New Books in American Studies
Episodes
Jeff Kosseff, "Liar in a Crowded Theater: Freedom of Speech in a World of Misinformation" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
24 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Thanks to the First Amendment, Americans enjoy a rare privilege: the constitutional right to lie. And although controversial, they should continue to ...
Eric G. Wilson, "Point Blank" (British Film Institute, 2023)
24 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
John Boorman's Point Blank (1967) has long been recognized as one of the seminal films of the sixties, with its revisionary mix of genres including ...
Margaret K. Nelson, "Keeping Family Secrets: Shame and Silence in Memoirs from the 1950s" (NYU Press, 2022)
24 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
All families have secrets but the facts requiring secrecy change with time. Nowadays A lesbian partnership, a “bastard” son, an aunt who is a pros...
Aaron Tang, "Supreme Hubris: How Overconfidence Is Destroying the Court--And How We Can Fix It" (Yale UP, 2023)
23 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The American public’s confidence in the United States Supreme Court is a historic low – in part based on a belief that the Supreme Court is incr...
Decolonizing Praxis
23 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of High Theory, Erin Pineda talks about decolonizing praxis. Black American activists in the 1950s and 1960s used strategies of civil ...
Michael Welsh, "Big Bend National Park: Mexico, the United States, and a Borderland Ecosystem" (U Nevada Press, 2021)
22 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
National Parks are sites where politics, cultures, and ecology converge. University of Northern Colorado historian Michael Welsh argues that, at Big B...
Campbell F. Scribner, "A Is for Arson: A History of Vandalism in American Education" (Cornell UP, 2023)
22 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In A Is for Arson: A History of Vandalism in American Education (Cornell UP, 2023), Campbell F. Scribner sifts through two centuries of debris to un...
Danielle N. Boaz, "Voodoo: The History of a Racial Slur" (Oxford UP, 2023)
21 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Coined in the middle of the nineteenth century, the term "voodoo" has been deployed largely by people in the U.S. to refer to spiritual practices--rea...
Jason C. Bivins, "Embattled America: The Rise of Anti-Politics and America's Obsession with Religion" (Oxford UP, 2022)
21 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Histories of political religion since the 1960s often center on the rise of the powerful conservative evangelical voting bloc since the 1970s. One of ...
Matthew Guariglia, "Police and the Empire City: Race and the Origins of Modern Policing in New York" (Duke UP, 2023)
21 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
During the years between the Civil War and World War II, police in New York City struggled with how to control a diverse metropolis. In Police and th...
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" (Vintage, 2006)
21 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The inspiration for Christopher Nolan’s major motion picture, Oppenheimer, this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography explores the life and times of J. ...
Katherine Mason, "The Reproduction of Inequality: How Class Shapes the Pregnant Body and Infant Health" (NYU Press, 2023)
20 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Can you run a marathon, drink coffee, eat fish, or fly on a plane while pregnant? Such questions are just the tip of the iceberg for how most pregnant...
The Unquiet Legacy of Jewish Radical Meir Kahane
19 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of the massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas in October, 2023 I spoke with Shaul Magid, author of Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Polit...
Allison M. Prasch, "The World Is Our Stage: The Global Rhetorical Presidency and the Cold War" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
19 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Allison M. Prasch, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has a new book that focuses on the w...
Philip Dray, "A Lynching at Port Jervis: Race and Reckoning in the Gilded Age" (FSG, 2022)
19 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On June 2, 1892, in the small, idyllic village of Port Jervis, New York, a young Black man named Robert Lewis was lynched by a violent mob. The twenty...
Jeremy Land, "Colonial Ports, Global Trade, and the Roots of the American Revolution (1700-1776)" (Brill, 2023)
18 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jeremy Land's book Colonial Ports, Global Trade, and the Roots of the American Revolution (1700-1776) (Brill, 2023) takes a long-run view of the glo...
The Future of Incarceration: A Discussion with Colleen P. Eren
18 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The United States has long been associated with a very harsh criminal justice system with, in some cases, people serving long sentence for minor crime...
Colin Dickey, "Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy" (Viking, 2023)
17 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The United States was born in paranoia. From the American Revolution (thought by some to be a conspiracy organized by the French) to the Salem witch t...
Orisanmi Burton, "Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt" (U California Press, 2023)
17 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt (University of California Press, 2023) boldly and compellingly arg...
Michael A. Robinson, "Dangerous Instrument: Political Polarization and US Civil-Military Relations" (Oxford UP, 2022)
17 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As increasingly contentious politics in the United States raise concerns over the "politicization" of traditionally non-partisan institutions, many ha...
Nick Tabor, "Africatown: America's Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created" (St. Martin's Press, 2023)
16 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
An evocative and epic story, Nick Tabor's Africatown: America's Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created (St. Martin's Press, 2023) charts the f...
Victoria Houseman, "American Classicist: The Life and Loves of Edith Hamilton" (Princeton UP, 2023)
15 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Edith Hamilton (1867-1963) didn't publish her first book until she was sixty-two. But over the next three decades, this former headmistress would beco...
Kristen Green, "The Devil's Half Acre: The Untold Story of How One Woman Liberated the South's Most Notorious Slave Jail" (Seal Press, 2022)
14 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The inspiring true story of an enslaved woman who liberated an infamous slave jail and transformed it into one of the nation’s first HBCUs. In The ...
Peter Stark, "Gallop Toward the Sun: Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison's Struggle for the Destiny of a Nation" (Random House, 2023)
14 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The conquest of Indigenous land in the eastern United States through corrupt treaties and genocidal violence laid the groundwork for the conquest of t...
Christopher John Bosso, "Why SNAP Works: A Political History--And Defense--of the Food Stamp Program" (U California Press, 2023)
14 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How did the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program evolve from a Depression-era effort to use up surplus goods into America's foundational food ass...
Jeffrey S. Debies-Carl, "If You Should Go at Midnight: Legends and Legend Tripping in America" (UP of Mississippi, 2023)
13 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Across today’s America, countless people will embark on an adventure. They will prowl among overgrown headstones in forgotten graveyards, stalk thro...
Alejandra Dubcovsky, "Talking Back: Native Women and the Making of the Early South" (Yale UP, 2023)
13 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Historian Alejandra Dubcovsky tells a story of war, slavery, loss, remembrance, and the women whose resilience and resistance transformed the colonial...
Lisandro Pérez, "The House on G Street: A Cuban Family Saga" (NYU Press, 2023)
13 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The House on G Street: A Cuban Family Saga (NYU Press, 2023), award-winning author Lisandro Pérez tells Cuba’s story through the lens of a sin...
Robert Greene and Tyler D. Parry, "Invisible No More: The African American Experience at the University of South Carolina" (U South Carolina Press, 2021)
13 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Since its founding in 1801, African Americans have played an integral, if too often overlooked, role in the history of the University of South Carolin...
Kristen M. Budd and David C. Lane, "Beyond Bars: A Path Forward from 50 Years of Mass Incarceration in the United States" (Policy Press, 2023)
13 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The year 2023 marks 50 years of mass incarceration in the United States. This timely volume highlights and addresses pressing social problems associat...
Paul Crenshaw, "Melt with Me: Coming of Age and Other '80s Perils" (Ohio State UP, 2023)
12 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In his new collection of essays, Melt With Me (Mad Creek Press, 2023), Paul Crenshaw examines the intersection of 1980s pop culture, the Cold War, ...
Dennis C. Rasmussen, "The Constitution's Penman: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of America's Basic Charter" (UP of Kansas, 2023)
12 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dennis Rasmussen’s new book, The Constitution's Penman: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of America's Basic Charter (UP of Kansas, 2023), is a p...
Indigenous DC: A Conversation with Elizabeth Rule
12 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s book is Indigenous DC: Native Peoples and the Nation’s First Capital (Georgetown UP, 2023), by Dr. Elizabeth Rule, which is the first ...
Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol, "Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working-Class Voters Are Turning Away from the Democratic Party" (Columbia UP, 2023)
12 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the heyday of American labor, the influence of local unions extended far beyond the workplace. Unions fostered tight-knit communities, touching nea...
Sheila McManus, "Both Sides Now: Writing the Edges of the North American West" (Texas A&M UP, 2022)
11 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How do borderlands work? How do they maintain their distinctive features in the face of concerted efforts on the part of nation-states to make each of...
Marlena Williams, "Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of the Exorcist" (Mad Creek Books, 2023)
10 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Never watch The Exorcist, Marlena Williams's mother told her, just as she'd been told by her own mother as a Catholic teen in rural Oregon when the h...
Rhoda Kanaaneh, "The Right Kind of Suffering: Gender, Sexuality, and Arab Asylum Seekers in America" (U Texas Press, 2023)
10 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From the overloaded courts with their constantly changing dates and appointments to the need to prove oneself the “right" kind of asylum seeker, the...
Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, "The Vice President's Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn" (UNC Press, 2023)
10 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Vice President's Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn (UNC Press, 2023), award-winning historian Amrita Chakrabarti Myers has recovered...
Evan C. Rothera, "Civil Wars and Reconstructions in the Americas: The United States, Mexico, and Argentina, 1860–1880" (LSU Press, 2022)
10 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, three violent national conflicts rocked the Americas: the Wars of Unification in Argentina, the War of t...
Tariq D. Khan, "The Republic Shall be Kept Clean: How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Antileft Repression" (U Illinois Press, 2023)
09 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Republic Will Be Kept Clean: How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Antileft Repression (University of Illinois Press, 2023) by Dr. Tariq D. Khan e...
The Future of Superstates: A Discussion with Alasdair Roberts
09 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Empires are supposed to be a thing of the past but very big countries with global reach are becoming more entrenched. By 2050, almost 40 per cent o...
John Arena, "Expelling Public Schools: How Antiracist Politics Enable School Privatization in Newark" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
09 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Exploring the role of identitarian politics in the privatization of Newark’s public school system In Expelling Public Schools, John Arena explores t...
Oil Beach - How Toxic Infrastructure Threatens Life: A Conversation with Christina Dunbar-Hester
09 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Christina Dunbar-Hester, professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, talks about her rec...
Stephanie Southworth and Sara Brallier, "Homelessness in the 21st Century: Living the Impossible American Dream" (Routledge, 2023)
08 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
An accessible and engaging introductory text on homelessness and housing policy, this timely book uses a sociopolitical framework for understanding is...
Andrew Monteith, "Christian Nationalism and the Birth of the War on Drugs" (NYU Press, 2023)
08 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many people view the War on Drugs as a contemporary phenomenon invented by the Nixon administration. But as Dr. Andrew Monteith shows in Christian Na...
Sharon Patricia Holland, "an other: a black feminist consideration of animal life" (Duke UP, 2023)
07 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In an other: a black feminist examination of animal life (Duke UP, 2023), Sharon Patricia Holland offers a new theorization of the human animal/divi...
Charlotte Gray, "Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons: The Lives of Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt" (Simon & Schuster, 2023)
07 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Born into upper-class America in the same year, 1854, Sara Delano (later to become the mother of Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and Jennie Jerome (later t...
Scott Creney and Brigette Adair Herron, "The Story of the B-52s: Neon Side of Town" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
07 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Story of the B-52s: Neon Side of Town (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) is the first critical history of one of the most legendary and influential band...
Nick Baumgardner and Mark Snyder, "Mountaintop: The Inside Story of Michigan's 1997 National Title Climb" (Printopya, 2023)
06 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When the 1997 college football season began, the once-mighty Michigan Wolverines were dismissed nationally as a relic of a bygone era. Michigan had po...
Melissa Estes Blair, "Bringing Home the White House: The Hidden History of Women Who Shaped the Presidency in the Twentieth Century" (U Georgia Press, 2023)
06 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Bringing Home the White House: The Hidden History of Women Who Shaped the Presidency in the Twentieth Century (U Georgia Press, 2023), Melissa Es...
James N. Druckman and Elizabeth A. Sharrow, "Equality Unfulfilled: How Title IX's Policy Design Undermines Change to College Sports" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
05 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The year 1972 is often hailed as an inflection point in the evolution of women's rights. Congress passed Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972,...
Robert P. Watson, "When Washington Burned: The British Invasion of the Capital and a Nation's Rise from the Ashes" (Georgetown UP, 2023)
05 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps no other single day in US history was as threatening to the survival of the nation as August 24, 1814, when British forces captured Washington...
Viet Thanh Nguyen, "A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, a History, a Memorial" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2023)
03 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2023), Viet Th...
Adrian Chastain Weimer, "A Constitutional Culture: New England and the Struggle Against Arbitrary Rule in the Restoration Empire" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)
03 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In A Constitutional Culture: New England and the Struggle Against Arbitrary Rule in the Restoration Empire (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023), Adrian Cha...
Janet Somerville, "Yours, for Probably Always: Martha Gellhorn's Letters of Love and War 1930-1949" (Firefly Books, 2022)
03 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Before email, when long distance telephone calls were difficult and expensive, people wrote letters, often several each day. Today, those letters prov...
Twenty Years After “The New Economy”: A Conversation with Doug Henwood
02 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Economic journalist and broadcaster Doug Henwood revisits his 2003 book, After the New Economy (New Press), with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel....
Eric Bennett, "Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing During the Cold War" (U Iowa Press, 2015)
01 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
During and just after World War II, an influential group of American writers and intellectuals projected a vision for literature that would save the f...
Rebecca J. Fraser, "Black Female Intellectuals in 19th Century America: Born to Bloom Unseen?" (Routledge, 2022)
01 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Drawing on letters, personal testimony, works of art, novels, and historic Black newspapers, this book is an interdisciplinary exploration of Black wo...
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)
01 Oct 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...
Sara Marcus, "Political Disappointment: A Cultural History from Reconstruction to the AIDS Crisis" (Harvard UP, 2023)
30 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Moving from the aftermath of Reconstruction through the AIDS crisis, a new cultural history of the United States shows how artists, intellectuals, and...
Christina Ward, "Holy Food: How Cults, Communes and Religious Movements Influenced What We Eat" (Process, 2023)
30 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Independent food historian and author Christina Ward joins New Books Network to discuss her highly anticipated book Holy Food: How Cults, Communes an...
Kiana Fitzgerald, "Ode to Hip-Hop: 50 Albums That Define 50 Years of Trailblazing Music" (Running Press Adult, 2023)
30 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From underground roots to mainstream popularity, hip-hop's influence on music and entertainment around the world has been nothing short of extraordina...
Aaron Tang, "Supreme Hubris: How Overconfidence Is Destroying the Court--And How We Can Fix It" (Yale UP, 2023)
30 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Aaron Tang about his new book Supreme Hubris: How Overconfidence Is Destroying the Court--And How We Can Fix It (Yale UP, 2023)....
Peter Reed, "Staging Haiti in Nineteenth-Century America: Revolution, Race and Popular Performance" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
28 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
American culture maintained a complicated relationship with Haiti from its revolutionary beginnings onward. In Staging Haiti in Nineteenth-Century Am...
Sirpa Salenius, "An Abolitionist Abroad: Sarah Parker Remond in Cosmopolitan Europe" (U Massachusetts Press, 2016)
27 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Parker Remond (1826–1894) left the free black community of Salem, Massachusetts, where she was born, to become one of the first women to trave...
Jamie L. Jones, "Rendered Obsolete: Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling" (UNC Press, 2023)
26 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Through the mid-nineteenth century, the US whaling industry helped drive industrialization and urbanization, providing whale oil to lubricate and illu...
Dylan C. Penningroth, "Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights" (Liveright, 2023)
26 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A prize-winning scholar draws on astonishing new research to demonstrate how Black people used the law to their advantage long before the Civil Rights...
Michelle K. Berry, "Cow Talk: Work, Ecology, and Range Cattle Ranchers in the Postwar Mountain West" (U Oklahoma Press, 2023)
26 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How did ranching become an identity? University of Arizona historian Michelle Berry explains in Cow Talk: Work, Ecology, and Western Ranchers in the...
Jonathan Mael, "Harlem World: How Hip Hop's Super Showdown Changed Music Forever" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
26 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
July 3, 1981, was a pivotal night for the future of America's newest art form: hip hop. In New York's Harlem World Club, the Fantastic Romantic Five a...
Laura F. Edwards, "The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South" (UNC Press, 2009)
25 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Do individuals have the right to “keep and bear” arms? Do “the people” have any collective rights to public safety? Now that the United States...
Nigel Biggar, "Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning" (William Collins, 2023)
25 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet empire in 1989, many believed that we had arrived at the 'End of History' - that the global dominance of ...
Nigel Biggar, "Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning" (William Collins, 2023)
25 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet empire in 1989, many believed that we had arrived at the 'End of History' - that the global dominance of ...
Mark Thomas Edwards, "Walter Lippmann: American Skeptic, American Pastor" (Oxford UP, 2023)
25 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Walter Lippmann was arguably the most recognized and respected political journalist of the twentieth century. His "Today and Tomorrow" columns attract...
Alda Balthrop-Lewis, "Thoreau's Religion: Walden Woods, Social Justice, and the Politics of Asceticism" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
25 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Balthrop-Lewis's Thoreau's Religion: Walden Woods, Social Justice, and the Politics of Asceticism (Cambridge UP, 2021) presents a ground-breaking in...
Megan MacKenzie, "Good Soldiers Don't Rape: The Stories We Tell About Military Sexual Violence" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
24 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sexual violence is a significant problem within many Western militaries. Despite international attention to the issue and global #MeToo and #TimesUp m...
Steven P. Gietschier, "Baseball: The Turbulent Midcentury Years" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)
23 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Baseball: The Turbulent Midcentury Years (University of Nebraska Press, 2023) explores the history of organized baseball during the middle of the twe...
Diana Rickard, "The New True Crime: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence" (NYU Press, 2023)
23 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The New True Crime: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence (NYU Press, 2023) by Dr. Diana Rickard examines how serialized ...
Zebulon Vance Miletsky, "Before Busing: A History of Boston's Long Black Freedom Struggle" (UNC Press, 2022)
22 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In many histories of Boston, African Americans have remained almost invisible. Partly as a result, when the 1972 crisis over school desegregation and ...
Todd E. Vachon, "Clean Air and Good Jobs: U.S. Labor and the Struggle for Climate Justice" (Temple UP, 2023)
22 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The labor–climate movement in the U.S. laid the groundwork for the Green New Deal by building a base within labor for supporting climate protection ...
Jack Schneider and Ethan L. Hutt, "Off the Mark: How Grades, Ratings, and Rankings Undermine Learning (but Don't Have To)" (Harvard UP, 2023)
22 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Amid widespread concern that our approach to testing and grading undermines education, two experts explain how schools can use assessment to support, ...
C. J. Pascoe, "Nice Is Not Enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness at American High" (U California Press, 2023)
21 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nice is not enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness at American High (University of California Press, 2023) by Dr. C. J. Pascoe is a provocativ...
David Cunningham, January 6th and Asymmetrical Policing (JP, EF)
21 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Recall This Book first heard from the sociologist of American racism David Cunningham in Episode 36 Policing and White Power. Less than a week afte...
Diane Flynt, "Wild, Tamed, Lost, Revived: The Surprising Story of Apples in the South" (UNC Press, 2023)
20 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For anyone who's ever picked an apple fresh from the tree or enjoyed a glass of cider, writer and orchardist Diane Flynt offers a new history of the a...
Lipika Pelham, "Passing: An Alternative History of Identity" (Oxford UP, 2021)
20 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A slave woman in 1840s America dresses as a white, disabled man to escape to freedom, while a twenty-first-century black rights activist is 'cancelled...
Molly Ladd-Taylor, "Fixing the Poor: Eugenic Sterilization and Child Welfare in the Twentieth Century" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
20 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1907 and 1937, thirty-two states legalized the sterilization of more than 63,000 Americans. In Fixing the Poor: Eugenic Sterilization and Ch...
Christian Kiefer, "The Heart of It All" (Melville House, 2023)
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Heart of It All (Melville House, 2023), Christian Kiefer imagines a group of factory workers and their families living in a once vibrant Ohio...
Kimberly Mack, "Living Colour's Time's Up" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The iconic Black rock band Living Colour's Time's Up, released in 1990, was recorded in the aftermath of the spectacular critical and commercial succ...
Maria Smilios, "The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis" (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2023)
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
New York City, 1929. A sanatorium, a deadly disease, and a dire nursing shortage. In the pre-antibiotic days when tuberculosis stirred people’s da...
Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, "Before Gentrification: The Creation of DC's Racial Wealth Gap" (U California Press, 2023)
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This book shows how a century of redlining, disinvestment, and the War on Drugs wreaked devastation on Black people and paved the way for gentrificati...
Takeo Rivera, "Model Minority Masochism: Performing the Cultural Politics of Asian American Masculinity" (Oxford UP, 2022)
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There are few grand narratives that loom over Asian Americans more than the “model minority.” While many Asian Americanist scholars and activists ...
Lincoln A. Mitchell, "The One Hundred Most Important Players in Baseball History" (Artemesia Publishing, 2023)
18 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Baseball lore and history is filled with many valuable players, and not all of them are the Hall of Famers you know. In The One Hundred Most Importan...
Luke Messac, "Your Money Or Your Life: Debt Collection in American Medicine" (Oxford UP, 2023)
17 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A riveting exposé of medical debt collection in America -- and the profound financial and physical costs eroding patient trust in medicine For the cr...
Avery Dame-Griff, "The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet" (NYU Press, 2023)
17 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Avery Dame-Griff's The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet (NYU Press, 2023) explores how the rise of the internet shaped transg...
Katie J. Wells et al., "Disrupting D.C.: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City" (Princeton UP, 2023)
16 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The first city to fight back against Uber, Washington, D.C., was also the first city where such resistance was defeated. It was here that the company ...
Christopher F. Zurn, "Splitsville USA: A Democratic Argument for Breaking Up the United States" (Routledge, 2023)
16 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
At the end of the day, I have faith in the wisdom of democracy: the idea that good political solutions only arise from widely dispersed discussion, de...
Chris Molanphy, "Old Town Road" (Duke UP, 2023)
15 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Old Town Road (Duke University Press, 2023), Chris Molanphy considers Lil Nas X’s debut single as pop artifact, chart phenomenon, and cultura...
Christopher Paul Harris, "To Build a Black Future: The Radical Politics of Joy, Pain, and Care" (Princeton UP, 2023)
15 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When #BlackLivesMatter emerged in 2013, it animated the most consequential Black-led mobilization since the civil rights and Black power era. Today, t...
Zachary Parolin, "Poverty in the Pandemic: Policy Lessons from COVID-19" (Russell Sage Foundation, 2023)
15 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Zachary Parolin's book Poverty in the Pandemic: Policy Lessons from COVID-19 (Russell Sage Foundation, 2023) is interested in poverty during the COV...
Jonathan Leal, "Dreams in Double Time: On Race, Freedom, and Bebop" (Duke UP, 2023)
14 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Dreams in Double Time: On Race, Freedom, and Bebop (Duke UP, 2023), Jonathan Leal examines how the musical revolution of bebop opened up new fut...
Jonathan Daniel Wells, "The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery, and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War" (Bold Type Press, 2020)
14 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In a rapidly changing New York, two forces battled for the city's soul: the pro-slavery New Yorkers who kept the illegal slave trade alive and well, a...