New Books in American Studies

Matthew McManus, "The Political Right and Equality: Turning Back the Tide of Egalitarian Modernity" (Routledge, 2023)

13 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

McManus presents an intellectual history of the conservative and reactionary tradition, stretching from Aristotle and Filmer to Alexander Dugin and Pa...

The Shadow War between America and Russia

13 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Western analysts and media often assess the prospect that Moscow might use nuclear weapons as the war in Ukraine grinds on, possibly to a flailing Rus...

Anthony B. Sanders, "Baby Ninth Amendments: How Americans Embraced Unenumerated Rights and Why It Matters" (U Michigan Press, 2023)

13 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Listing every right that a constitution should protect is hard. American constitution drafters often list a few famous rights such as freedom of speec...

Michèle Lamont, "Seeing Others: How Recognition Works-And How It Can Heal a Divided World" (Atria, 2023)

13 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How can we challenge and change inequalities? In Seeing Others: How Recognition Works— and How It Can Heal a Divided World (Atria, 2023), Michele...

William Darity et al., "The Black Reparations Project: A Handbook for Racial Justice" (U California Press, 2023)

12 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A surge in interest in black reparations is taking place in America on a scale not seen since the Reconstruction Era. The Black Reparations Project: ...

Gilberto Rosas, "Unsettling: The El Paso Massacre, Resurgent White Nationalism, and the US-Mexico Border" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

12 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On August 3, 2019, a far-right extremist committed a deadly mass shooting at a major shopping center in El Paso, Texas, a city on the border of the Un...

A Better Way to Buy Books

12 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has alre...

Robert F. Moss, "The Lost Southern Chefs: A History of Commercial Dining in the Nineteenth-Century South" (U Georgia Press, 2022)

12 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In recent years, food writers and historians have begun to retell the story of southern food. Heirloom ingredients and traditional recipes have been r...

Josephine Lee, "Oriental, Black, and White: The Formation of Racial Habits in American Theater" (UNC Press, 2022)

11 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The history of race in American theater is more complicated than you might think, writes Dr. Josephine Lee in Oriental, Black, and White: The Format...

Robyn Muir, "The Disney Princess Phenomenon: A Feminist Analysis" (Bristol UP, 2023)

11 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Disney Princesses are a billion-dollar industry, known and loved by children across the globe. In The Disney Princess Phenomenon: A Feminist Anal...

Race and Electrical Infrastructure in the Jim Crow South

11 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Conor Harrison, Associate Professor of Geography and the School of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at the University of South Carolina, talks about his ...

Postscript: How Firearms Fuel Domestic Violence in the US

11 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 2019, nearly two-thirds of domestic violence homicides in the United States were committed with a gun. On average, three women are killed by a curr...

Nicole Fabricant, "Fighting to Breathe: Race, Toxicity, and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore" (U California Press, 2022)

10 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Industrial toxic emissions on the South Baltimore Peninsula are among the highest in the nation. Because of the concentration of factories and other c...

Isabel Machado, "Carnival in Alabama: Marked Bodies and Invented Traditions in Mobile" (UP of Mississippi, 2023)

10 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Mobile is simultaneously a typical and unique city in the postwar United States. It was a quintessential boomtown during World War II. That prosperity...

Jeanne K. Firth, "Feeding New Orleans: Celebrity Chefs and Reimagining Food Justice" (UNC Press, 2023)

09 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, many high-profile chefs in New Orleans pledged to help their city rebound from the flooding. Several formed their own...

Chris Yogerst, "The Warner Brothers" (UP of Kentucky, 2023)

08 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

One of the oldest and most recognizable studios in Hollywood, Warner Bros. is considered a juggernaut of the entertainment industry. Since its formati...

Christian O. Paiz, "The Strikers of Coachella: A Rank-And-File History of the UFW Movement" (UNC Press, 2023)

08 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The past decades have borne witness to the United Farm Workers' (UFW) tenacious hold on the country's imagination. Since 2008, the UFW has lent its ra...

Erik Sherman, "Daybreak at Chavez Ravine: Fernandomania and the Remaking of the Los Angeles Dodgers" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)

06 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Fernando Valenzuela was only twenty years old when Tom Lasorda chose him as the Dodgers' opening-day starting pitcher in 1981. Born in the remote Mexi...

Kristal Brent Zook, "The Girl in the Yellow Poncho: A Memoir" (Duke UP, 2023)

05 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

At five years old, Kristal Brent Zook sat on the steps of a Venice Beach, California, motel trying to make sense of her white father’s abandonment, ...

Andrew Chan, "Why Mariah Carey Matters" (U Texas Press, 2023)

05 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why Mariah Carey Matters (University of Texas Press, 2023) examines the creative and complicated evolution of the musical artist. In the 1990s, Carey...

Al Davidoff, "Unionizing the Ivory Tower: Cornell Workers' Fifteen-Year Fight for Justice and a Living Wage" (ILR Press, 2023)

04 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Unionizing the Ivory Tower: Cornell Workers' Fifteen-Year Fight for Justice and a Living Wage (ILR Press, 2023) chronicles how a thousand low-paid cu...

Alexander Stille, "The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune" (FSG, 2023)

04 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the middle of the Ozzie and Harriet 1950s, the birth control pill was introduced and a maverick psychoanalytic institute, the Sullivan Institute fo...

John Szwed, "Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith" (FSG, 2023)

03 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Who was Harry Smith? Was he an anthropologist, a filmmaker, a painter? Was he a charlatan? A genius? Was he a moocher, a schmuck, a bum? As John Szwed...

Zachary Jacobson, "On Nixon's Madness: An Emotional History" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

03 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When Richard Nixon battled for the presidency in 1968, he did so with the knowledge that, should he win, he would face the looming question of how to ...

Kidada E. Williams, "I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

03 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The story of Reconstruction is often told from the perspective of the politicians, generals, and journalists whose accounts claim an outsized place in...

Diana W. Anselmo, "A Queer Way of Feeling: Girl Fans and Personal Archives of Early Hollywood" (U California Press, 2023)

02 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In A Queer Way of Feeling: Girl Fans and Personal Archives of Early Hollywood (University of California Press, 2023), Diana W. Anselmo queers the ea...

Kathryn J. Edin et al., "The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America" (Mariner Books, 2023)

01 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A sweeping and surprising new understanding of extreme poverty in America from the authors of the acclaimed $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in ...

Sarah R. Coleman, "The Walls Within: The Politics of Immigration in Modern America" (Princeton UP, 2023)

31 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah Coleman, an historian at Texas State University, is the author of an important and topical book about immigration policy in the United States. ...

Hava Rachel Gordon, "This Is Our School!: Race and Community Resistance to School Reform" (NYU Press, 2021)

31 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Parents, educators, and activists are passionately fighting to improve public schools around the country. In This Is Our School!: Race and Community ...

Tomiko Brown-Nagin, "Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality" (Knopf Doubleday, 2023)

30 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

With the US Supreme Court confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, “it makes sense to revisit the life and work of another Black woman who profoundly ...

Brooke L. Blower, "Americans in a World at War: Intimate Histories from the Crash of Pan Am's Yankee Clipper" (Oxford UP, 2023)

30 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On February 21, 1943, Pan American Airways’ celebrated seaplane—the Yankee Clipper—took off from New York and island-hopped its way across the A...

John Brackett, "Live Dead: The Grateful Dead, Live Recordings, and the Ideology of Liveness" (Duke UP, 2023)

30 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Grateful Dead were one of the most successful live acts of the rock era. Performing over 2300 shows between 1965 and 1995, the Grateful Dead’s r...

Ana Lucia Araujo, "Museums and Atlantic Slavery" (Routledge, 2021)

29 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ana Lucia Araujo's book Museums and Atlantic Slavery (Routledge, 2021) explores how slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, and enslaved people are repre...

Denise Gigante, "Book Madness: A Story of Book Collectors in America" (Yale UP, 2022)

29 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In February 1848, a book auction took place in Astor House, No. 7, on the corner of Broadway and Vesey in lower Manhattan, New York. By all accounts, ...

David Waldstreicher, "The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet's Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence" (FSG, 2023)

28 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Thy Power, O Liberty, make strong the weak, And (wond’rous instinct) Ethiopians speak. At the age of 19, Phillis Wheatley published the first book i...

Peter Heather and John Rapley, "Why Empires Fall: Rome, America, and the Future of the West" (Yale UP, 2023)

27 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Over the last three centuries, the West rose to dominate the planet. Then, around the start of the new millennium, history took a dramatic turn. Faced...

Beverly C. Tomek, "Slavery and Abolition in Pennsylvania" (Temple UP, 2021)

27 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In her concise history Slavery and Abolition in Pennsylvania (Temple UP, 2021), Beverly Tomek corrects the long-held notion that slavery in the Nort...

Karima K. Jeffrey-Legette, "Speculative Film and Moving Images by or about Black Women and Girls" (Lexington Books, 2022)

27 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Karima K. Jeffrey-Legette's book Speculative Film and Moving Images by or about Black Women and Girls (Lexington Books, 2022) examines depictions of...

Vanessa I. Corredera, "Reanimating Shakespeare's Othello in Post-Racial America" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)

27 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Vanessa I. Corredera’s book Reanimating Shakespeare's Othello in Post-Racial America (Edinburgh Univeristy Press, 2022) looks at how that seventee...

Asad L. Asad, "Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life" (Princeton UP, 2023)

27 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Because immigration is such a recurring-and divisive-topic in the United States, it is easy to assume that we understand what it means for an immigran...

Hollis Robbins, "Forms of Contention: Influence and the African American Sonnet Tradition" (U Georgia Press, 2020)

26 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As I learned from Hollis Robbins’s monograph Forms of Contention: Influence and the African American Sonnet Tradition (U Georgia Press, 2020), th...

Marisa Holmes, "Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This is Just Practice" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

26 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This is Just Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) is the first study of the processes and structures of the Occupy Wal...

Frederick W. Gooding Jr. and Eric S. Yellin, "Public Workers in Service of America: A Reader" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

26 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From white-collar executives to mail carriers, public workers meet the needs of the entire nation. In Public Workers in Service of America: A Reader ...

Frederick W. Gooding Jr. and Eric S. Yellin, "Public Workers in Service of America: A Reader" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

26 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From white-collar executives to mail carriers, public workers meet the needs of the entire nation. In Public Workers in Service of America: A Reader ...

Elly Fishman, "Refugee High: Coming of Age in America" (The New Press, 2021)

26 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lit Hub's Most Anticipated of 2021.  Winner of the Studs and Ida Terkel Award. A year in the life of a Chicago high school that has one of the high...

Juliana Hu Pegues, "Space-Time Colonialism: Alaska's Indigenous and Asian Entanglements" (UNC Press, 2021)

25 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As the enduring "last frontier," Alaska proves an indispensable context for examining the form and function of American colonialism, particularly in t...

Erica O. Turner, "Suddenly Diverse: How School Districts Manage Race and Inequality" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

25 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For the past five years, American public schools have enrolled more students identified as Black, Latinx, American Indian, and Asian than white. At th...

Mbaye Lo and Carl W. Ernst, "I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar Ibn Said's America" (UNC Press, 2023)

25 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Carl Ernst’s and Mbaye Lo’s new book I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar Ibn Said's America (UNC Press, 2023) is a fascin...

Chesya Burke, "Hero Me Not: The Containment of the Most Powerful Black, Female Superhero" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

25 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

First introduced in the pages of X-Men, Storm is probably the most recognized Black female superhero. She is also one of the most powerful characters...

The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI

25 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this 2014 episode from the Institute’s Vault, we hear from Betty Medsger. Medsger was a Washington Post reporter in March 1971, and received a ...

Cara Fitzpatrick, "The Death of Public School: How Conservatives Won the War Over Education in America" (Basic Books, 2023)

23 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

America has relied on public schools for 150 years, but the system is increasingly under attack. With declining enrollment and diminished trust in pub...

Postscript: Guns, Violence, and the Law: How Federal Courts are Trying to Figure Out the Second Amendment

22 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Two blockbuster cases came down in June of 2022. The Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen...

Lyndsie Bourgon, "Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods" (Little, Brown Spark, 2023)

22 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods (Little, Brown Spark, 2022), Lyndsie Bourgon takes us deep into the underbelly of the ...

Erin Raffety, "From Inclusion to Justice: Disability, Ministry, and Congregational Leadership" (Baylor UP, 2022)

22 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

American Christianity tends to view disabled persons as problems to be solved rather than people with experiences and gifts that enrich the church. Ch...

Janiece Johnson, "Convicting the Mormons: The Mountain Meadows Massacre in American Culture" (UNC Press, 2023)

22 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On September 11, 1857, a small band of Mormons led by John D. Lee massacred an emigrant train of men, women, and children heading west at Mountain Mea...

Liran Einav and Amy Finkelstein, "We've Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care" (Penguin, 2023)

21 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Few of us need convincing that the American health insurance system needs reform. But many of the existing proposals focus on expanding one relatively...

Christopher C. Sellers, "Race and the Greening of Atlanta: Inequality, Democracy, and Environmental Politics in an Ascendant Metropolis" (U Georgia Press, 2023)

21 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Race and the Greening of Atlanta: Inequality, Democracy, and Environmental Politics in an Ascendant Metropolis (U Georgia Press, 2023) turns an envi...

Morgan L. W. Hazelton et al., "The Elevator Effect: Contact and Collegiality in the American Judiciary" (Oxford UP, 2023)

21 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Does it matter if judges are nice to each other? The Elevator Effect: Contact and Collegiality in the American Judiciary (Oxford UP, 2023)argues tha...

Brooke Kroeger, "Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism" (Knopf, 2023)

21 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism (Knopf, 2023) is a representative history of the American women who surmounted every impediment put...

Jean M. Twenge, "Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future" (Atria, 2023)

20 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The United States is currently home to six generations of people: -the Silents, born 1925-1945 -Baby Boomers, born 1946-1964 -Gen X, born 1965-1979...

Peter Moore, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: Britain and the American Dream (1740–1776)" ( FSG, 2023)

20 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The most famous phrase in American history once looked quite different. "The preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness" was how Thom...

Becoming Justice Thomas

20 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On today’s podcast, we are changing things up a bit. Instead of interviewing the author of a recent book, I am interviewing another podcaster about ...

Samuel Moyn, "Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times" (Yale UP, 2023)

19 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

By the middle of the twentieth century, many liberals looked glumly at the world modernity had brought about, with its devastating wars, rising totali...

Michael R. Jin, "Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless: A Japanese American Diaspora in the Pacific" (Stanford UP, 2021)

19 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Michael R. Jin regarding his recently published book Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless: The Japan...

Kevin Landis, "One Public: New York’s Public Theater in the Era of Oskar Eustis" (Methuen Drama, 2022)

19 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Kevin Landis's One Public: New York’s Public Theater in the Era of Oskar Eustis (Methuen Drama, 2022) tells the story of the remarkable first 17...

Jennifer Keys Adair and Kiyomi Sánchez-Suzuki Colegrove, "Segregation by Experience: Agency, Racism, and Learning in the Early Grades" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

18 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Early childhood can be a time of rich discovery, a period when educators have an opportunity to harness their students’ fascination to create unique...

Stephen Aron, "Peace and Friendship: An Alternative History of the American West" (Oxford UP, 2022)

18 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The history of the American West has typically been told in one of two ways: as triumph, or as tragedy. Stephen Aron, accomplished scholar of the Wes...

Carl Van Ness, "The Making of Florida's Universities: Public Higher Education at the Turn of the Twentieth Century" (UP of Florida, 2023)

17 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Making of Florida's Universities: Public Higher Education at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (UP of Florida, 2023), Carl Van Ness describes...

Ramzi Fawaz, "The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics" (NYU Press, 2016)

17 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest is Ramzi Fawaz, the Romnes Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Published by NYU Press in 2016, The New Mutan...

Jennifer Ritterhouse, "Discovering the South: One Man's Travels through a Changing America in the 1930s" (UNC Press, 2017)

16 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

During the Great Depression, the American South was not merely "the nation's number one economic problem," as President Franklin Roosevelt declared. I...

Bobby J. Smith II, "Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement" (UNC Press, 2023)

16 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Bobby J. Smith II's book Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (UNC Press, 2023 )unearths a food story burie...

In Praise of Reason: Why Rationality Matters for Democracy

16 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why does reason matter, if (as many people seem to think) in the end everything comes down to blind faith or gut instinct? Why not just go with what y...

Lauren S. Foley, "On the Basis of Race: How Higher Education Navigates Affirmative Action Policies" (NYU Press, 2023)

16 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Diversity in higher education is under attack as the Supreme Court limits the use of race-conscious admissions practices at American colleges and uni...

Earl Cureton and Jake Uitti, "Earl the Twirl: My Life in Basketball" (McFarland, 2023)

16 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Earl Careton about his new book (co-authored with Jake Uitti), Earl the Twirl: My Life in Basketball (McFarland, 2023) Earl "The ...

Benjamin Y. Fong, "Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge" (Verso, 2023)

15 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Benjamin Y. Fong is author of the new book Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge, which was just released in July,...

Paratroopers in the Pacific: A Conversation with James Fenelon

15 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the final episode of Season 3, Annika sits down with James Fenelon, a veteran-turned-historian, who served in the Army for over a decade and is a ...

How Uber Disrupted Washington, D.C.: A Conversation with Katie Wells and Kafui Attoh

14 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Katie Wells, a Postdoctoral Fritz Fellow with Georgetown University's Tech and Society Initiative, and Kafui Attoh, Associate Professor of Urban Studi...

Nicholas Tochka, "Rocking in the Free World: Popular Music and the Politics of Freedom in Postwar America" (Oxford UP, 2023)

14 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Progressive and libertarian, anti-Communist and revolutionary, Democratic and Republican, quintessentially American but simultaneously universal. By t...

Julia Wertz, "Tenements, Towers & Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City" (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2017)

13 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tenements, Towers & Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2017) is a comically illustrated chronicle ...

Marsha Gordon, "Becoming the Ex-Wife: The Unconventional Life and Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott" (U California Press, 2023)

13 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Credited with popularizing the label "ex-wife" in 1929, Ursula Parrott wrote provocatively about divorcées, career women, single mothers, work-life b...

Keith A. Mayes, "The Unteachables: Disability Rights and the Invention of Black Special Education" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

13 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Unteachables: Disability Rights and the Invention of Black Special Education (U Minnesota Press, 2023) examines the overrepresentation of Black s...

Sophie Bjork-James, "The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism's Politics of the Family" (Rutgers UP, 2021)

12 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism's Politics of the Family (Rutgers University Press, 2021) provides an account of how a theology of the ...

Ashley Robertson Preston, "Mary Mcleod Bethune the Pan-Africanist" (UP of Florida, 2023)

12 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This book examines the Pan-Africanism of Mary McLeod Bethune through her work, which internationalized the scope of Black women's organizations to cre...

Donovan X. Ramsey, "When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era" (One World, 2023)

12 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s is arguably the least examined crisis in American history. Beginning with the myths inspired by Reagan's war...

Kris Marsh, "The Love Jones Cohort: Single and Living Alone in the Black Middle Class" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

12 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Drawing from stratification economics, intersectionality, and respectability politics, Kris Marsh's The Love Jones Cohort: Single and Living Alone i...

The Future of Underground/Sea Cables: A Discussion with Henry Farrell

12 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How much of US power is underground? We hear a lot about the US military assets used on land, on the sea, and in the air - but not much about what’s...

Michael J. Diamond, "Ruptures in the American Psyche: Containing Destructive Populism in Perilous Times" (Phoenix Publishing, 2022)

11 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Michael J. Diamond's book Ruptures in the American Psyche: Containing Destructive Populism in Perilous Times (Phoenix Publishing, 2022) describes Tr...

Charlotte Karem Albrecht, "Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling" (U California Press, 2023)

11 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Many of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who immigrated to the US beginning in the 1870s worked as peddlers. Men were able to transgress Syrian no...

Phillip Reid, "A Boston Schooner in the Royal Navy, 1768-1772: Commerce and Conflict in Maritime British America" (Boydell Press, 2023)

10 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The small Boston-built schooner Sultana served as a customs-enforcement interceptor on the North American eastern seaboard in the period leading up to...

Wendy A. Woloson, "Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

09 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why are our lives filled with so much stuff? In Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America (U Chicago Press, 2023), Wendy Woloson, Professor and C...

William J. Mann, "Bogie and Bacall: The Surprising True Story of Hollywood's Greatest Love Affair" (Harper, 2023)

09 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From the noted Hollywood biographer comes this celebration of the great American love story—the romance between Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart—...

Michell D. Jones and Elisabeth A. Nelson, "Besides, Who Would Believe a Prisoner?: Indiana Women's Carceral Institutions, 1848-1920" (New Press, 2023)

09 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What if prisoners were to write the history of their own prison? What might that tell them--and all of us--about the roots of the system that incarcer...

Postscript: Protecting the Public? Guns, Intimate Partner Violence, and the US Supreme Court

07 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Postscript invites scholars to react to contemporary political events and today’s podcast welcomes an expert on domestic violence and firearms law ...

Driving While Black: African Americans and the Automobile

07 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Gretchen Sorin, Director and Distinguished Professor of the Cooperstown Graduate Program at the State University of New York - Oneonta, talks about he...

Erika Marie Bsumek, "The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam: Infrastructures of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau" (U Texas Press, 2023)

06 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River provides electricity for some forty million people, and is one of the largest sources of water in the Ameri...

Andreas Killen, "Nervous Systems: Brain Science in the Early Cold War" (Harper, 2023)

06 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this eye-opening chronicle of scientific research on the brain in the early Cold War era, the acclaimed historian Andreas Killen traces the complex...

Landon Mascareñaz and Doannie Tran, "The Open System: Redesigning Education and Reigniting Democracy" ((Harvard Education Press, 2023)

06 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Landon Mascareñaz and Doannie Tran propose that, even as events of this decade have exposed stress points in existing top-down, closed systems within...

Daniel G Hummel, "The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation" (William B. Eerdmans, 2023)

05 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation (William B. Eerdmans, 2023), Daniel G. Humm...

Christine Keiner, "Deep Cut: Science, Power, and the Unbuilt Interoceanic Canal" (U Georgia Press, 2020)

05 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Atlantic-Pacific Central American sea-level canal is generally regarded as a spectacular failure. However, Deep Cut: Science, Power, and the Unbu...

Breaking Out: An Indian Woman's American Journey

04 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Padma Desai grew up in the 1930s in the provincial world of Surat, India, where she had a sheltered and strict upbringing in a traditional Gujarati An...