New Books in American Studies
Episodes
Genealogies of Modernity Episode 4: Jamestown and the Myth of the Sovereign Family
08 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What is the “traditional American family?” Popular images from the colonial and pioneer past suggest an isolated and self-sufficient nuclear famil...
Grace Lin, "Chinese Menu: The History, Myths, and Legends Behind Your Favorite Foods" (Little, Brown Books, 2023)
08 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Newbery and Caldecott honoree and New York Times bestselling author Grace Lin joins New Books Network to talk about her new, groundbreaking, lushly il...
Genealogies of Modernity Episode 3: What Is Genealogy
07 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Genealogy, in Charles Darwin’s terms, is the study of “descent with modification.” Taken as an analogy for the study of history, genealogy can g...
Wendy S. Hesford, "Violent Exceptions: Children's Human Rights and Humanitarian Rhetorics" (Ohio State UP, 2021)
07 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Violent Exceptions: Children's Human Rights and Humanitarian Rhetorics (Ohio State UP, 2021) turns to the humanitarian figure of the child-in-peril ...
Self Help
07 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of High Theory, Angela Hume tells us about Self Help, not the neoliberal strategy of self-actualization through consumer choices, but ...
Emma K. Sutton, "William James, MD: Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
05 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Emma K. Sutton's William James, MD: Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician (U Chicago Press, 2023) is the first book to map William James's preoccupat...
Monica Huerta, "The Unintended: Photography, Property, and the Aesthetics of Racial Capitalism" (NYU Press, 2023)
04 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The end of the nineteenth century saw massive developments and innovations in photography at a time when the forces of Western modernity—industriali...
Ramsey Lewis and Aaron Cohen, "Gentleman of Jazz: A Life in Music" (Blackstone, 2023)
04 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This immersive new autobiography provides insight into the early life and illustrious career of the late great Ramsey Lewis, one of the most popular j...
Jonathan D. Fitzgerald, "How the News Feels: The Empathic Power of Literary Journalists" (U Massachusetts Press, 2023)
04 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In How the News Feels: The Empathic Power of Literary Journalists (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023), Jonathan D. Fitzgerald examines a mode ...
The Future of the State: A Discussion with Graeme Garrard
04 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Reagan-Thatcher neoliberal era started the retreat of the state. Privatisation and deregulation meant power was handed over to corporations and ma...
Barbara D. Savage, "Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar" (Yale UP, 2023)
03 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Born in rural Michigan during the Jim Crow era, the bold and irrepressible Merze Tate (1905–1996) refused to limit her intellectual ambitions, despi...
Tracy E. Perkins, "Evolution of a Movement: Four Decades of California Environmental Justice Activism" (U California Press, 2022)
03 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Despite living and working in California, one of the county's most environmentally progressive states, environmental justice activists have spent deca...
Sara Byala, "Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African" (Oxford UP, 2023)
03 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Travel to virtually any African country and you are likely to find a Coca-Cola, often a cold one at that. Bottled asks how this carbonated drink bec...
Chhaya Kolavalli, "Well-Intentioned Whiteness: Green Urban Development and Black Resistance in Kansas City" (U Georgia Press, 2023)
02 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Chhaya Kolavalli's book Well-Intentioned Whiteness: Green Urban Development and Black Resistance in Kansas City (U Georgia Press, 2023) documents ho...
Daniel Herbert, "Maverick Movies: New Line Cinema and the Transformation of American Film" (U California Press, 2023)
02 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Herbert's book Maverick Movies: New Line Cinema and the Transformation of American Film (U California Press, 2023) tells the improbable stor...
Rachel Stephens, "Hidden in Plain Sight: Concealing Enslavement in American Visual Culture" (U Arkansas Press, 2023)
01 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the decades leading up to the Civil War, abolitionists crafted a variety of visual messages about the plight of enslaved people, portraying the vio...
Russ Castronovo, "American Insecurity and the Origins of Vulnerability" (Princeton UP, 2023)
30 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
An incisive critique that examines the origins of contemporary American ideas about surveillance, terrorism, and white supremacy. For more than three ...
On “Henry Kissinger and His World” with author Barry Gewen
30 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In my talk with Barry Gewen on his 2020 book, The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World (W. W. Norton, 2020), we explore the disp...
Salim Yaqub, "Winds of Hope, Storms of Discord: The United States since 1945" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
28 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Salim Yaqub's Winds of Hope, Storms of Discord: The United States since 1945 (Cambridge UP, 2022) explores how Americans from all walks of life – ...
Kevin F. Adler and Donald W. Burnes, "When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America" (North Atlantic Books, 2023)
28 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Think about the last time that you saw or interacted with an unhoused person. What did you do? What did you say? Did you offer money or a smile, or di...
Brian D. Blankenship, "The Burden-Sharing Dilemma: Coercive Diplomacy in US Alliance Politics" (Cornell UP, 2023)
26 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Burden-Sharing Dilemma: Coercive Diplomacy in US Alliance Politics (Cornell UP, 2023) examines the conditions under which the United States is wi...
J. Daniel, "Suds Series: Baseball, Beer Wars, and the Summer of '82" (U Missouri Press, 2023)
26 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, J. Daniel takes readers back more than forty years, telling a story that is part baseball history, part urban history, and part U.S. ...
Diane Carol Fujino, "Nisei Radicals: The Feminist Poetics and Transformative Ministry of Mitsuye Yamada and Michael Yasutake" (U Washington Press, 2020)
25 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode, which is co-hosted with Michael Nishimura, features a conversation with Dr. Diane C. Fujino, the author of Nisei Radicals: The Feminis...
Edward L. Ayers, "American Visions: The United States, 1800-1860" (Norton, 2023)
25 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
American Visions: The United States, 1800-1860 (Norton, 2023) is a revealing history of the formative period when voices of dissent and innovation d...
Leontina Hormel, "Trailer Park America: Reimagining Working-Class Communities" (Rutgers UP, 2023)
24 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In rural northern Idaho in the winter of 2013-2014, Syringa Mobile Home Park’s water system was contaminated by sewage, resulting in residents’ wa...
Daniel Shea and Nicholas F. Jacobs, "The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America" (Columbia UP, 2023)
24 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The widening gulf between rural and urban America is becoming the most serious political divide of our day. Support for Democrats, up and down the bal...
Mia Mask, "Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western" (U Illinois Press, 2023)
24 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Did you know Sidney Poitier was a western icon? In a genre best known for John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, African American actors and directors have ...
William S. Kiser, "Illusions of Empire: The Civil War and Reconstruction in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021)
23 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The 19th-century Mexican-American borderlands were a complicated place. By the 1860s, Confederates, Americans, Mexicans, French, and various Native so...
Robin Phylisia Chapdelaine et al., "When Will the Joy Come?: Black Women in the Ivory Tower" (U Massachusetts Press, 2023)
23 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How do Black women in higher education create, experience, and understand joy? What sustains them? While scholars have long documented sexism, racism,...
Jessi Streib, "The Accidental Equalizer: How Luck Determines Pay After College" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
23 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Are jobs fair? In The Accidental Equalizer: How Luck Determines Pay after College (U Chicago Press, 2023), Jessi Streib, an associate Professor of...
Boris Heersink, "National Party Organizations and Party Brands in American Politics" (Oxford UP, 2023)
23 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Political Scientist Boris Heersink’s new book guides the reader through over a century of politics and national parties in the United States. Heersi...
Biko Mandela Gray and Ryan J. Johnson, "Phenomenology of Black Spirit" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
22 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Phenomenology of Black Spirit (Edinburgh UP, 2023), Ryan Johnson and Biko Mandela Gray study the relationship between Hegel's Phenomenology of ...
Israel, Hamas, and American Jews in a Time of War
22 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey speaks with Jodi Rudoren, editor-in-chief of the Forward magazine, about t...
Kawika Guillermo, "Nimrods: A Fake-Punk Self-Hurt Anti-Memoir" (Duke UP, 2023)
21 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Christopher Patterson about two books: the late Y-Dang Troeung's Landbridge [life in fragments] (Knopf Canada, 2023) and Christ...
Cody D. Ewert, "Making Schools American: Nationalism and the Origin of Modern Educational Politics" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)
21 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years, public schools have become one of the central battlegrounds of American politics. Making Schools American: Nationalism and the Origi...
The US State Department and Ever-Changing Global Politics
21 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey interviews Assistant Secretary of State for Global Public Affairs Bill Russo. Ass...
Seán Creagh, "The Wolfhounds of Irish-American Nationalism: A History of Clan Na Gael, 1867-Present" (Peter Lang, 2023)
20 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As Ireland's oldest revolutionary movement and America's oldest transatlantic nationalist organization this is the first book covering the entire hist...
Greil Marcus, "Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs" (Yale UP, 2022)
20 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Greil Marcus is perhaps the world’s foremost interpreter of Bob Dylan. This podcast focuses on Marcus’ latest Dylan book, Folk Music: A Bob Dylan...
The Future of the Rural-Urban Divide: A Discussion with Nicholas F. Jacobs and Daniel M. Shea
20 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The town/countryside split has always been a feature of democratic Western politics and has impacted party choice. The advent of rust belts may have a...
Thomas Blake Earle, "The Liberty to Take Fish: Atlantic Fisheries and Federal Power in Nineteenth-Century America" (Cornell UP, 2023)
19 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Liberty to Take Fish: Atlantic Fisheries and Federal Power in Nineteenth-Century America (Cornell University Press, 2023), Dr. Thomas Blake E...
Earl Lewis and Nancy Cantor, "Our Compelling Interests: The Value of Diversity for Democracy and a Prosperous Society" (Princeton UP, 2016)
18 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Princeton University Press’ Our Compelling Interests series focuses on diversity, in racial, gender, socioeconomic, religious, and other forms. S...
Robert P. George's 'Making Men Moral': A 30th Anniversary Conference
18 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The first book in the storied career of one of the most influential conservative legal scholars and philosophers of our day is the focus of an upcomin...
Matthew F. Jordan, "Danger Sound Klaxon!: The Horn That Changed History" (U Virginia Press, 2023)
17 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Danger Sound Klaxon!:The Horn That Changed History (University of Virginia Press, 2023) reveals the untold story of the Klaxon automobile horn, one o...
Terah J. Stewart, "Sex Work on Campus" (Routledge, 2022)
17 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Terah J. Stewart's book Sex Work on Campus (Routledge, 2022) examines the experiences of college students engaged in sex work and sparks dialogue ab...
Charisse Burden-Stelly, "Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
17 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the early twentieth century, two panics emerged in the United States. The Black Scare was rooted in white Americans’ fear of Black Nationalism an...
Warren Zanes, "Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's 'Nebraska' (Crown, 2023)
17 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Without Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen might not be who he is today. The natural follow-up to Springsteen's hugely successful album The River should h...
Laurence Ralph Reckons With Police Violence (EF, JP)
16 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the third episode of our Global Policing series, Elizabeth and John spoke back in 2020 with anthropologist Laurence Ralph about The Torture Let...
Where Have All the Democrats Gone?
16 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2002, John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira published The Emerging Democratic Majority (Scribner). Now the pair are back with Where Have All the Democr...
Huping Ling, "Chinese Americans in the Heartland: Migration, Work, and Community" (Rutgers UP, 2022)
16 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode features a conversation with Dr. Huping Ling on her two latest books, Chinese Americans in the Heartland: Migration, Work, and Community...
'For All Mankind,’ An Alternate History About the Possibility of Utopia
15 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the UConn PopCast, and in this episode we tackle ‘For All Mankind,’ Apple TV’s alternate history about a space race that never ended. We ...
Brigid Cohen, "Musical Migration and Imperial New York: Early Cold War Scenes" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
15 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The heart of Brigid Cohen’s Musical Migration and Imperial New York: Early Cold War Scenes (University of Chicago Press, 2022) are the connections...
Jennifer Burns on the Life and Lasting Influence of Milton Friedman
14 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jennifer Burns (Hoover Reserch Fellow and Stanford Associate Professor of History) joins the podcast to discuss her career as well as her new biograph...
Jeffrey Scholes, "Christianity, Race, and Sport" (Routledge, 2021)
14 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This book provides a rigorously researched introduction to the relationship between Christianity, race, and sport in the United States. Christianity,...
Kristofer Ray and Brady DeSanti, "Understanding and Teaching Native American History" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
14 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Understanding and Teaching Native American History (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023), co-edited by Kristofer Ray and Brady DeSanti, is a timely...
Brendan J. Doherty, "Fundraiser in Chief: Presidents and the Politics of Campaign Cash" (UP of Kansas, 2023)
13 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Political Scientist Brendan Doherty has a new book that dives into the ways that presidents have raised money for themselves, their parties, and other...
Juliet Hooker, "Black Grief/White Grievance: The Politics of Loss" (Princeton UP, 2023)
13 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In democracies, citizens must accept loss; we can't always be on the winning side. But in the United States, the fundamental civic capacity of being a...
Elizabeth Anderson, "Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
13 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What is the work ethic? Does it justify policies that promote the wealth and power of the One Percent at workers' expense? Or does it advance policies...
David Myer Temin, "Remapping Sovereignty: Decolonization and Self-Determination in North American Indigenous Political Thought" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
13 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Accounts of decolonization routinely neglect Indigenous societies in North America and Australasia, yet Native communities have made unique contributi...
Jennifer E. Brooks, "Resident Strangers: Immigrant Laborers in New South Alabama" (LSU Press, 2022)
12 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Immigrant laborers who came to the New South in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries found themselves poised uncomfortably between white ...
Eric M. Patashnik, "Countermobilization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
12 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The most successful policies not only solve problems. They also build supportive coalitions. Yet, sometimes, policies trigger backlash and mobilize op...
Stephanie K. Kim, "Constructing Student Mobility: How Universities Recruit Students and Shape Pathways between Berkeley and Seoul" (MIT Press, 2023)
12 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Constructing Student Mobility: How Universities Recruit Students and Shape Pathways between Berkeley and Seoul (MIT Press, 2023) challenges the popul...
Cecilia Márquez, "Making the Latino South: A History of Racial Formation" (UNC Press, 2023)
12 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The presence of Latinx people in the American South has long confounded the region's persistent racial binaries. In Making the Latino South: A Histor...
Adrien Sebro, "Scratchin' and Survivin': Hustle Economics and the Black Sitcoms of Tandem Productions" (Rutgers UP, 2023)
12 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The 1970s was a golden age for representations of African American life on TV sitcoms: Sanford & Son, Good Times, The Jeffersons. Surprisingly, nea...
Steven Simon, "Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East" (Penguin, 2023)
11 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A longtime American foreign policy insider’s penetrating and definitive reckoning with this country’s involvement in the Middle East The culminati...
Daniel Macfarlane, "Natural Allies: Environment, Energy, and the History of US-Canada Relations" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)
11 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
No two nations have exchanged natural resources, produced transborder environmental agreements, or cooperatively altered ecosystems on the same scale ...
Shelley Fraser Mickle, "White House Wild Child: How Alice Roosevelt Broke All the Rules and Won the Heart of America" (Imagine, 2023)
11 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
“I can do one of two things, I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both.”—Theodore Roosevelt Duri...
Ralph H. Craig III, "Dancing in My Dreams: A Spiritual Biography of Tina Turner" (Eerdmans, 2023)
10 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you don’t know Tina Turner’s spirituality, you don’t know Tina. When Tina Turner reclaimed her throne as the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll in th...
Barry Reay and Nina Attwood, "Dirty Books: Erotic Fiction and the Avant-garde in Mid-century Paris and New York" (Manchester UP, 2023)
10 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From the 1930s to the 1970s, in New York and in Paris, daring publishers and writers were producing banned pornographic literature. The books were wri...
Xaq Frohlich, "From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age" (U California Press, 2023)
10 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Xaq Frohlich’s From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age (U California Press, 2023) is a biography of the Nutrition ...
Randy Laist, ed.. "The '80s Resurrected: Essays on the Decade in Popular Culture Then and Now" (McFarland, 2023)
09 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Randy Laist, professor of English at Goodwin University and the University of Bridgeport, has a new edited volume focusing specifically on popular cul...
Chad Randl and D. Medina Lasansky, "Playing Place: Board Games, Popular Culture, Space" (MIT Press, 2023)
09 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
An essay collection exploring the board game's relationship to the built environment, revealing the unexpected ways that play reflects perceptions of ...
Curtis Smith, "Homelessness and Housing Advocacy: The Role of Red-Tape Warriors" (Routledge, 2022)
09 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Through compelling ethnography, Homelessness and Housing Advocacy: The Role of Red-Tape Warriors (Routledge, 2022) reveals the creative and ambitio...
Michael Newton, "It's a Wonderful Life" (British Film Institute, 2023)
08 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is one of the best-loved films of Classical Hollywood cinema, a story of despair and redemption in the aftermath...
Speak Freely: The Princeton Principles
07 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Kicking off our new monthly series on freedom of speech, Keith Whittington and Donald Downs discuss the Princeton Principles for a Campus of Free...
Matthew J. Clavin, "Symbols of Freedom: Slavery and Resistance Before the Civil War" (NYU Press, 2023)
07 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the early United States, anthems, flags, holidays, monuments, and memorials were powerful symbols of an American identity that helped unify a divid...
Vicki Howard, ed., "A Cultural History of Shopping in the Modern Age" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
07 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I talk to Vicki Howard and Sarah Elvins, both contributors to Volume 6 of the anthology A Cultural History of Shopping. Jon Stobart...
Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, "Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
06 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past 40 years, lawmakers in America's two major political parties have taken increasingly extreme positions on ideological issues. Voters fro...
Shannon McKenna Schmidt, "The First Lady of World War II: Eleanor Roosevelt's Daring Journey to the Frontlines and Back" (Sourcebooks, 2023)
06 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Shannon McKenna Schmidt's The First Lady of World War II: Eleanor Roosevelt's Daring Journey to the Frontlines and Back (Sourcebooks, 2023) is the f...
Greg Beets and Richard Whymark, "A Curious Mix of People: The Underground Scene of '90s Austin" (U Texas Press, 2023)
05 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ask anyone outside of Austin what they know about the city and chances are the first thing they'll mention is the music. While the Armadillo Era has b...
Tamson Pietsch, "The Floating University: Experience, Empire, and the Politics of Knowledge" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
05 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A globe-trotting and scandal-ridden story of American empire and higher education, The Floating University: Experience, Empire, and the Politics of K...
Drew A. Swanson, "A Man of Bad Reputation: The Murder of John Stephens and the Contested Landscape of North Carolina Reconstruction" (UNC Press, 2023)
04 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Five years after the Civil War, North Carolina Republican state senator John W. Stephens was found murdered inside the Caswell County Courthouse. Step...
David Alan Richards, "I Give These Books: The History of the Yale University Library, 1656-2016" (Oak Knoll, 2022)
04 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The disparate stories of the libraries of the fledgling colleges in the colonies of the Eastern Seaboard, beginning more than one hundred fifty years ...
Jacqueline R. Braitman, "She Damn Near Ran the Studio: The Extraordinary Lives of Ida R. Koverman" (UP of Mississippi, 2020)
02 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I am happy to be interviewing historian and author Dr. Jacqueline R. Braitman about her very engaging biography, She Damn Near Ran t...
The Future of Cancelling: A Conversation with Greg Lukianoff
01 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Cancel culture is something all academics are aware of and some are concerned about. Certainly that’s true of Greg Lukianoff who was the co-autho...
Melvin L. Rogers, "The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought" (Princeton UP, 2023)
01 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” is notoriously fiery. No doubt part of what’s gripping about it is ...
Dara Z. Strolovitch, "When Bad Things Happen to Privileged People: Race, Gender, and What Makes a Crisis in America" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
31 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A deep and thought-provoking examination of crisis politics and their implications for power and marginalization in the United States. From the clim...
Scott Eyman, "Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided" (Simon & Schuster, 2023)
31 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The remarkable, must-read story of Charlie Chaplin’s years of exile from the United States during the postwar Red Scare, and how it ruined his film ...
Claire Jean Kim, "Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
30 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Where do Asian Americans fit into the U.S. racial order? How do we understand anti-Asian racism in relation to structural anti-Blackness? Are Asian Am...
Frederick V. Engram, "Black Liberation Through Action and Resistance: MOVE" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)
30 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Black Liberation through Action and Resistance: MOVE (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) serves as a call to action for Black millennials and co-conspirator...
Sarah Mayorga, "Urban Specters: The Everyday Harms of Racial Capitalism" (UNC Press, 2023)
29 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Racial capitalism, invisible but threaded throughout the world, shapes our lives. Focusing on the experiences of white, Black, and Latinx residents ...
Chris Bishop, "Medievalist Comics and the American Century" (UP of Mississippi, 2016)
29 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Medievalist Comics and the American Century (UP of Mississippi, 2016), Chris Bishop surveys the medievalist comic, its stories, characters, setti...
Nikki M. Taylor, "Brooding over Bloody Revenge: Enslaved Women's Lethal Resistance" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
28 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From the colonial through the antebellum era, enslaved women in the US used lethal force as the ultimate form of resistance. By amplifying their voice...
Norman Solomon, "War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine" (New Press, 2023)
28 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
More than twenty years ago, 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan set into motion a hugely consequential shift in America’s foreign policy: a perpetual st...
James V. Fenelon, "Indian, Black and Irish: Indigenous Nations, African Peoples, European Invasions, 1492-1790" (Routledge, 2023)
28 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview James Fenelon discusses his new book entitled Indian, Black and Irish: Indigenous Nations, African Peoples, European Invasions, 149...
Stephen B. Armstrong, "I Want You Around: The Ramones and the Making of Rock 'n' Roll High School" (Backbeat Books, 2023)
27 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Stephen Armstrong's new book I Want You Around: The Ramones and the Making of Rock-n-Roll High School (Backbeat Books, 2023), provides a detailed ...
Nicole Nguyen, "Terrorism on Trial: Political Violence and Abolitionist Futures" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
27 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rather than functioning as a final arbiter of justice, U.S. domestic courts are increasingly seen as counterterrorism tools that can incapacitate terr...
Denise D. Meringolo, "Radical Roots: Public History and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism" (Amherst College Press, 2021)
26 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Uncovering a radical tradition at the heart of public history within the United States, Radical Roots: Public History and a Tradition of Social Justi...
Scott Kamen, "From Union Halls to the Suburbs: Americans for Democratic Action and the Transformation of Postwar Liberalism" (U Massachusetts Press, 2023)
25 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) was perhaps the most influential multi-issue organization in American liberalism. The first book-le...
Greg Glasgow and Kathryn Mayer, "Disneyland on the Mountain: Walt, the Environmentalists, and the Ski Resort That Never Was" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)
25 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A fascinating look at Walt Disney's last, unfinished project and the controversy that surrounded it. It was going to be Disneyland at the top of a mou...
Christopher P. Barton, "The Archaeology of Race and Class at Timbuctoo: A Black Community in New Jersey" (UP of Florida, 2023)
25 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Archaeology of Race and Class at Timbuctoo: A Black Community in New Jersey (UP of Florida, 2023) is the first book to examine the historic Black...