New Books in American Studies
Episodes
Robert W. Tomlinson, "The Influence of Foreign Wars on U.S. Domestic Military Policy: The Case of the Yom Kippur War" (Lexington, 2022)
27 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How do military organizations learn? Robert W. Tomlinson's book The Influence of Foreign Wars on U.S. Domestic Military Policy (Lexington, 2022) cov...
Koch Block My Campus: How Big Money Corrupts Academia
27 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why is so much right-wing money being funnelled at such a furious pace into universities across the US? Libertarian-minded billionaires like the Kochs...
Michael S. Roth, "Safe Enough Spaces: A Pragmatist's Approach to Inclusion, Free Speech, and Political Correctness on College Campuses" (Yale UP, 2021)
27 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From the president of Wesleyan University, a compassionate and provocative manifesto, Safe Enough Spaces (Yale UP, 2021) on the crises confronting ...
The Grift of Meritocracy: All About Grifting (Inside and Outside of the Academy)
26 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Our society is dominated by grifters. Cheats, cons, frauds: people who don’t really believe what they tell you. They’re just what they need to do ...
Kecia Ali, ed., "Tying the Knot: A Feminist/Womanist Guide to Muslim Marriage in America" (Open BU, 2021)
26 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Are you a born, revert, or convert Muslim who is trying to navigate the puzzle that is Muslim marriage in America? Do you want an egalitarian and fair...
F. Brett Cox, "Roger Zelazny" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
26 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Roger Zelazny (1937-1995) combined poetic prose with fearless literary ambition to become one of the most influential science fiction writers of the 1...
Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth, "It's Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)
25 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The protests of summer 2020 led to long-overdue reassessments of the legacy of racism and white supremacy in both American academe and cultural life m...
Mark Solovey, "Social Science for What?: Battles over Public Funding for the 'Other Sciences' at the National Science Foundation" (MIT Press, 2020)
25 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This is part one of a two part interview. "The social sciences have prospered best in the federal government where they have been included under broad...
The Bland Corporation: On the RAND Corporation and the Defence-Intellectual Industrial Complex
25 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to week two of our Darts and Letters summer showcase! Darts and Letters is a show about the politics of ideas. We’re celebrating joining the...
Duy Lap Nguyen, "The Unimagined Community: Imperialism and Culture in South Vietnam" (Manchester UP, 2019)
25 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Duy Lap Nguyen's book The Unimagined Community: Imperialism and Culture in South Vietnam (Manchester UP, 2019) proposes a reexamination of the Vietn...
James P. Byrd and James Hudnut-Beumler, "The Story of Religion in America: An Introduction" (Westminster John Knox Press, 2021)
25 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Story of Religion in America: An Introduction (Westminster John Knox Press, 2021) presents the broad scope of the story of religion in the Ameri...
Exiled in America: About the Lives of Registered Sex Offenders
22 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Before Darts and Letters there was a documentary series called Cited. This is one of those documentaries. This episode is about the lives of sex offen...
John Joe Schlichtman, "Showroom City: Real Estate and Resistance in the Furniture Capital of the World" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
22 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A unique and engaging account of local urban decision-making within the globalizing world High Point, North Carolina, is known as the “Furniture Cap...
Ann Marie Borys, "American Unitarian Churches: Architecture of a Democratic Religion" (U Massachusetts Press, 2021)
22 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Unitarian religious tradition was a product of the same eighteenth-century democratic ideals that fueled the American Revolution and informed the ...
Jay Baruch, "Tornado of Life: A Doctor's Journey through Constraints and Creativity in the ER" (MIT Press, 2022)
22 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
To be an emergency room doctor is to be a professional listener to stories. Each patient presents a story; finding the heart of that story is the doct...
Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner, "The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be" (MIT Press, 2022)
22 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be (MIT Press, 2022), Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner analyzed in-depth in...
Traci Parker, "Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s" (UNC Press, 2019)
22 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s (UNC Press, 2019), Traci Parke...
David D. Dworak, "War of Supply: World War II Allied Logistics in the Mediterranean" (UP of Kentucky Press, 2022)
21 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The era of modern warfare introduced in World War II presented the Allied Powers with one of the more complicated logistical challenges of the century...
Jason Resnikoff, "Labor's End: How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
21 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Labor's End: How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work (U Illinois Press, 2021) traces the discourse around automation from its origins in the fact...
Ryan Uytdewilligen, "Killing John Wayne: The Making of the Conqueror" (Lyons Press, 2021)
21 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Behold the history of a film so scandalous, so outrageous, so explosive it disappeared from print for over a quarter century! A film so dangerous, hal...
Prison Notebooks: Thinking (and Writing) about Incarceration
21 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
I can point you to mountains of research about prisons. I can also recommend at least a dozen Netflix documentaries, and highlight a handful of radica...
Peter Boag, "Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-Of-the-Century Oregon" (U Washington Press, 2022)
20 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On November 19, 1895, eighteen year old Lloyd Montgomery murdered his parents and their neighbor at his home in rural Linn County, Oregon. In Pioneer...
Gabrielle David, "Trailblazers: Black Women Who Helped Make America Great, American Firsts/American Icons" (2leaf Press, 2021)
20 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Since slavery, Black women have struggled to liberate themselves from racism and sexism. Yet despite these hurdles and under the most difficult circum...
Donald Trump Loves Wrestlemania
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Darts and Letters is a show about the politics of ideas, and this week we’re searching for progressive politics in strange places… such as pro-wre...
Caryn Rose, "Why Patti Smith Matters" (U of Texas Press, 2022)
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Patti Smith arrived in New York City at the end of the Age of Aquarius in search of work and purpose. What she found—what she fostered—was a cultu...
Tara Watson and Kalee Thompson, "The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in an Age of Fear" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, immigration has been one of the most divisive, contentious topics in American politics. And for decades, urgent calls for its policy refo...
Katharine A. Burnett and Monica Carol Miller, "The Tacky South" (LSU Press, 2022)
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As a way to comment on a person’s style or taste, the word “tacky” has distinctly southern origins, with its roots tracing back to the so-called...
Thulani Davis, "The Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom" (Duke UP, 2022)
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom (Duke UP, 2022) Thulani Davis provides a sweeping rethinking of Reconstruc...
Xine Yao, "Disaffected: The Cultural Politics of Unfeeling in Nineteenth-Century America" (Duke UP, 2021)
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What is unfeeling? According to today’s guest, Xine Yao, unfeeling includes “a broad range of affective modes, including withholding, disregard, g...
Scott Meslow, "From Hollywood with Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy" (Day Street, 2022)
18 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
An in-depth celebration of the romantic comedy's modern golden era and its role in our culture, tracking the genre from its heyday in the '80s and the...
Pigeon Shit Bookstore: On Street Bookselling, Populism, and Public Intellectuals
18 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hi! This is Darts and Letters. We’ve just become a part of New Books Network, so we want to introduce ourselves. Fundamentally, This is a show about...
Jonna Perrillo, "Educating the Enemy: Teaching Nazis and Mexicans in the Cold War Borderlands" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
18 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Educating the Enemy: Teaching Nazis and Mexicans in the Cold War Borderlands (U Chicago Press, 2022) begins with the 144 children of Nazi scientists ...
Sergei Zhuk, "KGB Operations Against the USA and Canada in Soviet Ukraine 1953-1991" (Routledge, 2022)
18 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Oriented for a general reading audience, Sergei Zhuk's book KGB Operations Against the USA and Canada in Soviet Ukraine 1953-1991 (Routledge, 2022)...
Kelsi Matwick and Keri Matwick, "Food Discourse of Celebrity Chefs of Food Network" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019)
18 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Kelsi Matwick and Keri Matwick's book Food Discourse of Celebrity Chefs of Food Network (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019) explores a fascinating, yet virtu...
Victoria W. Wolcott, "Living in the Future: Utopianism and the Long Civil Rights Movement" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
18 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Living in the Future: Utopianism and the Long Civil Rights Movement (U Chicago Press, 2022) reveals the unexplored impact of utopian thought on the m...
Jeannie N. Shinozuka, "Biotic Borders: Transpacific Plant and Insect Migration and the Rise of Anti-Asian Racism in America, 1890-1950" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
15 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the late nineteenth century, increasing traffic of transpacific plants, insects, and peoples raised fears of a "biological yellow peril" when nurse...
Daniel Wirls, "The Senate: From White Supremacy to Governmental Gridlock" (U Virginia Press, 2021)
14 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Wirls, Professor of Politics at the University of California-Santa Cruz, has a new book that continues his research stream on the United States...
Anthony W. Wood, "Black Montana: Settler Colonialism and the Erosion of the Racial Frontier, 1877-1930" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)
14 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, many African Americans moved westward as Greater Reconstruction came to a close. Though, along with Euro-Ame...
Jennifer Lin, "Beethoven in Beijing: Stories from the Philadelphia Orchestra's Historic Journey to China" (Temple UP, 2022)
14 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1973, the Philadelphia Orchestra boarded a Pan Am 707 plane in Philadelphia for a once-in-a-lifetime journey: a multi-city tour of Maoist China, mo...
Tanya M. Peres and Aaron Deter-Wolf, "Baking, Bourbon, and Black Drink" (U Alabama Press, 2018)
14 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Understanding and explaining societal rules surrounding food and foodways have been the foci of anthropological studies since the early days of the di...
Hugh Ryan, "The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison" (Bold Type Books, 2022)
14 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Women’s House of Detention stood in New York City’s Greenwich Village from 1929 to 1974. Throughout its history, it was a nexus for tens of th...
Jed Esty, "The Future of Decline: Anglo-American Culture at Its Limits" (Stanford Briefs, 2022)
13 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As the US becomes a second-place nation, can it shed the superpower nostalgia that still haunts the UK? The debate over the US's fading hegemony has r...
Michael Mandelbaum, "The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy: Weak Power, Great Power, Superpower, Hyperpower" (Oxford UP, 2022)
13 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The United States is now nearly 250 years old. It arose from humble beginnings, as a strip of mostly agrarian and sparsely populated English colonies ...
Kevin Ruane and Matthew Jones, "Anthony Eden, Anglo-American Relations and the 1954 Indochina Crisis" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
12 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the spring of 1954, after eight years of bitter fighting, the war in Vietnam between the French and the communist-led Vietminh came to a head. With...
David Silkenat, "Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" (Oxford UP, 2022)
12 Jul 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...
Jennifer J. Hill, "Birthing the West: Mothers and Midwives in the Rockies and Plains" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
11 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Childbirth defines families, communities, and nations. In Birthing the West, Jennifer J. Hill fills the silences around historical reproduction with c...
Trevor Boffone, "TikTok Cultures in the United States" (Routledge, 2022)
11 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Trevor Boffone's book TikTok Cultures in the United States (Routledge, 2022) examines the role of TikTok in US popular culture, paying close attenti...
Shannen Dee Williams, "Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle" (Duke UP, 2022)
11 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle (Duke UP, 2022), Shannen Dee Williams, provides the first f...
Rain Prud'homme-Cranford and Darryl Barthé, "Louisiana Creole Peoplehood: Afro-Indigeneity and Community" (U Washington Press, 2022)
08 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over the course of more than three centuries, the diverse communities of Louisiana have engaged in creative living practices to forge a vibrant, multi...
Alison Macor, "Making The Best Years of Our Lives: The Hollywood Classic That Inspired a Nation" (U Texas Press, 2022)
08 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Released in 1946, The Best Years of Our Lives became an immediate success. Life magazine called it “the first big, good movie of the post-war era”...
Andrew R. Polk, "Faith in Freedom: Propaganda, Presidential Politics, and the Making of an American Religion" (Cornell UP, 2021)
07 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Faith in Freedom: Propaganda, Presidential Politics, and the Making of an American Religion (Cornell UP, 2021), Andrew R. Polk argues that the Am...
Pallavi Banerjee, "The Opportunity Trap: High-Skilled Workers, Indian Families, and the Failures of the Dependent Visa Program" (NYU Press, 2022)
06 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Opportunity Trap: High-Skilled Workers, Indian Families, and the Failures of the Dependent Visa Program (NYU Press, 2022) is the first book to lo...
Helen Morgan, "The Work of Whiteness: A Psychoanalytic Perspective" (Routledge, 2021)
06 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
'Whiteness' is a politically constructed category which needs to be understood and dismantled because the system of racism so embedded within our soci...
Ashley Remer and Tiffany Isselhardt, "Exploring American Girlhood through 50 Historic Treasures" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021)
06 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Who are the girls that helped build America? Conventional history books shed little light on the influence and impact of girls’ contributions to soc...
Jessica Lipsky, "It Ain't Retro: Daptone Records and the 21st-Century Soul Revolution" (Jawbone, 2021)
05 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Soul is the most powerful expression of American music--a distinct combination of roots, migration, race, culture, and politics packaged together for ...
Annette G. Aubert and Zachary Purvis, "Transatlantic Religion: Europe, America, and the Making of Modern Christianity" (Brill, 2021)
05 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Annette G. Aubert and Zachary Purvis' edited volume Transatlantic Religion: Europe, America, and the Making of Modern Christianity (Brill, 2021) off...
Elisabeth R. Anker, "Ugly Freedoms" (Duke UP, 2022)
04 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Ugly Freedoms (Duke UP, 2022), Elisabeth R. Anker reckons with the complex legacy of freedom offered by liberal American democracy, outlining ho...
Jason D. Spraitz and Kendra N. Bowen, "Institutional Sexual Abuse in the #metoo Era" (Southern Illinois UP, 2021)
01 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Institutional Sexual Abuse in the #metoo Era (Southern Illinois UP, 2021), editors Jason D. Spraitz and Kendra N. Bowen bring together the work o...
Stefanie K. Dunning, "Black to Nature: Pastoral Return and African American Culture" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
01 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Black to Nature: Pastoral Return and African American Culture (University Press of Mississippi, 2021), author Stefanie K. Dunning considers b...
Vanessa Walker, "Principles in Power: Latin America and the Politics of U.S. Human Rights Diplomacy" (Cornell UP, 2020)
01 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Vanessa Walker's Principles in Power: Latin America and the Politics of U. S. Human Rights Diplomacy (Cornell University Press, 2020) explores the r...
Roberto J. González, "War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future" (U California Press, 2022)
01 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A critical look at how the US military is weaponizing technology and data for new kinds of warfare—and why we must resist. War Virtually: The Quest...
Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre, "Curious about George: Curious George, Cultural Icons, Colonialism, and US Exceptionalism" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
01 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1940, Hans Augusto Rey and Margret Rey built two bikes, packed what they could, and fled wartime Paris. Among the possessions they escaped with was...
On Evangelicals in Antebellum America
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Brett Malcolm Grainger is a scholar of American religion and an award-winning journalist. He is Assistant Professor of Theology and Religious Stud...
Carla Power, "Home, Land, Security: Deradicalization and the Journey Back from Extremism" (One World, 2021)
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the Pulitzer Prize finalist book Home, Land, Security: Deradicalisation and the Journey Back from Extremism (One World, 2021), Carla Power explor...
Nicholas T. Pruitt, "Open Hearts, Closed Doors: Immigration Reform and the Waning of Mainline Protestantism" (NYU Press, 2021)
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Open Hearts, Closed Doors: Immigration Reform and the Waning of Mainline Protestantism (NYU Press, 2021) uncovers the largely overlooked role that li...
Shannen Dee Williams, "Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle" (Duke UP, 2022)
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle (Duke UP, 2022), Shannen Dee Williams provides the first ful...
Book Talk 53: Paul Edwards on Toni Morrison's "Playing in the Dark"
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination is a must-read for anyone interested in American literature and in the...
War and Peace: America's Humane War and the Crisis in Ukraine
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This podcast is a recorded panel discussion on “War and Peace: America's Humane War and the Crisis in Ukraine.” The panel was part of the Annual C...
Katherine E. Sugg, "Apocalypse and Heroism in Popular Culture" (McFarland, 2022)
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Stories of world-ending catastrophe have featured prominently in film and television lately. Zombie apocalypses, climate disasters, alien invasions, g...
Holly A. Pinheiro Jr., "The Families' Civil War: Black Soldiers and the Fight for Racial Justice" (U Georgia Press, 2022)
29 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Families' Civil War: Black Soldiers and the Fight for Racial Justice (U Georgia Press, 2022) tells the stories of freeborn northern African Ameri...
Susan H. Brandt, "Women Healers: Gender, Authority, and Medicine in Early Philadelphia" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
29 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In her eighteenth-century medical recipe manuscript, the Philadelphia healer Elizabeth Coates Paschall asserted her ingenuity and authority with the b...
Deirdre N. McCloskey and Art Carden, "Leave Me Alone and I'll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
29 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The economist and historian Deirdre Nansen McCloskey has been best known recently for her Bourgeois Era trilogy, a vigorous defense, unrivaled in scop...
Kirstin L. Squint ed., "Conversations with LeAnne Howe" (UP of Mississippi, 2022)
28 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Conversations with LeAnne Howe (UP of Mississippi, 2022) is the first collection of interviews with the groundbreaking Choctaw author, whose genre-b...
Claire Bellerjeau and Tiffany Yecke Brooks, "Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution: The True Story of Robert Townsend and Elizabeth" (Lyons Press, 2021)
28 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Claire Bellerjeau about her book (co-authored with Tiffany Yecke Brooks) Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution: The True S...
Bradford P. Wilson and Carson Holloway, eds., "The Political Writings of Alexander Hamilton" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
28 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How much does the average person know about Alexander Hamilton (1755 or 1757 – 1804)? Would we have guessed that this hero of many fiscal conservati...
Richard White, "Who Killed Jane Stanford?: A Gilded-Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits and the Birth of a University" (W. W. Norton, 2022)
28 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1885 Jane and Leland Stanford cofounded a university to honor their recently deceased young son. After her husband’s death in 1893, Jane Stanford...
The Future of Philanthropy: A Conversation with Emma Saunders-Hastings
28 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Philanthropists are praise for their generosity but does their desire to keep control of what happens to their donations mean they exercise power in w...
D. G. Hart, "Benjamin Franklin: Cultural Protestant" (Oxford UP, 2021)
28 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Benjamin Franklin grew up in a devout Protestant family with limited prospects for wealth and fame. By hard work, limitless curiosity, native intellig...
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, "Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation" (Verso, 2022)
27 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Gathering together Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s work from over three decades, Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation (Verso, 2022) presents her si...
Meredith Farmer and Jonathan D. S. Schroeder, "Ahab Unbound: Melville and the Materialist Turn" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
27 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guests are Meredith Farmer and Jonathan D.S. Schroeder, the co-editors of a bracing new collection of essays about the figure of Ahab in Mel...
Mahshid Mayar, "Citizens and Rulers of the World: The American Child and the Cartographic Pedagogies of Empire" (UNC Press, 2022)
27 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of New Books in Literary Studies, John Yargo spoke with Mahshid Mayar about how children’s puzzles and schoolbooks at the turn of th...
Teresa Palomo Acosta, "Tejanaland: A Writing Life in Four Acts" (Texas A&M UP, 2021)
24 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Tejanaland: A Writing Life in Four Acts (Texas A&M UP, 2021) by Teresa Palomo Acosta--poet, historian, author, and activist--spans three decades of ...
Joni Schwartz and John R. Chaney, "Gifts from the Dark: Learning from the Incarceration Experience" (Lexington Books, 2022)
24 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
While in no way supporting the systemic injustices and disparities of mass incarceration, in Gifts from the Dark: Learning from the Incarceration Exp...
Emily Mendenhall, "Unmasked: Covid, Community, and the Case of Okoboji" (Vanderbilt UP, 2022)
24 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Unmasked: Covid, Community, and the Case of Okoboji (Vanderbilt UP, 2022) is the story of what happened in Okoboji, a small Iowan tourist town, when...
Elizabeth Anker, "Ugly Freedoms" (Duke UP, 2022)
24 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
With me on today’s show is Professor Elizabeth Anker, whose most recent book, Ugly Freedoms (Duke UP, 2022), works to understand how the idea of f...
Daniel Soyer, "Left in the Center: The Liberal Party of New York and the Rise and Fall of American Social Democracy (Cornell UP, 2021)
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The history of small political parties and the history of the American left are closely intertwined, especially in the book Left in the Center: The L...
Dayna Bowen Matthew, "Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America" (NYU Press, 2022)
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the United States, systemic racism is embedded in policies and practices, thereby structuring American society to perpetuate inequality and all of ...
Bianca C. Williams et al., "Plantation Politics and Campus Rebellions: Power, Diversity, and the Emancipatory Struggle in Higher Education" (SUNY Press, 2021)
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Plantation Politics and Campus Rebellions: Power, Diversity, and the Emancipatory Struggle in Higher Education (SUNY Press, 2021) provides a multidi...
Susan Hartman, "City of Refugees: The Story of Three Newcomers Who Breathed Life into a Dying American Town" (Beacon Press, 2022)
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
City of Refugees: The Story of Three Newcomers Who Breathed Life into a Dying American Town (Beacon Press, 2022) paints an intimate portrait of the ...
Anne Gray Fischer, "The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification" (UNC Press, 2022)
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Anne Gray Fischer speaks about her path to and through research, including how sex workers informed her analysis of policing and state violence, the...
Natalie Lira, "Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900-1950s" (U California Press, 2021)
22 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Mirelsie Velázquez (Associate Professor & Rainbolt Family Endowed Presidential Professor, University of Oklahoma) speaks with Natalie Lira (Associate...
John Luther Adams, "Silences So Deep: Music, Solitude, Alaska" (FSG, 2020)
22 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
John Luther Adams's Silences So Deep: Music, Solitude, Alaska (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020) is a profound, funny, and enlightening memoir from ...
Max Holleran, "Yes to the City: Millennials and the Fight for Affordable Housing" (Princeton UP, 2022)
22 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The exorbitant costs of urban housing and the widening gap in income inequality are fueling a combative new movement in cities around the world. A gro...
Aaron Hiltner, "Taking Leave, Taking Liberties: American Troops on the World War II Home Front" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
21 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
During the Second World War, locals in Australia and Britain described American GIs as “overpaid, oversexed, and over here.” But this conflict bet...
The Future of Public Opinion: A Conversation with Susan Herbst
21 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Politicians and corporations cannot only measure public opinion but also manipulate and create it. And they have been doing so since the 1930s when se...
Edwin Amenta and Neal Caren, "Rough Draft of History: A Century of US Social Movements in the News" (Princeton UP, 2022)
21 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Rough Draft of History: A Century of US Social Movements in the News (Princeton UP, 2022) offers a new view of U.S. social movement history across th...
Justin Gautreau, "The Last Word: The Hollywood Novel and the Studio System" (Oxford UP, 2020)
21 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Justin Gautreau's book The Last Word: The Hollywood Novel and the Studio System (Oxford UP, 2020) argues that the Hollywood novel opened up space fo...
Paul T. Murray, "Seeing Jesus in the Eyes of the Oppressed: Franciscans Working for Peace and Justice" (AAFH, 2022)
20 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Following World War II, the United States enjoyed unprecedented prosperity as the post-war economy exploded. While Americans pondered affluence, U.S. ...
Joshua Prager, "The Family Roe: An American Story" (W. W. Norton, 2021)
20 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Despite her famous pseudonym, "Jane Roe," no one knows the truth about Norma McCorvey (1947-2017), whose unwanted pregnancy in 1969 opened a great fra...
On Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan
20 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Jolyon Thomas is the author of Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan, out now from the University of Chicago Press. Dr. ...