New Books in American Studies
Episodes
Viola Franziska Müller, "Escape to the City: Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum Urban South" (UNC Press, 2022)
20 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Escape to the City: Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum Urban South (UNC Press, 2022), Viola Franziska Müller examines runaways who camouflaged t...
Emily A. Owens, "Consent in the Presence of Force: Sexual Violence and Black Women's Survival in Antebellum New Orleans" (UNC Press, 2023)
19 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In histories of enslavement and in Black women's history, coercion looms large in any discussion of sex and sexuality. At a time when sexual violence ...
The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature
19 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s book is: The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature, which is the 2022 Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award Winner. Th...
We Shall Overcome: Sister Thea Bowman and the Black Catholic Experience
18 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Though we are all one—“there is neither Jew nor Greek,” St. Paul wrote to the Galatians—each of us brings a particular heritage to the mosaic ...
Richard Aquila, "Rock & Roll in Kennedy's America: A Cultural History of the Early 1960s" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)
18 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1960s, the nation was on track to fulfill its destiny in what was being called the American Century. Baby boomers and rock & roll shared ...
Robert Ovetz, "We the Elites: Why the US Constitution Serves the Few" (Pluto Press, 2022)
18 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We have been ruled long enough. It is time to govern ourselves. If we are to get past the Constitution and all systems based on constitutions, we need...
Michael Joseph Roberto, "The Coming of the American Behemoth: The Origins of Fascism in the United States, 1920-1940" (Monthly Review Press, 2018)
17 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 shocked and appalled a number of people, forcing a critical reevaluation of what was possible, and what we ought ...
Eric A. Stanley, "Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable" (Duke UP, 2021)
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Content note: This episode contains discussions of suicide, as well as allusions to graphic anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-Black violence Advances in LGBTQ r...
The History of the Black Urban Working-Class in the United States
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Joe William Trotter, Jr., Giant Eagle University Professor of History and Founder and Director of the Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the...
Lisa Biggs, "The Healing Stage: Black Women, Incarceration, and the Art of Transformation" (Ohio State UP, 2022)
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last five decades, Black women have been one of the fastest-growing segments of the global prison population, thanks to changes in policies t...
Infrastructure and Inequality
15 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Armanios, associate professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, talks about his work on infrastructure and inequa...
Apocalyptic Politics: What Do Evangelical Voters Want?
15 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Evangelical voters made up a significant portion of Donald Trump’s base in the 2016 presidential election. Their political agenda may not be peace o...
Tanya Katerí Hernández, "Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality" (Beacon Press, 2022)
14 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality (Beacon Press, 2022) will challenge what you thought about racism an...
Donna Stein, "Archaeology of Metaphor: The Art of Gilah Yelin Hirsch" (Skira, 2022)
14 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Characterized by a search for meaning, Hirsch’s oeuvre connects psychological, scientific, and philosophical implications of form, bringing together...
Eternity Now: Talking about Mysticism with the Apostle to the Gangs of LA
14 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jesuit Father Greg Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries in East LA, the world’s largest and most successful gang intervention and rehabilitati...
Aaron Berman, "America's Arab Nationalists: From the Ottoman Revolution to the Rise of Hitler" (Routledge, 2022)
13 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Aaron Berman's book America's Arab Nationalists: From the Ottoman Revolution to the Rise of Hitler (Routledge, 2022) focuses in on the relationship ...
Sabrina Mittermeier, "Fan Phenomena: Disney" (Intellect Books, 2023)
13 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sabrina Mittermeier's edited volume Fan Phenomena: Disney (Intellect Books, 2023) analyzes the fandom of Disney brands across a variety of media inc...
The Climate Change Scientist: A Conversation with Dr. Shuang-Yu Wu
12 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What is the difference between global warming and climate change? This episode explores: What led Dr. Wu into STEM, and to the study of climate chang...
Simon Brodbeck, "Divine Descent and the Four World-Ages in the Mahābhārata" (Cardiff UP, 2022)
12 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Divine Descent and the Four World-Ages in the Mahābhārata reflects on the theology of time in this early Hindu text and poses the key question: why ...
Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America
12 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew Jewett is the author of Science Under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America (2020) and Science, Democracy, and the America...
Seeing Truth in the Speculative: A Conversation with Dexter Gabriel
12 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Historian and author Dexter Gabriel talks about his relationship to truth and memory in his fiction and non-fiction writing. Come for his thoughts o...
Vincent Phillip Muñoz, "Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Religion Clauses" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
11 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What is religious liberty, anyway? What are its origins? What are religious exemptions? What would a jurisprudence of religious liberty based on the i...
Sarah Imhoff, "The Lives of Jessie Sampter: Queer, Disabled, Zionist" (Duke UP, 2022)
11 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Lives of Jessie Sampter: Queer, Disabled, Zionist (Duke UP, 2022), Sarah Imhoff tells the story of an individual full of contradictions. Jess...
Matthew Smith, "The First Resort: The History of Social Psychiatry in the United States" (Columbia UP, 2022)
10 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Social psychiatry was a mid-twentieth-century approach to mental health that stressed the prevention of mental illness rather than its treatment. Its ...
Demeritocracy: Should We Still Believe in Meritocracy?
10 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Total faith in meritocracy leads to the dangerous belief that all social winners and losers are wholly deserving. Instead, we need an economy of grace...
Poverty, Race, and Rural Sanitation
10 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Catherine Coleman Flowers, activist, author, founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, and MacArthur “genius prize” wi...
The History of Household Technology from Open Hearth to the Microwave
09 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan talks about her book, More Work for Mother, with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. The book examines the history of how ...
Jonathan W. White, "To Address You as My Friend: African Americans' Letters to Abraham Lincoln" (UNC Press, 2021)
08 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many African Americans of the Civil War era felt a personal connection to Abraham Lincoln. For the first time in their lives, an occupant of the White...
21st Century Citizenship: What Does It Mean to be a Citizen in America?
08 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to be a citizen in America in 2017? Guests Danielle Allen, Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and University Profess...
Neoliberalism and Higher Education
08 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is a roundtable discussion on the influence of the neoliberal project on higher education. Our guests are Professor Emeritus Frank Fear f...
Lior Lehrs, "Unofficial Peace Diplomacy: Private Peace Entrepreneurs in Conflict Resolution Processes" (Manchester UP, 2022)
08 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Unofficial Peace Diplomacy: Private Peace Entrepreneurs in Conflict Resolution Processes (Manchester University Press, 2022) by Dr. Lior Lehrs analys...
Jason Isralowitz, "Nothing to Fear: Alfred Hitchcock and the Wrong Men" (Fayetteville Mafia Press, 2023)
07 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1956, Alfred Hitchcock focused his lens on an issue that cuts to the heart of our criminal justice system: the risk of wrongful conviction. The res...
Albert Glinsky, "Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2022)
07 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Moog synthesizer ‘bent the course of music forever’ Rolling Stone declared. Bob Moog, the man who did that bending, was a lovable geek with Ei...
Roger A Sneed, "The Dreamer and the Dream: Afrofuturism and Black Religious Thought" (Ohio State UP, 2021)
06 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Dreamer and the Dream: Afrofuturism and Black Religious Thought (Ohio State UP, 2021), Professor Roger Sneed illuminates the interplay of Bl...
Do We Live in a Christian Country?
06 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
I asked medieval historian Rachel Fulton Brown if we ought to still think of our nation (or any Western nation) as “a Christian country” in the tw...
Ellen Cassedy, "Working 9 to 5: A Women's Movement, a Labor Union, and the Iconic Movie" (Chicago Review Press, 2022)
06 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Ellen Cassedy about her new book Working 9 to 5: A Women's Movement, a Labor Union, and the Iconic Movie (Chicago Review Press, ...
White Balance: How Do Race and Class Intersect?
06 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Understanding race in America requires understanding its relationship to class. Guests Joshua Bennett, writer and poet Julian Bourg, Professor of Hi...
On W. H. Auden
05 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1983, ten years after W. H. Auden’s death, the New York Institute for the Humanities organized a series of readings and discussions of his work....
Why Did 48,000 UC Workers Go on Strike? A Conversation with Dr. Trevor Griffey
05 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why did thousands of workers at prestigious universities in the United States go on strike in 2022? How did we get to this historic moment, and is it ...
Generation Why?: Do We Need "Generations?"
04 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Who gets to define generational cohorts and do they obscure more than illuminate? Guests Neil Howe, author of Generations Tony Tulathimutte, author...
Assessing Affirmative Action: A Conversation with Jason Riley
03 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With the Supreme Court poised to potentially outlaw race-conscious admissions, Affirmative Action may soon be on the chopping block. What will be the ...
Paul J. Gutacker, "The Old Faith in a New Nation: American Protestants and the Christian Past" (Oxford UP, 2023)
03 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Conventional wisdom holds that tradition and history meant little to nineteenth-century American Protestants, who relied on common sense and "the Bibl...
Dannelle Gutarra Cordero, "She Is Weeping: An Intellectual History of Racialized Slavery and Emotions in the Atlantic World" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
03 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dannelle Gutarra Cordero's expansive study incorporates writers, cultural figures and intellectuals from antiquity to the present day to analyze how d...
Seriously Funny: Politics and Comedy
03 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when politics becomes comedy and the jester becomes the king? Guests Emily Nussbaum, television critic for The New Yorker Avi Steinberg...
Amanda Hendrix-Komoto, "Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
03 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has always been globally situated, argues Montana State history professor Amanda Hendrix-Komoto in ...
Felicity M. Turner, "Proving Pregnancy: Gender, Law, and Medical Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America" (UNC Press, 2022)
01 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Examining infanticide cases in the United States from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, Felicity M. Turner's Proving Pregnancy: ...
Mairead Sullivan, "Lesbian Death: Desire and Danger Between Feminist and Queer" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
01 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The loss of lesbian spaces, as well as ideas of the lesbian as anachronistic, has called into question the place of lesbian identity within our curren...
Bonus Episode: "Nomadland"
01 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A special bonus episode in honor of the 93rd Academy Awards on April 25, 2021! One of the most-nominated films at this year's Oscars is "Nomadland," a...
Tommie Shelby, "The Idea of Prison Abolition" (Princeton UP, 2022)
30 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
By any reasonable metric, prisons as they exist in the United States and in many other countries are normatively unacceptable. What is the proper mora...
Adam M. Silver, "Partisanship and Polarization: American Party Platforms, 1840-1896" (Lexington Books, 2022)
30 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This volume explores the development of political parties in nineteenth-century United States of America through an extensive analysis of the official...
Abdul Alkalimat, "The Future of Black Studies" (Pluto Press, 2022)
29 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The marginalisation of Black voices from the academy is a problem in the Western world. But Black Studies, where it exists, is a powerful, boundary-pu...
"Gone with the Wind" Revisited
28 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this week’s episode from the Institute’s Vault, Molly Haskell talks about her 2009 book, Frankly, My Dear: "Gone with the Wind" Revisited, pub...
Jefferson Cowie, "Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power" (Basic Books, 2022)
28 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"History recalls Wallace’s inaugural address as a set piece in the larger drama of defending Southern segregation, which it was. But the speech was ...
Jed Rasula, "What the Thunder Said: How 'The Waste Land' Made Poetry Modern" (Princeton UP, 2022)
28 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When T. S. Eliot published The Waste Land in 1922, it put the thirty-four-year-old author on a path to worldwide fame and the Nobel Prize. "But," as...
Mary M. Burke, "Race, Politics, and Irish America: A Gothic History" (Oxford UP, 2023)
26 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview, she discusses her book, Race, Politics, and Irish America: A Gothic History (Oxford UP, 2023), which inserts successive Irish-Am...
Kevin R. C. Gutzman, "The Jeffersonians: The Visionary Presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe" (St. Martin's Press, 2022)
25 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Kevin R. C. Gutzman's The Jeffersonians: The Visionary Presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe (St. Martin's Press, 2022) marks the first chr...
The Emergence of Trotskyism in the United States: Part 3 of 3
25 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Part 3 of 3. In the spring of 1942, James P. Cannon, the founder of American Trotskyism, gave a series of lectures in New York on the first decade of ...
Stuart Klawans, "Crooked, But Never Common: The Films of Preston Sturges" (Columbia UP, 2023)
25 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In a burst of creativity unmatched in Hollywood history, Preston Sturges directed a string of all-time classic comedies from 1939 through 1948--The Gr...
Lucy Fraser, "The Pleasures of Metamorphosis: Japanese and English Fairy Tale Transformations of "The Little Mermaid"" (Wayne State UP, 2017)
25 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“The Little Mermaid” has become popular around the world since the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen published it almost two centuries ago. Lu...
Anatoly Liberman, "Take My Word for It: A Dictionary of English Idioms" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
25 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Three centuries of English idioms—their unusual origins and unexpected interpretations. To pay through the nose. Raining cats and dogs. By hook or b...
Eve Golden, "Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn't Help It" (UP of Kentucky, 2021)
25 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jayne Mansfield (1933-1967) was driven not just to be an actress but to be a star. One of the most influential sex symbols of her time, she was known ...
Naa Oyo A. Kwate, "White Burgers, Black Cash: Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
25 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The long and pernicious relationship between fast food restaurants and the African American community. Today, fast food is disproportionately located ...
The Emergence of Trotskyism in the United States: Part 2 of 3
24 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Part 2 of 3. In the spring of 1942, James P. Cannon, the founder of American Trotskyism, gave a series of lectures in New York on the first decade of ...
The Emergence of Trotskyism in the United States: Part 1 of 3
23 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Part 1 of 3. In the spring of 1942, James P. Cannon, the founder of American Trotskyism, gave a series of lectures in New York on the first decade of ...
Neurasthenia
23 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of High Theory, Kim talks with Saronik about neurasthenia. A disease that no longer exists, neurasthenia was a nineteenth century Amer...
Lauren N. Haumesser, "The Democratic Collapse: How Gender Politics Broke a Party and a Nation, 1856-1861" (UNC Press, 2022)
23 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Lauren N. Haumesser's The Democratic Collapse: How Gender Politics Broke a Party and a Nation, 1856-1861 (UNC Press, 2022) offers a fresh examinati...
Edward E. Curtis IV, "Muslims of the Heartland: How Syrian Immigrants Made a Home in the American Midwest" (NYU Press, 2022)
23 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The American Midwest is often thought of as uniformly white, and shaped exclusively by Christian values. However, this view of the region as an unvary...
The Future of Global Trade: A Discussion with Shannon K. O'Neil
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Critics of globalisation come in many forms from environmentalists to trade unionists and many others in between. In the midst of all the controversy ...
Finis Dunaway. "Defending the Arctic Refuge: A Photographer, an Indigenous Nation, and a Fight for Environmental Justice" (UNC Press, 2021)
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In far northeastern Alaska lies one of the most remarkable, and contested, places in North America: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This coastal...
Lyzette Wanzer, "Trauma, Tresses, and Truth: Untangling Our Hair Through Personal Narratives" (Chicago Review Press, 2022)
21 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Black women continue to have a complex and convoluted relationship with their hair. From grammar and high schools to corporate boardrooms and military...
Brenden W. Rensink, "The North American West in the Twenty-First Century" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
21 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner famously argued that the generational process of meeting and conquering the supposedly uncivilized western frontier i...
Craig Seymour, "Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther Vandross" (2017)
21 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On April 16, 2003, Luther Vandross suffered a near-fatal stroke, and the world held its breath. Inside sources said he might never sing again. He was ...
Jacob Kramer, "The New Freedom and the Radicals: Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Views of Radicalism, and the Origins of Repressive Tolerance" (Temple UP, 2015)
21 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The New Freedom and the Radicals: Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Views of Radicalism, and the Origins of Repressive Tolerance (Temple University Pre...
Quentin Bruneau, "States and the Masters of Capital: Sovereign Lending, Old and New" (Columbia UP, 2022)
18 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today, states' ability to borrow private capital depends on stringent evaluations of their creditworthiness. While many presume that this has long bee...
Sonya Y. Ramsey, "Bertha Maxwell-Roddey: A Modern-Day Race Woman and the Power of Black Leadership" (UP of Florida, 2022)
18 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Bertha Maxwell-Roddey: A Modern-Day Race Woman and the Power of Black Leadership (UP of Florida, 2022) examines a life of remarkable achievements and...
Matthew F. Delmont, "Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad" (Viking, 2022)
18 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregat...
Michael Weeks, "Cattle Beet Capital: Making Industrial Agriculture in Northern Colorado" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1870 several hundred settlers arrived at a patch of land at the confluence of the South Platte and Cache la Poudre Rivers in Colorado Territory. Th...
Kathleen Sprows Cummings, "A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American" (UNC Press, 2019
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), Kathleen Sprows Cu...
Neil Baldwin, "Martha Graham: When Dance Became Modern" (Knopf, 2022)
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Time magazine called her "the Dancer of the Century." Her technique, used by dance companies throughout the world, became the first long-lasting alte...
J. V. Fesko, "The Spirit of the Age: The 19th-Century Debate Over the Holy Spirit and the Westminster Confession" (Reformation Heritage, 2017)
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1903, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America revised the Westminster Confession of Faith because they thought it was deficient reg...
Shelley Fraser Mickle, "Borrowing Life: How Scientists, Surgeons, and a War Hero Made the First Successful Organ Transplant a Reality" (Imagine, 2020)
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Performed at Boston's Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in 1954, the first successful kidney transplant was the culmination of years of grit, compassion, an...
Gregory Smithsimon, "Liberty Road: Black Middle-Class Suburbs and the Battle Between Civil Rights and Neoliberalism" (NYU Press, 2022)
16 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Half of Black Americans who live in the one hundred largest metropolitan areas are now living in suburbs, not cities. In Liberty Road: Black Middle-C...
Sean Metzger, "The Chinese Atlantic: Seascapes and the Theatricality of Globalization" (Indiana UP, 2020)
16 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Chinese Atlantic: Seascapes and the Theatricality of Globalization (Indiana University Press, 2020), Sean Metzger proposes a new analytical f...
Karen Levy, "Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance" (Princeton UP, 2022)
15 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Long-haul truckers are the backbone of the American economy, transporting goods under grueling conditions and immense economic pressure. Truckers have...
Samuel J. Redman, "Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums" (Harvard UP, 2022)
15 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums (Harvard University Press, 2022 for paperback edition), Samuel J. Redman, Assoc...
Alison L. Gash and Daniel J. Tichenor, "Democracy's Child: Young People and the Politics of Control, Leverage, and Agency" (Oxford UP, 2022)
15 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Political Scientists Alison Gash and Dan Tichenor have a new book, Democracy's Child: Young People and the Politics of Control, Leverage, and Agency ...
Yasmine Ali, "Walk Through Fire: The Train Disaster That Changed America" (Citadel Press, 2023)
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The first book to examine the rarely-acknowledged Waverly Train Disaster of 1978 - the catastrophic accident that changed America forever and led to t...
Harold Holzer, "The Presidents vs. the Press: The Endless Battle between the White House and the Media" (Dutton, 2020)
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Presidents vs. the Press: The Endless Battle between the White House and the Media--from the Founding Fathers to Fake News (Dutton, 2020), Ha...
Elizabeth N. Ellis. "The Great Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Great Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022) tackles questions of Native power past and pres...
Catherine Bateson, "Irish American Civil War Songs: Identity, Loyalty, and Nationhood" (Louisiana UP, 2022)
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Catherine Bateson is Associate Lecturer of American History at the University of Kent. She researches and writes about the role of song in the Amer...
William Inboden, "The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink" (Dutton, 2022)
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
With decades of hindsight, the peaceful end of the Cold War seems a foregone conclusion. But in the early 1980s, most experts believed the Soviet Unio...
What Went Wrong in the 1970s in the USA?: A Discussion with Bill McKibben
12 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of How To Be Wrong we talk with author, educator, and environmentalist Bill McKibben, founder of Third Act, an organization focused ...
Brian Daldorph, "Words Is a Powerful Thing: Twenty Years of Teaching Creative Writing at Douglas County Jail" (UP of Kansas, 2021)
11 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Daldorph first entered the Douglas County Jail classroom in Lawrence, Kansas, to teach a writing class on Christmas Eve 2001. His last class at ...
Natasha Lasky, "Britney Spears's Blackout" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
11 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Britney Spears barely survived 2007. She divorced her husband, lost custody of her kids, went to rehab, shaved her head and assaulted a paparazzo. In ...
Barbara Katz Rothman, "The Biomedical Empire: Lessons Learned from the COVID Pandemic" (Stanford UP, 2021)
11 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We are all citizens of the Biomedical Empire, though few of us know it, and even fewer understand the extent of its power. In this book, Barbara Kat...
Thomas Beller, "Lost in the Game: A Book about Basketball" (Duke UP, 2022)
11 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For players, coaches, writers, and fans, basketball is a science and an art, a religious sacrament, a source of entertainment, and a way of interactin...
Jake S. Friedman, "The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation's Golden Age" (Chicago Review Press, 2022)
10 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Soon after the birth of Mickey Mouse, one animator raised the Disney Studio far beyond Walt’s expectations. That animator also led a union war that ...
Daniel Immerwahr, "The Galactic Vietnam: Technology, Modernization, and Empire in George Lucas’s Star Wars" (2022)
10 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode I got to chat about two of my favorite things: the history of imperialism and Star Wars with Daniel Immerwahr, Professor of History ...
Timothy Shenk, "Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy" (FSG, 2022)
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
These days it seems that nobody is satisfied with American democracy. Critics across the ideological spectrum warn that the country is heading toward ...
Dan Bouk, "Democracy's Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them" (MCD, 2022)
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dan Bouk is a writer, professor, and cultural historian of quantification, or as Bouk puts it, the history all fascinating things “shrouded in the c...