New Books in American Studies
Episodes
Black and Queer on Campus
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s book is: Black and Queer on Campus (NYU Press, 2023) by Michael P. Jeffries, which offers an inside look at what life is like for LGBTQ c...
Scott Gac, "Born in Blood: Violence and the Making of America" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Scott Gac's Born in Blood: Violence and the Making of America (Cambridge UP, 2023) investigates one of history's most violent undertakings: The Unit...
Bradley R. Clampitt, "Lost Causes: Confederate Demobilization and the Making of Veteran Identity" (LSU Press, 2022)
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Lost Causes: Confederate Demobilization and the Making of Veteran Identity (LSU Press, 2022) by Dr. Bradley R. Clampitt is a groundbreaking analysis...
Aimee Loiselle, "Beyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class" (UNC Press, 2023)
17 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the late 1970s, Hollywood producers took the published biography of Crystal Lee Sutton, a white southern textile worker, and transformed it into a ...
On Henry Einspruch's 1941 Yiddish Translation of the Christian Bible
17 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are going to explore a peculiar volume in the history of Yiddish literature, the Yiddish translation of the Christian bible written by Khaim ...
Geoffrey Levin, "Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978" (Yale UP, 2023)
16 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
American Jews began debating Palestinian rights issues even before Israel’s founding in 1948. Geoffrey Levin recovers the voices of American Jews wh...
Alexandra Filindra, "Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The United States has more guns than people and more gun violence than any Western democracy. Scholars in diverse fields interrogate why 21st centur...
James C. Goodall, "Nautilus to Columbia: 70 Years of the US Navy's Nuclear Submarines" (Osprey, 2023)
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Nautilus to Columbia: 70 Years of the US Navy's Nuclear Submarines (Osprey, 2023), James C. Goodall covers the origins, design and development o...
James W. Cortada, "Inside IBM: Lessons of a Corporate Culture in Action" (Columbia Business School, 2023)
14 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
IBM was the world's leading provider of information technologies for much of the twentieth century. What made it so successful for such a long time, a...
Jeffrey A. Friedman, "The Commander-in-Chief Test: Public Opinion and the Politics of Image-Making in US Foreign Policy" (Cornell UP, 2023)
14 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Americans frequently criticize US foreign policy for being overly costly and excessively militaristic. With its rising defense budgets and open-ended ...
Kathryn Mathers, "White Saviorism and Popular Culture: Imagined Africa as a Space for American Salvation" (Routledge, 2022)
14 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In White Saviorism and Popular Culture: Imagined Africa as a Space for American Salvation (Routledge, 2022), Kathryn Mathers interrogates the white...
Matt Singer, "Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever" (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2023)
13 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Once upon a time, if you wanted to know if a movie was worth seeing, you didn’t check out Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB. You asked whether Siskel & Ebert ...
Rich Cohen, "When the Game Was War: The NBA's Greatest Season" (Random House, 2023)
13 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Four historic teams. Four legendary players. One unforgettable season. The 1980s were a transformative decade for the NBA. Since its founding in 1946,...
Emily Brooks, "Gotham’s War Within a War: Policing and the Birth of Law-and-Order Liberalism in World War II-Era New York City" (UNC Press, 2023)
13 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, members of the NYPD had worked to enforce partisan political power rather than focus on ...
Aviva Ben-Ur and Wim Klooster eds., "Jewish Entanglements in the Atlantic World" (Cornell UP, 2024)
13 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Aviva Ben-Ur and Wim Klooster's edited volume Jewish Entanglements in the Atlantic World (Cornell UP, 2024) represents the first collective attem...
Matthew Batt, "The Last Supper Club: A Waiter's Requiem" (U of Minnesota Press, 2023)
12 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During a year on sabbatical from his university position, Matthew Batt realized he needed money—fast—and it just so happened that a craft brewery ...
Hajar Yazdiha, "The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement" (Princeton UP, 2023)
12 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, fro...
Sam Lebovic, "State of Silence: The Espionage Act and the Rise of America's Secrecy Regime" (Basic Book, 2023)
12 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In State of Silence: The Espionage Act and the Rise of America's Secrecy Regime (Basic Books, 2023), political historian Dr. Sam Lebovic uncovers th...
Patrick R. O'Malley, "The Irish and the Imagination of Race: White Supremacy Across the Atlantic in the Nineteenth Century" (U Virginia Press, 2023)
11 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Patrick R. O'Malley's book The Irish and the Imagination of Race: White Supremacy Across the Atlantic in the Nineteenth Century (U Virginia Press, 2...
Selby Wynn Schwartz, "The Bodies of Others: Drag Dances and Their Afterlives" (U Michigan Press, 2019)
11 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Selby Wynn Schwartz writes about gender, performance, and the politics of embodiment. Her articles have been published in Women & Performance, PAJ, Da...
Kami Fletcher and Ashley Towle, "Grave History: Death, Race, and Gender in Southern Cemeteries" (U Georgia Press, 2023)
11 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kami Fletcher and Ashley Towle’s edited collection Grave History: Death, Race and Gender in Southern Cemeteries (University of Georgia Press, 2023...
Darnise C. Martin, "Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church" (NYU Press, 2005)
11 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Darnise C. Martin's Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church (NYU Press, 2005) draws on rich ethnographic work in a Religious ...
Robert Michael Morrissey, "People of the Ecotone: Environment and Indigenous Power at the Center of Early America" (U Washington Press, 2022)
10 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
By putting the Midwest at the center of Vast Early America, University of Illinois historian Robert Morrissey reconfigures the power dynamics in the s...
Jennifer Thomson, "The Wild and the Toxic: American Environmentalism and the Politics of Health" (UNC Press, 2019)
10 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The first wealth is health, according to Emerson. Among health’s riches is its political potential. Few know this better than environmentalists. In ...
Matthew Kennedy, "On Elizabeth Taylor: An Opinionated Guide" (Oxford UP, 2024)
10 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the oceans of ink devoted to the monumental movie star/businesswoman/political activist Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (1932-2011), her beauty and not-s...
Ayelet Brinn, "A Revolution in Type: Gender and the Making of the American Yiddish Press" (NYU Press, 2023)
09 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A Revolution in Type: Gender and the Making of the American Yiddish Press (NYU Press, 2023) by Dr. Ayelet Brinn offers a fascinating glimpse into the...
Katherine Rye Jewell, "Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio" (UNC Press, 2023)
09 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bands like R.E.M., U2, Public Enemy, and Nirvana found success as darlings of college radio, but the extraordinary influence of these stations and the...
Steven Rogers, "Accountability in State Legislatures" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
08 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Political Scientist Steven Rogers’ new book focuses on the deceptively complex question of how it is that voters do or don’t/can and can’t hold ...
Alex Pappademas and Joan LeMay, "Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan" (U Texas Press, 2023)
07 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A literary and visual exploration of the songs of Steely Dan. Steely Dan's songs are exercises in fictional world-building. No one else in the classic...
Christopher R. Martin, "No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class" (Cornell UP, 2019)
07 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Until the recent political shift pushed workers back into the media spotlight, the mainstream media had largely ignored this significant part of Ameri...
Amy Von Lintel, "Georgia O'Keeffe's Wartime Texas Letters" (Texas A&M UP, 2020)
06 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1912, at age 24, Georgia O’Keeffe boarded a train in Virginia and headed west, to the prairies of the Texas Panhandle, to take a position as art ...
Martyn Whittock, "American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America" (Pegasus Books, 2023)
05 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A vivid and illuminating new history--separate fact from fiction, myth from legend--exploring the early Vikings settlements in North America. Vikings ...
Susanna Phillips Newbury, "The Speculative City: Art, Real Estate, and the Making of Global Los Angeles" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Underlying every great city is a rich and vibrant culture that shapes the texture of life within. In The Speculative City: Art, Real Estate, and the ...
Claire Myers Owens and the Banned Book
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why did the New York Public Library ban a novel about women’s independence? What was the Human Potential Movement? And who was Claire Myers Owens? T...
Jack Glazier, "Anthropology and Radical Humanism: Native and African American Narratives and the Myth of Race" (MSU Press, 2020)
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Radin was one of the founding generation of American cultural anthropologists: A student of Franz Boas, and famed ethnographer of the Winneb...
W. K. Stratton, "The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
03 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On June 18, 1969, "The Wild Bunch" premiered to critical success. Over the past 50 years it has been rightly recognized as one of the landmark films f...
Margaret M. McGuinness, "Katharine Drexel and the Sisters Who Shared Her Vision" (Paulist Press, 2023)
03 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Although Katharine Drexel has been the subject of several biographies, they have tended to treat her as a perfect human being whom the Church later tr...
Robert N. Gross, “Public vs. Private: The Early History of School Choice in America” (Oxford UP, 2018)
03 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There are numerous political debates about education policy today, but some of the most heated surround vouchers, charter schools, and other questions...
Stephen M. Engel and Timothy S. Lyle, "Disrupting Dignity: Rethinking Power and Progress in LGBTQ Lives" (NYU Press, 2021)
02 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Scholars Stephen Engel and Timothy Lyle have a new book that dives into the thinking around power, political and cultural progress, and the LGBTQ+ com...
Benjamin Lorr, "The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket" (Penguin, 2020)
01 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This episode of the New Books in Economic and Business History is an interview with New York writer Benjamin Lorr. Benjamin Lorr is the author of Hel...
Jonathan Scott, "How the Old World Ended: The Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution, 1500-1800" (Yale UP, 2019)
31 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Scott is one of the most original interpreters of the early modern world. How the Old World Ended: The Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution, 1500-...
Gregg L. Frazer, "God against the Revolution: The Loyalist Clergy’s Case Against the American Revolution" (UP of Kansas, 2018)
31 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Not everyone was convinced by the arguments of patriots during the American revolution. Among those who retained some degree of loyalty to the British...
Laura Briggs, "Taking Children: A History of American Terror" (U California Press, 2020)
31 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Briggs’s Taking Children: A History of American Terror (University of California Press 2020) is a forceful and captivating book that readers w...
Laurent Dubois, “The Banjo: America’s African Instrument” (Harvard UP, 2016)
30 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 e...
Timothy K. August, "The Refugee Aesthetic: Reimagining Southeast Asian America" (Temple UP, 2020)
30 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Refugee Aesthetic: Reimagining Southeast Asian America (Temple University Press, 2021), Timothy K. August centers Southeast Asian American wr...
Nature-Study
29 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, John Linstrom tells us about Nature-Study, an educational movement that began in the rural classrooms of American Progressive Era. It...
Ralph H. Craig, "Dancing in My Dreams: A Spiritual Biography of Tina Turner" (Eerdmans, 2023)
29 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When Tina Turner reclaimed her throne as the Queen of Rock 'n' Roll in the 1980s, she attributed her comeback to one thing: the wisdom and power she f...
D. B. Maroon, "Black Lives, American Love: Essays on Race and Resilience" (Lawrence Hill Books, 2023)
28 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this hard-hitting collection of essays, D.B. Maroon presents a personal biography of America, Blackness, and racial politics with unflinching style...
Nicole Seymour, "Glitter" (Bloombury, 2022)
28 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Glitter (Bloomsbury, 2022) by Dr. Nicole Seymour reveals the complexity of an object often dismissed as frivolous. Dr. Seymour describes how glitter'...
Joseph Vogel, "James Baldwin and the 1980s: Witnessing the Reagan Era" (U Illinois Press, 2018)
28 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
By the 1980s, critics and the public alike considered James Baldwin irrelevant. Yet Baldwin remained an important, prolific writer until his death in ...
Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler, "Open Plan: A Design History of the American Office" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
28 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Albeit inspired by a progressive vision of a working environment without walls or hierarchies, the open plan office has come to be associated with som...
Annie McClanahan, "Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and Twenty-First Century Culture" (Stanford UP, 2016)
28 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When teaching a public course called “The Age of Debt” this winter break, I had the strange realization that one of the the most successful readin...
Jeffrey Whyte, "The Birth of Psychological War: Propaganda, Espionage, and Military Violence from WWII to the Vietnam War" (Oxford UP, 2023)
27 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jeffrey Whyte's book The Birth of Psychological War: Propaganda, Espionage, and Military Violence from WWII to the Vietnam War (Oxford UP, 2023) exp...
Julia F. Irwin, "Catastrophic Diplomacy: US Foreign Disaster Assistance in the American Century" (UNC Press, 2023)
27 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Catastrophic Diplomacy: US Foreign Disaster Assistance in the American Century (UNC Press, 2023) offers a sweeping history of US foreign disaster ass...
David T. Beito, "The New Deal's War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR's Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance" (Independent Institute, 2023)
27 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt enjoys regular acclaim from historians, politicians, and educators. Lauded for his New Deal policies, le...
Tamara Venit-Shelton, "Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace" (Yale UP, 2019)
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The modern popularity of acupuncture and herbal medicine belies the long history of Chinese medicine in the U.S. In Herbs and Roots: A History of Chin...
Marixa Lasso, "Erased: The Untold Story of the Panama Canal" (Harvard UP, 2019)
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many of our presumptions about the Panama Canal Zone are wrong; it was not carved out of uninhabited jungle, the creation of Lake Gatún did not flood...
Jordana M. Saggese, "The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader" (U California Press, 2021)
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader (University of California Press, 2021), Jordana Moore Saggese provides the first comprehensive sourcebook on the ...
David Courtwright, "The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business" (Harvard UP, 2019)
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 Cou...
Thomas A. Schwartz, "Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography" (Hill and Wang, 2020)
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past six decades, Henry Kissinger has been America's most consistently praised--and reviled--public figure. He was hailed as a "miracle worke...
Milton Gaither, "Homeschool: An American History" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 ti...
Bryan McCann, "The Mark of Criminality: Rhetoric, Race, and Gangsta Rap in the War-on-Crime Era" (U Alabama Press, 2017)
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Communication at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Bryan McCann (he/his)--Associate Professor of Com...
Jafari S. Allen, "There's a Disco Ball Between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life" (Duke UP, 2022)
25 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In There's a Disco Ball Between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life (Duke UP, 2022), Jafari S. Allen offers a sweeping and lively ethnographic and intell...
David R. Brigham, "Two Hundred Years: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1824-2024" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)
25 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Home to the first two drafts of the U.S. Constitution, an original printer’s proof of the Declaration of Independence, and the earliest surviving Am...
Walter Greason and Tim Fielder, "The Graphic History of Hip Hop" (NYC Department of Education, 2023)
25 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hip Hop turned 50 this year. It has been five decades since DJ Cool Herc played a party in the Bronx that gave birth to a global cultural revolution. ...
Matt Garcia, "Eli and the Octopus: The CEO Who Tried to Reform One of the World’s Most Notorious Corporations" (Harvard UP, 2023)
25 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The poignant rise and fall of an idealistic immigrant who, as CEO of a major conglomerate, tried to change the way America did business before he hims...
Carl Rollyson, "The Life of William Faulkner: This Alarming Paradox, 1935-1962" (U Virginia Press, 2020)
25 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
By 1935 William Faulkner was well established as an author of critically praised novels, yet the low volume of his sales forced him to seek work in Ho...
Meredith Oda, "The Gateway to the Pacific: Japanese Americans and the Remaking of San Francisco" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
25 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Gateway to the Pacific: Japanese Americans and the Remaking of San Francisco (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Meredith Oda shows how city l...
On Native American Warfare: A Discussion with Author and Historian Wayne E. Lee
24 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How did Native Americans make war, not with European settlers, but amongst themselves? Historian Wayne E. Lee, a professor at the University of North ...
James M. Lawson Jr. et al., "Revolutionary Nonviolence: Organizing for Freedom" (U California Press, 2022)
24 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A persuasive account of the philosophy and power of nonviolence organizing, and a resource for building and sustaining effective social movements. Des...
Laurence Jurdem, "The Rough Rider and the Professor: Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and the Friendship that Changed American History" (Simon and Schuster, 2023)
24 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Evoking the political intrigue of the Gilded Age, Laurence Jurdem's book The Rough Rider and the Professor: Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, an...
Michelle J. Manno, "Denied: Women, Sports, and the Contradictions of Identity" (NYU Press, 2023)
23 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Women’s college basketball is big business—top teams bring in millions of dollars in revenue for their schools. Women’s NCAA games are broadcast...
Yael A. Sternhell, "War on Record: The Archive and the Afterlife of the Civil War" (Yale UP, 2023)
23 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Yael A. Sternhell's War on Record: The Archive and the Aftermath of the Civil War (Yale University Press, 2023) is a history of the United States' g...
Daniel Campo, "Postindustrial DIY: Recovering American Rust Belt Icons" (Fordham UP, 2023)
20 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A pioneering Detroit automobile factory. A legendary iron mill at the edge of Pittsburgh. A campus of concrete grain elevators in Buffalo. Two monumen...
David Craig, "Apocalypse Television: How The Day After Helped Save the World" (Applause Books, 2023)
20 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On November 20, 1983, a three-hour made-for-TV movie The Day After premiered on ABC. Set in the heartland of Lawrence, Kansas, the film depicted the e...
Emily Horowitz, "From Rage to Reason: Why We Need Sex Crime Laws Based on Facts, Not Fear" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
20 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In her book From Rage to Reason: Why We Need Sex Crime Laws Based on Facts, Not Fear (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), Emily Horowitz shows how current s...
Katlyn Marie Carter, "Democracy in Darkness: Secrecy and Transparency in the Age of Revolutions" (Yale UP, 2023)
19 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Katlyn Marie Carter, Democracy in Darkness: Secrecy and Transparency in the Age of Revolutions (Yale UP, 2023) examines how debates over secrecy an...
Speech Unbound: A Conversation with Nadine Strossen
19 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What (and why) can and can't we say? What do empirical examples both at home and abroad tell us about how we should protect freedom of speech? How do ...
Sara Chatfield, "In Her Own Name: The Politics of Women’s Rights Before Suffrage" (Columbia UP, 2023)
18 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We often narrate the history of women’s rights in the United States by focusing on the fight for suffrage. Yet starting as early as 1835, states exp...
Michelle R. Scott, "T.O.B.A. Time: Black Vaudeville and the Theater Owners' Booking Association in Jazz-Age America" (U Illinois Press, 2023)
18 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Black vaudevillians and entertainers joked that T.O.B.A. stood for "tough on black artists." But the Theater Owner's Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) pl...
Jack D. Noe, "Contesting Commemoration: The 1876 Centennial, Independence Day, and the Reconstruction-Era South" (LSU Press, 2021)
18 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Examining identity and nationalism in the Reconstruction-era South, Jack Noe’s Contesting Commemoration: The 1876 Centennial, Independence Day, and...
Jackson Lears, "Animal Spirits: The American Pursuit of Vitality from Camp Meeting to Wall Street" (FSG, 2023)
17 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview the distinguished historian Jackson Lears talks about his latest book, Animal Spirits: The American Pursuit of Vitality from Camp M...
Sisterhood
16 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of High Theory, Katherine Turk tells us about Sisterhood, a familial metaphor used to evoke gendered solidarity in women’s movement ...
Peter Richardson, "Savage Journey: Hunter S. Thompson and the Weird Road to Gonzo" (U California Press, 2022)
15 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hunter S. Thompson was never a hippie, but his writing nonetheless helped define the counterculture and the San Francisco scene of the 1960s and early...
Gary J. Bass, "Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia" (Knopf, 2023)
15 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf, 2023), a book ten years in the making, is the definitive account of t...
Ronald C. White, "On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain" (Random House, 2023)
15 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and mild-mannered professor at Bowdo...
Hugo Wong, "America's Lost Chinese: The Rise and Fall of a Migrant Family Dream" (Oxford UP, 2023)
14 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Like countless other migrants from China, Hugo Wong’s great-grandfathers–Wong Foon Chuck and Leung Hing–travel across the Pacific to make a life...
Caroline J. Smith, "Season to Taste: Rewriting Kitchen Space in Contemporary Women's Food Memoirs" (U Mississippi Press, 2023)
14 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Between 2000 and 2010, many contemporary US-American women writers were returning to the private space of the kitchen, writing about their experiences...
Julian Go, "Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US" (Oxford UP, 2023)
12 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The police response to protests erupting on America's streets in recent years has made the militarization of policing painfully transparent. Yet, prop...
David Steele, "It Was Always a Choice: Picking Up the Baton of Athlete Activism" (Temple UP, 2022)
12 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by the sports journalist David Steele, who has written for the Sporting News, AOL, the Baltimore Sun and the San Francisco Ch...
Rob Harvilla, "60 Songs That Explain The 90s" (Twelve, 2023)
12 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A companion to the #1 music podcast on Spotify, this book takes listeners through the greatest hits that define a weirdly undefinable decade. The 1990...
Melinda N. Ritchie, "Backdoor Lawmaking: Evading Obstacles in the US Congress" (Oxford UP, 2023)
12 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Civics textbooks focus on how Congress makes policy through the legislative process, but the reality is that members of Congress have limited opportun...
Sean Howe, "Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s" (Hachette Books, 2023)
10 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It wasn’t easy writing a biography the mysterious, shape-shifting Thomas King Forçade, but after nine years of research and extensive interviews, ...
Lindsey Claire Smith, "Urban Homelands: Writing the Native City from Oklahoma" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)
10 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What do Tulsa, Santa Fe, and New Orleans have in common? When viewed from the perspective of Indigenous arts and culture, the answer is quite a bit. ...
Matthew Dennis, "American Relics and the Politics of Public Memory" (U Massachusetts Press, 2023)
10 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The gold epaulettes that George Washington wore into battle. A Union soldier's bloody shirt in the wake of the Civil War. A crushed wristwatch after t...
Paul Crosthwaite et al., "Invested: How Three Centuries of Stock Market Advice Reshaped Our Money, Markets, and Minds" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
10 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Who hasn’t wished for a surefire formula for riches and a ticket to the good life? For three centuries, investment advisers of all kinds, legit and ...
Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel, "Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine" (Callaway, 2023)
09 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Several years ago, a treasure trove containing some 6,000 original Bob Dylan manuscripts was revealed to exist. Their destination? Tulsa, Oklahoma. Th...
Jeffrey S. Gurock, "Marty Glickman: The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend" (NYU Press, 2023)
09 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For close to half a century after World War II, Marty Glickman was the voice of New York sports. His distinctive style of broadcasting, on television ...
Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez, "An American Icon in Puerto Rico: Barbie, Girlhood, and Colonialism at Play" (Berghahn Books, 2022)
08 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Since her debut in 1959, Barbie has transcended boundaries and transformed into a global symbol of femininity, capturing the imaginations of girls all...
Katharine M. Millar, "Support the Troops: Military Obligation, Gender, and the Making of Political Community" (Oxford UP, 2022)
08 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the past, it was assumed that men, as good citizens, would serve in the armed forces in wartime. In the present, however, liberal democratic states...