New Books in American Studies

Matthew Delmont, "Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad" (Viking, 2022)

02 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Matthew Delmont about his new book Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad (V...

Clayton J. Butler, "True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South during the Civil War and Reconstruction" (LSU Press, 2022)

02 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

During the American Civil War, thousands of citizens in the Deep South remained loyal to the United States. Though often overlooked, this small number...

Herman Melville, "Moby-Dick" (Oxford UP, 2022)

02 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Hester Blum, editor of a new edition of Moby-Dick (Oxford UP, 2022). "It will be a strange sort of a book, tho', I fear; blubber ...

Jeremi Suri, "Civil War by Other Means: America's Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy" (PublicAffairs, 2022)

02 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1865, the Confederacy was defeated, but the military victory did not end the tensions of the war or signal acceptance of a new, more equal nation. ...

Sarah Quesada, "The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

01 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2022) unearths a buried African archive within widely-read Lati...

Elizabeth Drame et al., "The Resistance, Persistence and Resilience of Black Families Raising Children with Autism" (Peter Lang, 2020)

01 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Resistance, Persistence and Resilience of Black Families Raising Children with Autism (Peter Lang, 2020) presents nuanced perspectives in the for...

Mike Owen Benediktsson, "In the Midst of Things: The Social Lives of Objects in the Public Spaces of New York City" (Princeton UP, 2022)

01 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How ordinary urban objects influence our behavior, exacerbate inequality, and encourage social change Assumptions about human behavior lie hidden in p...

Darts Transit Commission: Silicon Valley’s Car Culture

31 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Paris Marx is one of the sharpest modern writers on Silicon Valley and transit. We have been talking a lot lately about the idea of techno-utopian thi...

Emily Weinstein and Carrie James, "Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (and Adults Are Missing)" (MIT Press, 2022)

31 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What are teens actually doing on their smartphones? Contrary to many adults' assumptions, they are not simply "addicted" to their screens, oblivious t...

Beyond Meat? Dietary Shifts and Meat Contestations in China, India and Vietnam

30 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What explains the uneven meatification of diets in three of Asia’s core ‘emerging economies’? How and why is meat consumption changing today, an...

Ross Cole, "The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination" (U California Press, 2021)

28 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination (U California Press, 2021), Ross Cole revisits the remarkable upswell of interest in f...

Joseph McBride, "The Whole Durn Human Comedy: Life According to the Coen Brothers" (Anthem Press, 2022)

28 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Coen Bros. have attracted a wide following and have been rewarded with Oscars and other honors. Some of their films such as Fargo, The Big Lebowsk...

Regina L. Wagner, "Electoral Patterns in Alabama: Local Change and Continuity Amid National Trends" (Palgrave MacmIllan, 2022)

28 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

While significant attention in political science is devoted to national level elections, a comprehensive look at state level political dynamics in the...

Elizabeth F. Schwartz, "Before I Do: A Legal Guide to Marriage, Gay and Otherwise" (New Press, 2016)

27 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Not long ago, same-sex couples had to jump through endless hoops to make their relationships even close to legal. Happily, those days are over. But he...

Guy Lancaster, "American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching" (U Arkansas Press, 2021)

26 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Lynching is often viewed as a narrow form of violence: either the spontaneous act of an angry mob against accused individuals, or a demonstration of w...

Shall We Play A Game?

26 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Remember Khrushchev-Nixon Kitchen Debate? America recognized its consumer culture was a Cold War weapon. By the early 80s, the home computer in the ha...

A. Carly Buxton, "Un-Thinking Collaboration: American Nisei in Transwar Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)

26 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today I will be talking to Carly Buxton about her book Unthinking collaboration: American Nisei in transwar Japan, which came out this year [2022] wi...

Larry Ceplair, "The Hollywood Motion Picture Blacklist: Seventy-Five Years Later" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)

26 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Seventy-five years ago, the Hollywood blacklist ruined lives, stifled creativity, and sent waves of proscription and censorship throughout United Stat...

Kelisha B. Graves, ed., "Nannie Helen Burroughs: A Documentary Portrait of an Early Civil Rights Pioneer, 1900-1959" (U Notre Dame Press, 2019)

26 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961) is just one of the many African American intellectuals whose work has long been excluded from the literary canon. I...

Jose O. Fernandez, "Against Marginalization: Convergences in Black and Latinx Literatures" (Ohio State UP, 2022)

26 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Against Marginalization: Convergences in Black and Latinx Literatures (Ohio State University Press, 2022), Jose O. Fernandez examines thematic, ...

Jose O. Fernandez, "Against Marginalization: Convergences in Black and Latinx Literatures" (Ohio State UP, 2022)

26 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Against Marginalization: Convergences in Black and Latinx Literatures (Ohio State University Press, 2022), Jose O. Fernandez examines thematic, ...

Lynn M. Hudson, "West of Jim Crow: The Fight Against California's Color Line" (U Illinois Press, 2020)

26 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

California was born "under the shadow of slavery," writes Lynn Hudson, professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In West of Jim ...

Mallory Lewis and Nat Segaloff, "Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop: The Team That Changed Children's TV" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)

26 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Two decades after Lewis and Lamb Chop last graced television with their presence, Lewis' daughter Mallory and author Nat Segaloff have set the record ...

Rachel Schreiber, "Elaine Black Yoneda: Jewish Immigration, Labor Activism, and Japanese American Exclusion and Incarceration" (Temple UP, 2021)

25 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

During World War II, Elaine Black Yoneda, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, spent eight months in a concentration camp--not in Europe, but in...

Kenyon Gradert, "Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

25 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Modern imagination of the Puritans typically casts them in a repressive, conservative light. But that wasn't always the case. Abolitionist activists ...

Kenyon Gradert, "Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

25 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Modern imagination of the Puritans typically casts them in a repressive, conservative light. But that wasn't always the case. Abolitionist activists ...

Dan Immergluck, "Red Hot City: Housing, Race, and Exclusion in Twenty-First-Century Atlanta" (U California Press, 2022)

25 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Atlanta, the capital of the American South, is at the red-hot core of expansion, inequality, and political relevance. In recent decades, central Atlan...

Ahmed White, "Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers" (U California Press, 2022)

24 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World was rapidly gaining strength and members. Within a decade, this radical union was effectively destroyed, ...

Sara Wallace Goodman, "Citizenship in Hard Times: How Ordinary People Respond to Democratic Threat" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

24 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What do citizens do in response to threats to democracy? Citizenship in Hard Times: How Ordinary People Respond to Democratic Threat (Cambridge UP, ...

Robert Hutchinson, "After Nuremberg: American Clemency for Nazi War Criminals" (Yale UP, 2022)

24 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Robert Hutchinson's After Nuremberg: American Clemency for Nazi War Criminals (Yale UP, 2022) is about the fleeting nature of American punishment fo...

Scott Bukatman, "Black Panther" (U Texas Press, 2022)

21 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Black Panther was the first Black superhero in mainstream American comics. Black Panther was a cultural phenomenon that broke box office records. Ye...

Michael Keevak, "On Saving Face: A Brief History of Western Appropriation" (Hong Kong UP, 2022)

21 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In On Saving Face: A Brief History of Western Appropriation (Hong Kong UP, 2022), Michael Keevak traces the Western reception of the Chinese concept...

On Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

21 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

By the early 19th century, slavery was still a brutal reality in southern U.S. states, and a growing movement to abolish slavery nationwide was taking...

Gwen Shuni D'Arcangelis, "Bio-Imperialism: Disease, Terror, and the Construction of National Fragility" (Rutgers UP, 2020)

21 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Gwen Shuni D'Arcangelis's book Bio-Imperialism: Disease, Terror, and the Construction of National Fragility (Rutgers UP, 2020) focuses on an unders...

Randall Balmer, "Passion Plays: How Religion Shaped Sports in North America" (UNC Press, 2022)

20 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Randall Balmer was a late convert to sports talk radio, but he quickly became addicted, just like millions of other devoted American sports fans. As a...

Eric Jay Dolin, "Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution" (Liveright, 2022)

20 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The bestselling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters reclaims the daring freelance sailors who proved essential to the winning of the Revolutionary Wa...

John Suval, "Dangerous Ground: Squatters, Statesmen, and the Antebellum Rupture of American Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2022)

19 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The squatter—defined by Noah Webster as "one that settles on new land without a title"—had long been a fixture of America's frontier past. In the ...

Jeffers Lennox, "North of America: Loyalists, Indigenous Nations, and the Borders of the Long American Revolution" (Yale UP, 2022)

19 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The story of the Thirteen Colonies’ struggle for independence from Britain is well known to every American schoolchild. But at the start of the Revo...

Wolverines!

19 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This episode and the next look back at films that came out in the 1980s, a decade when Hollywood seemed to cater to teenage audiences like never befor...

John Briscoe, "Crush: The Triumph of California Wine" (U Nevada Press, 2018)

19 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1910, the future of California wine looked dim. Beset by crises ranging from earthquakes to insect infestations, and with momentum moving toward pr...

John F. Lyons, "Joy and Fear: The Beatles, Chicago and the 1960s" (Permuted Press, 2020)

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For many, the Beatles offered a delightful alternative to the dull and the staid, while for others, the mop-top haircuts, the unsettling music, and th...

David Weinfeld, "An American Friendship: Horace Kallen, Alain Locke, and the Development of Cultural Pluralism" (Cornell UP, 2022)

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In An American Friendship: Horace Kallen, Alain Locke, and the Development of Cultural Pluralism (Cornell UP, 2022), David Weinfeld presents the bio...

Robert Steven Levine et al., "The Norton Anthology of American Literature" (Norton, 2022)

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Tenth Edition introduces diverse, compelling, relevant texts-from Civil War songs and stories to The Turn of the Screw to The Great Gatsby to poem...

The Future of Cold War: A Discussion with Sergey Radchenko

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Are we in a new cold war? And if so, is the US up against China or Russia? Join Owen Bennett Jones for a discussion with Sergey Radchenko, the Wilson ...

Diane Negra, "Shadow of a Doubt" (Auteur, 2021)

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Diane Negra about Shadow of a Doubt (Auteur, 2021). Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was British-born Alfred Hitchcock's fifth American f...

Robert P. Crease, "The Leak: Politics, Activists, and Loss of Trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory" (MIT Press, 2022)

18 Oct 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...

Anita Wohlmann, "Metaphor in Illness Writing: Fight and Battle Reused" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Metaphor in Illness Writing: Fight and Battle Reused (Edinburgh UP, 2022) argues that even when a metaphor appears problematic and limiting, it need ...

Patricia A. Turner, "Trash Talk: Anti-Obama Lore and Race in the Twenty-First Century" (U California Press, 2022)

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Barack Obama and his family have been the objects of rumors, legends, and conspiracy theories unprecedented in US politics. Outbreaks of anti-Obama lo...

Jakob Feinig, "Moral Economies of Money: Politics and the Monetary Constitution of Society" (Stanford UP, 2022)

17 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this podcast Jakob Feinig introduces his ideas about how and when people's practices and institutions shape money and money creation. He provided d...

Evan Haefeli, "Accidental Pluralism: America and the Religious Politics of English Expansion, 1497-1662" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

17 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Origin stories of the United States often highlight religious freedom as a foundational pillar of the earliest English settlers. But Evan Haefeli tell...

Erin Keane, "Runaway: Notes on the Myths That Made Me" (Belt Publishing, 2022)

17 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From Erin Keane, editor in chief at Salon, comes Runaway: Notes in the Myths that Made Me (Belt Publishing, 2022), a touching memoir about the sear...

Radicalism, Humility, and Racism in America

17 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s episode focuses on the new book by Lydia Moland, who is a Professor of Philosophy at Colby College. Her book, Lydia Maria Child: A Radical ...

Alexander Sergeant, "Encountering the Impossible: The Fantastic in Hollywood Fantasy Cinema" (SUNY Press, 2021)

14 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hollywood fantasy cinema is responsible for some of the most lucrative franchises produced over the past two decades, yet it remains difficult to find...

Charles Sawyer, "B. B. King: From Indianola to Icon: A Personal Odyssey with the 'King of the Blues'" (Schiffer Publishing, 2022)

14 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Want to take a trip with the king of the Blues? As B.B. King’s photographer and original biographer, Charlie Sawyer was along for the ride. In B.B....

Doron Taussig, "What We Mean by the American Dream: Stories We Tell about Meritocracy" (Cornell UP, 2021)

14 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The American Dream is built on the idea that Americans end up roughly where we deserve to be in our working lives based on our efforts and abilities; ...

Maria Adele Carrai and Jennifer Rudolph, "The China Questions 2: Critical Insights Into US-China Relations" (Harvard UP, 2022)

14 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For decades Americans have described China as a rising power. That description no longer fits: China has already risen. What does this mean for the U....

Sherry Boschert, "37 Words: Title IX and Fifty Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination" (New Press, 2022)

14 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A sweeping history of the federal legislation that prohibits sex discrimination in education, published on the fiftieth anniversary of Title IX. “No...

The Fight to Save the Town

13 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Why we need to write about difficult topics. Four American towns trying to save t...

Ramzi Fawaz, "Queer Forms" (NYU Press, 2022)

13 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Ramzi Fawaz, Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has a new book that weaves together the more contemporary history of feminis...

Jill Hicks-Keeton and Cavan W. Concannon, "Does Scripture Speak for Itself?: The Museum of the Bible and the Politics of Interpretation" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

13 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Is the Bible the unembellished Word of God or the product of human agency? There are different answers to that question. And they lie at the heart of ...

Bhaskar Sunkara, "The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality" (Basic Books, 2020)

13 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality (Basic Books, 2020), Bhaskar Sunkara explores socialism's ...

Suzana Sawyer, "The Small Matter of Suing Chevron" (Duke UP, 2022)

12 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 2011, an Ecuadorian court issued the world’s largest environmental contamination liability: a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron. Within years...

John D'Emilio, "Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood: Coming of Age in the Sixties" (Duke UP, 2022)

12 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of the Queer Voices podcast, John Marszalek interviews author John D’Emilio, one of the leading historians of his generation and a ...

Peter Coviello, "Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism" (U Chicago Press, 2019)

12 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

rom the perspective of Protestant America, nineteenth-century Mormons were the victims of a peculiar zealotry, a population deranged––socially, se...

Gabriel Debenedetti, "The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama" (Henry Holt, 2022)

12 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama (Henry Holt, 2022) New York Magazine national correspondent Gabriel Debened...

P. E. Caquet, "Opium's Orphans: The 200-Year History of the War on Drugs" (Reaktion Books, 2022)

12 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The global war on drugs began some 150 years before US President Richard Nixon launched the current chapter of America’s drug war in 1971. In Opium...

Alena Pirok, "The Spirit of Colonial Williamsburg: Ghosts and Interpreting the Recreated Past" (U Massachusetts Press, 2022)

12 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On any given night, hundreds of guests walk the darkened streets of Colonial Williamsburg looking for ghosts. Since the early 2000s, both the museum a...

Sami Schalk, "Black Disability Politics" (Duke UP, 2022)

12 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Black Disability Politics (Duke UP, 2022) Sami Schalk explores how issues of disability have been and continue to be central to Black activism fr...

Anima Adjepong, "Afropolitan Projects: Redefining Blackness, Sexualities, and Culture from Houston to Accra" (UNC Press, 2021)

11 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Beyond simplistic binaries of the dark continent or Africa Rising, Africans at home and abroad articulate their identities through their quotidian pra...

Mitch Troutman, "Bootleg Coal Rebellion: The Pennsylvania Miners Who Seized an Industry, 1925-1942" (PM Press, 2022)

11 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Told with great intimacy and compassion, Bootleg Coal Rebellion: The Pennsylvania Miners Who Seized an Industry, 1925-1942 (PM Press, 2022) uncovers...

Nadine Weidman, "Killer Instinct: The Popular Science of Human Nature in Twentieth-Century America" (Harvard UP, 2021)

11 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A historian of science examines key public debates about the fundamental nature of humans to ask why a polarized discourse about nature versus nurture...

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

11 Oct 2022

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...

Andrew Porwancher et al., "The Prophet of Harvard Law: James Bradley Thayer and His Legal Legacy" (UP of Kansas, 2022)

10 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Though relatively short, the 2022 book The Prophet of Harvard Law: James Bradley Thayer and His Legal Legacy (UP of Kansas, 2022) by Andrew Porwanch...

Peter Montoya, "The Second Civil War: A Citizen's Guide to Healing Our Fractured Nation" (RH Press, 2021)

10 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

America is on the brink of disaster. You've seen it -- on television, social media, at work, and even in your personal life. We're in the midst of a c...

Technocracy Now! Part 2: Exploring Technocracy through Cybernetics

10 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On part #2 of Technocracy Now, we tell stories of cybernetic technocracies. First, we hear the story of Charles A. McClelland, a liberal political sci...

M. Margaret McKeown, "Citizen Justice: The Environmental Legacy of William O. Douglas" (Potomac Books, 2022)

10 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was a giant in the legal world, even if he is often remembered for his four wives, as a potential vice-p...

Emerald Garner, "Finding My Voice" (Haymarket, 2022)

07 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this unforgetable memoir, Emerald Garner recounts her father's cruel and unjust murder, the immense pain that followed, the pressures of an exploit...

On John Hersey's "Hiroshima"

07 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In August of 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Less than a year later, American journalis...

Joseph Blankholm, "The Secular Paradox: On the Religiosity of the Not Religious" (NYU Press, 2022)

07 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For much of America’s rapidly growing secular population, religion is an inescapable source of skepticism and discomfort. It shows up in politics an...

Kathryn Gin Lum, "Heathen: Religion and Race in American History" (Harvard UP, 2022)

07 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

If an eighteenth-century parson told you that the difference between "civilization and heathenism is sky-high and star-far," the words would hardly co...

Edward Chancellor, "The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2022)

06 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Edward Chancellor's just published history of interest rates could not be better timed. As the world adjusts to rising rates after decades of falling...

Pamela Robertson Wojcik, "Gidget: Origins of a Teen Girl Transmedia Franchise" (Routledge, 2022)

06 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Gidget: Origins of a Teen Girl Transmedia Franchise (Routledge, 2022) examines the multiplicity of books, films, TV shows, and merchandise that make ...

A Region of the Mind: U.S. Northern Plains and Canadian Prairies

06 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Greg Marchildon interviews Molly P. Rozum, the author of Grasslands Grown: Creating Place on the U.S. Northern Plains and Canadian Prairies (U of Ne...

Tenzan Eaghll and Rebekka King, "Representing Religion in Film" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

06 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Tenzan Eaghll and Rebekka King's Representing Religion in Film (Bloomsbury, 2021) is the first full-length exploration of the relationship between...

The Two Russias

05 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the late 1980s, Hollywood reflected the real world thaw in the Cold War by depicting the idea of two Russias: the cold bureaucratic state run by gr...

Ian Macpherson McCulloch, "John Bradstreet's Raid 1758: A Riverine Operation in the French and Indian War" (U Oklahoma Press, 2022)

05 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A year after John Bradstreet’s raid of 1758—the first and largest British-American riverine raid mounted during the Seven Years’ War (known in N...

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Gwendolyn Mink, "Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress" (NYU Press, 2022)

05 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The first biography of trailblazing legislator Patsy Takemoto Mink, best known as the legislative champion of Title IX. "Every girl in Little League, ...

Cinema’s First Nasty Women

04 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What makes a nasty woman? Is it her unwillingness to break to the stringent standards of patriarchy, her gameness to get rough, even abject? Or is it ...

The Future of the Legitimate Opposition: A Discussion with Alexander S. Kirshner

04 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Alexander Kirshner’s book Legitimate Opposition (Yale UP, 2022) can be seen as a reaction to the politics of Donald Trump and the questions he has...

On Thomas Paine's "Common Sense"

03 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1770s, the American colonies were working up to a revolution. But while the colonists were increasingly dissatisfied with British rule, there w...

Technocracy Now! Part 1: Noam Chomsky on Intellectuals and Expertise

03 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Technocracy is the idea that experts should govern. For the common good, presumably. In fact, it's an idea as old as politics itself, and it emerges j...

Erin A. Snider, "Marketing Democracy: The Political Economy of Democracy Aid in the Middle East" (Cambridge UP. 2022)

03 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For nearly two decades, the United States devoted more than $2 billion towards democracy promotion in the Middle East with seemingly little impact. To...

Angela Tedesco, "Finding Turtle Farm: My Twenty-Acre Adventure in Community-Supported Agriculture" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)

03 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This is the tale of one woman's journey of growing a community-supported farm from earth to plate. In 1995 Angela Tedesco bought a twenty-acre farm wi...

R. E. Evans and B. E. Kinnear, "'Richard Eager'": A Pilot's Story from Tennessee Eagle Scout to General Montgomery's 'Flying Fortress'" (Kieran Publishing, 2021)

03 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Captain Richard E. Evans was an American B-17 "Flying Fortress" pilot. He flew 55 combat missions and during that time was also chosen to fly British ...

NBN Classic: David Farber, "Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

02 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. A shattering account of the cr...

NBN Classic: Alexandra Minna Stern, "White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination" (Beacon Press, 2019)

01 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. In this episode, Dr. Alexandra...

The Canada-US Border: A History of a Fluid and Unstable Boundary

30 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Greg Marchildon interviews Benjamin Hoy, author of A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada-United States Border across Indigenous Lands (Oxfor...

Noah Shusterman, "Armed Citizens: The Road from Ancient Rome to the Second Amendment" (U Virginia Press, 2020)

30 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Although much has changed in the United States since the eighteenth century, our framework for gun laws still largely relies on the Second Amendment a...

Alex Williams and Jeremy Gilbert, "Hegemony Now: How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World (And How We Win it Back)" (Verso, 2022)

29 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today power is in the hands of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. How do we understand this transformation in power? And what can we do about it? We cann...

Kermit Roosevelt III, "The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America's Story" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

29 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

There's a common story we tell about America: that our fundamental values as a country were stated in the Declaration of Independence, fought for in t...