New Books in American Studies
Episodes
James Bessen, "The New Goliaths: How Corporations Use Software to Dominate Industries, Kill Innovation, and Undermine Regulation" (Yale UP, 2022)
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The New Goliaths: How Corporations Use Software to Dominate Industries, Kill Innovation, and Undermine Regulation (Yale UP, 2022), James Bessen e...
Robert P. Watson, "George Washington's Final Battle: The Epic Struggle to Build a Capital City and a Nation" (Georgetown UP, 2021)
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
George Washington is remembered for leading the Continental Army to victory, presiding over the Constitution, and forging a new nation, but few know t...
Wendy Simonds, "Hospital Land USA: Sociological Adventures in Medicalization" (Routledge, 2016)
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Hospital Land USA: Sociological Adventures in Medicalization (Routledge, 2016), Wendy Simonds analyzes the wide-reaching powers of medicalizatio...
Charisse Burden-Stelly and Jodi Dean, "Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women's Political Writing" (Verso, 2022)
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Black Communist women throughout the early to mid-twentieth century fought for and led mass campaigns in the service of building collective power in t...
Tripp Mickle, "After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul" (William Morrow, 2022))
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Jobs called Jony Ive his "spiritual partner at Apple." The London-born genius was the second-most powerful person at Apple and the creative forc...
Cold War Homefront
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We could do a whole season on Vietnam war films, but in this episode we chose three films that highlight the Cold War’s omnipresence in daily life. ...
Abigail Perkiss, "Hurricane Sandy on New Jersey's Forgotten Shore" (Cornell UP, 2022)
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
After the tumultuous night of October 29, 2012, the residents of Monmouth, Ocean, and Atlantic Counties faced an enormous and pressing question: What ...
Peter Coviello, "Vineland Reread" (Columbia UP, 2021)
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Vineland is hardly anyone’s favorite Thomas Pynchon novel. Marking Pynchon’s return after vanishing for nearly two decades following his epic Gr...
Christopher Nichols and David Milne, "Ideology in U.S. Foreign Relations: New Histories" (Columbia UP, 2022)
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ideology drives American foreign policy in ways seen and unseen. Racialized notions of subjecthood and civilization underlay the political revolution ...
Beverly Weintraub, "Wings of Gold: The Story of the First Women Naval Aviators" (Lyons Press, 2021)
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On Feb. 2, 2019, the skies over Maynardville, Tennessee, filled with the roar of four F/A-18F Super Hornets streaking overhead in close formation. In ...
Julia Scheeres and Allison Gilbert, "Listen, World!: How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America's Most-Read Woman" (Seal Press, 2022)
27 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Together, bestselling author Julia Scheeres and award-winning journalist Allison Gilbert have written Listen, World!: How the Intrepid Elsie Robi...
Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt, "Franz Boas: The Emergence of the Anthropologist" (U Nebraska Press, 2019)
27 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Franz Boas is remembered today as one of the most important figures in the history of anthropology. In the United States, he is widely created with cr...
Gregory Sholette, "The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art" (Lund Humphries, 2021)
27 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Since the global financial crash of 2008, artists have become increasingly engaged in a wide range of cultural activism targeted against capitalism, p...
Jim Cullen, "1980: America's Pivotal Year" (Rutgers UP, 2022)
26 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
1980 was a turning point in American history. When the year began, it was still very much the 1970s, with Jimmy Carter in the White House, a sluggish ...
Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas and Mérida M. Rúa, "Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies: A Reader" (NYU Press, 2021)
26 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Latinx Studies has long been overdue for a revamp – a different orientation to the questions with which we concern ourselves. Critical Dialogues in...
On F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby"
26 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“America” means something different to everyone. American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby, his account of the roaring twen...
Andrew Bomback, "Long Days, Short Years: A Cultural History of Modern Parenting" (MIT Press, 2022)
23 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When did "parenting" become a verb? Why is it so hard to parent, and so rife with the possibility of failure? Sitcom families of the past--the Cleaver...
Doug Greene, "Failure of Vision: Michael Harrington and the Limits of Democratic Socialism" (Zero Books, 2022)
23 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Democratic Socialists of America have exploded in the last few years, going from just a couple thousand members to close to a hundred thousand. Th...
Catherine Lester, "Horror Films for Children: Fear and Pleasure in American Cinema" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
23 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Children and horror are often thought to be an incompatible meeting of audience and genre, beset by concerns that children will be corrupted or harmed...
Yarimar Bonilla ed. et al., "Trouillot Remixed: The Michel-Rolph Trouillot Reader" (Duke UP, 2021)
23 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout his career, the internationally renowned Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot unsettled key concepts in anthropology, history, pos...
Charles L. Chavis Jr., "The Silent Shore: The Lynching of Matthew Williams and the Politics of Racism in the Free State" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On December 4, 1931, a mob of white men in Salisbury, Maryland, lynched and set ablaze a twenty-three-year-old Black man named Matthew Williams. His g...
Patrick O. Cohrs, "The New Atlantic Order: The Transformation of International Politics, 1860-1933" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The New Atlantic Order: The Transformation of International Politics, 1860-1933 (Cambridge UP, 2022) elucidates a momentous transformation process th...
Olúfemi Táíwò, "Against Decolonization: Taking African Agency Seriously" (Hurst, 2022)
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Decolonisation has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West’s direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, o...
Keri Blakinger, "Corrections in Ink: A Memoir" (St. Martin's Press, 2022)
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Corrections in Ink (St. Martin's Press, 2022) is an electric and unforgettable memoir about a young woman's journey-from the ice rink, to addiction a...
David Enrich, "Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice" (Mariner Books, 2022)
21 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In his acclaimed #1 bestseller Dark Towers, David Enrich presented the never-before-told saga of how Deutsche Bank became the global face of financia...
It’s The End Of The World As We Know It
21 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Last episode we discussed films about how a nuclear war would start, particularly the insane logic of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). In this epis...
Jon Krampner, "Ernest Lehman: The Sweet Smell of Success" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)
21 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A Hollywood screenwriting and movie-making icon, Ernest Lehman penned some of the most memorable scenes to ever grace the silver screen. Hailed by Va...
Michael R. Gordon, "Degrade and Destroy: The Inside Story of the War Against the Islamic State, from Barack Obama to Donald Trump" (FSG, 2022)
21 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Degrade and Destroy: The Inside Story of the War Against the Islamic State, from Barack Obama to Donald Trump (FSG, 2022), Wall Street Journal na...
Olivier Zunz, "The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville" (Princeton UP, 2022)
21 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1831, at the age of twenty-five, Alexis de Tocqueville made his fateful journey to America, where he observed the thrilling reality of a functionin...
Timothy Paul Bowman, "You Will Never Be One of Us: A Teacher, a Texas Town, and the Rural Roots of Radical Conservatism" (U of Oklahoma Press, 2022)
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As the 1974 school year began, Wayne Woodward was a beloved high school teacher in a rural Texas town. By the following spring, he was embroiled in a ...
Randall Balmer, "Passion Plays: How Religion Shaped Sports in North America" (UNC Press, 2022)
20 Sep 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...
Stevie Van Zandt, "Unrequited Infatuations: A Memoir" (Hachette Books, 2022)
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What story begins in a bedroom in suburban New Jersey in the early '60s, unfolds on some of the country's largest stages, and then ranges across the g...
Nancy Fraser, "Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do About It" (Verso, 2022)
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Capital is currently cannibalizing every sphere of life–guzzling wealth from nature and racialized populations, sucking up our ability to care for e...
John M. Curatola, "Autumn of Our Discontent: Fall 1949 and the Crises in American National Security" (US Naval Institute Press, 2022)
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the Fall of 1949, a series of international events shattered the notion that the United States would return to its traditional small peacetime mili...
Kenneth H. Kolb, "Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate" (U California Press, 2021)
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate (U California Press, 2021) examines the failure of recent efforts to improve Americans' diets by ...
Abby L. Goode, "Agrotopias: An American Literary History of Sustainability" (UNC Press, 2022)
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this book, Abby L. Goode reveals the foundations of American environmentalism and its enduring connections to racism, eugenics, and agrarian ideals...
Emily Bingham, "My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song" (Knopf, 2022)
19 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Any song as old and as familiar as “My Old Kentucky Home” is bound to have accrued many different meanings and an interesting history. Emily Bingh...
Raúl Pérez, "The Souls of White Jokes: How Racist Humor Fuels White Supremacy" (Stanford UP, 2022)
19 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Having a "good" sense of humor generally means being able to take a joke without getting offended—laughing even at a taboo thought or at another's e...
Tod Gitlin on the Recovery of American Ideals
19 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, we hear from Tod Gitlin. Gitlin was president of the Students for a Democratic Society, and went on to b...
Brian D. Bunk, "From Football to Soccer: The Early History of the Beautiful Game in the United States" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
19 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Across North America, native peoples and colonists alike played a variety of kicking games long before soccer's emergence in the late 1800s. Brian D....
Steve Adelman, "Nocturnal Admissions: A Nightlife Memoir" (Santa Monica Press, 2022)
16 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Nocturnal Admissions: Behind the Scenes at Tunnel, Limelight, Avalon, and Other Legendary Nightclubs (Santa Monica Press, 2022), nightclub direc...
Mohamed Adhikari, "Destroying to Replace: Settler Genocides of Indigenous Peoples" (Hackett, 2022)
16 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Dr. Mohamed Adhikari about his book Destroying to Replace: Settler Genocides of Indigenous Peoples (Hackett, 2022). "This book e...
Aria S. Halliday, "Buy Black: How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture" (U Illinois Press, 2022)
16 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Buy Black: How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture (U Illinois Press, 2022) examines the role American Black women play in Black consumption in th...
Paul Russell Semendinger, "The Least Among Them: 29 Players, Their Brief Moments in the Big Leagues, and a Unique History of the New York Yankees" (Artemesia, 2021)
16 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Least Among Them: 29 Players, Their Brief Moments in the Big Leagues, and a Unique History of the New York Yankees (Artemesia, 2021) is a most sp...
Chris Belcher, "Pretty Baby: A Memoir" (Simon and Schuster, 2022)
16 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"The dominatrix is the id of American femininity. She says the words that we all wish we could say when we find ourselves frozen in the presence of me...
Michael O. Johnston, "Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest" (Lexington Books, 2022)
16 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest (Lexington Books, 2022) explores an annual interstate tug-of-war between two small...
David Crow, "The Pale-Faced Lie: A True Story" (Sandra Jonas Publishing, 2019)
15 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A violent ex-con forces his son to commit crimes in this unforgettable memoir about family and survival. Growing up on the Navajo Indian Reservation, ...
Bruce J. Dierenfield and David A. Gerber, "Disability Rights and Religious Liberty in Education: The Story Behind Zobrest V. Catalina Foothills School District" (U Illinois Press, 2020)
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1988, Sandi and Larry Zobrest sued a suburban Tucson, Arizona, school district that had denied their hearing-impaired son a taxpayer-funded interpr...
Christin Essin, "Working Backstage: A Cultural History and Ethnography of Technical Theater Labor" (U Michigan Press, 2021)
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Working Backstage: A Cultural History and Ethnography of Technical Theater Labor (University of Michigan Press, 2021) by Dr. Christin Essin illuminat...
Brad Snyder, "Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment" (Norton, 2022)
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The conventional wisdom about Felix Frankfurter--Harvard law professor and Supreme Court justice--is that he struggled to fill the seat once held by O...
A MAD, MAD, World
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The world lived under the shadow of the acronym MAD for forty years. Mutually Assured Destruction was no laughing matter, but Stanley Kubrick thought ...
Derek H. Alderman et al., "Remembering Enslavement: Reassembling the Southern Plantation Museum" (U Georgia Press, 2022)
13 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Remembering Enslavement: Reassembling the Southern Plantation Museum (U Georgia Press, 2022) explores plantation museums as sites for contesting and ...
On "The Book of Mormon"
13 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1827 a young farmer named Joseph Smith was visited by an angel. The angel led him to a hillside where he uncovered a set of ancient gold plates wri...
Ellie D. Hernández et al., "Transmovimientos: Latinx Queer Migrations, Bodies, and Spaces" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)
13 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Edited by Ellie D. Hernandez, Eddy Francisco Alvarez Jr., and Magda García, Transmovimientos: Latinx Queer Migrations, Bodies, and Space (Univers...
Esther Wright, "Rockstar Games and American History: Promotional Materials and the Construction of Authenticity" (de Gruyter, 2022)
13 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For two decades, Rockstar Games have been making games that interrogate and represent the idea of America, past and present. Commercially successful, ...
The Future of American Decline: A Conversation with Jed Esty
13 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The UK spent decades in its the post imperial phase trying to work out how it should think of itself and align itself in the world - a debate that Bre...
Ethan Czuy Levine, "Rape by the Numbers: Producing and Contesting Scientific Knowledge about Sexual Violence" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
13 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Science plays a substantial, though under-acknowledged, role in shaping popular understandings of rape. Statistical figures like “1 in 4 women have ...
Carl A. Brasseaux and Donald W. Davis, "Asian-Cajun Fusion: Shrimp from the Bay to the Bayou" (UP of Mississippi, 2022)
13 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Shrimp is easily America’s favorite seafood, but its very popularity is the wellspring of problems that threaten the shrimp industry’s existence. ...
Karen Hunger Parshall, "The New Era in American Mathematics, 1920–1950" (Princeton UP, 2022)
12 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The New Era in Mathematics, 1920-1950 (Princeton University Press, 2022) Karen Parshall explores the institutional, financial, social, and politi...
Danielle J. Lindemann, "True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us" (FSG, 2022)
12 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why is reality TV important? In True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us (FSG, 2022), Danielle J. Lindemann, an Associate Professor of Sociology ...
Jodi Skipper, "Behind the Big House: Reconciling Slavery, Race, and Heritage in the U.S. South" (U Iowa Press, 2022)
09 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When residents and tourists visit sites of slavery, whose stories are told? All too often the lives of slaveowners are centered, obscuring the lives o...
Pew Research Center: Analyzing the Evangelical Right
09 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
You’ve seen hilarious videos of the evangelicals for Trump. You might be inclined to ignore them, mock their excesses, or dismiss their threat. But ...
Josep M. Fradera, "The Imperial Nation: Citizens and Subjects in the British, French, Spanish, and American Empires" (Princeton UP, 2018)
09 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How the legacy of monarchical empires shaped Britain, France, Spain, and the United States as they became liberal entities? Historians view the late e...
Eric A. Posner, "How Antitrust Failed Workers" (Oxford UP, 2021)
08 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Eric Posner about his book How Antitrust Failed Workers (Oxford UP, 2021). When anti-trust cases are brought forward, typically t...
William C. Kirby, "Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China" (Harvard UP, 2022)
08 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier this month, U.S. President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act, a bill purportedly meant to revive U.S. dominance in research and devel...
Michael O'Hanlon, "The Art of War in an Age of Peace: U.S. Grand Strategy and Resolute Restraint" (Yale UP, 2021)
07 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Art of War in an Age of Peace: U.S. Grand Strategy and Resolute Restraint (Yale University Press, 2021) Dr. Michael O’Hanlon presents an in...
Ugo Corte, "Dangerous Fun: The Social Lives of Big Wave Surfers" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
07 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Straight from the beaches of Hawaii comes an exciting new ethnography of a community of big-wave surfers. Oahu’s Waimea Bay attracts the world’s b...
Marissa R. Moss, "Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be" (Henry Holt, 2022)
07 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It was only two decades ago, but, for the women of country music, 1999 seems like an entirely different universe. With Shania Twain, country's biggest...
Who Can You Trust?
07 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Can you imagine living in a society that is ostensibly a democracy but secret forces are working behind the scenes to manipulate events? What if our i...
Phillip B. Levine, "A Problem of Fit: How the Complexity of College Pricing Hurts Students—and Universities" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
06 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
According to A Problem of Fit: How the Complexity of College Pricing Hurts Students—and Universities (U Chicago Press, 2022) a college education ...
Mark T. Johnson, "The Middle Kingdom Under the Big Sky: A History of the Chinese Experience in Montana" (U of Nebraska Press, 2022)
06 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From the earliest days of non-Native settlement of Montana, when Chinese immigrants made up more than 10 percent of the territory’s population, Chin...
Allyson P. Brantley, "Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors and Remade American Consumer Activism" (UNC Press, 2021)
06 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Before the craft beer revolution, Coors was a hot commodity. Impossible to find outside a few states in the West, the beer had a level of "cool" that ...
Liz Bucar, "Stealing My Religion: Not Just Any Cultural Appropriation" (Harvard UP, 2022)
06 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Liz Bucar is the Director of Sacred Writes, Professor of Religion, and Dean’s Leadership Fellow at Northeastern University. Bucar is an expert in ...
Peter S. Alagona, "The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities" (U California Press, 2022)
05 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities (U California Press, 2022) tells the story of how cities across the United States we...
Fritz Bartel, "The Triumph of Broken Promises: The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism" (Harvard UP, 2022)
05 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why did the Cold War come to a peaceful end? And why did neoliberal economics sweep across the world in the late twentieth century? In this pathbreaki...
Decoteau Irby, "Stuck Improving: Racial Equity and School Leadership" (Harvard Education Press, 2021)
05 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
An incisive case study of changemaking in action, Stuck Improving: Racial Equity and School Leadership (Harvard Education Press, 2021) analyzes the...
Truck Nuts: The Political History of Trucks and Trucking
05 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The pickup truck is the symbol of rural conservative masculinity. So, it often takes centre stage in the tired culture wars between reactionary neo-po...
Marcus Nevius on Becoming a Historian, Marronage, Slave Resistance, and More!
03 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today's episode of "New Books in African American Studies" is special. Why, you might ask? Because today's episode marks my 100th episode on the NBN...
Adam Abraham, "Attack of the Monster Musical: A Cultural History of Little Shop of Horrors" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
02 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Attack of the Monster Musical: A Cultural History of Little Shop of Horrors (Bloomsbury, 2022), Adam Abraham chronicles the history of this hit ...
William Alexander, "Ten Tomatoes that Changed the World" (Grand Central Publishing, 2022)
02 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The tomato gets no respect. Never has. Stored in the dustbin of history for centuries, accused of being vile and poisonous, appropriated as wartime pr...
The Tamiflu Trials: Profit and Public Health
02 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Before Remdesivir and Hydroxycloroquin there was Tamiflu. To prepare for Swine Flu and Bird Flu, governments spent billions stockpiling this drug call...
Mark Clague, "O Say Can You Hear?: A Cultural Biography of the Star-Spangled Banner" (Norton, 2022)
02 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The national anthem of the United States is familiar around the world from Olympic medal ceremonies and American patriotic celebrations. Like anything...
Aria S. Halliday, "Buy Black: How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture" (U Illinois Press, 2022)
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Buy Black: How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2022), Aria Halliday negotiates the line between "sell out...
Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone, "Social Media, Freedom of Speech, and the Future of Our Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2022)
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most fiercely debated issues of this era is what to do about "bad" speech, hate speech, disinformation, propaganda campaigns, incitement of...
Tommi Koivula and Heljä Ossa, "NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes: Past, Present and Future Prospects" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes: Past, Present and Future Prospects (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Dr. Tommi Koivula & Heljä Ossa argues that burd...
Meighen McCrae, "Coalition Strategy and the End of the First World War: The Supreme War Council and War Planning, 1917-1918" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When the Germans requested an armistice in October 1918, it was a shock to the Allied political and military leadership. They had been expecting, and ...
88 Underwater Eye: Margaret Cohen explores the Film Aquatic
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Margaret Cohen joins John to discuss The Underwater Eye, which explores "How the Movie Camera Opened the Depths and Unleashed New Realms of Fantasy....
The Heroin Clinic
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
At Crosstown Clinic, doctors are turning addiction treatment on its head: they’re prescribing heroin-users the very drug they’re addicted to. This...
Anthony Christian Ocampo, "Brown and Gay in LA: The Lives of Immigrant Sons" (NYU Press, 2022)
31 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Growing up in the shadow of Hollywood, the gay sons of immigrants featured in Brown and Gay in LA: The Lives of Immigrant Sons (NYU Press, 2022) cou...
John M. Kinder and Jason A. Higgins, "Service Denied: Marginalized Veterans in Modern American History" (U Massachusetts Press, 2022)
31 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Wartime military service is held up as a marker of civic duty and patriotism, yet the rewards of veteran status have never been equally distributed. C...
This is Your Brain on Trial
31 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine reading or watching The Minority Report and thinking of that as a model for the criminal justice system. Well, plenty of forensic types are ...
Jillian Peterson and James Densley, "The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic" (Harry N. Abrams, 2021)
31 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Using data from the writers' groundbreaking research on mass shooters, including first-person accounts from the perpetrators themselves, The Violence...
He May Be a Communist!
31 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We are back for a third season! The Russian invasion of Ukraine reminded us all that “everything old is new again” and that includes Cold War tens...
E. James West, "Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr." (U Massachusetts Press, 2022)
30 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Journalist, activist, popular historian, and public intellectual, Lerone Bennett Jr. left an indelible mark on twentieth-century American history and ...
Merlin Chowkwanyun, "All Health Politics Is Local: Community Battles for Medical Care and Environmental Health" (UNC Press, 2022)
30 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Health care is political. It entails fierce battles over the allocation of resources, arguments over the imposition of regulations, and the mediation ...
Sandra Eder, "How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
30 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
An eye-opening exploration of the medical origins of gender in modern US history. Today, a world without "gender" is hard to imagine. Gender is at the...
Pathological: The Work of Dr. Charles Smith
30 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Charles Smith performed autopsies at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, ON. The cops kept turning to him with new corpses, and he kept cla...
Wendy L. Rouse, "Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women's Suffrage Movement" (NYU Press, 2022)
29 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment was commemorated in 2020, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were often the focus of museum ...
Derailed: The Crisis of Forensic Expertise
29 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to complex social problems, us “sensible” types turn to the experts, but what if they don’t actually know what they’re talking a...
On Herman Melville's "Moby Dick"
29 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It makes sense that historian Nathanial Philbrick calls Moby-Dick the “American Bible.” Along with being a story of adventure and danger, it’s a...