New Books in American Studies
Episodes
Amir Alexander, "Liberty's Grid: A Founding Father, a Mathematical Dreamland, and the Shaping of America" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
21 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Seen from an airplane, much of the United States appears to be a gridded land of startling uniformity. Perpendicular streets and rectangular fields, a...
Sarah Lewis, "The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America" (Harvard UP, 2024)
21 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In a masterpiece of historical detective work, Sarah Lewis exposes one of the most damaging lies in American history. There was a time when Americans ...
David Kroening Seitz, "A Different Trek: Radical Geographies of Deep Space Nine" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)
20 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A different kind of Star Trek television series debuted in 1993. Deep Space Nine was set not on a starship but a space station near a postcolonial pla...
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, "Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde" (FSG, 2024)
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-ce...
Steven K. Bailey, "Target Hong Kong: A True Story of U.S. Navy Pilots at War" (Osprey, 2024)
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On January 16, 1945, dozens of U.S. Navy aircraft took off for China’s southern coast, including the occupied British colony of Hong Kong. It was pa...
Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s book is: Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions (Columbia UP, 2024), by Ernesto Castaneda and Carina Cione, which is a p...
Celebrating Constitution Day, Part. 2: A Conversation with Julia Mahoney
18 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this conversation, we dive into key issues shaping the legal landscape today: the complexities of constitutional interpretation, the evolving role ...
Joy Knoblauch, "The Architecture of Good Behavior: Psychology and Modern Institutional Design in Postwar America" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020)
18 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Inspired by the rise of environmental psychology and increasing support for behavioral research after the Second World War, new initiatives at the fed...
Sheri Chinen Biesen, "Through a Noir Lens: Adapting Film Noir Visual Style" (Columbia UP, 2024)
18 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Shadows. Smoke. Dark alleys. Rain-slicked city streets. These are iconic elements of film noir visual style. Long after its 1940s heyday, noir hallmar...
Anne Byrn, "Baking in the American South: 200 Recipes and Their Untold Stories" (Harper Celebrate, 2024)
17 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Witness the rise of Southern baking from the humble, make-do recipes of earlier generations to its place as one of the world's richest culinary tradit...
Emily Strand and Amy H. Sturgis, "Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier" (Vernon Press, 2023)
16 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
n this special Star Trek Day episode on the New Books Network, hosted by Dessy Vassileva from Vernon Press, we celebrate over 55 years of Star Trek ...
Kevin J. McMahon, "A Supreme Court Unlike Any Other: The Deepening Divide Between the Justices and the People" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
16 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many scholars and members of the press have argued that John Roberts’ Supreme Court is exceptional. While some emphasize the approach to interpretin...
Paul Peart-Smith, "Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States: A Graphic Interpretation" (Beacon Press, 2024)
15 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As the author of a graphic history, I loved chatting with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Paul Peart-Smith about the graphic interpretation of An Indigenous...
Michael L. Walker, "Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail" (Oxford UP, 2022)
15 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jails are the principal people-processing machines of the criminal justice system. Mostly they hold persons awaiting trial who cannot afford or have b...
Michael D. Hattem, "The Memory of '76: The Revolution in American History" (Yale UP, 2024)
15 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Americans agree that their nation’s origins lie in the Revolution, but they have never agreed on what the Revolution meant. For nearly two hundred a...
Grant Olwage, "Paul Robeson's Voices" (Oxford UP, 2023)
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Robeson's Voices (Oxford UP, 2023) is a meditation on Robeson's singing, a study of the artist's life in song. Music historian Grant Olwage exa...
Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, "When a Dream Dies: Agriculture, Iowa, and the Farm Crisis of the 1980s" (UP of Kansas, 2022)
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Unlike a flood or fire, a the Farming Crisis of the 1980s did not have a set beginning of ending. Rather, it was a rolling, often invisible, disaster...
Aleksandra Djuric Milovanovic, "The Untold Journey of the Nazarene Emigration from Yugoslavia to North America" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What role does religion play in migration processes? What is the reason behind migration of religious minorities? Is religious affiliation a deciding ...
Postscript: Harris, Trump, and the Politics of Presidential Debates
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In June, a presidential debated ended the candidacy of incumbent President Joe Biden. On September 10th, Vice President Kamala Harris and Former Presi...
The Political Evolution of Taylor Swift
12 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the UConn Popcast, and today we offer a political science / popular culture studies view of Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris in th...
Matthew C. Ehrlich, "The Krebiozen Hoax: How a Mysterious Cancer Drug Shook Organized Medicine" (U Illinois Press, 2024)
11 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The brainchild of an obscure Yugoslav physician, Krebiozen emerged in 1951 as an alleged cancer treatment. Andrew Ivy, a University of Illinois vice p...
Celebrating Constitution Day Pt. 1: A Conversation with Cass R. Sunstein
11 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Join us for an in-depth exploration of Professor Cass Sunstein's latest work, Campus Free Speech (Harvard University Press, September 2024). Toget...
Josh Cowen, "The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers" (Harvard Education Press, 2024)
10 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
School vouchers are often framed as a way to help students and families by providing choice, but evidence shows that vouchers have a negative impact o...
Kaitlin Sidorsky, "All Roads Lead to Power: The Appointed and Elected Paths to Public Office for US Women" (UP Kansas, 2019)
09 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kaitlin Sidorsky’s new book, All Roads Lead to Power: The Appointed and Elected Paths to Public Office for US Women (University Press of Kansas, 201...
Anthony Michael Kreis, "Rot and Revival: The History of Constitutional Law in American Political Development" (U California Press, 2024)
09 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One of the great divides in American judicial scholarship is between legal scholars who take the justices at their word and assume that those words de...
Sharon M. Quinsaat, "Insurgent Communities: How Protests Create a Filipino Diaspora" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
09 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When people migrate and settle in other countries, do they automatically form a diaspora? In Insurgent Communities: How Protests Create a Filipino Di...
Trevor Boffone, "TikTok Broadway: Musical Theatre Fandom in the Digital Age" (Oxford UP, 2024)
08 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Are you a musical theatre fan who loves TikTok? Or are you curious about how this social media app has changed musical theatre fandom - and even the c...
Tracy Fessenden, “Religion Around Billie Holiday” (Penn State UP, 2018)
08 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Billie Holiday is one of the most iconic jazz performers of all time. Her voice is certainly unmistakable but for many her religious sensibilities may...
Ana Stevenson, "The Woman as Slave in Nineteenth-Century American Social Movements" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
08 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Woman as Slave in Nineteenth-Century American Social Movements (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Ana Stevenson explores the ubiquity of what she term...
Mariana Craciun, "From Skepticism to Competence: How American Psychiatrists Learn Psychotherapy" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
08 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From Skepticism to Competence: How American Psychiatrists Learn Psychotherapy (U Chicago Press, 2024) offers an examination of how novice psychiatris...
Jess Whatcott, "Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics" (Duke UP, 2024)
07 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics (Duke UP, 2024), Jess Whatcott traces the link between US disability in...
The Epic Story of America's Great Migration: A Talk by Isabel Wilkerson
07 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2010, Isabel Wilkerson spoke to the Institute about the fifteen years she spent reporting and writing her book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic...
Magdalena J. Zaborowska, "Me and My House: James Baldwin's Last Decade in France" (Duke UP, 2018)
06 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The last sixteen years of James Baldwin's life (1971–87) unfolded in a village in the South of France, in a sprawling house nicknamed “Chez Baldwi...
Mark Blake, "Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac" (Pegasus Books, 2024)
06 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An illuminating deep-dive into everything Fleetwood Mac--the songs, the rivalries, the successes, and the failures—Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwo...
Oren Kroll-Zeldin, "Unsettled: American Jews and the Movement for Justice in Palestine" (NYU Press, 2024)
06 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Unsettled: American Jews and the Movement for Justice in Palestine (NYU Press, 2024) digs into the experiences of young Jewish Americans who engage ...
James M. Scott, "Black Snow: Curtis Lemay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb" (Norton, 2024)
06 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In our interview about Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb (W. W. Norton & Company, 2022), James M. ...
Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins, "Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past several decades, American society has experienced fundamental changes - from shifting relations between social groups and evolving langu...
Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins, "Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past several decades, American society has experienced fundamental changes - from shifting relations between social groups and evolving langu...
Judge Frederic Block, "A Second Chance: A Federal Judge Decides Who Deserves It" (The New Press, 2024)
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The police officer who brutalized Abner Louima. A purveyor of child pornography. These are some of the defendants to have come before U.S. District Co...
David H. Price, "The American Surveillance State: How the US Spies on Dissent" (Pluto Press, 2022)
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When the possibility of wiretapping first became known to Americans they were outraged. Now, in our post-9/11 world, it's accepted that corporations a...
E. J. Fagan, "The Thinkers: The Rise of Partisan Think Tanks and the Polarization of American Politics" (Oxford UP, 2024)
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Political Scientist E.J. Fagan, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, once worked at a think tank, and...
Andy Clarno et al., "Imperial Policing: Weaponized Data in Carceral Chicago" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Chicago is a city with extreme concentrations of racialized poverty and inequity, one that relies on an extensive network of repressive agencies to po...
Jonathan Gienapp, "Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique" (Yale UP, 2024)
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The legal theory of constitutional originalism has attracted increasing attention in recent years as the US Supreme Court has tilted with the weigh...
How Mechanisms of Psychoanalytic Defense Perpetuate Racism in America
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The third podcast in this series focuses on an article written by Dr. Dionne Powell who participated in the 2014 documentary, “Black Psychoanalysts...
John S. Garrison, "Red Hot + Blue" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
02 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
John Garrison's Red Hot + Blue (33 1/3 Series) (Bloomsbury, 2024) is a meditation on music's capacity to find us, transform us, and help us make ...
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, "Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught Between Cultures in Early Virginia" (NYU Press, 2019)
01 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught Between Cultures in Early Virginia(New York University Press, 2019), Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Silver Profess...
Sarah Miller-Davenport, "Gateway State: Hawai’i and the Cultural Transformation of American Empire" (Princeton UP, 2019)
01 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One of my talking points when hanging out with my fellow diplomatic historians is the painful absence of scholarship on Hawaii. Too many political his...
Karyne E. Messina, "The Power of Community: A 45 Day Action Plan to Stop Trump from Turning Our Democracy into His Autocracy" (PI Press, 2024)
01 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An Amazon # 1 top release Kindle book during its debut, The Power of Community: A 45 Day Action Plan to Stop Trump from Turning Our Democracy into Hi...
James P. Leary, “Folksongs of Another America: Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937–1946” (U Wisconsin Press, 2015)
01 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Folksongs of Another America: Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937–1946 (University of Wisconsin Press) first appeared in 2015 when it com...
Tadashi Dozono, "Discipline Problems: How Students of Color Trouble Whiteness in Schools" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
31 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Angel, a Black tenth-grader at a New York City public school, self-identifies as a nerd and likes to learn. But she’s troubled that her history clas...
Edwin P Rutan II, "High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor" (Kent State UP, 2024)
31 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In his recent book, High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor (The Kent State University Press, 2024), Edwin P. Rutan II re...
Ronnie Grinberg, "Write like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals" (Princeton UP, 2024)
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the years following World War II, the New York intellectuals became some of the most renowned critics and writers in the country. Although mostly m...
Tracy Pintchman, "Goddess Beyond Boundaries: Worshipping the Eternal Mother at a North American Hindu Temple" (Oxford UP, 2023)
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Parashakthi Temple in Pontiac, Michigan serves as a site of worship for the Hindu goddess Karumariamman, whose origins are in South India. In her ...
Bhaskar Sunkara, "The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality" (Basic Books, 2020)
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality (Basic Books, 2020), Bhaskar Sunkara explores socialism's ...
Mark Valeri, "The Opening of the Protestant Mind: How Anglo-American Protestants Embraced Religious Liberty" (Oxford UP, 2023)
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During the mid-seventeenth century, Anglo-American Protestants described Native American ceremonies as savage devilry, Islamic teaching as violent chi...
Randall Stephens, "The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock n’ Roll" (Harvard UP, 2018)
28 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Joanna Wuest, "Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
27 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Scholars often narrate the legal cases confirming LGBTQ+ rights as a huge success story. While it took 100 years to confirm the rights of Black Americ...
Holly Miowak Guise, "Alaska Native Resilience: Voices from World War II" (U Washington Press, 2024)
27 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Japanese invasion of the Aleutian Islands during World War II changed Alaska, serving as justification for a large American military presence acro...
Lori Gemeiner-Bihler, "Cities of Refuge: German Jews in London and New York, 1935-1945" (SUNY Press, 2019)
27 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the years following Hitler’s rise to power, German Jews faced increasingly restrictive antisemitic laws, and many responded by fleeing to more to...
The Democrats Have a Party: DNC2024
26 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination in Chicago. Lilly and Susan talk to two presidential politics s...
Robert Vitalis, "Oilcraft: The Myths of Scarcity and Security That Haunt U.S. Energy Policy" (Stanford UP, 2020)
26 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We've heard and rehearsed the conventional wisdom about oil: that the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf is what guarantees access to this str...
Steve Moriarty, "Mia Zapata and the Gits: A True Story of Art, Rock and Revolution" (Ferel House, 2024)
26 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Mia Zapata and the Gits: A True Story of Art, Rock and Revolution (Ferel House, 2024) by Steve Moriarty, shares the story of the Seattle based The ...
Douglas K. Miller, "Indians on the Move: Native American Mobility and Urbanization in the Twentieth Century" (UNC Press, 2019)
25 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1972, the Bureau of Indian Affairs terminated its twenty-year-old Voluntary Relocation Program, which encouraged the mass migration of roughly 100,...
Phil Haun, "Tactical Air Power and the Vietnam War: Explaining Effectiveness in Modern Air Warfare" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
25 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tactical Air Power and the Vietnam War: Explaining Effectiveness in Modern Air Warfare (Cambridge UP, 2023) introduces a much-needed theory of tactic...
James Barrera, "'We Want Better Education!': The 1960s Chicano Student Movement, School Walkouts, and the Quest for Educational Reform in South Texas" (Texas A&M UP, 2023)
25 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 'We Want Better Education!': The 1960s Chicano Student Movement, School Walkouts, and the Quest for Educational Reform in South Texas (Texas A&M ...
Damaging Rationality: Exxon-Funded Legal Research and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
25 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is part #3 of a the (ir)Rational Alaskans, a Cited Podcast mini-series that re-examines the legacy of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. In the la...
Regina G. Kunzel, "In the Shadow of Diagnosis: Psychiatric Power and Queer Life" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
25 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the mid-twentieth century, American psychiatrists proclaimed homosexuality a mental disorder, one that was treatable and amenable to cure. Drawing ...
Christopher B. Patterson and Tara Fickle, "Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) about Us" (Duke UP, 2024)
24 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) about Us (Duke UP, 2024) explores the key role video games play within the race makings of ...
Wesley G. Phelps, "Before Lawrence v. Texas: The Making of a Queer Social Movement" (U Texas Press, 2023)
24 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2003, in a ruling that bordered on poetic, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in Lawrence v. Texas that sexual behavior between consent...
Gary Mucciaroni, "Answers to the Labour Question: Industrial Relations and the State in the Anglophone World, 1880–1945" (U Toronto Press, 2024)
24 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since the mid-nineteenth century, public officials, reformers, journalists, and other elites have referred to “the labour question.” The labour qu...
Jennifer Ponce de León, "Another Aesthetics Is Possible: Arts of Rebellion in the Fourth World War" (Duke UP, 2021)
23 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Another Aesthetics Is Possible: Arts of Rebellion in the Fourth World War (Duke UP, 2021), Jennifer Ponce de León examines the roles that art c...
Robin Bernstein, "Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
23 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the early nineteenth century, as slavery gradually ended in the North, a village in New York State invented a new form of unfreedom: the profit-dri...
Bruce W. Dearstyne, "Progressive New York: Change and Reform in the Empire State, 1900-1920: A Reader" (SUNY Press, 2024)
23 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the first two decades of the twentieth century, New York State was a hotbed of change. Cities grew as immigrants arrived from Europe and African Am...
Edward Pearson, "The Enslaved and Their Enslavers: Power, Resistance, and Culture in South Carolina, 1670-1825" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Enslaved and Their Enslavers: Power, Resistance, and Culture in South Carolina, 1670-1825 (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023), Edward Pearson offers...
Joseph Heathcott, "Global Queens: An Urban Mosaic" (Fordham UP, 2023)
21 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Joseph Heathcott discusses his latest book, Global Queens: An Urban Mosaic (Fordham University Press, 2023), an engaging hybrid of text and visual t...
Gerarldo Cadava, "The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity, from Nixon to Trump" (Ecco, 2020)
18 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the lead-up to every election cycle, pundits predict that Latino Americans will overwhelmingly vote in favor of the Democratic candidate. And it’...
Raj Jayadev, "Protect Your People: How Ordinary Families Are Using Participatory Defense to Challenge Mass Incarceration" (New Press, 2023)
18 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over two million Americans are currently in prison or jail. Another 4.5 million are on probation or parole. And nearly one in two Americans have a fam...
Karen Tongson, "Normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV That Soothes Us" (NYU Press, 2023)
18 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV That Soothes Us (NYU Press, 2023), Karen Tongson presents an irreverent look at the love-hate relationship be...
Stephanie L Canizales, "Sin Padres, Ni Papeles: Unaccompanied Migrant Youth Coming of Age in the United States" (U California Press, 2024)
18 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Each year, thousands of youth endure harrowing unaccompanied and undocumented migrations across Central America and Mexico to the United States in pur...
Heath Brown, "Roadblocked: Joe Biden's Rocky Transition to the Presidency" (UP of Kansas, 2024)
16 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Political Scientist Heath Brown’s new book, Roadblocked: Joe Biden's Rocky Transition to the Presidency (UP of Kansas, 2024), examines the preside...
12 Angry Alaskans: Re-Examining the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Case
16 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is part #2 of a the (ir)Rational Alaskans, a Cited Podcast series that re-examines the legacy of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Last episode, th...
Policing and White Power with Daniel Kryder and David Cunningham (JP, EF)
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This June 2020 episode, originally part of a Global Policing series, was Recall this Book's first exploration of police brutality, systemic and pers...
Shaul Magid, "Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical" (Princeton UP, 2021)
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Rabbi Meir Kahane came of age amid the radical politics of the counterculture, becoming a militant voice of protest against Jewish liberalism. Kahane ...
Anthony Abraham Jack, "Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price" (Princeton UP, 2024)
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Elite colleges are boasting unprecedented numbers with respect to diversity, with some schools admitting their first majority-minority classes. But wh...
James Madison and the Spirit of Self-Government: A Conversation with Colleen Sheehan
14 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Who was James Madison? Why were his Notes on Government so valuable to the American founding? Did James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Wash...
Alonso Duralde, "Hollywood Pride: A Celebration of LGBTQ+ Representation and Perseverance in Film" (Running Press Adult, 2024)
14 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Film critic Alonso Duralde and I talk his new book, Hollywood Pride: A Celebration of LGBTQ+ Representation and Perseverance in Film (Running Press...
Crystal Wilkinson, "Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks" (Clarkson Potter, 2023)
14 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Poet Laureate of Kentucky Crystal Wilkinson’s food memoir, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Co...
Miguel Montalva Barba, "White Supremacy and Racism in Progressive America: Race, Place, and Space" (Policy Press, 2024)
14 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
White Supremacy and Racism in Progressive America: Race, Place, and Space (Policy Press, 2024) examines the connections between race, place, and spac...
Ana Raquel Minian, “Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration” (Harvard UP, 2018)
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1970s, the Mexican government acted to alleviate rural unemployment by supporting the migration of able-bodied men. Millions crossed into the U...
Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece, "Movies Under the Influence" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Movies under the Influence (University of Minnesota Press, 2024) by Dr. Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece charts the entangled histories of moviegoing and ...
Heather Murray, "Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric Patients, American Thought and Culture" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric Patients, American Thought and Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) by Dr. Heather Murray is a cultura...
Marc Ambinder, “The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983” (Simon & Schuster, 2018)
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983 (Simon & Schuster, 2018), by Marc Ambinder, is a history of US-Soviet Relations under Ro...
Peter Charles Hoffer, "The Supreme Court Footnote: A Surprising History" (NYU Press, 2024)
12 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When the draft majority decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health was leaked, the media, public officials, and scholars focused on the overturning...
Benjamin C. Waterhouse on "One Day I'll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America"
12 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Benjamin Waterhouse, full-as-full-can- be Professor of History at University of North Carolina at Chapel H...
Spencer Piston, “Class Attitudes in American Politics: Sympathy for the Poor, Resentment of the Rich, and Political Implications” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
11 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Eric Hoyt, "Ink-Stained Hollywood: The Triumph of American Cinema’s Trade Press" (U California Press, 2022)
11 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For the first half of the twentieth century, no American industry boasted a more motley and prolific trade press than the movie business—a cutthroat...
Kirsten Fermaglich, "A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America" (NYU Press, 2018)
11 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout the 20th century, especially during and immediately after WWII, New York Jews changed their names at rates considerably higher than any oth...
Matthew Evangelista, "Allied Air Attacks and Civilian Harm in Italy, 1940–1945: Bombing among Friends" (Routledge, 2024)
11 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tens of thousands of Italian civilians perished in the Allied bombing raids of World War II. More of them died after the Armistice of September 1943...
Ella Houston, "Advertising Disability" (Routledge, 2024)
10 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ella Houston's book Advertising Disability (Routledge, 2024) invites Cultural Disability Studies to consider how advertising, as one of the most ubi...
Claudia Strauss, "What Work Means: Beyond the Puritan Work Ethic" (ILR Press, 2024)
09 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What Work Means: Beyond the Puritan Work Ethic (ILR Press, 2024) goes beyond the stereotypes and captures the diverse ways Americans view work as a p...