New Books in American Studies
Episodes
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...
Robert L. Hetzel, "The Federal Reserve: A New History" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Federal Reserve: A New History (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Robert Hetzel draws on a 43-year career as an economist in the central b...
Autumn Womack, "The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880–1930" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Autumn Womack is a professor of English and of African American Studies at Princeton University. Her new book, The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthe...
Norm Cohen et al., "An American Singing Heritage: Songs from the British-Irish-American Oral Tradition as Recorded in the Early Twentieth Century" (A-R Editions, 2021)
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Music of the United States of America Series of musical editions is a monumental undertaking funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities w...
Ted Conover, "Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America's Edge" (Knopf, 2022)
07 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Ted Conover, author of Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America's Edge (Knopf, 2022) In May 2017, Conover went to Colorado to...
Virginia L. Summey, "The Life of Elreta Melton Alexander: Activism within the Courts" (U Georgia Press, 2022)
07 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Virginia L. Summey's book The Life of Elreta Melton Alexander: Activism within the Courts (U Georgia Press, 2022) explores the life and contribution...
Barbara E. Mattick, "Teaching in Black and White: The Sisters of St. Joseph in the American South" (Catholic U of America Press
07 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Teaching in Black and White: The Sisters of St. Joseph in the American South (Catholic University of America Press, 2022) discusses the work of the S...
Barbara Harris Combs, "Bodies Out of Place: Theorizing Anti-Blackness in U.S. Society" (U Georgia Press, 2022)
06 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Bodies Out of Place: Theorizing Anti-Blackness in U.S. Society (U Georgia Press, 2022) asserts that anti-Black racism is not better than it used to b...
Eyal Press, "Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America" (Picador, 2022)
05 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the episode of Conversations from the Institute, we hear from Eyal Press, who is the author of Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Co...
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, "Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century" (St. Martin's Press, 2022)
05 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
While the story of women’s liberation has often been framed by the growing acceptance of pants over the twentieth century, the most important and in...
On James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time"
05 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The writer and activist James Baldwin grew up in a majority white America that saw white American lives as standard and universal, and Black American ...
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, "Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in College Debt" (Harvard UP, 2021)
04 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It didn't always take thirty years to pay off the cost of a bachelor's degree. In Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generat...
Madeline Lane-McKinley, "Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times" (Common Notions, 2022)
04 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Comedy is so frequently the topic of cultural dialogue, but it is rarely taken seriously as an object of study. Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing ...
John Delury, "Agents of Subversion: The Fate of John T. Downey and the CIA's Covert War in China" (Cornell UP, 2022)
04 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Agents of Subversion: The Fate of John T. Downey and the CIA's Covert War in China (Cornell University Press, 2022) by Dr. John Delury reconstructs t...
Char Miller, "West Side Rising: How San Antonio's 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice Movement" (Maverick Books, 2022)
02 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On September 9, 1921, a tropical storm raged above San Antonio, Texas. The rain that night flooded the city's many waterways, distributing unequal de...
On John Rawl's "A Theory of Justice"
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How do you create a fair society? Who deserves to rule? What rights do citizens have? How are those rights protected? What does it mean to act morally...
Jonathan R. Hunt, "The Nuclear Club: How America and the World Policed the Atom from Hiroshima to Vietnam" (Stanford UP, 2022)
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Nuclear Club: How America and the World Policed the Atom from Hiroshima to Vietnam (Stanford UP, 2022) reveals how a coalition of powerful and d...
Stephanie Azzarone, "Heaven on the Hudson: Mansions, Monuments, and Marvels of Riverside Park" (Fordham UP, 2022)
30 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On the west side of Manhattan, Riverside Park winds between the banks of the Hudson River and the elegant housing of Riverside Drive. In her new book ...
Sarah Abel, "Permanent Markers: Race, Ancestry, and the Body After the Genome" (UNC Press, 2021)
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past twenty years, DNA ancestry testing has morphed from a niche market into a booming international industry that encourages members of the ...
Agathe Demarais, "Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests" (Columbia UP, 2022)
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sanctions have become the go-to foreign policy tool for the United States. Coercive economic measures such as trade tariffs, financial penalties, and ...
William Marling, "Christian Anarchist: Ammon Hennacy, A Life on the Catholic Left" (NYU Press, 2022)
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ammon Hennacy was arrested over thirty times for opposing US entry in World War 1. Later, when he refused to pay taxes that support war, he lost his w...
Shana Kushner Gadarian et al., "Pandemic Politics: The Deadly Toll of Partisanship in the Age of COVID" (Princeton UP, 2022)
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
None of us really want to relive our first encounters with COVID-19 and the disruptions to our lives, to say nothing of the anxiety and concern about ...
Gregory Nobles, "The Education of Betsey Stockton: An Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
25 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The life of Betsey Stockton (ca. 1798–1865) is a remarkable story of a Black woman’s journey from slavery to emancipation, from antebellum New Jer...
Jasmine Nichole Cobb, "New Growth: The Art and Texture of Black Hair" (Duke UP, 2022)
25 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From Frederick Douglass to Angela Davis, “natural hair” has been associated with the Black freedom struggle. In New Growth: The Art and Texture o...
Jennifer Mittelstadt and Mark R. Wilson, "The Military and the Market" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
25 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout its history, the U.S. military has worked in close connection to market-based institutions and structures. It has run systems of free and u...
Kate Christine Moore Koppy, "Fairy Tales in Contemporary American Culture: How We Hate to Love Them" (Lexington, 2021)
25 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the twenty-first century, American culture is experiencing a profound shift toward pluralism and secularization. In Fairy Tales in Contemporary Am...
Tara T. Green, "Love, Activism, and the Respectable Life of Alice Dunbar-Nelson" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
25 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Born in New Orleans in 1875 to a mother who was formerly enslaved and a father of questionable identity, Alice Dunbar-Nelson was a pioneering activist...
Ray Scott, "The NBA in Black and White: The Memoir of a Trailblazing NBA Player and Coach" (Seven Stories Press, 2022)
24 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“There’s a basic insecurity with Black guys my size,” Scott writes. “We can’t hide and everybody turns to stare when we walk down the street...
Christopher Willoughby, "Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in US Medical Schools" (UNC Press, 2022)
24 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Medical science in antebellum America was organized around a paradox: it presumed African Americans to be less than human yet still human enough to be...
Joseph McBride, "Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge" (Columbia UP, 2021)
24 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The director and cowriter of some of the world's most iconic films―including Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd., Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment―B...
Anna Arabindan-Kesson, "Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World" (Duke UP, 2021)
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World (Duke UP, 2021), Anna Arabindan-Kesson uses cotton, a commodity centra...
Burt Kearns, "Lawrence Tierney: Hollywood's Real-Life Tough Guy" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In his latest book, Lawrence Tierney: Hollywood's Real-Life Tough Guy (The University of Kentucky Press, 2022) Burt Kearns explores the life of act...
Jeanne Theoharis, "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks" (Beacon Press, 2015)
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (Beacon Press, 2015) is the definitive political biography of Rosa Parks and the basis for a 2022 documentary...
Michael A. Verney, "A Great and Rising Nation: Naval Exploration and Global Empire in the Early US Republic" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A Great and Rising Nation: Naval Exploration and Global Empire in the Early US Republic (University of Chicago Press, 2022) by Dr. Michael A. Verney ...
Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow, "Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back" (Beacon Press, 2022)
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Corporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (wh...
Rhonda F. Levine, "When Race Meets Class: African Americans Coming of Age in a Small City" (Routledge, 2019)
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In When Race Meets Class: African Americans Coming of Age in a Small City (Routledge, 2019), Rhonda Levine provides a 15-year ethnography that follo...
Michael Genovese, "The Modern Presidency: Six Debates That Define the Institution" (Columbia UP, 2022)
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Modern Presidency: Sex Debates That Define the Institution (Columbia University Press, 2022) is a concisely written book that helps makes sense ...
Amy Gajda, "Seek and Hide: The Tangled History of the Right to Privacy" (Viking, 2022)
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Should everyone have privacy in their personal lives? Can privacy exist in a public place? Is there a right to be left alone, even in the United State...
Paul Barba, "Country of the Cursed and the Driven: Slavery and the Texas Borderlands" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Most of what people think they know about Texas history is wrong, argues Bucknell University history professor Paul Barba in Country of the Cursed an...
Lyndsie Bourgon, "Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods" (Little, Brown Spark, 2022)
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There's a strong chance that chair you are sitting on was made from stolen lumber. In Tree Thieves: Crime And Survival In North America's Woods (Lit...
Bridget Kies and Megan Connor, "Fandom, the Next Generation" (U Iowa Press, 2022)
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Fandom, the Next Generation (University of Iowa Press, 2022), Bridget Kies and Megan Connor have edited the first collection to offer a close s...
Missing: Men at Work — A Conversation with Nick Eberstadt
22 Nov 2022
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...
Caroline Grego, "Hurricane Jim Crow: How the Great Sea Island Storm of 1893 Shaped the Lowcountry South" (UNC Press, 2022)
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On an August night in 1893, the deadliest hurricane in South Carolina history struck the Lowcountry, killing thousands—almost all African American. ...
Jon Lewis, "The Godfather, Part II" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
21 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather, Part II" (1974) is a magisterial cinematic work, a gorgeous, stylized, auteur epic, and one of the few sequels ...
Psyche A. Williams-Forson, "Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America" (UNC Press, 2022)
21 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America (UNC Press, 2022), Psyche A. Williams-Forson offers her knowledge and experience to illumina...
Elliott H. Powell, "Sounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
21 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From Beyoncé's South Asian music-inspired Super Bowl Halftime performance, to jazz artists like John and Alice Coltrane's use of Indian song structur...
Antonio T. Bly, "Escaping Slavery: A Documentary History of Native American Runaways in British North America" (Lexington Books, 2022)
21 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Antonio T. Bly had collected and edited hundreds of advertisements offering a reward for enslaved Native Americans who run away from their masters. E...
Robert P. Crease with Peter D. Bond, "The Leak: Politics, Activists, and Loss of Trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory" (MIT Press, 2022)
18 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1997, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory found a small leak of radioactive water near their research reactor. Brookhaven was--and is--a w...
Bradley Morgan, "U2's the Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America" (Backbeat Books, 2021)
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Backbeat, 2021) Bradley Morgan examines U2's iconic album and their critique of America ...
Riché Richardson, "Emancipation's Daughters: Re-Imagining Black Femininity and the National Body" (Duke UP, 2020)
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Emancipation's Daughters: Re-Imagining Black Femininity and the National Body (Duke UP, 2020), Riché Richardson examines iconic black women lead...
Steve Kemper, "Our Man In Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor" (Mariner Books, 2022)
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A gripping, behind-the-scenes account of the personalities and contending forces in Tokyo during the volatile decade that led to World War II, as seen...
Ethnonationalism since 1973: A Discussion with Quinn Slobodian
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What’s the relationship between immigration, globalization and demographics? And what is woke particularism? John and Elizabeth turn for answers to...
Riché Richardson, "Emancipation's Daughters: Re-Imagining Black Femininity and the National Body" (Duke UP, 2020)
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Emancipation's Daughters: Re-Imagining Black Femininity and the National Body (Duke UP, 2020), Riché Richardson examines iconic black women lead...
Science Against the People: Anti-Capitalist Science
16 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s difficult to criticise science from the left. Right-wingers attack science and liberals defend it. Science for the People is a radical movement...
Adam Laats, "Creationism USA: Bridging the Impasse on Teaching Evolution" (Oxford UP, 2020)
16 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Who are America's creationists? What do they want? Why do they think Jesus rode around on a dinosaur? In Creationism USA: Bridging the Impasse on Tea...
Heart of All: Oral Histories of Oglala Lakota People on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
16 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Working with a group of over fifty students at the Little Wound School in Kyle, South Dakota, Mark Hetzel collected countless hours of oral history in...
Alan Shuback, "Hollywood at the Races: Film's Love Affair with the Turf" (UP of Kentucky, 2019)
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Alan Shuback about his book Hollywood at the Races: Film's Love Affair with the Turf (UP of Kentucky, 2019) A love of the slapsti...
Megan Asaka, "Seattle from the Margins: Exclusion, Erasure, and the Making of a Pacific Coast City" (U Washington Press, 2022)
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Seattle has a reputation as a city of Progressive values, but as Megan Asaka argues in Seattle From the Margins: Exclusion, Erasure, and the Making...
Jeffrey Bellin, "Mass Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became Addicted to Prisons and Jails and How it Can Recover" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The United States imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any other nation. Mass Incarceration Nation offers a novel, in-the-trenches per...
Transforming the Urban University: Northeastern University, 1996-2006
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It is rare to see colleges and universities achieve major and rapid changes in their national rankings. Richard Freeland, the president emeritus of No...
Therí Alyce Pickens, "Black Madness :: Mad Blackness" (Duke UP, 2019)
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Black Madness :: Mad Blackness (Duke UP, 2019), Therí Alyce Pickens rethinks the relationship between Blackness and disability, unsettling the ...
Ryan Poll, "Aquaman and the War Against Oceans: Comics Activism and Allegory in the Anthropocene" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Aquaman and the War against Oceans (University of Nebraska Press, 2022), Ryan Poll explores ways the New 52 reimagining of Aquaman--a massive ove...
Naomi A. Moland, "Can Big Bird Fight Terrorism?: Children's Television and Globalized Multicultural Education" (Oxford UP, 2019)
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sesame Street has taught generations of Americans their letters and numbers, and also how to better understand and get along with people of different ...
Sofi Thanhauser, "Worn: A People's History of Clothing" (Vintage, 2022)
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Worn: A People's History of Clothing (Vintage, 2022) by Sofi Thanhauser explores linen, cotton, silk, synthetics, wool: through the stories of these ...
Bruce W. Dearstyne, "The Crucible of Public Policy: New York Courts in the Progressive Era" (SUNY Press, 2022)
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
During the early twentieth century New York State, with its settlement houses, muckraking journalists, labor unions and national political leaders lik...
Rachael Hanel, "Not the Camilla We Knew: One Woman's Life from Small-Town America to the Symbionese Liberation Army" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How could an artist and former social worker from small-town Minnesota become one of the most wanted domestic terrorists in the United States? Camilla...
Kathryn Gin Lum, "Heathen: Religion and Race in American History" (Harvard UP, 2022)
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Heathen: Religion and Race in American History (Harvard University Press, 2022), Kathryn Gin Lum shows how the idea of the “heathen” has been...
Jeremy Bangs, "New Light on the Old Colony: Plymouth, the Dutch Context of Toleration, and Patterns of Pilgrim Commemoration" (Brill, 2019)
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jeremy Duperteis Bangs, a leading expert in the history of the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony, overturns stereotypes with exciting new analyses of ...
Where Does Research Really Begin?
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s book is: Where Research Begins: Choosing a Research Project That Matters to You (and the World) (U Chicago Press, 2022) by Thomas S. Mull...
Sarah E. Wagner, "What Remains: Bringing America's Missing Home from the Vietnam War" (Harvard UP, 2019)
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For many families the Vietnam War remains unsettled. Nearly 1,600 Americans— and more than 300,000 Vietnamese—involved in the conflict are still u...
Hua Hsu, "Stay True: A Memoir" (Doubleday, 2022)
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Stay True (Doubleday: 2022), the new memoir from Hua Hsu, is a coming-of-age story about the writer’s time in the University of California in Berk...
David Silkenat, "Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" (Oxford UP, 2022)
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
They worked Virginia's tobacco fields, South Carolina's rice marshes, and the Black Belt's cotton plantations. Wherever they lived, enslaved people fo...
Muggsy Bogues and Jake Uitti, "Muggsy: My Life from a Kid in the Projects to the Godfather of Small Ball" (Triumph, 2022)
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Growing up, Muggsy Bogues was always told he should do something else, anything besides basketball. He never acknowledged his many doubters except to ...
Bradley Onishi, "Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism--And What Comes Next" (Broadleaf Books, 2023)
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was not a blip or an aberration. It was the logical outcome of years of a White evangelical sub...
Stephen G. Rabe, "The Lost Paratroopers of Normandy: A Story of Resistance, Courage, and Solidarity in a French Village" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The fateful days and weeks surrounding 6 June 1944 have been extensively documented in histories of the Second World War, but less attention has been ...
Richard Petts, "Father Involvement and Gender Equality in the United States: Contemporary Norms and Barriers" (Routledge, 2022)
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Petts' Father Involvement and Gender Equality in the United States: Contemporary Norms and Barriers (Routledge, 2022) focuses on issues of f...
Natasha Lance Rogoff, "Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the timing appeared perfect to bring Sesame Street to millions of children living in the ...
Andrew Fiss, "Performing Math: A History of Communication and Anxiety in the American Mathematics Classroom" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Performing Math: A History of Communication and Anxiety in the American Mathematics Classroom (Rutgers University Press, 2020) by Dr. Andrew Fiss tel...
Katie Hickman, "Brave Hearted: The Women of the American West" (Spiegel & Grau, 2022)
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hard-drinking, hard-living poker players and prostitutes of the new boom towns; wives and mothers traveling two and a half thousand miles across the p...
Nancy Woloch, "The Insider: A Life of Virginia C. Gildersleeve" (Columbia UP, 2022)
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Virginia C. Gildersleeve was the most influential dean of Barnard College, which she led from 1911 to 1947. An organizer of the Seven College Conferen...
Veronica Kirin, "Stories of Elders: What the Greatest Generation Knows about Technology that You Don't" (2018)
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
America’s Greatest Generation (born before 1945) witnessed incredible changes in technology and social progress. From simple improvements in enterta...
Todd Meyers, "All That Was Not Her" (Duke UP, 2022)
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
While studying caregiving and chronic illness in families living in situations of economic and social insecurity in Baltimore, anthropologist Todd Mey...
On Toni Morrison's "Beloved"
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1987, Toni Morrison published her fourth novel, Beloved, based on the story of Margaret Garner, a woman who escaped slavery with her child. Garner ...
Dan Bouk, "Democracy's Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them" (MCD, 2022)
08 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The census isn't just a data-collection process; it's a ritual, and a tool, of American democracy. Behind every neat grid of numbers is a collage of m...
Bruce Davis, "The Academy and the Award: The Coming of Age of Oscar and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences" (Brandeis UP, 2022)
08 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Written by the former executive director of the Academy, this is the first behind-the-scenes history of the organization behind the Academy Awards. ...
Christopher Howard, "Who Cares: The Social Safety Net in America" (Oxford UP, 2022)
08 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Societies are often judged by how they treat their most vulnerable members: the poor and near poor. In the United States, this responsibility belongs ...
Guthrie P. Ramsey, "Who Hears Here?: On Black Music, Pasts and Present" (U California Press, 2022)
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., is an award-winning musicologist, music historian, composer, and pianist whose prescient theoretical and critical intervention...
The Hundred Year War for the American Right: A Conversation with Matthew Continetti
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What is the American Right, where does it come from, and how has it changed over time? Journalist and author Matthew Continetti discusses his recent ...
Elizabeth Schroeder Schlabach, "Dream Books and Gamblers: Black Women's Work in Chicago's Policy Game" (U Illinois Press, 2022)
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ubiquitous illegal lotteries known as policy flourished in Chicago's Black community during the overlapping waves of the Great Migration. Policy "quee...
Andrew S. Rosenberg, "Undesirable Immigrants: Why Racism Persists in International Migration" (Princeton UP, 2022)
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 officially ended the explicit prejudice in American immigration policy that began with the 1790 restrictio...
On "The U.S. Constitution"
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The story of the Constitution of the United States began long before the American Revolutionary War. This document was influenced by centuries old Eng...
Mikkael A. Sekeres, "Drugs and the FDA: Safety, Efficacy, and the Public's Trust" (MIT Press, 2022)
04 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How the FDA was shaped by public health crises and patient advocacy, told against a background of the contentious hearings on the breast cancer drug A...
Richard V. Reeves, "Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It" (Brookings Institution, 2022)
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Richard Reeves about his important new book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do ab...
Timothy W. Burns, "Leo Strauss on Democracy, Technology, and Liberal Education" (SUNY Press, 2021)
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There are few thinkers who engender as much debate about their legacy as Leo Strauss (1899 –1973). His critics and biographers often don’t even ag...
92 Janet McIntosh on "Let's Go Brandon," QAnon and Alt-Right Language (EF, JP)
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth and John talk with Brandeis linguistic anthropologist Janet McIntosh about the language of US alt-right movements. Janet's current book pr...
David Kaiser, "Well, Doc, You're In: Freeman Dyson’s Journey through the Universe" (MIT Press, 2022)
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Freeman Dyson (1923–2020)—renowned scientist, visionary, and iconoclast—helped invent modern physics. Not bound by disciplinary divisions, he we...
Shaken and Stirred
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We couldn’t do a season on the Cold War without talking about Bond . . . James Bond. He was there from the beginning and has of course survived into...
Bruce G. Carruthers, "The Economy of Promises: Trust, Power, and Credit in America" (Princeton UP, 2022)
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A comprehensive and illuminating account of the history of credit in America, The Economy of Promises: Trust, Power & Credit in America (Princeton U...
Andrew McIlwaine Bell, "The Origins of Southern College Football: How an Ivy League Game Became a Dixie Tradition" (LSU Press, 2020)
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
College football is a massive enterprise in the United States, and southern teams dominate poll rankings and sports headlines while generating billion...