New Books in American Studies

Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right but... US Lies and Media Reporting in the 2003 Iraq War

27 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of International Horizons, journalist and UN director of Human Rights Watch Louis Charbonneau describes the US's government misinfor...

Andrea Friederici Ross, "Edith: The Rogue Rockefeller McCormick" (Southern Illinois UP, 2020)

27 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Young Edith and her siblings had access to the best educators in the world, but the girls were not taught how to handle the family money; that respons...

Kristin Hass, "Blunt Instruments: Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums, and Patriotic Practices" (Beacon Press, 2022)

26 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Blunt Instruments: Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums, and Patriotic Practices (Beacon Press, 2022) provides a field g...

E. Cram, "Violent Inheritance: Sexuality, Land, and Energy in Making the North American West" (U California Press, 2022)

25 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Violent Inheritance: Sexuality, Land, and Energy in Making the North American West (U California Press, 2022) deepens the analysis of settler coloni...

Katherine S. Newman and Elisabeth S Jacobs, "Moving the Needle: What Tight Labor Markets Do for the Poor" (U California Press, 2023)

25 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Katherine S. Newman and Elisabeth S Jacobs' book Moving the Needle: What Tight Labor Markets Do for the Poor (U California Press, 2023) is a timel...

Dominique A. Tobbell, "Dr. Nurse: Science, Politics, and the Transformation of American Nursing" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

24 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An analysis of the efforts of American nurses to establish nursing as an academic discipline and nurses as valued researchers in the decades after Wor...

Adam Sowards, "Making America's Public Lands: The Contested History of Conservation on Federal Lands" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)

24 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Over one quarter - some 640 million acres - of the United States consists of public land owned, not privately, but by the federal government, much of ...

Robin M. Morris, "Goldwater Girls to Reagan Women: Gender, Georgia, and the Growth of the New Right" (U Georgia Press, 2022)

23 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Goldwater Girls to Reagan Women: Gender, Georgia, and the Growth of the New Right (U Georgia Press, 2022) is a statewide study of women’s part in ...

Tom Zoellner, "Rim to River: Looking Into the Heart of Arizona" (U Arizona Press, 2023)

22 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tom Zoellner walked across the length of Arizona to come to terms with his home state. But the trip revealed more mountains behind the mountains. Rim ...

Present at the Creation: Edward Mead Earle and the Depression-Era Origins of Security Studies

22 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Edward Mead Earle was a historian, scholar, professor, and international relations expert; he was also a founding father of the field we know as Secur...

Leigh Goodmark, "Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism" (U California Press, 2023)

22 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Leigh Goodmark’s new book, Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism (U California Press, 2023), uses the st...

Nadia Abu El-Haj, "Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America" (Verso, 2022)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most recognizable tropes in American society in the past few decades is the scarred war veteran, returning from foreign lands with wounds b...

Melanie Heath, "Forbidden Intimacies: Polygamies at the Limits of Western Tolerance" (Stanford UP, 2023)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the past thirty years, polygamy has become a flashpoint of conflict as Western governments attempt to regulate certain cultural and religious pract...

Woody Holton, "Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution" (Simon and Schuster, 2021)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A “deeply researched and bracing retelling” (Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian) of the American Revolution, showing how the ...

Alvin Hall, "Driving the Green Book: A Road Trip Through the Living History of Black Resistance" (HarperOne, 2023)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For countless Americans, the open road has long been a place where dangers lurk. In the era of Jim Crow, Black travelers encountered locked doors, hos...

Daniel L. Hatcher, "Injustice, Inc.: How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor" (U California Press, 2023)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Injustice, Inc.: How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor (U California Press, 2023) exposes the ways in which justice systems...

Rose Marshack, "Play Like a Man: My Life in Poster Children" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

20 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Play Like a Man: My Life in Poster Children (University of Illinois Press, 2023), Poster Children bassist Rose Marshack details her life in the ...

Daniel Heath Justice and Jean M. O'Brien, "Allotment Stories: Indigenous Land Relations Under Settler Siege" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)

20 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Daniel Heath Justice and Jean M. O'Brien's book Allotment Stories: Indigenous Land Relations Under Settler Siege (U Minnesota Press, 2021) collects ...

China's Century? Why America's Edge Will Endure

20 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Much has been made of the rise of China's economy, and some fear that China will surpass the United States as the world's largest economy in the comin...

Patrick L. Schmidt, "Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science: The Rise and Fall of the Department of Social Relations" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022)

19 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Harvard's Department of Social Relations made history in the 1950s and 1960s as the most ambitious program in social science in the United States. Ded...

Magdalena J. Zaborowska, "James Baldwin’s Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile" (Duke UP, 2009)

18 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Between 1961 and 1971 James Baldwin spent extended periods of time in Turkey, where he worked on some of his most important books. In this first in-de...

Michael Walzer, "The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On 'Liberal' As an Adjective" (Yale UP, 2023)

18 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The national purpose of the American state is to realize and then sustain the democracy and the equality that was the promise of our founding. I belie...

Felicity Hwee-Hwa Chan, "Tensions in Diversity: Spaces for Collective Life in Los Angeles" (U Toronto Press, 2022)

18 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Urban landscapes are complex spaces of sociocultural diversity, characterized by narratives of both conviviality and conflict. As people with multiple...

Roy Schwartz, "Is Superman Circumcised?: The Complete Jewish History of the World’s Greatest Hero" (McFarland, 2021)

18 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Superman is the original superhero, an American icon, and arguably the most famous character in the world--and he's Jewish! Introduced in June 1938, t...

Jessica Wilson, "It's Always Been Ours: Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies" (Hachette Go, 2023)

17 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In It's Always Been Ours: Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies (Hachette Go, 2023) eating disorder specialist and storyteller Jessica Wilson ...

Roger Biles and Mark H. Rose, "A Good Place to Do Business: The Politics of Downtown Renewal Since 1945" (Temple UP, 2022)

15 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The “Pittsburgh Renaissance,” an urban renewal effort launched in the late 1940s, transformed the smoky rust belt city’s downtown. Working-class...

Bradford Vivian, "Campus Misinformation: The Real Threat to Free Speech in American Higher Education" (Oxford UP, 2022)

15 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

If we listen to the politicians and pundits, college campuses have become fiercely ideological spaces where students unthinkingly endorse a liberal or...

R. J. M. Blackett, "Samuel Ringgold Ward: A Life of Struggle" (Yale UP, 2023)

15 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Born on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Samuel Ringgold Ward (1817–c. 1869) escaped enslavement and would become a leading figure in the struggle for...

Tisa Wenger and Sylvester A. Johnson, "Religion and US Empire: Critical New Histories" (NYU Press, 2022)

15 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The United States has been an empire since the time of its founding, and this empire is inextricably intertwined with American religion. Religion and...

The Deception Dividend: FDR's Undeclared War

14 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sean Lynn-Jones, editor of International Security, interviews author John Schuessler, whose article "The Deception Dividend: FDR's Undeclared War" app...

Stephen Prothero, "God, the Bestseller: How One Editor Transformed American Religion a Book at a Time" (HarperOne, 2023)

14 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed religion scholar, Stephen Prothero, captures the compelling and unique saga of twentieth-century Amer...

Damian Alan Pargas, "Freedom Seekers: Fugitive Slaves in North America, 1800–1860" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

13 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Freedom Seekers: Fugitive Slaves in North America, 1800–1860 (Cambridge UP, 2021), Damian Alan Pargas introduces a new conceptualization of 'sp...

Traveling Black, A Story of Race and Resistance: A Conversation with Mia Bay

13 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Mia Bay, the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Chair in American History at the University of Pennsylvania, talks about her book Traveling Black: A Sto...

Cherished and Cursed: Toward a Social History of "The Catcher in the Rye"

13 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In light of J.D. Salinger's recent passing and on reflection of his literary contributions, The New England Quarterly took a trip back to its December...

Nicholas Carnes and Lilly J. Goren, "The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe" (UP of Kansas, 2022)

13 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (UP of Kansas, 2022), Drs. Nicholas Carnes and Lilly J. Goren ask what lessons does Marvel – a “...

Kelsey Klotz, "Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness" (Oxford UP, 2023)

12 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How can we—jazz fans, musicians, writers, and historians—understand the legacy and impact of a musician like Dave Brubeck? It is undeniable that B...

Susan J. Stanfield, "Rewriting Citizenship: Women, Race, and Nineteenth-Century Print Culture" (U Georgia Press, 2022)

12 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Rewriting Citizenship: Women, Race, and Nineteenth-Century Print Culture (U Georgia Press, 2022) provides an interdisciplinary approach to antebellum...

"Prettier Than They Used to Be”: Femininity, Fashion, and the Recasting of Radcliffe's Reputation, 1900-1950

12 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Mary Kelley, member of the NEQ editorial board, interviews Deirdre Clemente about her article "'Prettier Than They Used to Be': Femininity, Fashion, a...

Theresa Runstedtler, "Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation That Saved the Soul of the NBA" (Bold Type Books, 2023)

11 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Against a backdrop of ongoing resistance to racial desegregation and strident calls for Black Power, the NBA in the 1970s embodied the nation’s imag...

Brian Harker, "Sportin' Life: John W. Bubbles, an American Classic" (Oxford UP, 2022)

11 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

John W. Bubbles was an actor, singer, comedian, and most importantly, a dancer. Born in 1902, Bubbles was an innovator in the jazz tap style and half ...

Alberto García, "Abandoning Their Beloved Land: The Politics of Bracero Migration in Mexico" (U California Press, 2023)

11 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Abandoning Their Beloved Land: The Politics of Bracero Migration in Mexico (U California Press, 2023) offers an essential new history of the Bracero ...

Robin L. Owens, "'My Faith in the Constitution Is Whole': Barbara Jordan and the Politics of Scriptures" (Georgetown UP, 2022)

11 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

US Congresswoman Barbara Jordan is well-known as an interpreter and defender of the Constitution, particularly through her landmark speech during Rich...

A Yankee Rebellion? The Regulators, New England, and the New Nation

10 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Bill Fowler, Chair of NEQ's Board of Directors, speaks with Bob Gross about the events leading up to Shays's Rebellion and how they relate to today's ...

Jefferson Cowie, "Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power" (Basic Book, 2022)

10 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jefferson Cowie discusses his book Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power (Basic Books, 2022), beginning with the book’...

Marion Turner, "The Wife of Bath: A Biography" (Princeton UP, 2023)

10 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognisably real woman in English ...

Ross Melnick, "Hollywood's Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World" (Columbia UP, 2022)

10 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Beginning in the 1920s, audiences around the globe were seduced not only by Hollywood films but also by lavish movie theaters that were owned and oper...

T. R. Johnson, "New Orleans: A Writer's City" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

09 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

New Orleans is an indispensable element of America's national identity. As one of the most fabled cities in the world, it figures in countless novels,...

Chris Walley on Deindustrialization (EF, JP)

09 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On a blustery fall morning back in 2019, RTB welcomed Christine Walley, anthropologist and author of Exit Zero: Family and Class in Postindustrial C...

The Native American Veterans of Connecticut's Volunteer Regiments and the Union Army

08 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Bill Fowler, Chair of The New England Quarterly Board of Directors, and author David Naumec discuss his article "From Mashantucket to Appomattox: The ...

Lillian Colon, "Lilly: The First Latina Rockette" (Lilly Enterprises, 2021)

07 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lilly: The First Latina Rockette (Lilly Enterprises, 2021) is the improbable story of a Puerto Rican toddler, confined by her father for 15 years to ...

Ryan Donovan, "Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity" (Oxford UP, 2023)

07 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Broadway has body issues. What is a Broadway Body? Broadway has long preserved the ideology of the "Broadway Body": the hyper-fit, exceptionally able,...

Elizabeth Cobbs, "Fearless Women: Feminist Patriots from Abigail Adams to Beyoncé" (Harvard UP, 2023)

07 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In her latest book, Fearless Women: Feminist Patriots from Abigail Adams to Beyoncé (Harvard University Press, 2023), New York Times bestselling...

Nicola Rollock, "The Racial Code: Tales of Resistance and Survival" (Penguin, 2022)

05 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why do racial inequalities persist? In The Racial Code: Tales of Resistance and Survival (Penguin, 2023), Nicola Rollock, a Professor of Social Po...

Raina Lipsitz, "The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics" (Verso, 2022)

05 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The mushrooming rolls of the Democratic Socialists of America, Marxist explainers in Teen Vogue, and the outsized impact of the youngest woman ever el...

Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education

05 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Chris Gondek interviews author John Palfrey about how diversity and free expression can coexist on a modern campus. Safe spaces, trig...

Jovan Scott Lewis, "Violent Utopia: Dispossession and Black Restoration in Tulsa" (Duke UP, 2022)

05 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Violent Utopia: Dispossession and Black Restoration in Tulsa (Duke UP, 2022), Jovan Scott Lewis retells the history and afterlife of the 1921 Tul...

Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera, "Decolonizing American Spanish: Eurocentrism and the Limits of Foreignness in the Imperial Ecosystem" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2022)

04 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jeffrey joins the podcast to discuss the prevalence of English in the academic ecosystem and in research publishing. Jeffrey critiques the lackadaisic...

Thomas Aiello, "Dixieball: Race and Professional Basketball in the Deep South, 1947-1979" (U Tennessee Press, 2019)

03 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Dixieball: Race and Professional Basketball in the Deep South, 1947-1979 (U Tennessee Press, 2019), Thomas Aiello considers the cultural functio...

Marcus Rediker, "The Slave Ship: A Human History" (Penguin, 2008)

03 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this widely praised history of an infamous institution, award-winning scholar Marcus Rediker shines a light into the darkest corners of the British...

Are We Done with Higher Education Rankings?

02 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why do most of the institutions of higher education in the United States participate in a rankings system? What do the rankings do? And what does it m...

Steve Kemper, "Our Man in Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor" (Mariner Books, 2022)

02 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the years leading up to the Second World War, the U.S. was represented in Japan by Ambassador Joseph Grew: born from a patrician family, Harvard-ed...

Celeste Vaughan Curington et al., "The Dating Divide: Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance" (U California Press, 2021)

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Dating Divide: Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance (U California Press, 2021) is the first comprehensive look at "digital-sexual racism,...

Damien M. Sojoyner, "Joy and Pain: A Story of Black Life and Liberation in Five Albums" (U California Press, 2022)

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This highly original story reflects on how the carceral state shapes daily life for young Black people--and how Black Americans resist, find joy, and ...

Margaret Hall, "Gemignani: Life and Lessons from Broadway and Beyond" (Applause Books, 2022)

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Margaret Hall's Gemignani: Life and Lessons from Broadway and Beyond (Applause Books, 2022) is the definitive book on Broadway's greatest music dir...

Richard McGahey, "Unequal Cities: Overcoming Anti-Urban Bias to Reduce Inequality in the United States" (Columbia UP, 2023)

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Cities are central to prosperity: they are hubs of innovation and growth. However, the economic vitality of wealthy cities is marred by persistent and...

Lerone A. Martin, "The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism" (Princeton UP, 2023)

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On a Sunday morning in 1966, a group of white evangelicals dedicated a stained glass window to J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI director was not an evangelica...

Melvyn P. Leffler, "Confronting Saddam Hussein: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq" (Oxford UP, 2023)

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

America's decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 is arguably the most important foreign policy choice of the entire post-Cold War era. Nearly two decad...

Mapping the American Right: A Conversation with the American Enterprise Institute’s Robert Doar

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Annika sits down with Robert Doar, president of the American Enterprise Institute, one of Washington D.C.'s most prominent think-tanks, to discuss the...

What a City Is for: Remaking the Politics of Displacement

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Matt Hern began to examine urban displacement when he first encountered an empty lot in the northeast sector of Portland, OR. This corner was the site...

Saida Grundy, "Respectable: Politics and Paradox in Making the Morehouse Man" (U California Press, 2022)

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How does it feel to be groomed as the "solution" to a national Black male "problem"? This is the guiding paradox of Respectable: Politics and Paradox...

Helena Hansen et al., "Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America" (U California Press, 2023)

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the past two decades, media images of the surprisingly white “new face” of the US opioid crisis abounded. But why was the crisis so white? Some...

The Story of American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada

27 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The idea of moving to Canada figures prominently in the imagination of many disaffected Americans. Most recently, it was comedian Marc Maron who said ...

Leslie M. Alexander, "Fear of a Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States" (U Illinois Press, 2022)

27 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The emergence of Haiti as a sovereign Black nation lit a beacon of hope for Black people throughout the African diaspora. Leslie M. Alexander’s stud...

Lara Gabrielle, "Captain of Her Soul: The Life of Marion Davies" (U California Press, 2022)

27 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From Marion Davies's humble days in Brooklyn to her rise to fame alongside press baron William Randolph Hearst, the public life story of the film star...

Jonathan W. White and Lydia J. Davis, ed., "My Work Among the Freedmen: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of Harriet M. Buss" (U Virginia Press, 2021)

26 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Between 1863 and 1871, Harriet M. Buss of Sterling, Massachusetts, taught former slaves in three different regions of the South, in coastal South Caro...

Caroline Dodds Pennock, "On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe" (Knopf, 2023)

26 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe (Knopf, 2023) by Dr. Caroline Dodds Pennock presents a landmark work of narrative histor...

Jen B. Larson, "Hit Girls: Women of Punk in the USA, 1975-1983" (Feral House, 2022)

26 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Hit Girls: Women of Punk in the USA, 1975-1983 (Feral House, 2023), Jen B. Larson takes readers throughout the United States on a punk history l...

Gary Alan Fine, "Fair Share: Senior Activism, Tiny Publics, and the Culture of Resistance" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

26 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

If you’ve ever been to a protest or been involved in a movement for social change, you have likely experienced a local culture, one with slogans, ja...

Ron Hirschbein and Amin Asfari, "Jews and Muslims in the White Supremacist Conspiratorial Imagination" (Routledge, 2023)

26 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Supremacists imagine that Jews and Muslims secretly strive to replace white, European civilization with an unspeakable tyranny. The authors, a Jew and...

Mary Crossley, "Embodied Injustice: Race, Disability, and Health" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

26 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Black people and people with disabilities in the United States are distinctively disadvantaged in their encounters with the health care system. These ...

Stephen Bullivant, "Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America" (Oxford UP, 2022)

26 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The United States is in the midst of a religious revolution. Or, perhaps it is better to say a non-religious revolution. Around a quarter of US adults...

Mitchell Schwarzer, "Hella Town: Oakland's History of Development and Disruption" (U California Press, 2022)

26 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Oakland grew up on the shadow of the dynamo of the nineteenth century West, always the "other" city on San Francisco Bay.  But as Mitchell Schwarzer,...

Britni de la Cretaz and Lyndsey D'Arcangelo, "Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League" (Bold Type Books, 2021)

25 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today we are joined by Frankie de la Cretaz, a sports journalist whose work focuses on the intersection of sport and gender, and one of the authors al...

Claire Bond Potter, "Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy" (Basic Books, 2020)

25 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

With fake news on Facebook, trolls on Twitter, and viral outrage everywhere, it's easy to believe that the internet changed politics entirely. In Pol...

Gesine Bullock-Prado, "A Vermont Table: Recipes for All (Six) Seasons" (Countryman Press, 2023)

25 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Vermont—arguably the OG farm-to-table state—is celebrated through 100+ recipes and stories from celebrated pastry chef Gesine Bullock-Prado. When ...

Bernard D. Geoghegan, "Code: From Information Theory to French Theory" (Duke UP, 2023)

25 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan traces the shared intellectual and political history of computer scientists, cyberneticists, anthropologists, linguists, a...

Ian C. Hartman and David Reamer, "Black Lives in Alaska: A History of African Americans in the Far Northwest" ( U Washington Press, 2022)

24 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The history of Black Alaskans runs deep and spans generations. Decades before statehood and earlier even than the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s, Bla...

Ashley Brown, "Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson" (Oxford UP, 2023)

24 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From her start playing paddle tennis on the streets of Harlem as a young teenager to her eleven Grand Slam tennis wins to her professional golf career...

The Future of Democratic Capitalism: A Discussion with Martin Wolf

24 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Does China show that capitalism works better without democracy? What can be done to secure the future of open societies in which there is wealth, tole...

Jeffrey J. Matthews, "Colin Powell: Imperfect Patriot" (U Notre Dame Press, 2019)

24 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Until he passed away in 2021, Colin Powell was revered as one of America's most trusted and admired leaders. Jeffrey J. Matthews' Colin Powell: Imper...

Leonard C. Spitale, "Victorine Du Pont: The Force Behind the Family" (U Delaware Press, 2022)

24 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Victorine Elizabeth du Pont, the first child of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont and his wife Sophie, was seven years old when her family emigrated to Amer...

John Vinci, "Reconstructing the Garrick: Adler and Sullivan's Lost Masterpiece" (Alphawood Exhibitions, 2021)

23 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For six months in 1961, Richard Nickel, John Vinci, and David Norris salvaged the interior and exterior ornamentation of the Garrick Theater, Adler & ...

David H. Price, "The American Surveillance State: How the US Spies on Dissent" (Pluto Press, 2022)

23 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When the possibility of wiretapping first became known to Americans they were outraged. Now, in our post-9/11 world, it's accepted that corporations a...

The Business of the Early NHL

22 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Greg Marchildon interviews J. Andrew Ross about his book Joining the Clubs: The Business of the National Hockey League, 1917-1945 (University of Syrac...

Deborah Holt Larkin, "A Lovely Girl: The Tragedy of Olga Duncan and the Trial of California's Most Notorious Killer" (Pegasus Crime, 2022)

22 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In A Lovely Girl: The Tragedy of Olga Duncan and the Trial of California's Most Notorious Killer (Pegasus Crime, 2022), Deborah Larkin tells the inc...

Kevin Bryant, "Spies on the Sidelines: The High-Stakes World of NFL Espionage" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)

22 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Kevin Bryant's Spies on the Sidelines: The High-Stakes World of NFL Espionage (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) is first book to fully explore the extra...

Tara Zahra, "Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars" (Norton, 2023)

22 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Before the First World War, enthusiasm for a borderless world reached its height. International travel, migration, trade, and progressive projects on ...

Elżbieta Janicka and Michael Steinlauf, "This Was Not America: A Wrangle Through Jewish-Polish-American History" (Cherry Orchard Books, 2022)

22 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From fleeing the Warsaw Ghetto and living underground to fighting for social justice in 1960s' Seattle and helping smash the communist system in 1980s...

Pete Millwood, "Improbable Diplomats: How Ping-Pong Players, Musicians, and Scientists Remade US-China Relations" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

21 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1971, Americans made two historic visits to China that would transform relations between the two countries. One was by US official Henry Kissinger;...

David Bond, "Negative Ecologies: Fossil Fuels and the Discovery of the Environment" (U California Press, 2022)

21 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

So much of what we know of clean water, clean air, and now a stable climate rests on how fossil fuels first disrupted them. Negative Ecologies: Fossi...