, “Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There are three Americans in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. One is Horace Wilson, the professor of English who brought his students outside for a game in 1872, thus introducing baseball to Jap...

Theresa Kaminski, "Dr. Mary Walker's Civil War: One Woman's Journey to the Medal of Honor and the Fight for Women's Rights" (Lyons Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Among the tens of thousands of Americans who volunteered their services during the Civil War was Mary Walker, a daring young woman who was one of the handful of female doctors in the nation at that...

Kimberly Dark, "Fat, Pretty, and Soon to Be Old: A Makeover for Self and Society" (AK Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book Fat, Pretty, and Soon to Be Old: A Makeover for Self and Society (AK Press 2019), sociologist and storyteller Kimberly Dark considers what it means to look a certain way. Integratin...

Erika Milam, "Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Erika Milam talks about the scientific search for human nature, a project that captured the attention of paleontologists, anthropologists, and primatologists in the years after World War II. Milam ...

Ernest McGowen III, "African Americans in White Suburbia: Social Networks and Political Behavior" (UP of Kansas 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Relative wealth has given suburban African Americans employment opportunities and political resources--but not necessarily neighbors, coworkers, or elected officials who share their concerns. How d...

Daniel E. Ponder, “Presidential Leverage: Presidents, Approval, and the American State” (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dan Ponder’s new book, Presidential Leverage: Presidents, Approval, and the American State (Stanford University Press, 2018), is an important and thoughtful exploration of the concept of presidenti...

Natchee Blu Barnd, “Native Space: Geographic Strategies to Unsettle Settler Colonialism” (Oregon State UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Native Space: Geographic Strategies to Unsettle Settler Colonialism (Oregon State University Press, 2017), Natchee Blu Barnd examines how Indigenous populations create space and geographies thro...

Ryan Alford, “Permanent State of Emergency: Unchecked Executive Power and the Demise of the Rule of Law” (McGill Queens UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ryan Alford is a law professor at Lakehead University and a specialist in constitutional law. His book Permanent State of Emergency: Unchecked Executive Power and the Demise of Rule of Law (McGill ...

Irene L. Gendzier, “Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East” (Columbia UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East (Columbia University Press, 2015), Irene L. Gendzier, Professor Emerita in the Department of Politic...

Robert Putnam, “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis” (Simon and Schuster, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Robert Putnam is the author of Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (Simon and Schuster, 2015). Putnam is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University. He has writ...

Simon P. Newman, “A New World of Labor: The Development of Plantation Slavery in the British Atlantic” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ask most educated people about the development of American slavery, and you’re likely to hear something about Virginia or, just maybe, South Carolina. In his far-reaching but concise and elegantly ...

Jen Huntley, “The Making of Yosemite: James Mason Hutchings and the Origins of America’s Most Popular National Park” (UP of Kansas, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I used to hike in and around Yosemite National Park. To me (and I imagine thousands of other visitors), Yosemite was the embodiment of “nature,” something grand, pristine, and, well “natural.” Of c...

JoAnna Poblete, "Balancing the Tides: Marine Practices in American Samoa" (U Hawai’i Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Balancing the Tides: Marine Practices in American Samoa (University of Hawai’i Press, 2020), JoAnna Poblete demonstrates how western-style economics, policy-making, and knowledge building impose...

Graham R. G. Hodges, "Black New Jersey 1664 to the Present Day" (Rutgers UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Black New Jersey 1664 to the Present Day (Rutgers University Press, 2018) by Graham Russell Gao Hodges, George Langdon, Jr. Professor of History and Africana and Latin American Studies at Colgate U...

Evan Bennett, "When Tobacco Was King: Families, Farm Labor, and Federal Policy in the Piedmont" (UP Florida, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Professor Evan Bennett of Florida Atlantic University, author of When Tobacco Was King: Families, Farm Labor, and Federal Policy in the Piedmont (University Press of Florida, 2015) discusses the de...

Peter Daou, "Digital Civil War: Confronting the Far-Right Menace" (Melville House, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Democratic political adviser Peter Daou has long toggled between the world of presidential campaigns and online activism. He worked for the presidential campaigns of John Kerry in 2004 and Hillary ...

Cameron B. Strang, “Frontiers of Science: Imperialism and Natural Knowledge in the Gulf South Borderlands, 1500-1850” (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Cameron Strang’s Frontiers of Science: Imperialism and Natural Knowledge in the Gulf South Borderlands, 1500-1850 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) examines how colonists, soldiers, explor...

Vanda Krefft, “The Man Who Made the Movies: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of William Fox” (Harper, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Though not a figure in the public imagination today, William Fox is a man whose legacy is visible in the numerous media enterprises that bear his name. Vanda Krefft‘s biography The Man Who Made the...

David M. Ewalt, “Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons and Dragons and The People Who Play It” (Scribner, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

David M. Ewalt‘s book Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons and Dragons and The People Who Play It (Scribner, 2013) is at once a love letter, cultural history, and succinct analysis of the rolepla...

Gabriel Thompson, “America’s Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century” (U of California Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.” This axiom encapsulates both the approach and dedication exhibited by Fred Ross during the five decades he spent orga...

Joanna Kempner, “Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health” (U of Chicago Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Migraine is real, and it is pervasive–at least 12% of Americans suffer some form of this spectrum disorder. Still, migraine remains a conflicted illness–people routinely dispute the legitimacy of b...

Allen Salkin “From Scratch: Inside the Food Network” (Putnam, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When I was growing up the only cooking show on TV I remember was Julia Child. I sometimes watched “The French Chef,” not so much to learn anything about cooking, but rather just to watch Julia. She...

Matthew Delmont, “The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia” (University of California Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Matthew Delmont‘s The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia (University of California Press, 2012) weaves a fascinating nar...

Verónica Martínez-Matsuda, "Migrant Citizenship: Race, Rights, and Reform in the U.S. Farm Labor Camp Program" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Verónica Martínez-Matsuda about her book Migrant Citizenship: Race, Rights, and Reform in the U.S. Farm Labor Camp Program (University of Pennsylvania Press). Migrant Citizenship exams the Farm Sec...

Emily E. LB. Twarog, "Politics of the Pantry: Housewives, Food, and Consumer Protest in Twentieth-Century America" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The history of women's political involvement has focused heavily on electoral politics, but throughout the twentieth century women engaged in grassroots activism when they found it increasingly cha...

A Conversation with Acquisitions Editor Dawn Durante about How Manuscripts Become Books from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For a book to exist, there must be a lot more than a writer. Of course, the writer is the essential component. But what about all the other hard-working professionals who shepherd the text from man...

Jeanne Theoharis, "The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North: Segregation and Struggle outside of the South" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this New Books Network/Gotham Center for NYC History podcast, guest host Beth Harpaz, editor of the City University of New York website SUM, interviews Jeanne Theoharis, distinguished professor ...

Matthew Harper, “The End of Days: African American Religion and Politics in the Age of Emancipation” (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the wake of the bloody Civil War, millions of slaves were emancipated. How did those freed slaves, along with African Americans freed before the Civil War, interpret this new post-war world? Dr....

Molly Ladd-Taylor, “Fixing the Poor: Eugenic Sterilization and Child Welfare in the Twentieth Century” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Eugenic sterilization is usually associated with Nazi horrors before and during World War II. But, as Dr. Molly Ladd-Taylor reminds us, it was also practiced in the United States. In her new book F...

Lee Trepanier, ed. “Why the Humanities Matter Today: In Defense of Liberal Education” (Lexington Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lee Trepanier, Professor of Political Science at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan, edited this important analysis of why the humanities matter, especially within higher education. Trepan...

Lester K. Spence, “Knocking the Hustle: Against the Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics” (Punctum Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lester K. Spence is the author of Knocking the Hustle: Against the Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics (Punctum Books, 2016). Spence is associate professor of political science and Africana Studies a...

Dorothy Sue Cobble, Linda Gordon, Astrid Henry, “A Short, Surprising History of American Women’s Movements” (Liveright, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Our guest today, Linda Gordon, is professor of history and humanities as New York University. Gordon and her co-authors Dorothy Sue Cobble and Astrid Henry have written Feminism Unfinished: A Short...

Brian Allen Drake, “Loving Nature, Fearing the State” (University of Washington Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What do Barry Goldwater, Edward Abbey, and Henry David Thoreau have in common? On the surface, they would seem to be at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. As Brian Allen Drake shows, howeve...

Matt Grossmann, “The Not-So-Special Interests: Interest Groups, Public Representation, and American Governance” (Stanford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Matt Grossmann, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University, has authored the recently released book, The Not-So-Special Interests: Interest Groups, Public Representation,...

R. K. Jefferson and H. B. Johnson, "Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Before Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court in 1981, nine highly qualified women were on the shortlist. What do the stories of these women tell us about the judiciary? G...

Great Books: Deborah Plant on Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

"It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding.” This line from Zora Neale Hurston’s masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God, captures what is at the heart of all great literature: the irr...

Kathryn E. O’Rourke, "O’Neil Ford on Architecture" (U Texas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

O’Neil Ford on Architecture (University of Texas Press, 2019) brings together Ford’s major professional writings and speeches for the first time. Revealing the intellectual and theoretical underpin...

Susan Lepselter, "The Resonance of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, and UFOs in the American Uncanny" (U Michigan Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When we talk about stories of alien abduction in the United States, we often do so through a framework of belief vs. disbelief. Do I think this story is true, or do I think it’s false? Anthropologi...

Megan Black, “The Global Interior: Mineral Frontiers and American Power” (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Of all of the departments of the U.S. government you might expect to be implicated in the exercise of imperialism, the Department of the Interior might not be the first one that you would think of....

Joshua Zeitz, “Building the Great Society: Inside Lyndon Johnson’s White House” (Viking, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did President Lyndon Johnson engineer one of the biggest bursts of liberal legislation in American history? And did his vision of a Great Society successfully alleviate poverty and reduce inequ...

Carlo Rotella and Michael Ezra, eds. “The Bittersweet Science: Fifteen Writers in the Gym, in the Corner, and at Ringside” (U. Chicago, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Boxing has always attracted writers because it issues a standing challenge to their powers of description and imagination, and also a warning–really a promise–that no matter how many layers of mea...

Mel Scult, “The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan” (Indiana UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan (Indiana University Press, 2013), Mel Scult, professor emeritus at Brooklyn College, explores the ways in which Mordecai Kaplan, the only rabbi...

Wen Jin, “Pluralist Universalism: An Asian Americanist Critique of U.S. and Chinese Multiculturalisms” (Ohio State University Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Wen Jin’s book, Pluralist Universalism: An Asian Americanist Critique of U.S. and Chinese Multiculturalisms (Ohio State Press, 2012), compares histories and modes of multiculturalism in China and t...

Annette Kolodny, “In Search of First Contact” (Duke University Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We all know the song. “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…” And now, thankfully, we all know the controversy; celebrating a perpetrator of genocide might say a few unpleasant things about the...

Sally Pipes, “The Pipes Plan: The Top Ten Ways to Dismantle and Replace Obamacare” (Regnery Publishing, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, The Pipes Plan: The Top Ten Ways to Dismantle and Replace Obamacare (Regnery Publishing, 2012), Sally C. Pipes, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Pacific Research Instit...

Justin Gomer, "White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Justin Gomer is the author of White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2020. White Balance explore...

Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McM...

Nancy Langston, "Sustaining Lake Superior: An Extraordinary Lake in a Changing World" (Yale UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When people today visit or imagine Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world, they often perceive a cold, remote, and pristine body of water, relatively untouched by industrialization...

Jack Wertheimer, "The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice their Religion Today" (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Countless sociological studies and surveys present a rather bleak picture of religion and religious engagement in the United States. Attendance at worship services remains very low and approximatel...

Bill Ivey, “Rebuilding an Enlightened World: Folklorizing America” (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bill Ivey’s Rebuilding an Enlightened World: Folklorizing America (Indiana University Press, 2018) advances the idea that we are entering a post-enlightenment world increasingly characterized by al...

Chad Alan Goldberg, “Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought” (U Chicago Press, 2017 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Chad Alan Goldberg looks at how social thinkers from Karl Marx, to Emile Durkheim, to Robert P...

John Bohrer, “The Revolution of Robert Kennedy: From Power to Protest after JFK” (Bloomsbury, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From the moment he entered politics as the manager of John F. Kennedy’s 1952 Senate campaign, Robert Kennedy’s political career was subsumed into that of his older brother. With President Kennedy’s...

Lincoln A. Mitchell, “The Democracy Promotion Paradox” (Brookings Institution Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In book his new book The Democracy Promotion Paradox (Brookings Institution Press, 2015), Lincoln A. Mitchell (Political Correspondent for the New York Observer) raises difficult but critically imp...

Michelle Nickerson, “Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right” (Princeton UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Recently, historians have shown that the modern conservative movement is older and more complex than has often been assumed by either liberals or historians. Michelle Nickerson‘s book, Mothers of C...

Robert Cassanello, “To Render Invisible: Jim Crow and Public Life in New South Jacksonville” (University Press of Florida, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The story of the rise of Jim Crow in Jacksonville, Florida is in many ways illustrative of the challenges facing newly emancipated African Americans throughout the South with local officials erecti...

Will Hermes, “Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York that Changed Music Forever” (Faber and Faber, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“New York City tends to erase its history, endlessly reinventing itself: that is its way, ” writes Will Hermes on the final page of his book Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York t...

Emily Wallace, "Road Sides: An Illustrated Companion to Dining and Driving in the American South" (U Texas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Emily Wallace, author and illustrator of the new book Road Sides: An Illustrated Companion to Dining and Driving in the American South (University o...

Daniel Skinner, "Medical Necessity: Health Care Access and the Politics of Decision Making" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The definition of medical necessity has morphed over the years, from a singular physician’s determination to a complex and dynamic political contest involving patients, medical companies, insurance...

Andrew Sidman, "Pork Barrel Politics: How Government Spending Determines Elections in a Polarized Era" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

n Andrew Sidman, Pork Barrel Politics: How Government Spending Determines Elections in a Polarized Era (Columbia University Press, 2019), offers a systematic explanation for how political polarizat...

Erin M. Kempker, "Big Sister: Feminism, Conservatism and Conspiracy in the Heartland" (U Illinois, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Erin M. Kempker is an associate professor of history at Mississippi University for Women and the author of Big Sister: Feminism, Conservatism and Conspiracy in the Heartland (University of Illinois...

Joan E. Cashin, “War Stuff: The Struggle for Human and Environmental Resources in the American Civil War” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Civil War was even more disastrous than we thought. Joan Cashin, already a distinguished scholar of the period, looks afresh at the war through the lens of environmental history and material cu...

J. Michael Butler, “Beyond Integration: The Black Freedom Struggle in Escambia County, Florida 1960-1980” (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Historians have long debated when the Black Freedom Struggle began and when it ended. Most point to the King years, 1955-1968. In his excellent book Beyond Integration: The Black Freedom Struggle i...

Adair Rounthwaite, “Asking the Audience: Participatory Art in 1980s New York” (U. Minnesota Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Asking the Audience: Participatory Art in 1980s New York (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) Adair Rounthwaite examines the roles of artist, audience and institutional context in the rise of n...

Garrett M. Broad, “More Than Just Food: Food Justice and Community Change” (U of California Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Resistance to the industrial food system has, over the past decades, led to the rise of alternative food movements. Debate about genetically modified food, sugar consumption, fast food and the obes...

Carolyn Finney, “Black Faces, White Spaces” (UNC Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Geographer Carolyn Finney wrote Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors (University of North Carolina Press, 2014), out of a frustration w...

Adam R. Shapiro, “Trying Biology: The Scopes Trial, Textbooks, and the Anti-Evolution Movement in American Schools” (University of Chicago Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

During the 1924-25 school year, John Scopes was filling in for the regular biology teacher at Rhea County Central High School in Dayton, Tennessee. The final exam was coming up, and he assigned rea...

Leslie Brody, “Irrepressible: The Life and Times of Jessica Mitford” (Counterpoint Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For years, biographers have been fascinated by the Mitfords, a quiet aristocratic British family with six beautiful daughters, nearly all of them famous for their controversial and stylish lives. ...

Thomas Bishop, "Every Home a Fortress: Cold War Fatherhood and the Family Fallout Shelter" (UMass Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Every Home a Fortress: Cold War Fatherhood and the Family Fallout Shelter (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020), Thomas Bishop details the remarkable cultural history and personal stories be...

Orly Clergé, "The New Noir: Race, Identity and Diaspora in Black Suburbia" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How has the expansion of the Black American middle class and the increase in the number of Black immigrants among them since the Civil Rights period transformed the cultural landscape of New York C...

Candy Gunther Brown, "Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion?" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode of New Books in Law Siobhan talks with Candy Gunther Brown about her book Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion? (U...

Michael A. Cohen, "Clear and Present Safety: The World Has Never Been Better and Why That Matters to Americans" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We are fed a steady stream of doom and gloom—terrorist attacks, erosion of democracy, robots taking our jobs. But Michael A. Cohen and his co-author Mich Zenko argue in Clear and Present Safety: Th...

Nicholas Carnes, “The Cash Ceiling: Why Only the Rich Run for Office and What We Can Do About It” (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 2018, much attention has been drawn to candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Randy Bryce: candidates for Congress who’ve made a living doing working class jobs. They are unusual because C...

Christopher B. Patterson, “Transitive Cultures: Anglophone Literature of the Transpacific” (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christopher B. Patterson‘s book Transitive Cultures: Anglophone Literature of the Transpacific (Rutgers University Press, 2018) reads English-language literary production from Southeast Asia and i...

Amy Elkins, “Black is the Day, Black is the Night” (Self Published, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Black is the Day, Black is the Night by Amy Elkins is self-published (2016), with an essay by Gregory J. Harris and C.F., unpaged, 80 color and black-and-white illustrations. Black is the Day, Bla...

Timothy Stewart-Winter, “Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics” (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Timothy Stewart-Winter is an assistant professor of history and women and gender studies at Rutgers University. Newark. His book Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics (University of Pen...

Doug McAdam and Karina Kloos, “Deeply Divided: Racial Politics and Social Movements in Postwar America” (Oxford UP 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Doug McAdam and Karina Kloos are the authors of Deeply Divided: Racial Politics and Social Movements in Postwar America (Oxford University Press, 2014). McAdam is The Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of ...

James Greene Jr., “This Music Leaves Stains: The Complete Story of the Misfits” (Scarecrow Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

New Jersey. Home to Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Yo La Tango. . .and the Misfits, a hardcore metal horror rock band from Lodi. In This Music Leaves Stains: The Complete Story of the Misfits (Scarec...

Heather Munro Prescott, “The Morning After: A History of Emergency Contraception in the United States” (Rutgers UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What would a Presidential campaign be without a good dose of reproductive politics? To be sure, many of us are surprised to see contraception, and not just abortion, called into question – but mayb...

Katherine Zien, "Sovereign Acts: Performing Race, Space, and Belonging in Panama and the Canal Zone" (Rutgers UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Sovereign Acts: Performing Race, Space, and Belonging in Panama and the Canal Zone (Rutgers University Press, 2017), Katherine Zien examines the ways politicians, activists, artists, and residen...

Phil Christman, "Midwest Futures" (Belt Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does the future hold for the Midwest? A vast stretch of fertile farmland bordering one of the largest concentrations of fresh water in the world, the Midwestern US seems ideally situated for t...

Christopher E. Mauriello, "Forced Confrontations: The Politics of Dead Bodies in Germany at the End of World War II" (Lexington Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christopher Mauriello’s groundbreaking book Forced Confrontations: The Politics of Dead Bodies in Germany at the End of World War II(Lexington Books, 2017) focuses on American soldiers reactions to...

Joan Watts, "The Collected Letters of Alan Watts" (New World Library, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Alan Watts (1915-1973) was one of the first to interpret Eastern wisdom for a Western audience. Joan Watts, Alan's eldest daughter, is the co-editor (along with her sister, Anne) of the new volume,...

Nicholas Grant, “Winning Our Freedoms Together: African Americans and Apartheid, 1945–1960” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The links between African Americans and the global struggle for decolonization, particularly in Africa are well-documented. Facing similar kinds of repression that were rooted in systemic racism an...

Deondra Rose, “Citizens by Degree: Higher Education Policy and the Changing Gender Dynamics of American Citizenship” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Deondra Rose has written Citizens by Degree: Higher Education Policy and the Changing Gender Dynamics of American Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 2018). She is an assistant professor of publi...

Richard E. Ocejo, “Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Readers will want to grab a cocktail and charcuterie board when they sit down to read Richard E. Ocejo‘s new book, Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy (Princeton University Press, 2...

Lynn Davidman, “Becoming Un-Orthodox: Stories of Ex-Hasidic Jews” (Oxford University Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Becoming Un-Orthodox: Stories of Ex-Hasidic Jews (Oxford University Press, 2015), Lynn Davidman, Robert M. Beren Distinguished Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at the University of Kansas, uti...

Colonel Ty Seidule, “West Point History of the Civil War” (Simon and Schuster, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We’re very fortunate to be joined by the editor of The West Point History of the Civil War (Simon and Schuster, 2014), the Head of the History Department at the United States Military Academy, Colo...

W. Caleb McDaniel, “The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery: Garrisonian Abolitionists and Transatlantic Reform” (LSU Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How could members of a movement committed to cosmopolitanism accommodate nationalism? How could men and women committed to non-resistance reconcile themselves to politics when the authority of even...

Elizabeth West, “African Spirituality in Black Women’s Fiction: Threaded Visions of Memory, Community, Nature, and Being” (Lexington Books, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Elizabeth West has written an insightful study about the presence of African spirituality in the autobiographies, poetry, speeches and novels of African American women, ranging from Phylis Wheatley...

Manuel Betancourt, "Judy Garland's Judy at Carnegie Hall" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Judy Garland's Judy at Carnegie Hall (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), Manuel Betancourt explores what makes Judy Garland’s landmark album great, and why it holds such a central place in queer cultur...

Bryant Simon, "The Hamlet Fire: A Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives" (The New Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bryant Simon, Professor of History at Temple University, discusses his new book, The Hamlet Fire: A Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives (The New Press, 2017), and the tragic cons...

Jonathan Sarna, "American Judaism: A History" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

American Judaism: A History (Yale University Press; second edition, 2019) chronicles the 350-year history of the Jewish religion in America. Tracing American Judaism from its origins in the colonia...

Eric T. Kasper and Quentin D. Vieregge, "The United States Constitution in Film: Part of Our National Culture" (Lexington Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The U.S. Constitution is often depicted in popular films, teaching lessons about what this founding document means and what it requires. The United States Constitution in Film: Part of Our National...

Ken Ilguas, “This Land is Our Land: How We Lost the Right to Roam and How to Take It Back” (Plume, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Author, journalist and sometime park ranger Ken Ilgunas has written an argument in favor a “right to roam.”  This concept, unfamiliar to most Americans, is one of an ability to traverse public and ...

David Grann, “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI” (Vintage, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built ...

Melissa L. Cooper, “Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders, Race, and the American Imagination” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders, Race, and the American Imagination (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) is a wide-ranging history that upends a long tradition of scrutinizing th...

Mary Ziegler, “After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this podcast I talk with Mary Ziegler, Stearns Weaver Miller Professor of Law at Florida State University College of Law about her book, After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate (Harva...

Robert P. Burns, “Kafka’s Law: ‘The Trial’ and American Criminal Justice” (U of Chicago Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Professor Robert P. Burns of Northwestern University School of Law offers an insightful critique of the modern American criminal justice system in his new work Kafka’s Law: ‘The Trial’ and American...

Sarah Churchwell, “Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of the Great Gatsby” (Virago, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

One phenomenon of movies made of classic novels is that the movie often says a lot more about the time of its making than about the time of the novel. And so Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is more...

Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, “Dropping the Torch: Jimmy Carter, the Olympic Boycott, and the Cold War” (Cambridge UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As a young, patriotic American, I was torn by the boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. On the one hand, I knew already as an eleven-year-old, long before Ronald Reagan had uttered the phr...

John B. Holbein, "Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes into Action" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the United States, each election cycle reminds us that younger voters vote at much lower rates than their older counterparts. This discrepancy is often chalked up to apathy or lack of interest i...

L. Benjamin Rolsky, "The Rise and Fall of the Religious Left" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As someone who grew up watching All in the Family and Sanford and Son, I’ve long been familiar with Norman Lear and his work. What I didn’t know, as a young child sitting cross-legged in front of t...

Robert M. Alexander, "Representation and the Electoral College" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Robert Alexander’s new book, Representation and the Electoral College (Oxford UP, 2019) is an important analysis of the Electoral College, from the debates about it at the constitutional convention...

Michael J. Mazarr, "Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America’s Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy" (Public Affairs, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Michael J. Mazarr has written a history of the policy planning process leading up to the Iraq War in 2003.  Mazarr has conducted over one hundred interviews with senior policy officials from the Ge...

Elana Buch, “Inequalities of Aging: Paradoxes of Independence in American Home Care” (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How are the vulnerabilities of older adults in need of care and their care workers intertwined? In Inequalities of Aging: Paradoxes of Independence in American Home Care (New York University Press,...

Urmi Engineer Willoughby, “Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteeth-Century New Orleans” (LSU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A disease cannot be fully understood unless considered in its environmental context. That conviction drives Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteeth-Century New Orleans (LSU Press, 2017) by his...

Ralph Young, “Dissent: The History of an American Idea” (NYU Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ralph Young is a professor of history at Temple University. His book Dissent: The History of an American Idea (New York University Press, 2015) provides a fast-paced four hundred years people’s his...

Kenna R. Archer, “Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River” (U of New Mexico, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River (University of New Mexico, 2015), Kenna R. Archer examines the history of the Brazos river. The river, which runs from easte...

Kaeten Mistry, “The United States, Italy, and the Origins of Cold War: Waging Political Warfare” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the annals of cold war history Italy is rarely seen as a crucial locale.  In his stimulating new book, The United States, Italy, and the Origins of Cold War: Waging Political Warfare (Cambridge ...

Gayle Kaufman, “Superdads: How Fathers Balance Work and Family in the 21st Century” (NYU Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Pretty much every day you can read an article–usually somewhat intemperate–about how women can or can’t “have it all.” Rarely, however, do you read anything about the way in which men try to balanc...

Karen Abbott, “American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee” (Random House, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As a whole, the genre of biography trends towards linear narratives–wherein the events of a subject’s life are tracked in the order that they occurred. This makes sense, as it’s how we live our liv...

Andrew S. Baer, "Beyond the Usual Beating" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the 1970s and 1980s, a group of Chicago police officers routinely tortured criminal suspects in their custody, while fellow cops, state attorneys and elected officials looked the other way. In h...

Steve Suitts, "Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement" (NewSouth Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

School choice, widely touted as a system that would ensure underprivileged youth have an equal opportunity in education, has grown in popularity in the past fifteen years. The strategies and rhetor...

Elizabeth Herbin-Triant, "Race, Class, and Campaigns to Legislate Jim Crow Neighborhoods" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Elizabeth Herbin-Triant is the author of Threatening Property: Race, Class, and Campaigns to Legislate Jim Crow Neighborhoods, published by Columbia University Press in 2019. Threatening Property e...

Pang Yang Huei, "Strait Rituals: China, Taiwan, and the United States in the Taiwan Strait Crises, 1954-1958" (Hong Kong UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Taiwan Strait Crises of 1954-55 and 1958 occurred at the height of the Cold War. Mao’s China bombarded Nationalist-controlled islands, and U.S. President Eisenhower threatened the use of nuclea...

Kathleen Belew, “Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America” (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

After the U.S. presidential election in 2016, discussions about white nationalism, supremacists, and neo-Nazis went from being a niche topic to mainstream news. For those who hadn’t been keeping ta...

Sean Sherman, “The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen” (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Chef Sean Sherman, Oglala Lakota and originally from Pine Ridge Reservation, has become one of the most important voices in the Indigenous foods revitalization movement. By researching in the archi...

James Poyner, “Trump Tweets: His Social Media Phenomenon” (Wilkinson Publishing, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The title of James Poyner’s book, Trump Tweets: His Social Media Phenomenon (Wilkinson Publishing, 2017), tells you everything you need to know about the world you about to enter. In temperament, a...

Joshua Braun, “This Program is Brought to You By . . . Distributing Television Online” (Yale UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“One of the things that was most shocking to me getting into the media business, an MSNBC.com producer tells Josh Braun, was the realization that regular people were making it. Television to me . ....

Donna J. Drucker, “The Classification of Sex: Alfred Kinsey and the Organization of Knowledge” (University of Pittsburg Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Donna J. Drucker is a guest professor at Darmstadt Technical University in Germany. Her book The Classification of Sex: Alfred Kinsey and the Organization of Knowledge (University of Pittsburg Pres...

Tevi Troy, “What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted” (Regency, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Presidents, you know, are people too. They read the newspaper (including the sports page and the funnies), settle in with books (yes, beach reading too), watch movies and TV (after all, they have a...

William Kuhn, “Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books” (Anchor Books, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nearly twenty years after the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, biographers are not only continuing to tell her story but finding provocative new ways to do so. In particular, a big bravo to Wil...

Raymond Winbush, "The Osiris Papers: Reflections on the Life and Writing of Dr. Frances Cress Welsing" (Black Classics Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today’s interview is with Dr. Raymond Winbush a research professor and the Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University. Dr. Winbush and Dr. Denise Wright coedited the bo...

Amy Shira Teitel, "Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight Before NASA" (Bloomsbury, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Amy Shira Teitel talks about Apollo and the community of people who are deeply attached to space history. Teitel is a spaceflight historian and the creator of the YouTube Channel, Vintage Space. Sh...

Ashanté M. Reese, "Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C." (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C. (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), by Ashanté M. Reese, examines the ways in which residents of the Deanwoo...

Jeffrey S. McDonald, "John Gerstner and the Renewal of Presbyterian and Reformed Evangelicalism in Modern America" (Pickwick, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

One of the most important trends within evangelicalism over the last half-century has been a renewal of Reformed theology. In this important new book, Jeffrey S. McDonald, who is a Presbyterian pas...

Janelle Wong, “Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change” (Russell Sage Foundation, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Surprising to many, white Evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election at a higher rate than any candidate in the previous four presidential elections. At the same time, the Evangelical...

Domingo Morel, “Takeover: Race, Education, and American Democracy” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When the state takes over, can local democracy survive? Over 100 school districts have been taken over by state governments since the late 1980s. In doing so, state officials relieve local official...

Amy Ziettlow and Naomi Cahn, “Homeward Bound: Modern Families, Elder Care, and Loss” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The U.S. population is aging and we often rely on our family to care for us during our twilight years. But, families today can be quite complex, with divorce, step-families, and cohabitation changi...

Katherine J. Cramer, “The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker” (U of Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Katherine J. Cramer is the author of The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (University of Chicago Press, 2016). Cramer is professor of political ...

Graham Steele, “What I Learned About Politics” (Nimbus, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Political debate in western democracies such as in Canada, the U.S. and Britain has become empty theatre, full of rhetorical flourishes with little meaning for citizens, according to a new book by ...

Robert Horwitz, “America’s Right: Anti-Establishment Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party” (Polity, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Robert Horwitz is the author of America’s Right: Anti-Establishment Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party (Polity, 2013). Horwitz is professor in the Department of Communication at the Unive...

Robert Pielke, “Rock Music in American Culture: The Sounds of Revolution” (2nd Edition; McFarland, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If, as John Lennon reportedly stated, “Before Elvis there was nothing,” then after Elvis there had to be something, right? That something, argues Robert Pielke in Rock Music in American Culture: Th...

Jonathan Zimmerman, "The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jonathan Zimmerman’s The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020) is the first full-length history of college teaching in the United States. It explores a par...

Christina Dunbar-Hester, "Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Hacking Diversity: The Politics of inclusion in Open Technology Cultures (Princeton University Press, 2020), Christina-Dunbar Hester, an associate professor in the USC Annenberg School for Commu...

Ryan Weber, "Cosmopolitanism and Transatlantic Circles in Music and Literature" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Musicologists have long tried to understand how cosmopolitanism and nationalism affected classical music. Ryan Weber takes on this task in his book, Cosmopolitanism and Transatlantic Circles in Mus...

Emily Skidmore, "True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the 20th Century" (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the 20th Century (New York University Press, 2017), Emily Skidmore weaves in a vibrant discussion on how trans men created community and crafted t...

Ann Gleig, "American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity (Yale University Press, 2019), Ann Gleig makes a major contribution to scholarship on American Buddhism. Gleig focuses on meditation-base...

John Kaag, “American Philosophy: A Love Story” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John Kaag is a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. American Philosophy: A Love Story (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) won the John Dewey Prize from the Society for ...

Tore T. Petersen, “The Military Conquest of the Prairie” (Sussex Academic Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Tore T. Petersen, Professor of International and American Diplomatic History at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, studies the final wars on the prairie from the Native American pe...

Stanley Corkin, “Connecting the Wire: Race, Space, and Postindustrial Baltimore” (U. Texas Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Critically acclaimed as one of the best television shows ever produced, the HBO series The Wire (2002-2008) is a landmark event in television history, offering a raw and dramatically compelling vis...

Peter K. Enns, “Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became the Most Punitive Democracy in the World” (Cambridge UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Peter K. Enns is the author of Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became the Most Punitive Democracy in the World (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Enns is Associate Professor in the Dep...

Wendy Oliver and Lindsay Guarino, eds., “Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches” (University Press of Florida, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Contested and complicated histories create the best books. This is true for many volumes and is certainly so for Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches (University Press of Florida, 2014),...

Philip Kretsedemas, “The Immigration Crucible: Transforming Race, Nation, and the Limits of the Law” (Columbia UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Philip Kretsedemas is the author of The Immigration Crucible: Transforming Race, Nation, and the Limits of the Law (Columbia UP 2012). He is associate professor of sociology at the University of Ma...

Noam Scheiber, “The Escape Artists: How Obama’s Team Fumbled the Recovery” (Simon & Schuster, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, The Escape Artists: How Obama’s Team Fumbled the Recovery (Simon & Schuster, 2012), Noam Scheiber, Senior Editor of The New Republic, presents a behind the scenes look at the membe...

Matt Christman, "The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason" (Simon & Schuster, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Let’s face it, 2020 has been a hell of a year. We could all use a good laugh. But as historians and/or fans of history, we have to read something historically grounded, right? Well, fear not! Felix...

Kevin Escudero, "Organizing While Undocumented: Immigrant Youth’s Political Activism Under the Law" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Undocumented youth activists are at the forefront of the present-day immigrant rights movement. This is especially true surrounding the activism of the recent SCOTUS decision on DACA issued on June...

Randal Schnoor, "Jewish Family: Identity and Self-Formation at Home" (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Jewish Family: Identity and Self-Formation at Home (Indiana University Press, 2018), Alex Pomson and Randal Schnoor examine the impact of the family on Jewish identity. Through interviewing a sa...

Seth J. Frantzman, "After Isis: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East" (Gefen, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The enterprise of journalism is in crisis. Today’s journalists face accusations of “fake news” on the one hand, and harassment, arrest, and even the murder of reporters on the other. At the same ti...

Anne Watts, "The Collected Letters of Alan Watts" (New World Library, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Anne Watts is one of the co-editors of the new book, The Collected letters of Alan Watts, released in January 2018 from New World Library. Anne Watts is a facilitator and educator who is committed ...

Josh Luke, “Health-Wealth: 9 Steps To Financial Recovery” (ForbesBooks, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Healthcare is extremely expensive for both patients and their employers. The costs of healthcare continue to increase with no end in sight. Dr. Josh Luke is a former Hospital CEO, disruptor, and he...

Marcus Rediker, “The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became The First Revolutionary Abolitionist” (Beacon Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the annals of abolitionist history, names like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, the Grimke sisters, and Harriet Tubman are well known. Dr. Marcus Rediker‘s new book, The Fearless Benj...

Jennifer Le Zotte, “From Goodwill to Grunge: A History of Secondhand Styles and Alternative Economies” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In From Goodwill to Grunge: A History of Secondhand Styles and Alternative Economies (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), historian Jennifer Le Zotte examines the movement of selling secondh...

Peter L. Laurence, “Becoming Jane Jacobs” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Peter L. Laurence is an associate professor of urban design, history and theory at Clemson University School of Architecture. His book Becoming Jane Jacobs (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) ...

Hasia Diner, “Roads Taken: The Great Jewish Migrations to the New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the Way” (Yale University Press, 2015). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The period from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries witnessed a mass migration which carried millions of Jews from central and eastern Europe, north Africa, and the Ottoman Empire ...

John K. Thornton, “A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250-1820” (Cambridge UP, 2012). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Thanks in no small part to John K. Thornton, professor of history at Boston University, the field of Atlantic history has emerged as one of the most exciting fields of historical research over the ...

Jorg Muth, “Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Forces, 1901-1940” (UNT Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This week we’re continuing our focus on the Second World War, as our guest author, Jorg Muth, chats about his recent book Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Fo...

Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, "After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency" (Lawfair Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, two attorneys who have worked, respectively, in the Barack Obama and the George W. Bush Administrations, have written a blueprint of considerations to reform and revis...

Mark Anderson, "From Boas to Black Power: Racism, Liberalism and American Anthropology" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mark Anderson’s From Boas to Black Power: Racism, Liberalism and American Anthropology (Stanford University Press) is at once a story about US anthropology and US liberalism from the 1930s to the 1...

Donald L. Miller, "Vicksburg: Grant’s Campaign that Broke the Confederacy" (Simon and Schuster, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Vicksburg: Grant’s Campaign that Broke the Confederacy (Simon & Schuster, 2019), Donald L. Miller explains in great detail how Grant ultimately succeeded in taking the city and turning the tide ...

Anastasia Denisova, "Internet Memes and Society: Social, Cultural, and Political Contexts" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How have memes changed politics? In Internet Memes and Society: Social, Cultural, and Political Contexts(Routledge, 2019), Anastasia Denisova, a lecturer in journalism at the University of Westmins...

Matthew Fox-Amato, "Exposing Slavery: Photography, Human Bondage, and the Birth of Modern Visual Politics in America" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Shortly after its introduction, photography transformed the ways Americans made political arguments using visual images. In the mid-19th century, photographs became key tools in debates surrounding...

Steven Stoll, “Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia” (Hill and Wang, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As you’ll hear in this interview with Steven Stoll, his latest book Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia (Hill and Wang, 2017) is “really a book about capitalism.” Specifically, it’s about how the...

Antony G. Hopkins, “American Empire: A Global History” (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In an expansive, engrossing, voluminously in depth analysis of the subject, Professor A. G. Hopkins, Professor Emeritus of Commonwealth History at the University of Cambridge, one of the foremost h...

Kate Daloz, “We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970s on a Quest for a New America” (PublicAffairs, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Growing up in a geodesic dome is not a claim everyone can make, but author Kate Daloz can. Her book We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970s on a Quest for a New America (PublicAffairs, 2016) ...

Kathleen Holscher, “Religious Lessons: Catholic Sisters and the Captured Schools Crisis in New Mexico” (Oxford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In New Mexico, before World War Two, Catholic sisters in full habits routinely taught in public schools. In her fascinating new book, Religious Lessons: Catholic Sisters and the Captured Schools Cr...

Justin Martin, “Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians” (Da Capo Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Biography is, both etymologically and in its conventional forms, the writing of a life. But what is the role of place within that? And how do the stories of lives- some of them well known, others l...

Kate Brown, “Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kate Brown‘s Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford University Press, 2013) is a tale of two atomic cities–one in the US (Richland,...

Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, “Dorothy West’s Paradise: A Biography of Class and Color” (Rutgers UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

One lesson that the ever-present trickster figure in African American folklore teaches is how to use signifying to protect one’s intimate self. A challenge of writing Dorothy West’s life is getting...

Miriam Kalman Friedman, "Rivers of Light: The Life of Claire Myers Owens" (Syracuse UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Growing up in a conservative, middle-class family in Texas, Claire Myers Owens sought adventure and freedom at an early age. At twenty years old, she left home and quickly found a community of like...

Leslie Dorrough Smith, "Compromising Positions: Sex Scandals, Politics, and American Christianity" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sex scandals are ubiquitous in American politics. In Compromising Positions: Sex Scandals, Politics, and American Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2019), Leslie Dorrough Smith examines the dy...

Kristen Millares Young, "Subduction" (Red Hen Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kristen Millares Young’s debut novel, Subduction (Red Hen Press, 2020), provides a lyrical exploration of cultural encounters in the Pacific Northwest. After a Latina anthropologist, Claudia, flees...

Thomas Aiello, "The Grapevine of the Black South" (U Georgia Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the summer of 1928, William Alexander Scott began a small four-page weekly with the help of his brother Cornelius. By 1932 the Atlanta World had become a daily paper and the basis of Scott's vis...

Nancy Tomes, "Remaking the American Patient" (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In a work that spans the twentieth century, Nancy Tomes questions the popular--and largely unexamined--idea that in order to get good health care, people must learn to shop for it. Remaking the Ame...

Christina Snyder, “Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson (Oxford, 2017) is a dramatic and vibrant story of a little-known Kentucky school, the Choctaw Academy. Christina Snyder, McCabe-...

Jesse Rhodes, “Ballot Blocked: The Political Erosion of the Voting Rights Act” (Stanford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Voting rights are always in the news in American politics, and recent court decisions and an upcoming election in 2018 make this especially true today. Most discussions come back to the Voting Righ...

Helen Anne Curry, “Evolution Made to Order: Plant Breeding and Technological Innovation in Twentieth-Century America” (U. Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nowadays, it might seem perplexing for the founder of a seed company to express the intention to “shock Mother Nature,” or at least in bad taste. Yet, this was precisely the goal of agricultural in...

Doug Bradley and Craig Werner, “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War” (U of Massachusetts Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From the “Ballad of the Green Berets” to “Bad Moon Rising,” the music of the Vietnam War is woven through every vets memories. Vietnam vet Doug Bradley and his fellow University of Wisconsin profes...

Udi Greenberg, “The Weimar Century: German Emigres and the Ideological Foundation of the Cold War” (Princeton UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

American policymakers and scholars alike have looked to the rapid transformation of Germany, specifically West Germany, from a defeated Nazi state into a thriving democracy as one of the most succe...

William J. Bush, “Greenback Dollar: The Incredible Rise of the Kingston Trio” (The Scarecrow Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

After the huge success of Elvis Presley there was a moment when it looked as if rock ‘n’ roll might, indeed, be nothing more than a fad. Its successor in the world of popular music would be folk mu...

Mia Bay, “To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells” (Hill and Wang, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I can’t remember when I first saw one of those horrible photographs of a lynching, with crowds of white people, kids included, laughing and pointing at the mangled black body hanging from a tree. I...

Peter Maguire and Mike Ritter, "Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammers and the Untold Story of the Marijuana Trade" (Columbia UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the 1970s surfing and smoking pot went hand in hand. As surfers traveled the world in search of perfect waves in places like Bali, Indonesia, some of them encountered high quality Afghan hashish...

Walter Johnson, "The Broken Heart of America" (Basic Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

St. Louis, Missouri is the city with the highest rate of police shootings in the United States. It’s the city with an 18 year difference in life expectancy between Black and white neighborhoods whi...

Peter Cole, "Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area" (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area (University of Illinois Press, 2018) is a fascinating, densely researched account of dockworkers and their organized res...

Scott Heerman, "The Alchemy of Slavery: Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois Country" (U Pennsylvania, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Scott Heerman is the author of The Alchemy of Slavery: Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois Country, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2018. The Alchemy of Slavery exam...

William Gale, "Fiscal Therapy: Curing America's Debt Addiction and Investing in the Future" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The US government is laboring under an enormous debt burden, one that will impact the living standards of future generations of Americans by limiting investment in people and infrastructure. In his...

 Megan Raby, “American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

American science and empire have a long mutual history. In American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), Megan Raby takes us to Caribbean...

Matt K. Lewis, “Too Dumb to Fail: How the GOP Went from the Party of Reagan to the Party of Trump” (Hachette, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Political commentator Matt K. Lewis warns his fellow conservatives that their movement is going off the rails in Too Dumb to Fail: How the GOP Went from the Party of Reagan to the Party of Trump (H...

Jeremy C. Young, “The Age of Charisma: Leaders, Follwoers, and Emotions in American Society, 1870-1940” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the age of the railroad, social movements, revivals, and campaigns for political office spread like wildfire across the United States. Leaders and their surrogates could go travel faster than ev...

Lawrence Jacobs and Desmond King, “Fed Power: How Finance Wins” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lawrence Jacobs and Desmond King are the authors of Fed Power: How Finance Wins (Oxford UP, 2016). Jacobs is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies and Director of the Center fo...

Akwugo Emejulu, “Community Development as Micropolitics: Comparing Theories, Policies, and Politics in America and Britain” (Policy Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Akwugo Emejulu has written Community Development as Micropolitics: Comparing Theories, Policies, and Politics in America and Britain (Policy Press, 2015). Emejulu is a lecturer at the Moray House S...

Michael Lind, “Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States” (Harper, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Over the last several podcasts, authors (Stedman Jones, Buchman, and Tienken) have repeatedly evoked neoliberalism. A new book helps to place this term and its meaning in American political history...

Lynn Stout, “Cultivating Conscience: How Good Laws Make Good People” (Princeton UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lynn Stout‘s pathbreaking book Cultivating Conscience:How Good Laws Make Good People (Princeton University Press, 2010) represents a much-needed update to the discipline of law and economics. Using...

Isar P. Godreau, "Scripts of Blackness: Race, Cultural Nationalism, and U.S. Colonialism in Puerto Rico" (U Illinois Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This is part of our Special Series on Third World Nationalism. In the wake of a rise in nationalism around the world, and its general condemnation by liberals and the left, in addition to the rise ...

Xueli Wang, "On My Own: The Challenge and Promise of Building Equitable STEM Transfer Pathways" (Harvard Education Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Xueli Wang from the University of Wisconsin-Madison on her new book, “On My Own: The Challenge and Promise of Building Equitable STEM Transfer Pathways (Harvard Ed...

Eddie Michel, "The White House and White Africa" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence was one of the last crises of formal imperialism. British settlers in present-day Zimbabwe, then known as Rhodesia, refused to accept demands fr...

Jennifer Jensen Wallach, "What We Need Ourselves: How Food has Shaped African American Life" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this this interview, Dr. Carrie Tippen talks with Jennifer Jensen Wallach about the her book Getting What We Need Ourselves: How Food has Shaped African American Life (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019...

Kenneth I. Helphand, "Lawrence Halprin" (Library of American Landscape History, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

During a career spanning six decades, Lawrence Halprin (1916–2009) became one of the most prolific and outspoken landscape architects of his generation. He took on challenging new project types, de...

Merin Shobhana Xavier, “Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism: Bawa Muhaiyaddeen and Contemporary Shrine Cultures” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 1971, a Sri Lankan Sufi arrived in Philadelphia to address a group of spiritual seekers. This trip initiated the career of one of the most influential teachers in the history of North American S...

Karina O. Alvarado et al, “U.S. Central Americans: Reconstructing Memories, Struggles, and Communities of Resistance” (U of Arizona Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In U.S. Central Americans: Reconstructing Memories, Struggles, and Communities of Resistance (University of Arizona Press, 2017) editors Karina O. Alvarado, Alicia Ivonne Estrada, and Ester E. Hern...

Sarah Bracey White, “Primary Lessons: A Memoir” (CavanKerry Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As an African-American child growing up in the segregated pre-Civil Rights South, Sarah Bracey White pushed against the social conventions that warned her not to rock the boat, even before she was ...

David J. Meltzer, “The Great Paleolithic War: How Science Forged an Understanding of Americas Ice Age Past” (U Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

David J. Meltzer‘s new book is a meticulous study of the controversy over human antiquity in America, a dispute that transformed North American archaeology as a practice and discipline, tracing it ...

Margaret D. Jacobs, “A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World” (University of Nebraska Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 2012, a young Cherokee girl named Veronica became famous. The widespread and often coercive adoption and fostering of Indigenous children by non-Native families has long been known, discussed, a...

Mark A. Largent, “Vaccine: The Debate in Modern America” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Children born in the 1970s and 1980s received just a handful of vaccinations: measles, rubella, and a few others. Beginning the 1990s, the numbers of mandated vaccines exploded, so that today a ful...

Vorris Nunley, “Keepin’ It Hushed: The Barbershop and African American Hush Harbor Rhetoric” (Wayne State UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Vorris Nunley‘s Keepin it Hushed: The Barbershop and African American Hush Harbor Rhetoric (Wayne State University Press, 2011), uses the black barbershop as a trope to discuss black talk within li...

Edwin Wilson, "Magic Time, a Memoir: Notes on Theatre & Other Entertainment" (Smith & Kraus, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Edwin Wilson's book Magic Time, a Memoir: Notes on Theatre & Other Entertainment (Smith & Kraus, 2020) is a spirited memoir of a long and fruitful career in the American theatre. Wilson was the the...

Greil Marcus, “Under the Red White and Blue" (Yale UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If Jay Gatsby is the embodiment of patriotism, what does that mean for America? Join NBN host Lee Pierce and author Greil Marcus as they take a deep dive into how F. Scott Fitzgerald’s vision of th...

Eric Lomazoff, "Reconstructing the National Bank Controversy: Politics and Law in the Early American Republic" (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Eric Lomazoff has written a kind of detective novel about the national bank controversy during the early years of the new republic. Lomazoff poses, in the introduction, and at the start of each cha...

Charlie Laderman, "Sharing the Burden: The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo-American Visions of Global Order" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Sharing the Burden: The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo-American Visions of Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2019), Charlie Laderman exposes the way that imperial a...

Tricia Bruce, "Parish and Place: Making Room for Diversity in the American Catholic Church" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does a typical American Catholic parish look like? Tricia Bruce, an affiliate of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Religion and Society, argues in her new book that Americ...

Neil Roberts, “A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass” (UP of Kentucky, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The year 2018 marks the 200th anniversary of Frederick Douglass’ birth. It can hardly be said that scholars have neglected Douglass; indeed, he is one of the most written-about figures in American ...

Arlie Russell Hochschild, “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right” (New Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Since it was published in 2016, Arlie Russell Hochschild‘s Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (The New Press, 2016) has been many times heralded as necessary read...

Stafanie Deluca, et.al. “Coming of Age in the Other America” (Russell Sage Foundation, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Do you think that what poor people most need to escape poverty is grit? Join us as we speak with Stefanie Deluca, co-author, along with Susan Clampet-Lundquist and Kathryn Edin, of Coming of Age in...

Roger Horowitz, “Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food (Columbia University Press, 2016), Roger Horowitz, director of the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society a...

Tim Lacy, “The Dream of a Democratic Culture: Mortimer J. Adler and Great Books Idea” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Tim Lacy is an assistant professor and academic advisor at Loyola University Chicago. His specialties are intellectual history, cultural history, and the history of education. He is co-founder of b...

Mishuana Goeman, “Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations” (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The maps drawn up by early settlers to plot their inexorable expansion were not the first representations of North American space. Colonialism does not simply impose a new reality, after all, but a...

Vincent Carretta, “Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage” (University of Georgia Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Few people can claim to have created a literary genre… Phillis Wheatley did. By the time she was twenty, her name- taken from the slave ship that carried her to America and the family that bought h...

J. A. Ball and T. Burroughs, "A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable's Malcolm X" (Black Classic Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This is part of our Special Series on Malcolm X and Black Nationalism. In this series, we delve into the background of Malcolm X's action and thought in the context of Black Nationalism, correcting...

Nick Estes, "Our History is the Future" (Verso, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For the second time, Nick Estes has been gracious enough to participate in a New Books Network podcast to discuss his book Our History is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline...

Great Books: Emily Bernard on Larsen's "Passing" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nella Larsen's gripping 1929 novel Passing recounts the fateful encounter, first on a fancy Chicago hotel rooftop restaurant on a sweltering August afternoon and later in New York City, of two wome...

Milton Gaither, "Homeschool: An American History" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With around two million children currently enrolled in home schools in the USA, no-one can doubt that the subject of Milton Gaither’s new book is timely. Gaither, a professor of education at Messia...

Patrick S. McKay, "Healing the Breach: Mormonism, Metaphors, and the Pieces of the Puzzle" (Lulu Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Patrick S. McKay, an apostle of the Joint Conference of Restoration Branches, believes that the Latter Day Saint movement is fractured. But one day soon, he hopes, that will change. In his new book...

Brian D. Laslie, “Architect of Air Power: General Laurence S. Kuter and the Birth of the U.S. Air Force” (UP of Kentucky, 2017. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We have all seen pictures of the “Big Three” (Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin) at their historic meeting Yalta in February 1945. The three leaders command the viewer’s attention, naturally, but in the...

Marian Wilson Kimber, “The Elocutionists: Women, Music, and the Spoken Word” (U Illinois Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Although largely forgotten today, elocution was a popular form of domestic and professional entertainment from the late nineteenth century until around World War II. Elocution is the dramatic readi...

Samuele F.S. Pardini, “In the Name of the Mother: Italian Americans, African Americans, and Modernity from Booker T. Washington to Bruce Springsteen” (Dartmouth, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the Name of the Mother: Italian Americans, African Americans, and Modernity from Booker T. Washington to Bruce Springsteen (Dartmouth, 2017) emphasizes the racial “in-betweenness” of Italian Ame...

David Grazian, “American Zoo: A Sociological Safari” (Princeton UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Urban zoos are both popular and imperiled. They are sites of contestation, but what are those contests about? In his new book, American Zoo: A Sociological Safari(Princeton, 2015), ethnographer Dav...

Diana Hess and Paula McAvoy, “The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education” (Routledge, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Contemporary American political culture is arguably more divisive than ever before. Blue states are bluer, red states are redder, and purple states are becoming harder and harder to find. Because o...

Brian Harker, “Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“The public don’t understand jazz music as we musicians do. A diminished seventh don’t mean a thing to them, but they go for high notes. After all, the public is paying. If musicians depended on mu...

Scott Morgensen, “Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Here’s a study-guide prepared to accompany the interview. For as much as recent decades have witnessed a patriarchal backlash against the growing visibility of LGBTQ people in North American socie...

Ashon T. Crawley, "The Lonely Letters" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Lonely Letters (Duke UP, 2020), A tells Moth: “Writing about and thinking with joy is what sustains me, daily. It nourishes me. I do not write about joy primarily because I always have it. I...

Brian F. Harrison, "A Change is Gonna Come: How to Have Effective Political Conversations in a Divided America" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The United States takes pride in its democratic model and the idea that citizens deliberate in a process to form political opinions. However, in recent years, division and partisanship have increas...

Iyko Day, "Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In our efforts to comprehend the systematic dispossession of indigenous peoples in settler colonies such as the United States, Canada, Australia, or Israel, the notion that "invasion is a structure...

Sara Georgini, "Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sara Georgini is a historian and series editor for The Papers of John Adams at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family (Oxford University Press...

Jacob Lee, "Masters of the Middle Waters: Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions Along the Mississippi" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

America’s waterways were once the superhighways of travel and communication. Coursing through a central line across the landscape, with tributaries connecting the South to the Great Plains and the ...

Freeden Blume Oeur, “Black Boys Apart: Racial Uplift and Respectability in All-Male Public Schools” (U Minnesota Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do schools empower but also potentially emasculate young black men? In his new book, Black Boys Apart: Racial Uplift and Respectability in All-Male Public Schools (University of Minnesota Press...

Matthew Clavin, “Aiming for Pensacola: Fugitive Slaves on the Atlantic and Southern Frontiers” (Harvard UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We all know that most runaway African-American slaves fled north in pursuit of freedom. Most, but not all. Some also fled to Pensacola, a city located in (of all places) the Deep South. In his exce...

Allison E. Fagan, “From the Edge: Chicana/Chicano Border Literature and the Politics of Print” (Rutgers UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is a book? The answer, at first glance, may seem apparent: printed material consisting of a certain amount of pages. However, when a printed item goes under the scrutiny of readers, writers, e...

Keenanga-Yamahtta Taylor, “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation” (Haymarket Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Few social justice struggles have captivated recent political history like the broad Black Lives Matter movement. From the streets of Ferguson and Baltimore to campaign rally interruptions of leadi...

Kimberly A. Hamlin, “From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women’s Rights in Gilded Age America” (U Chicago Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kimberly A. Hamlin is an associate professor in American Studies and history at Miami University in Oxford Ohio. Her book from Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science and Women’s Rights in Gilded Age in ...

Michael J. Kramer, “The Republic of Rock: Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Michael J. Kramer, author of The Republic of Rock: Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), spoke with Ray Haberski about the way rock music be...

Cynthia Wachtell, “War No More: The Antiwar Impulse in American Literature, 1861-1914” (LSU Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

My favorite book as a teenager (and in fact the only book I ever read as a teenager) was All Quiet on the Western Front. I liked it mostly for the vivid scenes of trench warfare. Teenage boys love ...

Pete Croatto, "From Hang Time to Prime Time: Business, Entertainment, and the Birth of the Modern-Day NBA" (Atria Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The birth of the modern-day NBA is often attributed to Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan and David Stern. In From Hang Time to Prime Time: Business, Entertainment, and the Birth of the Mode...

Philip M. Plotch, "Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City" (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ever since New York City built one of the world’s great subway systems, no promise has been more tantalizing than the proposal to build a new subway line under Second Avenue in Manhattan. Yet the S...

Lee Drutman, "Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There are quite a few authors writing about the problems facing American democracy and how best to solve those problems. Many of the problematic issues devolve to the question of representation – a...

Bryan Jones, "The Great Broadening: How the Vast Expansion of the Policymaking Agenda Transformed American Politics" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bryan Jones, Sean Theriault, and Michelle Whyman are out with a big book on with a provocative thesis. In The Great Broadening: How the Vast Expansion of the Policymaking Agenda Transformed America...

E. MacDonald et al., "Time and a Place: An Environmental History of Prince Edward Island" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With its long and well-documented history, Prince Edward Island makes a compelling case study for thousands of years of human interaction with a specific ecosystem. The pastoral landscapes, red san...

Jonathan W. White, “Lincoln on Law, Leadership, and Life” (Cumberland House, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jonathan W. White, an associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University, is the author of Lincoln on Law, Leadership, and Life (Cumberland House, 2015). In this work White r...

Kali Nicole Gross, “Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

True crime is as popular as ever in our present moment. Both television and podcast series have gained critical praise and large audiences by exploring largely unknown individual crimes in depth an...

Rosemary Corbett, “Making Moderate Islam: Sufism, Service, and the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ Controversy” (Stanford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Among the most powerful and equally insidious aspects of the new global politics of religion is the discourse of religious moderation that seeks to produce moderate religious subjects at ease with ...

Harlan Lebo, “Citizen Kane: A Filmmakers Journey” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Considered by many to be the greatest American film ever made, Citizen Kane was the product of Orson Welles, who made a movie that is still groundbreaking today. In his new book Citizen Kane: A Fil...

David Bullock, “Coal Wars” (Washington State University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

David Bullock is the author of Coal Wars: Unions, Strikes, and Violence in Depression-Era Central Washington (Washington State University Press, 2014). Bullock is professor and is the chair of the ...

Michael Innis-Jimenez, “Steel Bario: The Great Mexican Migration to South Chicago, 1915-1940” (NYU Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Michael Innis-Jimenez is the author of Steel Bario: The Great Mexican Migration to South Chicago, 1915-1940 (New York University Press, 2013). Innis-Jimenez is assistant professor in the Department...

Amanda Smith, “Newspaper Titan: The Infamous Life and Monumental Times of Cissy Patterson” (Knopf, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“When your grandmother gets raped, put it on the front page.” That was the Medill family editorial policy and Eleanor Medill “Cissy” Patterson embraced it enthusiastically. The granddaughter of the...

Alicia Puglionesi, "Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Séances, clairvoyance, and telepathy captivated public imagination in the United States from the 1850s well into the twentieth century. Though skeptics dismissed these experiences as delusions, a n...

Jennifer L. Holland, "Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sandie Holguín speaks with?Jennifer L. Holland about her book, Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement (University of California Press, 2020). In addition to her book, Dr. Holland...

Blain Roberts and Ethan J. Kytle, "Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy" (The New Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Blain Roberts and Ethan J. Kytle, Professors of History at California State University—Fresno, discuss their co-authored book, Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confed...

Gregg L. Frazer, "God against the Revolution: The Loyalist Clergy’s Case Against the American Revolution" (UP of Kansas, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Not everyone was convinced by the arguments of patriots during the American revolution. Among those who retained some degree of loyalty to the British crown were the majority of the clergy of the E...

Kristin L. Hoganson, "The Heartland: An American History" (Penguin, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Great West. Middle America. Flyover Country. The expanse of plains, lakes, forests, and farms, between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains has carried many names. Beginning in the twentieth cen...

M. Cooper Harriss, “Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Theology” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man is a milestone of American literature and the idea of invisibility has become a key way for understanding social marginalization. In Ralph Ellison’s Invisib...

Richard Candida Smith, “Improvised Continent: Pan-American and Cultural Exchange” (Penn Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Richard Candida Smith’s new book Improvised Continent: Pan-American and Cultural Exchange (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), offers a richly detailed cultural history of pan-Americanism and ...

Kathleen Collins, “Dr. Joyce Brothers: The Founding Mother of TV Psychology” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her book, Dr. Joyce Brothers: The Founding Mother of TV Psychology (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), Kathleen Collins presents an extensive history of the woman who is arguably the most famous tel...

Kate Bolick, “Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own” (Crown, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“There still exists little organized sense of what a woman’s biography or autobiography should look like,” Carolyn G. Heilbrun wrote in her 1988 classic, Writing A Woman’s Life, noting, “Even less ...

Kathleen A. Feeley and Jennifer Frost, “When Private Talk Goes Public: Gossip in American History” (Palgrave McMillan, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Across a series of twelve essays, When Private Talk Goes Public: Gossip in American History (Palgrave McMillan, 2014)examines the important and understudied role gossip has played in American histo...

Virginia Gray et al., “Interest Group$ and Health Care Reform Across the United State$” (Georgetown UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Virginia Gray, David Lowery, and Jennifer Benz are the authors of Interest Group$ and Health Care Reform Across the United State$ (Georgetown University Press, 2013). Gray is Distinguished Professo...

Andrew Ritchie, “Quest for Speed: A History of Early Bicycle Racing 1868-1903” (Cycle Publishing, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As several guests on this podcast have told us, sports have been fundamentally connected with the major developments of modern history: urbanization, class conflict, imperialism, political repressi...

Steven W. Webster, "American Rage: How Anger Shapes Our Politics" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today I talked to Steven W. Webster about his book American Rage: How Anger Shapes Our Politics (Cambridge UP, 2020). We discuss the behavioral implications of anger in American politics, from incr...

Christopher Bonanos, "Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous" (Henry Holt, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the middle of the twentieth century, a newspaper photographer who went by the name of Weegee took memorable pictures of New York City’s street life that appeared everywhere from tabloid newspape...

Juliane Hammer, "Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts Against Domestic Violence" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do Muslim Americans respond to domestic violence? What motivates Muslim individuals and organizations to work towards eradicating domestic violence in their communities? Where do Muslim provide...

Michael F. Conlin, "The Constitutional Origins of the American Civil War" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In an incisive analysis of over two dozen clauses as well as several 'unwritten' rules and practices, The Constitutional Origins of the American Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2019) shows h...

Christof Spieler, "Trains, Buses, People: An Opinionated Atlas of US Transit" (Island Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christof Spieler, PE, LEED AP, is a Vice President and Director of Planning at Huitt-Zollars and a lecturer in Architecture and Engineering at Rice University. He was a member of the board of direc...

Spencer Piston, “Class Attitudes in American Politics: Sympathy for the Poor, Resentment of the Rich, and Political Implications” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It has long been a truism that Americans’ disdain for poor people–our collective sense that if they only worked harder or behaved more responsibly they would do well in this land of opportunity–exp...

Jamila Michener, “Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Medicaid provides health care for around 1 in 5 Americans. Despite the large number served, the programs administration by state and local governments means very different things in different place...

Susanna L. Blumenthal, “Law and the Modern Mind: Consciousness and Responsibility in American Legal Culture” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Susanna L. Blumenthal is a professor of law and associate professor of history at the University of Minnesota. Her book, Law and the Modern Mind: Consciousness and Responsibility in American Legal ...

Jefferson Cowie, “The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics” (Princeton UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jefferson Cowie is the James G. Stahlman professor of history at Vanderbilt University. His book The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics (Princeton University Press, 2...

J. Douglas Smith, “On Democracy’s Doorstep” (Hill and Wang, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This year we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, a legal revolution with far-reaching cultural, political, and economic import. But as J. Douglas Smith argues in On Democra...

Rachel Prentice, “Bodies in Formation: An Ethnography of Anatomy and Surgery Education” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rachel Prentice‘s new book blends methodological approaches from science studies and anthropology to produce a riveting account of anatomical and surgical education in twenty-first century North Am...

Jodi A. Byrd, “The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In a world of painfully narrow academic monographs, rare is the work that teams with ideas, engagements, and interventions across a wide terrain of social life. In The Transit of Empire: Indigenous...

Michael E. Sawyer, "Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X" (Pluto Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This episode is part of a Special Series on Malcolm X and Black Nationalism. In this series, we delve into the background of Malcolm X's action and thought in the context of Black Nationalism, corr...

Crystal Mun-hye Baik, "Reencounters: On the Korean War and Diasporic Memory Critique" (Temple UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This interview coincides with the 70th anniversary of the Korean War, a war that, as Baik reminds us, has not officially ended. How are the particularities of the Korean War, as an unended war, exp...

Rupert Lewis, "Marcus Garvey" (UP of West Indies, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rupert Lewis has written a biography of Marcus Garvey published by the University Press of the West Indies in 2018. His book Marcus Garvey documents the forging of Garvey’s remarkable vision of pan...

Larry E. Morris, "A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The story of the creation of the Book of Mormon has been told many times, and often ridiculed. A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon (Oxford University Press, 2019), by Larry E. Morris, prese...

Chip Colwell, "Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America's Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Five decades ago, Native American leaders launched a crusade to force museums to return their sacred objects and allow them to rebury their kin. Today, hundreds of tribes use the Native American Gr...

Keri Leigh Merrit and Matthew Hild, eds., “Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power” (UP of Florida, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In their new edited volume Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power (University Press of Florida, 2018), Keri Leigh Merritt and Matthew Hild provide an interdisciplinary approac...

Peter A. Kopp, “Hoptopia: A World of Agriculture and Beer in Oregon’s Willamette Valley” (U California Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Environmental historian Peter A. Kopp‘s book Hoptopia: A World of Agriculture and Beer in Oregon’s Willamette Valley (University of California Press, 2016) examines the fascinating history of a ver...

James A. Cosby, “Devil’s Music, Holy Rollers and Hillbillies: How America Gave Birth to Rock and Roll” (McFarland, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Do you love Rock and Roll or is Rock and Roll music dead? Are you old enough to have put any money in a jukebox to hear your favorite song, watched American Bandstand, or spent any hours viewing mu...

Jason Mittell, “Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television” (NYU Press 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We are said to be in a golden age of TV. The best stories today are told on television screens in serialized forms. The Wire, Lost, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos are a few of the shows that have eleva...

Donald Deardorff, “Bruce Springsteen: American Poet and Prophet” (Scarecrow Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bruce Springsteen is an American icon, known to his fans as “Bruce” and the “Boss.” Springsteen burst onto the American music scene in 1975 with the release of his classic album, Born To Run. His c...

A. Glenn Crothers, “Quakers Living in the Lion’s Mouth” (University Press of Florida, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Deservedly or not, the members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) are often portrayed as one of history’s Good Guys. The Society was the first organized religious group to condemn slavery on moral...

Jonathan Green, “Green’s Dictionary of Slang” (Hodder Education, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Over the last thirty years, Jonathon Green has established himself as a major figure in lexicography, specialising in English slang. During this time he has accumulated a database of over half a mi...

Ian Ayres and Fredrick E. Vars, "Weapon of Choice: Fighting Gun Violence While Respecting Gun Rights" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the United States, gun violence is in a state of national crisis, yet efforts to reform gun regulation face significant political and constitutional barriers. In this innovative book, Ian Ayres ...

Frank Dimatteo, "Lord High Executioner: The Legendary Mafia Boss Albert Anastasia" (Citadel, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Though not as well known today as many of his contemporaries, few American mob bosses were as feared as Albert Anastasia. As head of “Murder Inc.”, Anastasia presided over the contract killing of h...

James K. Wellman, Jr., "High on God: How Megachurches Won the Heart of America" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the United States, the number of megachurches increased from 350 in 1990 to over 1,600 in 2011 with that number continuing to grow exponentially in subsequent years. By 2015, a Hartford Institut...

Mark Burford, "Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mahalia Jackson, the great mid-twentieth century gospel singer, thought of herself as an embodiment of the history of African Americans in the United States. She understood that her family’s backgr...

Harold Holzer, "Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel Chester French" (Princeton Architectural Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Harold Holzer has written a biography of one of America’s greatest public artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Daniel Chester French.  In Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel ...

Seymour M. Hersh, “Reporter: A Memoir” (Knopf, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In about 1978, I found myself in my high school library. I don’t know why I was there except to say I was probably on detention; I didn’t do a lot of reading in those days. In any event, I was wand...

Elizabeth Catte, “What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia” (Belt Publishing, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There is an alarming tendency to paint some topics with a broad brush, allowing for easy understanding, but losing the proper nuance that avoids stereotype. In her book, What You Are Getting Wrong ...

Lynn Dumenil, “The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When America went to war against Germany in 1917, the scale of the conflict required the mobilization of women as well as men in order to achieve victory. In The Second Line of Defense: American Wo...

Wendell Potter and Nick Penniman, “Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy” (Bloomsbury, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Wendell Potter and Nick Penniman are the authors of Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2016). Potter is a former health insurance executive, is the author of Dead...

Joseph M. Gabriel, “Medical Monopoly: Intellectual Property Rights and the Origins of the Modern Pharmaceutical Industry” (U Chicago Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Commercial interests are often understood as impinging upon the ethical norms of medicine. In his new book, Medical Monopoly: Intellectual Property Rights and the Origins of the Modern Pharmaceutic...

Sarah Banet-Weiser, “Authentic: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture” (NYU Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Authentic: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture (NYU Press, 2013), Sarah Banet-Weiser scrutinizes the spread of brand culture into other spheres of social life that the market–at leas...

Adrian Burgos, Jr., “Cuban Star: How One Negro-League Owner Changed the Face of Baseball” (Hill and Wang, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The integration of baseball is most often cast in terms of black and white, but biographer Adrian Burgos, Jr.— a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign– is out to change that. In...

Erica Armstrong Dunbar, "Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge" (Simon and Schuster, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A startling and eye-opening look into America’s First Family, Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (Simon and Schuster, 2017) is the powerful narrativ...

Nancy Beck Young, "Two Suns of the Southwest" (U Kansas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does the 1964 presidential election have to teach us about party dynamics, civil rights and polarization? While many scholars have treated the dramatic candidates and characters such as Lyndon...

A. K. Sandoval-Strausz, "Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City" (Basic Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In A. K. Sandoval-Strausz’s recent work, Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City (Basic Books, 2019), ties together a magnificent story of Latinos migrating to Chicago and Dal...

Rob Ruck, "Tropic of Football: The Long and Perilous Journey of Samoans to the NFL" (The New Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by Rob Ruck, Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, and the author of Tropic of Football: The Long and Perilous Journey of Samoans to the NFL (The New Press, 2018...

Andra Gillespie, "Race and the Obama Administration: Substance, Symbols, and Hope" (Manchester UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Scholars and pundits have been busy trying to assess the legacy of President Barack Obama. Few have done so with the nuance and comparative approach of Andra Gillespie. In her new book Race and the...

Jan M. Padios, “A Nation on the Line: Call Centers as Postcolonial Predicaments in the Philippines” (Duke UP, from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jan M. Padios‘ new book A Nation on the Line: Call Centers as Postcolonial Predicaments in the Philippines (Duke University Press, ) sheds light on the industry of offshore call centers in the Phil...

Jean R. Freedman, “Peggy Seeger: A Life of Music, Love, and Politics” (U Illinois Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When folklorist Jean Freedman first met Peggy Seeger in 1979, Freedman was an undergraduate on her junior year abroad in London, while her American compatriot had been living in the UK for two deca...

Mark P. Bradley, “The World Reimagined: Americans and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century” (Cambridge UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his farewell address, President George Washington warned his fellow citizens of the dangers of what has come to be known in American political speech as “foreign entanglements.” Whether Washingt...

Sangay Mishra, “Desis Divided: The Political Lives of South Asian Americans” (U of Minnesota Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sangay Mishra is the author of Desis Divided: The Political Lives of South Asian Americans (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). Mishra is an assistant professor of political science at Drew Unive...

Steven Awalt, “Steven Spielberg and Duel: The Making of a Film Career” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Steven Spielberg’s long career as a filmmaker began with television. In addition to episodes of popular TV series, he also directed one of the most popular made for television movies of all time, D...

Venessa Williamson and Theda Skocpol, “The Tea Party: Remaking of Republican Conservatism” (Oxford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Vanessa Williamson is coauthor (with Theda Skocpol) of The Tea Party: Remaking of Republican Conservatism (Oxford University Press, 2012), a New Yorker magazine “Ten Best Political Books of 2012”)....

Mike Allen and Evan Thomas, “The Right Fights Back” (Random House, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, The Right Fights Back (Random House, 2011), Mike Allen, the chief White House correspondent for Politico and author of Robert F. Kennedyand The War Lovers, provides a detailed anal...

Martha S. Jones, "Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All" (Basic Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The epic history of African American women's pursuit of political power-and how it transformed America In the standard story, the suffrage crusade began in Seneca Falls in 1848 and ended with the r...

Ismael Garcia-Colon, "Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire: Puerto Rican Workers on U.S. Farms" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire: Puerto Rican Workers on U.S. Farms (University of California Press, 2020) is the first in-depth look at the experiences of Puerto Rican migrant workers in ...

Kimberly Meltzer, “From News to Talk: The Expansion of Opinion and Commentary in U.S. Journalism” (SUNY Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From talking heads on cable news to hot takes online, there seems to be more opinion than ever in journalism these days. There’s an entire body of research about how this shift toward opinionated n...

Miroslava Chávez-García, "Migrant Longing: Letter Writing across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Miroslava Chávez-García is the author of Migrant Longing: Letter Writing across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2018. Migrant Longing is a histor...

Anand Prahlad, "The Secret Life of a Black Aspie: A Memoir" (U Alaska Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Anand Prahlad was born on a former plantation in Virginia in 1954. This memoir, vividly internal, powerfully lyric, and brilliantly impressionistic, is his story. For the first four years of his li...

B. T. Gervais and I. L. Morris, “Reactionary Republicans: How the Tea Party in the House Paved the Way for Trump’s Victory” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There’s been a lot written about the Tea Party, but nothing focused on members of Congress like the new book, Reactionary Republicans: How the Tea Party in the House Paved the Way for Trump’s Victo...

James Reston, Jr., “A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial” (Arcade Publishing, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

My students don’t remember Vietnam. That’s hard to believe, for someone born in 1968. But it’s true, nonetheless. High school history courses rarely make it past World War Two. The Cold War and th...

James Q. Whitman, “Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

James Q. Whitman, Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School, began researching the book that became Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Na...

Douglas Clark, “Gunboat Justice: British and American Law Courts in China and Japan (1842-1943)” (Earnshaw Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Douglas Clark’s new Gunboat Justice: British and American Law Courts in China and Japan (1842-1943) (Earnshaw Books Limited, 2016) is a three-volume study of extraterritoriality and its transnation...

Deana A. Rohlinger, “Abortion Politics, Mass Media, and Social Movements in America” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Deana A. Rohlinger has just written Abortion Politics, Mass Media, and Social Movements in America (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Rohlinger is associate professor of sociology at Florida State...

Hedrick Smith, “Who Stole the American Dream?” (Random House, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the “Great Recession,” millions lost their jobs, retirement savings, and even their houses. The entire middle class was shaken. Yet almost no one has been brought to justice. Quite the opposite:...

Jafari S. Allen, “!Venceremos?: The Erotics of Black Self-Making in Cuba” (Duke UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jafari S. Allen‘s !Venceremos?: The Erotics of Black Self-Making in Cuba (Duke University Press, 2011) is a meticulously researched and exquisitely theorized ethnography that begins with a queer sp...

Daniel S. Lucks, "Reconsidering Reagan: Racism, Republicans, and the Road to Trump" (Beacon Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ronald Reagan is regarded today as one of the most consequential presidents of the postwar era, yet many aspects of his legacy are largely unappreciated. In Reconsidering Reagan: Racism, Republican...

Melissa K. Merry, "Warped Narratives: Distortion in the Framing of Gun Policy" (U Michigan Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If gun violence kills so many Americans, why don’t we see more effective solutions? How much does the way we frame an issue impact how we feel about it? How often are hot button issues deeply polar...

Jay Wexler, "Our Non-Christian Nation" (Redwood Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Less and less Christian demographically, America is now home to an ever-larger number of people who say they identify with no religion at all. These non-Christians have increasingly been demanding ...

Lawrence Glickman, "Free Enterprise: An American History" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Free enterprise” is an everyday phrase that connotes an American common sense. It appears everywhere from political speeches to pop culture. And it is so central to the idea of the United States t...

Michael R. Cohen, "Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneurship in the Reconstruction Era" (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Michael R. Cohen is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Tulane University, where he holds a Sizeler Professorship. He is the author of the newly published Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish E...

Jessica Johnson, “Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire” (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her book Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire (Duke University Press, 2018), Dr. Jessica Johnson chronicles the rise and fall of Mars Hill Church, an evang...

Aidan Smith, “Gender, Heteronormativity, and the American Presidency” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Aidan Smith has written a timely and important analysis of the way that we understand images, masculinity, and femininity, especially through the lens of presidential campaigns and political advert...

Lizabeth Cohen, “Making A New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lizabeth Cohen‘s Making A New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 was originally published in 1990, and recently re-published in 2014. In this book, Cohen explores how it was that Chicag...

Howard P. Chudacoff, “Changing the Playbook: How Power, Profit, and Politics Transformed College Sports” (U of Illinois Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

March Madness is big business. Each year the NCAA collects $700 million for television rights to the men’s college basketball tournament, under the terms of a 14-year, $10.8 billion contract with C...

Don H. Doyle, “The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War” (Basic Books, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Many Americans know about the military side of the Civil War, and the private, official diplomacy of the Civil War is also well documented. The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the...

Hannah S. Decker, “The Making of DSM-III: A Diagnostic Manual’s Conquest of American Psychiatry” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Like it or not, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) has an enormous influence in deciding what qualifies as a mental health disorder in the United States ...

Kevin Avery, “Everything is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson” (Fantagraphics, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Paul Nelson, the Rolling Stone writer and Mercury Records A & R guy who signed the New York Dolls, is quoted in Kevin Avery‘s Everything is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson (Fa...

Nick Haddad, "The Last Butterflies: A Scientist's Quest to Save a Rare and Vanishing Creature" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Butterflies have long captivated the imagination of humans, from naturalists to children to poets. Indeed it would be hard to imagine a world without butterflies. And yet their populations are decl...

Peniel E. Joseph, "The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr." (Basic, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do the political afterlives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. continue to shape American democracy? How does a common myth of opposition distort our understanding of civil rights? In his...

Mario T. García, "Father Luis Olivares, A Biography: Faith Politics and the Origins of the Sanctuary Movement in Los Angeles" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As the leader of the Sanctuary Movement in Los Angeles during the 1980s, Father Luis Olivares brazenly defied local Catholic authorities and the federal government by publicly offering sanctuary to...

Tammy R. Vigil, "Moms in Chief: The Rhetoric of Republican Motherhood and the Spouses of Presidential Nominees, 1992-2016" (U Kansas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Tammy Vigil’s new book, Moms in Chief: The Rhetoric of Republican Motherhood and the Spouses of Presidential Nominees, 1992-2016 (University Press of Kansas, 2019), examines the contemporary “first...

Naomi Pullin, "Female Friends and the Making of Trans-Atlantic Quakerism, 1650-1750" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Naomi Pullin, who is Assistant Professor of Early Modern British History at the University of Warwick, UK, has just published an outstanding account of Female Friends and the Making of Trans-Atlant...

Leigh Eric Schmidt, “Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way in A Godly Nation” (Princeton UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A much-maligned minority throughout American history, atheists have been cast as a threat to the nation’s moral fabric, barred from holding public office, and branded as irreligious misfits in a na...

Hans Hassell, “The Party’s Primary: Control of Congressional Nominations” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When first enacted at the start of the twentieth century, primaries were to decrease the power of party bosses to dominate the choice of who ran for office. Primaries were a feature of the progress...

Anna Harwell Celenza, “Jazz Italian Style: From its Origins in New Orleans to Fascist Italy and Sinatra” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Jazz Italian Style: From its Origins in New Orleans to Fascist Italy and Sinatra (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Anna Harwell Celenza examines the arrival of jazz in Italy afte...

Heather Boushey, “Finding Time: The Economies of Work-Life Conflict” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Heather Boushey has written Finding Time: The Economies of Work-Life Conflict (Harvard University Press, 2016). Boushey is Executive Director and Chief Economist at the Washington Center for Equita...

David Krugler, “1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back (Cambridge University Press, 2014), David Krugler chronicles the origins and development of ten major race riots that took pl...

Jane Iwamura, “Virtual Orientalism: Religion and Popular Culture in the U.S.” Oxford University Press, 2011 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In popular perception, a certain image arises when we imagine eastern religions. Perhaps, we envision a wise old Asian man in traditional clothing sitting in a meditative state (maybe not). But why...

Randy Roberts, “Joe Louis: Hard Times Man” (Yale UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“I’m sure if it wasn’t for Joe Louis,” acknowledged Jackie Robinson, “the color line in baseball would not have been broken for another ten years.” To Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis was an inspiration and...

Mark Wild, "Renewal: Liberal Protestants and the American City After World War II" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Renewal: Liberal Protestants and the American City after World War II (U Chicago Press, 2019), Mark Wild traces the achievements and losses of American mainline Protestant Christians as they att...

Greg Mitchell, "The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (The New Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

dSoon after atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, MGM set out to make a movie studio chief Louis B. Mayer called “the most important story” he would ever film: a big budget dra...

Roger Gilles, "Women on the Move: The Forgotten Era of Women’s Bicycle Racing" (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by Roger Gilles, Director of the Honors College and Professor of Writing at Grand Valley State University, and author of Women on the Move: The Forgotten Era of Women’s Bicycle ...

Mark Winne, "Food Town USA: Seven Unlikely Cities that are Changing the Way We Eat" (Island Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Cities are extremely complex institutions to understand and are continually changing. A central place to make sense of the complexities of a city is the food that is grown and sold in these areas. ...

Robert Matzen, "Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II" (GoodKnight Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Audrey Hepburn was justly known for her long acting career, yet her early life is largely unknown. In his book, Robert Matzen describes how she lived during the World War II period in Nazi-occupied...

Christopher Grasso, “Skepticism and American Faith: From the Revolution to the Civil War” (Oxford University Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christopher Grasso is a professor of history at the College of William and Mary. His book Skepticism and American Faith: From the Revolution to the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2018) explore...

Brandi Denison, “Ute Land Religion in the American West, 1879-2009” (U Nebraska Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Land is central in the construction of identity for many communities. For Ute Native Americans the meaning of a twelve million acre homeland in western Colorado is intricately linked to the various...

Thomas M. Grace, “Kent State: Death and Dissent in the Long Sixties” (U of Massachusetts Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kent State University is associated indelibly with the events of May 4, 1970, when soldiers of the Ohio National Guard shot over a dozen students, killing four of them. In Kent State: Death and Dis...

Kimberly Fain, “Black Hollywood: From Butlers to Superheroes, the Changing Role of African American Men in the Movies” (Praeger, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

While black men have been portrayed in film for over a hundred years, they have often been stereotyped or portrayed very badly. In her book Black Hollywood: From Butlers to Superheroes, the Changin...

Lisa Tetrault, “The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898” (UNC Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lisa Tetrault received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is an associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University. Tetrault’s book The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory an...

Pauline Turner Strong, “American Indians and the American Imaginary: Cultural Representation Across the Centuries” (Paradigm Publishers, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Pauline Turner Strong‘s new book American Indians and the American Imaginary: Cultural Representation Across the Centuries (Paradigm Publishers, 2012) traces the representations of Native Americans...

Hayes Peter Mauro, “The Art of Americanization at the Carlisle Indian School” (University of New Mexico Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Anyone who’s turned on the television in the past several decades is familiar with the ubiquitous before-and-after picture. On the left, your present state: undesirable, out of shape, balding perha...

Waleed F. Mahdi, "Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation" (Syracuse UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It comes as little surprise that Hollywood films have traditionally stereotyped Arab Americans, but how are Arab Americans portrayed in Arab films, and just as importantly, how are they portrayed i...

Nicole Myers Turner, "Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her nuanced case study of postemanciaption Virginia, Nicole Myers Turner, (Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University) challenges assumptions regarding the intersection between ...

Great Books: Benjamin Reiss on Thoreau's "Walden" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

America’s “environmental prophet,” Henry David Thoreau, set out for a simpler, more mindful, and more deeply lived life on Walden Pond on July 4th, 1845. How to live deliberately, being mindful of ...

Jeffrey Ostler, "Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jeffrey Ostler’s Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas (Yale University Press, 2019) is the first of what will be a two-volume set...

Christian Philip Peterson, "The Routledge History of World Peace Since 1750" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christian Philip Peterson joins us today to talk about The Routledge History of World Peace since 1750 (Routledge, 2018), which he co-edited with William M. Knoblauch and Michael Loadenthal. The co...

Stephanie Elizondo Griest, “All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the United States, contemporary discourse concerning “the border” almost always centers around the country’s southern boundary shared with Mexico. Rarely, in conversations public or private amon...

David Weinstein, “The Eddie Cantor Story: A Jewish Life in Performance and Politics” (Brandeis UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Eddie Cantor was once among the most popular performers in the United States. He was influential and innovative on stage, radio, and film from the early twentieth century though the early 1960s. He...

Michael A. McCarthy, “Dismantling Solidarity: Capitalist Politics and American Pensions since the New Deal” (Cornell UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Over half of Americans approaching retirement age report having no money saved for retirement, but how did we get here as a nation? In his book, Dismantling Solidarity: Capitalist Politics and Amer...

Daniel K. Williams, “Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement Before Roe v. Wade” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Daniel K. Williams is an associate professor of history at the University of West Georgia. His book, Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement Before Roe v. Wade (Oxford University Press, 2016...

Erskine Clarke, “By the Rivers of Water: A Nineteenth Century Atlantic Odyssey” (Basic Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jane Bayard Wilson and John Leighton Wilson were unlikely African missionaries, coming as they did from privileged slaveholding families in Georgia and South Carolina, respectively. Yet in 1834 the...

Joseph Nye, “Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era” (Princeton UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Joseph Nye‘s latest book is Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era (Princeton University Press, 2013). Professor Nye is University Distinguished Professor and former dean of t...

Keith Gilyard, “True to the Language Game: African American Discourse, Cultural Politics, and Pedagogy” (Routledge, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the preface to this book, Keith Gilyard describes his career as 30 years of roaming the areas of rhetoric, composition, sociolinguistics, creative writing, applied linguistics, education theory,...

Trevor Pearce, "Pragmatism's Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Pragmatism’s Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 2020), Trevor Pearce demonstrates that the philosophical tradition of pragmatism owes an eno...

David Shimer, "Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference" (Knopf, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The "guard is tired." With that simple phrase, the newly installed Bolshevik regime in Russia dismissed the duly elected Constituent Assembly in January 1918. And, one might say, so started Russia'...

Megan Kate Nelson, "The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West" (Scribner, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What did the American Civil War look like from Diné Bikéyah and Apacheria? This is just one of the many questions that drives historian Megan Kate Nelson’s The Three-Cornered War: The Union, The Co...

Alexandra Minna Stern, "White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination" (Beacon Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, Dr. Alexandra Minna Stern and I discuss her latest book, Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination (Beacon Press, 2019). Our conver...

Kelly J. Beard, "An Imperfect Rapture" (Zone 3 Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Many of you listening to this now probably recall growing up in a household of faith. You may have fond memories of the familiar rituals, the holidays, the shared family values. A weekly service at...

Marc Leeds, “The Vonnegut Encyclopedia” (Delacorte Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Originally published in 1994, Marc Leeds’ The Vonnegut Encyclopedia (Delacorte Press, 2016) was initially conceived of as a comprehensive A-Z guide to the expansive oeuvre of the American author Ku...

Andrew Friedman, “Chefs, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll” (Ecco Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I first really got to know Andrew Friedman after the death of our mutual friend, the great food writer Josh Ozersky. Andrew is a widely respected food writer who has collaborated on numerous landma...

Lisa Wade, “American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus” (Norton, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Hookup” has become a buzzword, a misleading concept for students, parents and educators alike–one that confuses more than explains the nuances of this complex and pervasive trend. In American Hook...

Heather Vacek, “Madness: American Protestant Responses to Mental Illness” (Baylor UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Should the member of a Christian congregation be injured in a car accident, that person will likely be the subject of public prayers and hospitality. But if that same person suffers a mental breakd...

Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch, “The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire” (Verso, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Two Canadian socialist thinkers have published a new book on the successes and failures, the crises, contradictions and conflicts in present-day capitalism. In The Making of Global Capitalism: The ...

Sikivu Hutchinson, “Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels” (Infidel Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why does it seem like everyone in the atheist movement is white and male? Are African-American women less interested in secularism? In her book, Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels (Infide...

Jean H. Baker, “Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion” (Hill and Wang, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Forty-five years after her death, the reproductive rights activist Margaret Sanger remains a polarizing figure. Conservatives attack her social liberalism while liberals shy away from her perceived...

Tony Bolden, "Groove Theory: The Blues Foundation of Funk" (UP of Mississippi, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Groove Theory: The Blues Foundation of Funk (University Press of Mississippi, 2020) by Tony Bolden, an Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at the University of Kansas, and a...

Creshema R. Murray, "Leadership Through the Lens: Interrogating Production, Presentation, and Power" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Television informs our perceptions and expectations of leaders and offers a guide to understanding how we, as organizational actors, should communicate, act, and relate. Join NBN host Lee Pierce (s...

Michael F. Robinson, "The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2006) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Radio host Kevin Fox interviews Michael F. Robinson about the history of American Arctic exploration, the subject of his book, The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture (Univers...

Travis Rieder, "In Pain: A Bioethicist’s Personal Struggle with Opioids" (Harper Collins, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On a spring day in 2015, Dr. Travis Rieder’s life changed. A motorcycle accident, a shattered foot, and a long series of surgeries later, the John Hopkins University bioethicist had a far deeper un...

Lincoln A. Mitchell, "Baseball Goes West: The Dodgers, the Giants, and the Shaping of the Major Leagues" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ask a Brooklynite over the age of fifty and they’ll likely tell you that baseball’s golden age ended the day the Dodgers and Giants packed up and headed for the West Coast. Not so argues Lincoln A....

Teishan A. Latner, “Cuban Revolution in America: Havana and the Making of a United States Left, 1968–1992” (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Cuba’s grassroots revolution prevailed on America’s doorstep in 1959, fueling intense interest within the multiracial American Left even as it provoked a backlash from the U.S. political establishm...

Jon Kraszewski, “Reality TV” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his book Reality TV (Routledge, 2017), author Jon Kraszewski explores reality television’s relationship to the American cityscape. Starting with show such as Candid Camera and An American Family...

Marlene Banks, “Son of A Preacher Man” and “Greenwood and Archer” (Lift Every Voice, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The tragic Tulsa Race Riots plus a smidgeon of romance equals to a compelling historical saga. Marlene Banks weaves fact and fiction together illustrating how law and culture may change but human n...

Mario Jimenez Sifuentez, “Of Forests and Fields: Mexican Labor in the Pacific Northwest” (Rutgers UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Of Forests and Fields: Mexican Labor in the Pacific Northwest (Rutgers University Press, 2016), Dr. Mario Jimenez Sifuentez combines U.S. labor, environmental, and Chicana/o history to tell the ...

Daniel DiSalvo, “Government against Itself: Public Union Power and Its Consequences” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Daniel DiSalvo is the author ofGovernment against Itself: Public Union Power and Its Consequences (Oxford University Press, 2015). DiSalvo is associate professor of political science at the City Co...

Gregory Heller, “Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, and the Building of Modern Philadelphia” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gregory Heller is the author of Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, and the Building of Modern Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). Heller is Senior Advisor at Econsult Solutions, Inc. ...

Tim Groseclose, “Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind” (St. Martin’s Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind (St. Martin’s Press, 2011), Tim Groseclose, Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA, discusses his qua...

Nazita Lajevardi, "Outsiders at Home: The Politics of American Islamophobia" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the status of Muslim Americans in American democracy? Dr. Nazita Lajevardi’s superb new study concludes they are ‘outsiders at home.’ In Outsiders at Homes: The Politics of American Islamop...

Nicole Maurantonio, "Confederate Exceptionalism: Civil War Myth and Memory in the Twenty-First Century" (UP of Kansas, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In a time of contentious debate over Confederate monuments, Nicole Maurantonio (Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Communication studies and American Studies at the University of Richmond) provide...

Blain Roberts, "Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women: Race and Beauty in the Twentieth-Century South" (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Professor Blain Roberts of California State University, Fresno, talks about intersections of race, identity, and memory in the South in a wide-ranging discussion that starts in the segregated beaut...

Christine M. DeLucia, "Memory Lands: King Philip’s War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast" (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christine M. DeLucia is the author of Memory Lands: King Philip’s War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast, published by Yale University Press in 2018. Memory Lands provides a much needed new...

Randall Stephens, "The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock n’ Roll" (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I was immediately drawn to the book The Devil’s Music by Dr. Randall Stephens, Associate Professor of British and American Studies at the University of Oslo. Dr. Stephens and I came across one anot...

Seth Archer, “Sharks Upon the Land: Colonialism, Indigenous Health, and Culture in Hawai’i, 1778-1855” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Sharks Upon the Land: Colonialism, Indigenous Health, and Culture in Hawai’i, 1778-1855 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Utah State University Assistant Professor of History Seth Archer trace...

Marshall Poe, “How to Read a History Book: The Hidden History of History” (Zero Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the history of a “history book”? In How to Read a History Book: The Hidden History Of History (Zero Books, 2018), Marshall Poe, founder and Editor-In-Chief of the New Books Network, tells t...

Daina Ramey Berry, “The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation” (Beacon Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A profoundly humane look at an inhumane institution, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation (Beacon Press, 2017) will have a ...

Alexander Wolff, “The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama” (Temple UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Alexander Wolff is the author of The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama (Temple University Press, 2015). Wolff is a senior writer at Sports Illustrated. On the eve of the college ba...

Stephanie Coontz, “A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s” (Basic Books, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Stephanie Coontz is an award-winning social historian, the director of Research and Public Education at the Council for Contemporary Families and teaches history and family studies at The Evergreen...

Charlene M. Boyer Lewis, “Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte: An American Aristocrat in the Early Republic” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is a celebrity? And how has the definition of celebrity changed over the course of American history? Those questions are central to Charlene M. Boyer Lewis‘s book Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte...

Michael Matheny, “Carrying the War to the Enemy: American Operational Art to 1945” (University of Oklahoma Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ask many military historians about the origins of American operational art and many will place it sometime after the Second World War. Conventional wisdom has long held that the American military o...

Brandon Mills, "The World Colonization Made: The Racial Geography of Early American Empire" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Brandon Mills is the author of The World Colonization Made: The Racial Geography of Early American Empire, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2020. The World Colonization Made exp...

M. A. Weitekamp and M. Delaney, "Smithsonian American Women" (Smithsonian Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Smithsonian American Women: Remarkable Objects and Stories of Strength, Ingenuity and Vision from the National Collection (Smithsonian Book, 2019) is an inspiring and surprising celebration of U.S....

Saladin Ambar, "Reconsidering American Political Thought: A New Identity" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Saladin Ambar has written a masterful examination and analysis of American political thought in this new book which does, in fact, reconsider our thinking about this particular branch of political ...

Harriet Washington, "A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind" (Little, Brown Spark, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Environmental racism is visible not only as cancer clusters or the location of grocery stores. It is responsible for the reported gap in IQ scores between white Americans and Black, Latinx, and Nat...

Mickey and Dick Flacks, "Making History/Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America" (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mickey and Dick Flacks' new book Making History/Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America (Rutgers UP, 2018) is a chronicle of the political and personal li...

D. G. Surdam and M. J. Haupert, “The Age of Ruth and Landis: The Economics of Baseball during the Roaring Twenties” (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by David George Surdam, co-author with Michael J. Haupert of the book The Age of Ruth and Landis: The Economics of Baseball during the Roaring Twenties (University of Nebraska P...

Saladin Ambar, “American Cicero: Mario Cuomo and the Defense of American Liberalism” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

American Cicero: Mario Cuomo and the Defense of American Liberalism (Oxford University Press, 2017) is a compelling exploration of the political life of Governor Mario Cuomo as well as the concepts...

Steven M. Avella, “Charles K. McClatchy and the Golden Era of American Journalism” (U. Missouri Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Charles K. (CK) McClatchy was a towering figure in the making of Sacramento and the inland empire he liked to call Superior California. As editor of the Sacramento Bee from 1883 to 1936, McClatchy ...

Caroline E. Light, “That Pride of Race and Character: The Roots of Jewish Benevolence in the Jim Crow South” (NYU Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In That Pride of Race and Character: The Roots of Jewish Benevolence in the Jim Crow South (NYU Press, 2014), Caroline E. Light, Lecturer on Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard Unive...

Emma Anderson, “The Death and Afterlife of the North American Martyrs” (Harvard UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Martyrdom, writes Emma Anderson, is anything but random. In beautiful prose and spectacular historical detail, The Death and Afterlife of the North American Martyrs (Harvard University Press, 2013)...

Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton, “Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality” (Harvard UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

One of the basic rules of human behavior is that people generally want to do what their peers do. If your friends like jazz, you’ll probably like jazz. If your friends want to go to the movies, you...

Phil Kerpen, “Democracy Denied: How Obama is Ignoring You and Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America and How to Stop Him” (BenBella Books, 2011)” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, Democracy Denied: How Obama is Ignoring You and Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America – and How to Stop Him (BenBella Books, 2011), Phil Kerpen, vice president for poli...

Erica Fretwell, "Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race, and the Aesthetics of Feeling" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We so often take our senses as natural, but perhaps we should understand them as historically situated. Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race and the Aesthetics of Feeling (Duke University Press...

Grace Elizabeth Hale, "Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture (University of North Carolina Press), Grace Elizabeth Hale tells the epic story of the Athens, Georgia mus...

Howard Jones, "My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his book My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness (Oxford UP, 2017), Dr. Howard Jones describes how on March 16th, 1968, several units of American soldiers descended upon a collectio...

Amanda L. Tyler, "Habeas Corpus in Wartime: From the Tower of London to Guantanamo Bay" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Amanda L. Tyler is the author of Habeas Corpus in Wartime: From the Tower of London to Guantanamo Bay, published by Oxford University Press in 2017. Habeas Corpus in Wartime is a comprehensive hist...

Allison Schrager, "An Economist Walks Into A Brothel And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk" (Portfolio, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Whether you are a commuter weighing options of taking the bus vs walking to get you to work on time or a military general leading troops into war, risk is something we deal with every day. Even the...

Harold Morales, “Latino and Muslim in America: Race, Religion, and the Making of a New Minority” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Harold Morales, an associate professor of Religion at Morgan State University, is the author of the momentous new book, Latino and Muslim in America: Race, Religion, and the Making of a New Minorit...

Christopher Witko and William Franko, “The New Economic Populism: How States Respond to Economic Inequality” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the last few weeks, minimum wage workers in 18 states saw their wages go up; in Maine a full dollar increase. Why states have taken the lead on raising the minimum wage is the topic of the new b...

Seth Barrett Tillman, “Ex Parte Merryman: Myth, History, and Scholarship,” Military Law Review 481 (2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Seth Barrett Tillman has written “Ex Parte Merryman: Myth, History and Scholarship,” an article about the famous case that is popularly thought to demonstrate a conflict between the President and t...

Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, “Citizen Sailors: Becoming American in the Age of Revolution” (Harvard UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nathan Perl-Rosenthal‘s Citizen Sailors: Becoming American in the Age of Revolution (Harvard University Press, 2015), explores the fascinating history of identification and citizenship in the Atlan...

Elena Conis, “Vaccine Nation: America’s Changing Relationship with Immunization” (University of Chicago, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The 1960s marked a “new era of vaccination,” when Americans eagerly exposed their arms and hind ends for shots that would prevent a range of everyday illnesses–not only prevent the lurking killers,...

Matthew W. Hughey, “White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race” (Stanford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Whiteness studies has confirmed that race is a social construction, even for whites, and that the identity we understand as white is also a social invention. Those who benefit from this invention a...

Alice Bag, “Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage, a Chicana Punk Story” (Feral House, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I saw “The Decline of Western Civilization,” Penelope Spheeris’s film documenting the late seventies punk scene in Los Angeles, when it was first released in 1981/82. Performances by the “popular” ...

Susan M. Reverby, "Co-Conspirator for Justice: The Revolutionary Life of Dr. Alan Berkman" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Alan Berkman (1945–2009) was no campus radical in the mid-1960s; he was a promising Ivy League student, football player, Eagle Scout, and fraternity president. But when he was a medical student and...

Joshua C. Myers, "We Are Worth Fighting For: A History of the Howard University Student Protest of 1989" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We Are Worth Fighting For: A History of the Howard University Student Protest of 1989 (NYU Press, 2019) is the first history of the 1989 Howard University protest. The three-day occupation of the u...

Jodie Adams Kirshner, "Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promise" (St. Martin's Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promise (St. Martin's Press, 2019), Jodie Adams Kirshner tells the story of the people of Detroit before, during, and after its ba...

Anne M. Kornhauser, "Debating the American State: Liberal Anxieties and the New Leviathan, 1930-1970" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The New Deal left a host of political, institutional, and economic legacies. Among them was the restructuring of the government into an administrative state with a powerful executive leader and a l...

Anthony Nownes, "Organizing for Transgender Rights: Collective Action, Group Development, and the Rise of a New Social Movement" (SUNY Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Hard won transgender rights have been under attack by the Trump administration. Officials across government have sought to overturn decisions made by the Obama administration to expand rights to tr...

Louis Warren, “God’s Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America” (Basic Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Historians and other writers often portray the Ghost Dance religious movement and massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 as endings, the final gasps of armed Native resistance and their older ways of lif...

Rachel Sherman, “Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For her new book Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence (Princeton University Press, 2017), Rachel Sherman conducted in-depth interviews with fifty wealthy New Yorkers—including hedge fund finan...

Scott A. Mitchell, “Buddhism in America: Global Religion, Local Contexts” (Bloomsbury, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Scott A. Mitchell‘s recent monograph, Buddhism in America: Global Religion, Local Contexts (Bloomsbury, 2016), provides a much-needed up-to-date overview of Buddhism in the United States. To tackle...

Tahneer Oksman, “How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In “How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?”: Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs (Columbia University Press, 2016), Tahneer Oksman explores the graphic memoirs of sev...

Thomas F. Schaller, “The Stronghold: How Republicans Captured Congress but Surrendered the White House” (Yale UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Thomas F. Schaller is the author of The Stronghold: How Republicans Captured Congress but Surrendered the White House (Yale University Press, 2015). Schaller is professor of political science at th...

Dan LeRoy, “Paul’s Boutique” (Continuum, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

After spending millions to steal superstar Brooklyn-based rappers the Beastie Boys away from Def Jam Records in 1988, Capitol Records had high hopes for the act’s follow up effort. And why not? Lic...

Kariann Akemi Yokota, “Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The founding fathers–and mothers, sons and daughters–were British. Sort of. It’s true that they were subjects of the British crown, and that they looked, talked, acted and had the tastes of folks i...

Timothy Hampton, "Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work" (Zone Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Timothy Hampton's Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work (Zone Books, 2020) is a fascinating and meticulous study of Bob Dylan's songwriting craft. Hampton discusses how Dylan incorporated and then transcen...

A. P. Carnevale, "The Merit Myth: How Our Colleges Favor the Rich and Divide America" (The New Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Colleges fiercely defend America’s higher education system, arguing that it rewards bright kids who have worked hard. But it doesn’t actually work this way. As the recent bribery scandal demonstrat...

Brad Balukjian, "The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife" (U Nebraska Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by Brad Balukjian, author of the book The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife (University of Nebraska, 2020). A combination of Charles Kuralt and Lawren...

Hendrik Hartog, "The Trouble with Minna: A Case of Slavery and Emancipation in the Antebellum North" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode of the American Society for Legal History’s podcast Talking Legal History Siobhan talks with Hendrik Hartog about his book The Trouble with Minna: A Case of Slavery and Emancipation...

Max Felker-Kantor, "Policing Los Angeles: Race, Resistance, and the Rise of the LAPD" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In recent years, the treatment of African Americans by police departments around the country has come under increased public scrutiny. As any student of the longer historical relationship between l...

Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood, “Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston” (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Boston’s political culture is most known within the frame of antebellum political struggles over the institution of slavery. What about Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction era Black Bostonian po...

Jeffrey Stewart, “The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Through his work as a scholar and critic, Alain Locke redefined African American culture and its place in American life. Jeffrey Stewart‘s book The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke (Oxford Univer...

Dean Kotlowski, “Paul V. McNutt and the Age of FDR” (Indiana UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

One of the rising stars in American politics during the 1930s was Paul Vories McNutt. As governor of Indiana, McNutt refashioned the state government to address its citizens needs during the Great ...

Mariah Adin, “The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s” (Praeger, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Stereotypes should always be viewed with skepticism. That said, when we consider Jewish kids from Brooklyn we ordinarily think of well-behaved, studious types on their way to “good schools” and pro...

John Wiley Jr., “The Scarlett Letters: The Making of the Film Gone With the Wind” (Taylor Trade Publishing, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Margaret Mitchell’s blockbuster novel was released in 1936 to great acclaim. It immediately drew interest from Hollywood hoping to turn it into an epic film. After its sale, Mitchell began a large ...

David Garland, “Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition” (Harvard UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why is it that the United States continues to enforce the death penalty when the rest of the Western world abolished its use a little over three decades ago? That question, along with many other eq...

Ellen Lewin, “Gay Fatherhood: Narratives of Family and Citizenship in America” (University of Chicago, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When anthropologist Ellen Lewin gave a preliminary report on her research on gay fathers, a member of the audience asked how she could write about such “yucky people.” Yes, that’s the technical ant...

Justin Gifford, "Revolution Or Death: The Life of Eldridge Cleaver" (Lawrence Hill, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Revolution Or Death: The Life of Eldridge Cleaver (Lawrence Hill Books, 2020) is a remarkable biography that examines the notorious Black revolutionary meticulously within the context of his changi...

Kennan Ferguson, "Cookbooks Politics" (U Penn Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Many of us have stacks of cookbooks on our shelves, which we look through for ideas and inspiration, or to transport us to distant places with different foods, smells, experiences, and sometimes me...

Kate Lockwood Harris, "Beyond the Rapist: Title IX and Sexual Violence on US Campuses" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric and Communication at the State University of New York at Geneseo--interviews Dr. Kate Lockwood Harris (s...

Patrick Andelic, "Donkey Work: Congressional Democrats in Conservative America, 1974-1994" (UP of Kansas, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What happened to the Democratic Party after the 1960s? In many political histories, the McGovern defeat of 1972 announced the party’s decline—and the conservative movement’s ascent. What the conven...

Sigrid Lien, "Pictures of Longing: Photography and the Norwegian-American Migration" (U Minnesota Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In one of history’s largest migrations, hundreds of thousands of Norwegians immigrated to North American during the 1800s and early 1900s. In addition to letters sent home, Norwegian-Americans ofte...

Samira Mehta, “Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States” (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With rates of interfaith marriage steadily increasing since the middle of the twentieth century, interfaith families have become a permanent and significant feature of the religious landscape in th...

David Narrett, “Adventurism and Empire” (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803 (University of North Carolina Press, 2015), David Narrett explores the internationa...

Ruth Beckford and Careth Reid, “The Picture Man: From the Collection of Bay Area Photographer E. F. Joseph” (Arcadia, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From 1927 until his death in 1979, E.F. Joseph documented the daily lives of African Americans in the Bay Area. His images were printed in the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, but not w...

Steve Phillips, “Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority” (The New Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Steve Phillips is the author of Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority (The New Press, 2016). Phillips is a senior fellow at the Center for Ameri...

Keith Wailoo, “Pain: A Political History” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is pain real? Is pain relief a right? Who decides? In Pain: A Political History (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014),Keith Wailoo investigates how people have interpreted and judged the suffering...

Ron Schmidt (et al.), “Newcomers, Outsiders, and Insiders: Immigrants and the American Racial Politics in the Early 21st Century” (University of Michigan Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ron Schmidt is the co-author (with Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh, Andrew L. Aoki, and Rodney Hero) of Newcomers, Outsiders, and Insiders: Immigrants and the American Racial Politics in the Early 21st Cen...

Naomi Schaefer Riley, “The Faculty Lounges: And Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get the College Education You Paid For” (Ivan R. Dee, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book The Faculty Lounges: And Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get The College Education You Pay For (Ivan R. Dee, 2011), Naomi Schaefer Riley, former Wall Street Journal editor and affiliat...

Stacie Taranto and Leandra Zarnow, "Suffrage at 100: Women in American Politics since 1920" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Suffrage at 100: Women in American Politics since 1920 (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020) is a wonderful and sweeping exploration of the way that women and their access to the ballot have contributed to poli...

Archie Brown, "The Human Factor: Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher, and the End of the Cold War" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What brought about an end to the Cold War has long been a subject of speculation and mythology. One prominent argument is that the United States simply bankrupted the Soviet Union, outspending the ...

Matthew Goodman, "The City Game: Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team" (Ballantine Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The 1949-50 CCNY Beavers basketball team were one of the unlikeliest of champions in sports history. CCNY was a tuition-free in Harlem, New York, intended to give working class students the best ed...

Matthew Crow, "Thomas Jefferson, Legal History, and the Art of Recollection" (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today I talked to Matthew Crow about his book Thomas Jefferson, Legal History, and the Art of Recollection, published by Cambridge University Press in 2017.  Crow studies how Jefferson’s associatio...

Patrick Sharma, "Robert McNamara’s Other War: The World Bank and International Development" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Robert McNamara is best remembered today for his momentous term as Secretary of Defense in the 1960s. Often overlooked because of this is his even longer tenure as president of the World Bank, one ...

Sarah E. Igo, “The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America” (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sarah E. Igo is an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University and the author of The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America (Harvard University Press, 2018). Igo provides...

Jennifer Frost, “Producer of Controversy: Stanley Kramer, Hollywood Liberalism and the Cold War” (UP of Kansas, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

While Stanley Kramer is considered a successful producer and director of many films as Hollywood moved out of the studio era, he also was criticized for his lesser skills as a director, as well as ...

Mia Mask, “Divas on the Screen: Black Women in American Film” (U. of Illinois Press, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Five charismatic women navigate uneven terrain of racial gender and class stereotypes: Dorothy Dandridge, Pam Grier, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey and Halle Berry. The quintet charisma, as explor...

John D. Wilsey, “American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion: Reassessing the History of an Idea” (IVP Academic, 2015). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John D. Wilsey, assistant professor of history and Christian apologetics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. His book American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion: Reassessing the History o...

Joseph Laycock, “The Seer of Bayside: Veronica Lueken and the Struggle to Define Catholicism” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In understanding a tradition what is the relationship between the ‘center’ and the ‘periphery’? How do the lived religious lives of practitioners contest or affirm authority? In The Seer of Bayside...

William G. Howell (with David Brent), “Thinking about the Presidency: The Primacy of Power” (Princeton UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

William G. Howell (with David Brent) is the author of the new book Thinking about the Presidency: The Primacy of Power (Princeton UP, 2013). Howell is the Sydney Stein Professor in American Politic...

Jerald Walker, “Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption” (Bantam Books, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jerald Walker‘s critical autobiography, Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption (Bantam, 2010), is a sheer pleasure to read. A book-length series of vignettes, reflections that ...

Matthew Spady, "The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot: Audubon Park and the Families Who Shaped It" (Fordham UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In northern Manhattan in 1841, the naturalist John James Audubon bought 14 acres of farmland on the banks of the Hudson River and built his family a home far from the crowded downtown streets. Audu...

Edward J. Robinson, "Hard-Fighting Soldiers: A History of African American Churches of Christ" (U Tennessee Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book Hard-Fighting Soldiers: A History of African American Churches of Christ (University of Tennessee Press, 2019), Edward J. Robinson provides a comprehensive look at the church’s impr...

Michael Bobelian, "Battle for the Marble Palace: Abe Fortas, Earl Warren, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and the Forging of the Modern Supreme Court" (Schaffner, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Michael Bobelian has written a history of the nomination of Abe Fortas to be Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968. In Battle for the Marble Palace: Abe Fortas, Earl Warren, Lyndon Johnso...

Vincent DiGirolamo, "Crying the News: A History of America’s Newsboys" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Crying the News: A History of America’s Newsboys (Oxford University Press, 2019) looks at the legion of children and teenagers who sold newspapers on city streets, moving trains, and even Civil War...

Su'ad Abdul Khabeer, “Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States” (NYU Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Islam in American has been profoundly shaped by the Black Muslim experience. However, Black Muslims are often marginalized both within their own religious communities and in public discourse about ...

Peter James Hudson, “Bankers and Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Histories of banking and finance aren’t particularly well-known for being riveting, adventurous reads: they tend to be technical at the expense of being strongly narrative-driven. Peter James Hudso...

Douglas Kriner and Eric Schickler, “Investigating the President: Congressional Checks on Presidential Power” (Princeton UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Investigating the President: Congressional Checks on Presidential Power (Princeton University Press, 2016) is an important analysis of both congressional and presidential power, and how these two b...

Edward J. Balleisen, “Fraud: An American History from Barnum to Madoff” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This week’s podcast is a fraud or at least about a fraud. Edward J. Balleisen has written Fraud: An American History from Barnum to Madoff (Princeton University Press, 2017). Balleisen is associate...

Fowler, Franz, and Ridout, “Political Advertising in the United States” (Westview Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Erika Franklin Fowler, Michael M. Franz, and Travis N. Ridout are the co-authors of Political Advertising in the United States (Westview Press 2016). Fowler is assistant professor of government at ...

Sherrie Tucker, “Dance Floor Democracy: The Social Geography of Memory at the Hollywood Canteen” (Duke UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Cultural memory of World War II frequently draws on swing music and the USO dance floor as symbols of how the country came together in support of the war effort. Frequently, the term “the Greatest ...

Marian Moser Jones, “The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is there an institution in the United States that enjoys a better reputation than the American Red Cross? In her thorough, accessible new book The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New De...

Roberto Avant-Mier, “Rock the Nation: Latin/o Identites and the Latin Rock Diaspora” (Continuum, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Rock the Nation: Latin/o Identites and the Latin Rock Diaspora (Continuum, 2010), Roberto Avant-Mier challenges the traditional historical notion of rock and roll and rock being the result of th...

Timothy P. Storhoff, "Harmony and Normalization: US-Cuban Musical Diplomacy" (UP of Mississippi, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Harmony and Normalization: US-Cuban Musical Diplomacy (University Press of Mississippi, 2020) explores the channels of musical exchange between Cuba and the United States during the eight-year pres...

Katherine Stewart, "The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism" (Bloomsbury, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, The...

David S. Cohen and Carole Joffe, "Obstacle Course: The Everyday Struggle to Get an Abortion in America" (UC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It seems unthinkable that citizens of one of the most powerful nations in the world must risk their lives and livelihoods in the search for access to necessary health care. And yet it is no surpris...

Kevin M. Levin, "Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kevin M. Levin is the author of Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2019. Searching for Black Confederates...

Sarah Reckhow, "Outside Money in School Board Elections: The Nationalization of Education Politics" (Harvard Education Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Who funds local school board elections? Local residents or major donors living elsewhere? Jeffrey R. Henig, Rebecca Jacobsen, and Sarah Reckhow seek to answer this question in Outside Money in Scho...

Michele Margolis, “From Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity” (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On this American Political Science Association special podcast, we welcome a special guest host – and former guest of the podcast – Andy Lewis. In addition to his recent book, The Rights Turn in Co...

Marie Griffith, “Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics” (Basic Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Marie Griffith‘s new book Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics (Basic Books, 2017) offers a portrait of how religious views regarding sexuality became e...

Karl Baden, “The Americans by Car” (Retroactive Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Americans by Car is Karl Baden’s latest book. An homage to Robert Frank’s The Americans and Lee Friedlander’s America by Car, Baden’s book “is a personal, more specific answer to the vague ques...

Dan J. Puckett, “In the Shadow of Hitler: Alabama’s Jews, the Second World War, and the Holocaust” (U of Alabama Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his book, In the Shadow of Hitler: Alabama’s Jews, the Second World War, and the Holocaust (University of Alabama Press, 2014), Dan J. Puckett, Associate Professor of History at Troy University,...

Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, “The Politics of Information: Problem Definition and the Course of Public Policy in America ( U Chicago Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones are the authors of The Politics of Information: Problem Definition and the Course of Public Policy in America (University of Chicago Press, 2014). Baumgartne...

Jonathan V. Last, “What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Crisis” (Encounter Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Most people who listen to this podcast will know that places like Japan, Italy, and Germany are in the midst of a demographic crisis. The trouble is that people in those countries are not having en...

Kitty Kelley, “Oprah: A Biography” (Three Rivers Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When she emerged triumphant in a legal battle with the Texas beef industry, Oprah Winfrey took to the steps of the Amarillo court house and declared: “Free speech rocks!” She was likely a little le...

Ben Tarnoff and Moira Weigel, "Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do and How They Do It" (FSG Originals, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do and How They Do It (FSG Originals, 2020), the celebrated writers and Logic cofounders Moira Weigel and Ben Tarnoff take an unpreceden...

Pepper Glass, "Misplacing Ogden, Utah" (U Utah Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Pepper Glass’s?new book Misplacing Ogden, Utah: Race, Class, Immigration, and the Construction of Urban Reputation?(University of Utah Press, 2020) evaluates the widely held assumption that divisio...

R. Scott Huffard, Jr., "Redemption: Railroads and the Reconstruction of Capitalism in the New South" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

R. Scott Huffard Jr. is the author of Engines of Redemption: Railroads and the Reconstruction of Capitalism in the New South, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2019. Engines of...

Keir Giles, "Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia to Confront the West" (Chatham House, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From Moscow, the world looks different. It is through understanding how Russia sees the world—and its place in it—that the West can best meet the new Russian challenge to the existing world order. ...

Rósa Magnúsdóttir, "Enemy Number One: The United States of American in Soviet Ideology and Propaganda, 1945-1959" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Enemy Number One: The United States of American in Soviet Ideology and Propaganda, 1945-1959 (Oxford University Press, 2019), Dr. Rósa Magnúsdóttir of Aarhus University, explores depictions of A...

Skip Desjardin, “September 1918: War, Plague, and the World Series” (Regnery History, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by Skip Desjardin, author of the book September 1918: War, Plague, and the World Series (Regnery History, 2018). In this work, which blends sports and history together, Desjardi...

Sara Hirschhorn, “City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement” (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Who are the American Jews behind many of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank? This is the question that Dr. Sara Hirschhorn, Research Lecturer at the University of Oxford, seeks to answer in h...

Quincy T. Mills, “Cutting Along the Color Line: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America” (UPenn Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Business. Community. Politics. That’s the making of a barbershop. In Cutting Along the Color Lines: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), Dr. Quincy Mi...

Lori Flores, “Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants and the California Farmworker Movement” (Yale UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants and the California Farmworker Movement (Yale University Press, 2015), Lori A. Flores illuminates a neglected part of Salinas Valley’s ...

Karen A. Rader and Victoria E. M. Cain, “Life on Display: Revolutionizing U.S. Museums of Science and Natural History in the Twentieth Century” (U of Chicago Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In lucid prose that’s a real pleasure to read, Karen Rader and Victoria Cain‘s new book chronicles a revolution in modern American science education and culture. Life on Display: Revolutionizing U....

Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey, “The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America” (UNC Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jesus has inspired millions of people to both strive for social justice and commit horrific acts of violence. In the United States, Jesus has remained central in the construction of American identi...

Erica Prussing, “White Man’s Water: The Politics of Sobriety in a Native American Community” (University of Arizona Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For the past half century, Alcoholics Anonymous and its 12-step recovery program has been the dominant method for treating alcohol abuse in the United States. Reservation communities have been no e...

Carl R. Trueman, "The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution" (Crossway, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“My aim is to explain how and why a certain notion of the self has come to dominate the culture of the West, why this self finds its most obvious manifestation in the transformation of sexual mores...

James M. Lundberg, "Horace Greeley: Print, Politics, and the Failure of American Nationhood" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

During his nearly four decades as a newspaper editor and politician, Horace Greeley embraced a range of controversial causes. In his book Horace Greeley: Print, Politics, and the Failure of America...

Great Books: Glenn Wallis on Gibran's "The Prophet" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kahlil Gibran’s 1923 The Prophet is book that’s changed people’s lives. It is a deceptively simple book, but it contains a radical insight. “Of what can I speak save of that which is even now movin...

David Doddington, "Contesting Slave Masculinity in the American South" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Contesting Slave Masculinity in the American South (Cambridge University Press, 2018)  demonstrates the significance of internal divisions, comparison, and conflict in shaping gender and status in ...

Michael A. Schoeppner, "Moral Contagion: Black Atlantic Sailors, Citizenship, and Diplomacy in Antebellum America" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Between 1822 and 1857, eight Southern states barred the ingress of all free black maritime workers. According to lawmakers, they carried a 'moral contagion' of abolitionism and black autonomy that ...

Joanna Dyl, “Seismic City: An Environmental History of San Francisco’s 1906 Earthquake” (U Washington Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Seismic City: An Environmental History of San Francisco’s 1906 Earthquake (University of Washington Press, 2017), Joanna Dyl documents the course and effects of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake and ...

Timothy J. Shannon, “Indian Captive, Indian King: Peter Williamson in America and Britain” (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 1758, Peter Williamson appeared on the streets of Aberdeen, Scotland, dressed as a Native American and telling a remarkable tale. He claimed that as a young boy he had been kidnapped from the ci...

Stephen H. Grant, “Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Henry and Emily Folger were linked together not just by their love for one another, but their shared passion for the works of William Shakespeare. In Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and ...

Samara Klar and Yanna Krupnikov, “Independent Politics: How American Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction” (Cambridge UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Samara Klar and Yanna Krupnikov are the authors of Independent Politics: How American Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Klar is assistant professor...

Kenneth Prewitt, “What Is Your Race?: The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans” (Princeton University Press 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The US Census has been an important American institution for over 220 years. Since 1790, the US population has been counted and compiled, important figures when tabulating representation and electo...

Steve Bergsman, “The Death of Johnny Ace” (Dancing Traveler Publishing, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It’s Christmas Eve at the Houston City Auditorium, 1954, and Big Mama Thornton is belting out “Hound Dog,” her hit from the previous year. It’s the years just before Elvis, before rock and roll, wh...

Colin Woodward, “American Nations: A History of Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America” (Viking, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Europeans like to say that “America” (aka the “United States”) is not a nation. They are right and wrong. It’s true that Americans come from all over the place, unlike, say, Germans. Just ask an Am...

Caroline H. Yang, "The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery: The Chinese Worker and the Minstrel Form" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery: The Chinese Worker and the Minstrel Form (Stanford University Press, 2020) explores how antiblack racism lived on through the figure of the Chinese worker in US l...

Nancy MacLean, "Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America" (Viking, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The far-right has been coming after democracy for decades and we may be just one election away from a total takeover. Join NBN host and rhetorical scholar Lee Pierce (she/they) for a robust discuss...

Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, "Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean (Princeton University Press, 2019), historian Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof seamlessly ties togeth...

Jay Sexton, "A Nation Forged by Crisis: A New American History" (Basic Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A popular myth in the American nationalist imaginary is that the country has been on a continued path of progress. Another is that the country’s history has been the self-realization of the princip...

Christopher Herbert, "Gold Rush Manliness: Race and Gender on the Pacific Slope" (U Washington Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Not all gold rushes are created equal, argues Christopher Herbert, Associate Professor of History at Columbia Basin College. Dr. Herbert’s new book, Gold Rush Manliness: Race and Gender on the Paci...

Tessa Fontaine, “The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts” (FSG, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Who doesn’t remember their first trip to the county fair? The greasy hotdogs and popcorn and cotton candy. The lights and sounds of the seemingly endless games and rides and shows on the midway. Bu...

Mark G. Hanna, “Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570 to 1740” (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mark G. Hanna offers a unique perspective on the roles played by piracy in the formation of the British colonial project. In Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570 to 1740 (Universit...

Kelly Belanger, “Invisible Seasons: Title IX and the Fight for Equity in College Sports” (Syracuse UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As I write this, the women’s basketball team for the University of Connecticut is in the midst of a 107 game winning streak. It’s quite reasonable to assert that Geno Auriemma will end his career a...

Christian O. Christiansen, “Progressive Business: An Intellectual History of the Role of Business in American Society” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393