New Books in American Studies

Michel Jacques Gagné, "Thinking Critically about the Kennedy Assassination: Debunking the Myths and Conspiracy Theories" (Routledge, 2022)

21 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As we approach the 60th anniversary of the violent public assassination of President John F. Kennedy, over half of all Americans surveyed continue to ...

Anna Zeide, "US History in 15 Foods" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

20 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From whiskey in the American Revolution to Spam in WWII, food reveals a great deal about the society in which it exists. Selecting 15 foods that repre...

Joseph Plaster, "Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco's Tenderloin" (Duke UP, 2023)

20 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco's Tenderloin (Duke UP, 2023), Joseph Plaster explores the informal support netwo...

Zachary M. Schrag, "The Fires of Philadelphia: Citizen-Soldiers, Nativists, and the 1844 Riots Over the Soul of a Nation" (Pegasus, 2021)

20 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Zachary M. Schrag's The Fires of Philadelphia: Citizen-Soldiers, Nativists, and the 1844 Riots Over the Soul of a Nation (Pegasus, 2021) is a grip...

Lynn Cullen, "The Woman with the Cure" (Berkley Books, 2023)

19 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The essential contribution of The Woman with the Cure (Berkley Books, 2023) can be summarized in one sentence: like most of its future readers (I as...

Gerald F. Goodwin, "Race in the Crucible of War: African American Servicemen and the War in Vietnam" (U Massachusetts Press, 2023)

19 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When African American servicemen went to fight in the Vietnam War, discrimination and prejudice followed them. Even in a faraway country, their milita...

Nicholas Mirzoeff, "White Sight: Visual Politics and Practices of Whiteness" (MIT Press, 2023)

19 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From the author of How to See the World comes a new history of white supremacist ways of seeing—and a strategy for dismantling them. White suprema...

Ying Zhu, "Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Movie Market" (New Press, 2022)

18 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

With her book Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Movie Market (New Press, 2022), media scholar Ying Zhu explores the 100+ ...

A History of the Métis Nation

18 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Indigenous rights litigator Jean Teillet on her book The Northwest is our Mother: The story of Lou...

Lisa Hajjar, "The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight Against Torture" (U California Press, 2022)

18 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight against Torture (University of California Press, 2022) by Dr. Lisa Hajjar examines how hundreds of lawyers mo...

Laura Janet Feller, "Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia: Powhatan People and the Color Line" (U Oklahoma Press, 2022)

17 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Spanning a century of fraught history, Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia: Powhatan People and the Color Line (University of Oklahoma Press, 2022...

Victor Roy, "Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines" (U California Press, 2023)

17 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines (U California Press, 2023) takes readers into the struggle over a medical...

Andrea G. McDowell, "We the Miners: Self-Government in the California Gold Rush" (Harvard UP, 2022)

17 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When miners arrived in California seeking their fortune during the gold rush of the 1840s and early 1850s, they encountered a place with few existing ...

Stephen F. Knott, "Coming to Terms with John F. Kennedy" (UP of Kansas, 2022)

16 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Political Scientist and presidential scholar Stephen Knott has a new book specifically focusing on the 35th president, John F. Kennedy. This book is ...

Sarah Foss, "On Our Own Terms: Development and Indigeneity in Cold War Guatemala" (UNC Press, 2022)

16 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

During the Cold War, U.S. intervention in Latin American politics, economics, and society grew in scope and complexity, with diplomatic legacies evide...

Elisabeth Eittreim, "Teaching Empire: Native Americans, Filipinos, and Us Imperial Education 1879-1918" (UP of Kansas, 2019)

16 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

At the turn of the twentieth century, the US government viewed education as one sure way of civilizing “others” under its sway—among them Americ...

Philip Nel, "Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books" (Oxford UP, 2017)

16 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Racism is resilient, duplicitous, and endlessly adaptable, so it is no surprise that America is again in a period of civil rights activism. A signific...

The Future of the Liberal Order: A Discussion with James E. Cronin

16 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Has the liberal order been taken for granted? The post war consensus and the impact of the cold war may have helped establish a way of doing politics ...

Matthew S. Henry, "Hydronarratives: Water, Environmental Justice, and a Just Transition" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)

15 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The story of water in the United States is one of ecosystemic disruption and social injustice. From the Standing Rock Indian Reservation and Flint, Mi...

Labor Journalism, Farmworkers, and Reynolds Tobacco with Victoria Bouloubasis

15 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Journalist Victoria Bouloubasis discusses her career reporting on agricultural and food labor in North Carolina, her approach to labor journalism, and...

Kathy E. Ferguson, "Letterpress Revolution: The Politics of Anarchist Print Culture" (Duke UP, 2023)

15 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

While the stock image of the anarchist as a masked bomber or brick thrower prevails in the public eye, a more representative figure should be a printe...

Molly H. Bassett and Natalie Avalos, "Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes" (Equinox Publishing, 2022)

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes (Equinox Publishing, 2022) edited by Molly H. Bassett and Natalie Avalos aims to answer many of the q...

Lisa Haushofer, "Wonder Foods: The Science and Commerce of Nutrition" (U California Press, 2022)

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From Gail Borden’s meat biscuit to John Harvey Kellogg’s peptogenic foods for race betterment and Fleishmann’s yeast as both technology of empir...

Lauron J. Kehrer, "Queer Voices in Hip Hop: Cultures, Communities, and Contemporary Performance" (U Michigan Press, 2022)

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Notions of hip hop authenticity, as expressed both within hip hop communities and in the larger American culture, rely on the construction of the rapp...

The History of Student Loans in the United States

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, an associate professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, talks about her book, Indentured Students: How Government-Gua...

Malcolm Harris, "Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World" (Little, Brown, 2023)

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Palo Alto is nice. The weather is temperate, the people are educated, rich, healthy, enterprising. Remnants of a hippie counterculture have synthesize...

Helene Stapinski and Bonnie Siegler, "The American Way: A True Story of Nazi Escape, Superman, and Marilyn Monroe" (Simon & Schuster, 2023)

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The American Way: A True Story of Nazi Escape, Superman, and Marilyn Monroe (Simon & Schuster, 2023) Helene Stapinski and Bonnie Siegler tell how...

Maya Phillips, "Nerd: Adventures in Fandom from This Universe to the Multiverse" (Atria Books, 2022)

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When Maya Phillips first saw the opening of Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, she knew her life would change forever. She then spent her ...

American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D

13 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Eric Hintz, a historian and fellowship coordinator with the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian Institution’...

Lee D. Baker, "From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954" (U California Press, 1998)

13 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On today’s podcast we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the publication of Dr. Lee D. Baker’s book From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and ...

Leigh Campbell-Hale, "Remembering Ludlow But Forgetting the Columbine: The 1927-1928 Colorado Coal Strike" (U Colorado Press, 2023)

13 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Remembering Ludlow But Forgetting the Columbine: The 1927-1928 Colorado Coal Strike (U Colorado Press, 2023) examines the causes, context, and legac...

How Do We Treat Opioid Addiction?

13 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Mark Parrino has been involved with the delivery of health care and treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) since 1974. As the president of the Ameri...

Gun-Detecting AI, Infrastructure, and Bureaucracy

12 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Aaron Gordon, Senior Writer at Motherboard, Vice’s science and technology website, talks about his co-authored article, “‘The Least Safe Day’:...

Winston James, "Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik" (Columbia UP, 2022)

11 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

One of the foremost Black writers and intellectuals of his era, Claude McKay (1889–1948) was a central figure in Caribbean literature, the Harlem Re...

Mike Westhoff, "Figure It Out: My Thirty-Two-Year Journey While Revolutionizing Pro Football's Special Teams" (Mascot Books, 2022)

11 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Simply put, Mike Westhoff is the greatest special teams coach in National Football League history. Sharp-witted, creative, and intensely focused, West...

Marvin N. Olasky and Leah Savas, "The Story of Abortion in America: A Street-Level History, 1652-2022" (Crossway, 2023)

11 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Abortion is an issue like no other. Our attitudes towards it and how we define when life begins determine the very words we use when discussing aborti...

ALICE and Economic Hardship in the United States

11 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stephanie Hoopes, National Director of United for ALICE, a research center founded at United Way of Northern New Jersey, talks about the ALICE program...

Benjamin Hoy, "A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada-United States Border Across Indigenous Lands" (Oxford UP, 2021)

11 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada–United States Border across Indigenous Lands (Oxford UP, 2021), is the recipient of the AHA’s Alber...

The Future of the News: A Discussion with Roger Mosey

11 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What is the future of news? In the twentieth century Western-educated journalists championed impartial, unbiased news – which always seemed rather o...

Hannah Noel, "Deflective Whiteness: Coopting Black and Latinx Identity Politics" (Ohio State UP, 2022)

10 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Deflective Whiteness: Coopting Black and Latinx Identity Politics (Ohio State UP, 2022), Hannah Noel repositions Whiteness studies in relation to...

Kate Masur, "Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction" (Norton, 2021)

10 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states enacted laws that ...

We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States

09 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s book is: We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States. The “Dreamer narrative” celebrate...

Energy Costs, Poverty, and Race

09 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Destenie Nock, an assistant professor in the Engineering and Public Policy and Civil and Environmental Engineering Departments at Carnegie Mellon Univ...

Bruce Kuklick, "Fascism Comes to America: A Century of Obsession in Politics and Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From the time Mussolini took power in Italy in 1922, Americans have been obsessed with and brooded over the meaning of fascism and how it might migrat...

Dianne M. Stewart, "Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African-American Marriage" (Seal Press, 2020)

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

According to the 2010 US census, more than seventy percent of Black women in America are unmarried. Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African...

Leslie Bow, "Racist Love: Asian Abstraction and the Pleasures of Fantasy" (Duke UP, 2022)

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Racist Love: Asian Abstraction and the Pleasures of Fantasy (Duke UP, 2022), Leslie Bow traces the ways in which Asian Americans become objects ...

Arthur Bovino, "Buffalo Everything: A Guide to Eating in Nickel City with 50 Recipes" (Countryman Press, 2018)

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Buffalo isn't just a city full of great wings. There is a great hot dog tradition, from Greek- originated "Texas red hots" to year-round charcoal-gril...

M. V. Hood and Seth C. McKee, "Rural Republican Realignment in the Modern South: The Untold Story" (U South Carolina Press, 2022)

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Beginning with the Dixiecrat Revolt of 1948 and extending through the 2020 election cycle, political scientists M.V. Hood III and Seth C. McKee trace ...

Francis M. Carroll, "America and the Making of an Independent Ireland: A History" (NYU Press, 2021)

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On Easter Day 1916, more than a thousand Irishmen stormed Dublin city center, seizing the General Post Office building and reading the Proclamation fo...

How a California Electricity Utility Caused Deadly Wildfires

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Journalist Katherine Blunt, who writes about renewable energy and utilities for the Wall Street Journal, talks about her new book, California Burning:...

Ben Burgis, "Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters" (Zero Books, 2022)

07 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters (Zero Books, 2022), Ben Burgis reminds readers about what wa...

Erin in the Morning: A Interview with Erin Reed, LGBTQ+ Activist and Substacker

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today I interview Erin Reed. Reed is an activist, public speaker, and writer across multiple platforms, including a Substack newsletter, all of which...

Where is the Left? The Rise and Decline of Social Democratic Movements

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This week on International Horizons, David Abraham from the University of Miami discusses the origins of social democratic parties in Europe and the p...

Yu Tokunaga, "Transborder Los Angeles: An Unknown Transpacific History of Japanese-Mexican Relations" (U California Press, 2022)

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Focusing on Los Angeles farmland during the years between the Immigration Act of 1924 and the Japanese Internment in 1942, Transborder Los Angeles: A...

Steven Hyden, "Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation" (Hachette Books, 2022)

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ever since Pearl Jam first blasted onto the Seattle grunge scene three decades ago with their debut album, Ten, they have sold 85M+ albums, performed...

Deep Cuts: Classic Rock and Hair Metal with Professor and Guitarist Jesse Kavadlo

05 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jesse Kavadlo is the classic “renaissance man” – literature and humanities professor, author of acclaimed books and articles, President of the ...

Adam Elder, "New Kids in the World Cup: The Totally Late '80s and Early '90s Tale of the Team That Changed American Soccer Forever" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)

05 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1990, though no one knew it then, a fearless group of players changed the sport of soccer in the United States forever. Young, bronzed, and mullete...

Emily Strasser, "Half-Life of a Secret: Reckoning with a Hidden History" (UP of Kentucky, 2023)

05 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1942, the US government began construction on a sixty-thousand-acre planned community named Oak Ridge in a rural area west of Knoxville, Tennessee....

Gabriel Glickman, "US-Egypt Diplomacy Under Johnson: Nasser, Komer, and the Limits of Personal Diplomacy" (Bloombury, 2021)

05 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What happens to policies when a president dies in office? Do they get replaced by the new president, or do advisers carry on with the status quo? In ...

Reclaiming a Lost Vision of Feminism: A Conversation with Erika Bachiochi

04 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The overturning of Roe v. Wade has led to a flurry of commentary and wondering, "Where next?" But, it also begs deeper questions: what is the history ...

Richard Overy, "Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945" (Viking, 2022)

04 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Richard Overy sets out in Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945 (Viking, 2022) to recast the way in which we view the Second World War a...

H. Jefferson Powell, "The Practice of American Constitutional Law" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

03 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What areas of our lives are governed by constitutional law? When asked about what constitutional law is, Americans tend to think of notable Supreme Co...

Truth, Fiction, and Student Loan Forgiveness: A Conversation with Beth Akers

02 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

With the Biden Administration's student loan relief coming down the pike, Annika sits down with Dr. Beth Akers, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterp...

Michael Lawrence Dickinson, "Almost Dead: Slavery and Social Rebirth in the Black Urban Atlantic, 1680-1807" (U Georgia Press, 2022)

02 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Beginning in the late seventeenth century and concluding with the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, Almost Dead: Slavery and Social Rebirth in t...

Clare Forstie, "Queering the Midwest: Forging LGBTQ Community" (NYU Press, 2022)

01 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Drag shows that test the capacity of bars persist alongside wishes for stronger community among River City's LGBTQ population. In this examination of ...

Derrick Darby, "A Realistic Blacktopia: Why We Must Unite to Fight" (Oxford UP, 2022)

01 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the United States, unjust disparities in things like income, opportunity, health, safety, and education tightly track racial categorizations of the...

Inventing American Telecommunications

01 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Historian Richard John, professor of journalism at Columbia University, talks about his book, Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications, w...

Missing: Men at Work

31 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Over six million prime-age men are neither working nor looking for work; America's low unemployment rate hides the fact that many men have dropped out...

J. Brent Morris, "Dismal Freedom: A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp" (UNC Press, 2022)

31 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The massive and foreboding Great Dismal Swamp sprawls over 2,000 square miles and spills over parts of Virginia and North Carolina. From the early sev...

Money or Meaning? A Discussion on Choice, Restlessness, and Higher Education

30 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What kinds of tools do we need to make big decisions, and why aren't our universities training us to make them? Are universities doing students a diss...

Zachary Shore, "This Is Not Who We Are: America’s Struggle Between Vengeance and Virtue" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

29 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What kind of country is America? Zachary Shore tackles this polarizing question by spotlighting some of the most morally muddled matters of WWII. Shou...

Vona Groarke, "Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O'Hara" (NYU Press, 2022)

29 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ellen O'Hara was a young immigrant from Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century who, with courage and resilience, made a life for herself in New ...

Robin Bartram, "Stacked Decks: Building Inspectors and the Reproduction of Urban Inequality" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

29 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Though we rarely see them at work, building inspectors have the power to significantly shape our lives through their discretionary decisions. The buil...

Above the Veil: Beyond Segregationism and Assimilationism

29 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The work of Ibram X. Kendi distinguishes between two forms of racism: segregationism and assimilationism. Segregationists argue that some groups are i...

Collaborations between Cold War Scientists and Artists

29 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Patrick McCray, Professor of History at University of California, Santa Barbara, talks about his book, Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Art...

David S. Painter and Gregory Brew, "The Struggle for Iran: Oil, Autocracy, and the Cold War, 1951-1954" (UNC Press, 2023)

28 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Beginning with the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in spring 1951 and ending with its reversal following the overthrow of Prime Minister M...

Anthony Reed, "Soundworks: Race, Sound, and Poetry in Production" (Duke UP, 2020)

28 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Soundworks: Race, Sound, and Poetry in Production (Duke UP, 2020), Anthony Reed argues that studying sound requires conceiving it as process and ...

Michael T. Rizzi, "Jesuit Colleges and Universities in the United States: A History" (Catholic U of America Press, 2022)

28 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jesuit Colleges and Universities in the United States: A History (Catholic University of America Press, 2022) provides a comprehensive history of J...

Stephen C. Finley, "In and Out of This World: Material and Extraterrestrial Bodies in the Nation of Islam" (Duke UP, 2022)

27 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

With In and Out of This World: Material and Extraterrestrial Bodies in the Nation of Islam (Duke University Press, 2022), Stephen C. Finley, Inaugu...

Shaun M. Anderson, "The Black Athlete Revolt: The Sport Justice Movement in the Age Of #BlackLivesMatter" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)

27 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the age of social media, athletes have a powerful influence like never before. Many Black athletes have used that power in positive ways, galvanizi...

Elizabeth Kelly Gray, "Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America, 1776-1914" (Oxford UP, 2023)

27 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Habitual drug use in the United States is at least as old as the nation itself. Elizabeth Kelly Gray's book Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America,...

Kevin Munger, "Generation Gap: Why the Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture" (Columbia UP, 2022)

25 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Generation Gap: Why the Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture (Columbia UP, 2022), Kevin Munger marshals novel data and sur...

Frank Wolff, "Yiddish Revolutionaries in Migration: The Transnational History of the Jewish Labour Bund" (Haymarket Books, 2021)

25 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Frank Wolff's ground-breaking Yiddish Revolutionaries in Migration: The Transnational History of the Jewish Labour Bund (Haymarket Books, 2021) in...

Eric Adler, "The Battle of the Classics: How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today" (Oxford UP, 2020)

25 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

These are troubling days for the humanities. In response, a recent proliferation of works defending the humanities has emerged. But, taken together, w...

Sheri Brenden, "Break Point: Two Minnesota Athletes and the Road to Title IX" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)

25 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Break Point: Two Minnesota Athletes and the Road to Title IX (University of Minnesota Press, 2022), Sheri Brenden examines how two teenage girls...

Oline Eaton, "Finding Jackie: The Second Act of America's First Lady" (Diversion Books, 2023)

24 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In her new book, Finding Jackie: A Life Reinvented (Diversion Books, 2023), scholar and writer Oline Eaton examines the story of an era's biggest...

The History of Temp Work

24 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Historian Louis Hyman, professor and director of the Institute of Workplace Studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations...

Elizabeth Farfán-Santos, "Undocumented Motherhood: Conversations on Love, Trauma, and Border Crossing" (U Texas Press, 2022)

24 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Claudia Garcia crossed the border because her toddler, Natalia, could not hear. Leaving behind everything she knew in Mexico, Claudia recounts the ter...

Gregory Pfitzer, "'Fame Is Not Just for the Fellas': Female Renown and the Childhood of Famous Americans Series" (U Massachusetts Press, 2022)

24 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In “Fame is Not Just for the Fellas”: Female Renown and the Childhood of Famous Americans Series (University of Massachusetts Press, 2022), Greg...

How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities

23 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Davarian L. Baldwin is a professor of American studies and founding director of the Smart Cities Lab at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. His latest ...

Climate of Denial: Why Do Americans Doubt Climate Change?

23 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Human-caused climate change is real and growing in impact. Yet many Americans see climate change as a belief that they can opt out of. Two belief stru...

Dick Weissman, "Bob Dylan's New York: A Historic Guide" (SUNY Press, 2022)

22 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

New York has long been a city where people go to reinvent themselves. And since the dawn of the twentieth century, New York City’s Greenwich Village...

Amy Kohout, "Taking the Field: Soldiers, Nature, and Empire on American Frontiers" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)

22 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The US military didn't just conquer its way across the US West and the Pacific - it also collected and categorized across these spaces too. In Taking...

Progressive Souls: Religion and the Pursuit of a Just Society (Part 2)

22 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Religious people have played an important role in progressive politics in the US for its entire history. Contemporary leftists should look to build br...

Progressive Souls: Religion and the Pursuit of a Just Society (Part 1)

21 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Religious people have played an important role in progressive politics in the US for its entire history. Contemporary leftists should look to build br...

Helen Anne Curry, "Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction" (U California Press, 2022)

21 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction (U California Press, 2022), historian Helen Anne Curry investigates more th...

Adam Lajeunesse, "Lock, Stock, and Icebergs: A History of Canada's Arctic Maritime Sovereignty" (UBC Press, 2016)

21 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In April 1988, after years of failed negotiations over the status of the Northwest Passage, Brian Mulroney gave Ronald Reagan a globe, pointed to the ...

Karyne E. Messina, "Resurgence of Global Populism: A Psychoanalytic Study of Projective Identification, Blame-Shifting and the Corruption of Democracy" (Routledge, 2022)

21 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Resurgence of Global Populism: A Psychoanalytic Study of Projective Identification, Blame-Shifting and the Corruption of Democracy (Routledge, 2022) ...

Daniel F. Runde, "The American Imperative: Reclaiming Global Leadership through Soft Power" (Bombardier, 2023)

20 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The American Imperative: Reclaiming Global Leadership through Soft Power (Bombardier, 2023), Washington insider Daniel Runde makes the case for ...

Drew Morton, "After Midnight: Watchmen After Watchmen" (U Mississippi Press, 2022)

20 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen fundamentally altered the perception of American comic books and remains one of the medium’s greatest...