New Books in American Studies
Episodes
Matthew J. Lacombe, "Firepower: How the NRA Turned Gun Owners Into a Political Force" (Princeton UP, 2021)
03 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Firepower: How the NRA Turned Gun Owners into a Political Force (Princeton, 2021) explores the scope and power of one of America’s most influential...
Habiba Ibrahim, "Black Age: Oceanic Lifespans and the Time of Black Life" (NYU Press, 2021)
03 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Although more than fifty years apart, the murders of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin share a commonality: Black children are not seen as children. Time...
Matthew J. Holian, "Data and the American Dream: Contemporary Social Controversies and the American Community Survey" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
02 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How much do new building codes reduce energy usage? How much and it what ways does it matter for an immigrant to be able to work legally? How has the ...
Hsuan L. Hsu, "The Smell of Risk: Environmental Disparities and Olfactory Aesthetics" (NYU Press, 2020)
02 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Our sense of smell is a uniquely visceral—and personal—form of experience. As Hsuan L. Hsu points out, smell has long been spurned by Western aest...
Gregg Mitman, "Empire of Rubber: Firestone's Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia" (New Press, 2021)
02 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1920s, Americans owned 80 percent of the world’s automobiles and consumed 75 percent of the world’s rubber. But only one percent of t...
David Madland, "Re-Union: How Bold Labor Reforms Can Repair, Revitalize, and Reunite the United States" (Cornell UP, 2021)
01 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Re-Union: How Bold Labor Reforms Can Repair, Revitalize, and Reunite the United States (Cornell UP, 2021), David Madland explores how labor union...
Robert J. Spitzer, "The Politics of Gun Control" (Routledge, 2020)
01 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Robert J. Spitzer’s classic text, The Politics of Gun Control: 8th Edition (Routledge, 2020), has been revised based on new data on gun owners...
Joan Marie Johnson, "Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women's Movement, 1870-1967" (UNC Press, 2020)
29 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Joan Marie Johnson examines an understudied dimension of women's history in the United States: how a group of affluent white women from the late ninet...
Joseph Tachovsky, "40 Thieves on Saipan: The Elite Marine Scout-Snipers in One of WWII's Bloodiest Battles" (Regnery History, 2020)
29 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
An elite platoon of Marine Scout-Snipers, Lieutenant Frank Tachovsky's "40 Thieves" were chosen for their willingness to defy rules and beat all-comer...
John A. Dearborn, "Power Shifts: Congress and Presidential Representation" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Political Scientist John Dearborn’s new book, Power Shifts: Congress and Presidential Representation (U Chicago Press, 2021), weaves together thre...
Kristy Nabhan-Warren, "Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland" (UNC Press, 2021)
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Whether valorized as the heartland or derided as flyover country, the Midwest became instantly notorious when COVID-19 infections skyrocketed among wo...
Sarah Eppler Janda and Patricia Loughlin, "This Land is Herland: Gendered Activism in Oklahoma, 1870-2010" (U Oklahoma Press, 2021)
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Cori Simon (Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma) speaks with Sarah Eppler Janda (Professor, Cameron University) and Patricia Loughlin (Profess...
Andrea Laurent-Simpson, "Just Like Family: How Companion Animals Joined the Household" (NYU Press, 2021)
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Andrea Laurent-Simpson’s path in and out of and back into graduate school The s...
Scott Sumner, "The Money Illusion: Market Monetarism, the Great Recession, and the Future of Monetary Policy" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
27 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Is it possible that the consensus around what caused the 2008 Great Recession is almost entirely wrong? It's happened before. Just as Milton Friedman ...
Marilyn J. Westerkamp, "The Passion of Anne Hutchinson: An Extraordinary Woman, the Puritan Patriarchs, and the World They Made and Lost" (Oxford UP, 2021)
27 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When English colonizers landed in New England in 1630, they constructed a godly commonwealth according to precepts gleaned from Scripture. For these '...
Dina Gilio-Whitaker, "As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock" (Beacon Press, 2019)
27 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Through the unique lens of “Indigenized environmental justice,” Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker explores the fraught histor...
Postscript: The Supreme Court, Concealed Carry, and How Your Laws Might Change
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The American media has been focused on the Supreme Court’s upcoming abortion cases but a decision in a critical Second Amendment case could overturn...
David Pearson, "Rebel Music in the Triumphant Empire: Punk Rock in the 1990s United States" (Oxford UP, 2020)
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Rebel Music in the Triumphant Empire (Oxford University Press, 2020), musicologist David Pearson explores the changing landscape of punk in the...
Imani Perry on a Life in African American Studies
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s podcast, I am chopping it up with my dear friend and play cousin Dr. Imani Perry, the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studie...
Julian Agyeman and Sydney Giacalone, "The Immigrant-Food Nexus: Borders, Labor, and Identity in North America" (MIT Press, 2020)
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Immigrant-Food Nexus: Borders, Labor, and Identity in North America (MIT Press, 2020) considers the intersection of food and immigration at both ...
Roy Schwartz, "Is Superman Circumcised?: The Complete Jewish History of the World's Greatest Hero" (McFarland, 2021)
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Introduced in June 1938, the Man of Steel was created by two Jewish teens, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the sons of immigrants from Eastern Europe...
Stephanie N. Brehm, "America's Most Famous Catholic (According to Himself): Stephen Colbert and American Religion in the 21st Century" (Fordham UP, 2019)
25 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For nine years, Stephen Colbert’s persona “Colbert”?—a Republican superhero and parody of conservative political pundits--informed audiences o...
Rebecca DeWolf, "Gendered Citizenship: The Original Conflict Over the Equal Rights Amendment, 1920-1963" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)
25 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Political Science, we are very familiar with the work of scholars who try to unpack why the ERA failed to get the required states. But Gendered Ci...
Don Stradley, "The War: Hagler-Hearns and Three Rounds for the Ages" (Hamilcar Publications, 2021)
25 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The battle between Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns is remembered as one of the greatest fights of all time. But in the months before the two...
Justin Beal, "Sandfuture" (MIT Press, 2021)
22 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Sandfuture (MIT Press, 2021) is a book about the life of the architect Minoru Yamasaki (1912–1986), who remains on the margins of history despite ...
Kelefa Sanneh, "Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres" (Penguin, 2021)
22 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Kelefa Sanneh was born in England, and lived in Ghana and Scotland before moving with his parents to the United States in the early 1980s. He was a po...
John Roy Price, "The Last Liberal Republican: An Insider's Perspective on Nixon's Surprising Social Policy" (UP of Kansas, 2021)
22 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
History is told, it is said, by the victors. And so it is in regard to Richard Nixon. We all know how his presidency ended. What too few of us recall...
Esther De Dauw, "Hot Pants and Spandex Suits: Gender Representation in American Superhero Comic" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Superman, Batman, Captain America, and Iron Man are names that are often connected to the expansive superhero genre, including the multi-billion-dolla...
Alice L Baumgartner, "South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War" (Basic Books, 2020)
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For some enslaved Americans, the path to freedom led not north, but south, argues Dr. Alice Baumgardner, an assistant professor of history at the Univ...
Ronald J. Pestritto, "America Transformed: The Rise and Legacy of American Progressivism" (Encounter Books, 2021)
20 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What’s a “progressive?” We hear constantly about the rift in the Democratic Party between its “progressive” wing and its “moderate” one....
Lindsey Stewart, "The Politics of Black Joy: Zora Neale Hurston and Neo-Abolitionism" (Northwestern UP, 2021)
20 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What can southern Black joy teach us about agency? What role does refusal have in liberation? What more might there be to root work than resistance? I...
Chenxing Han, "Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists" (North Atlantic Books, 2021)
20 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Despite the fact that two thirds of U.S. Buddhists identify as Asian American, mainstream perceptions about what it means to be Buddhist in America of...
Kant Patel and Mark E. Rushefsky, "The Opioid Epidemics in the United States: Missed Opportunities and Policy Failures" (Routledge, 2021)
20 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The current opioid epidemic in the United States began in the mid-1990s with the introduction of a new drug, OxyContin, viewed as a safer and more eff...
Katherine Chandler, "Unmanning: How Humans, Machines and Media Perform Drone Warfare" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
19 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine Chandler's Unmanning: How Humans, Machines and Media Perform Drone Warfare (Rutgers UP, 2020) studies the conditions that create unmanned...
Montana Historical Society, "History of Montana in 101 Objects: Artifacts & Essays from the Montana Historical Society" (MHS Press, 2021)
19 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A History of Montana in 101 Objects: Artifacts & Essays from the Montana Historical Society (Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 2021) showcas...
Elizabeth McCain, "A Lesbian Belle Tells: OUTrageous Southern Stories of Family, Loss, and Love" (Crystal Heart Imprints, 2020)
18 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Settle back for a wild ride through a Southern lesbian's life of soul-searching, rule-breaking, and truth-telling. This belle's kind of coming out was...
Seth M. Siegel, "Troubled Water: What's Wrong with What We Drink" (Thomas Dunne, 2020)
18 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There’s nothing more vital to survival than water. “Water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink!”, said the Ancient Mariner, in the poem by ...
Heather P. Venable, "How the Few Became the Proud: Crafting the Marine Corps Mystique 1874-1918" (US Naval Institute Press, 2019)
18 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For more than half of its existence, members of the Marine Corps largely self-identified as soldiers. It did not yet mean something distinct to be a M...
P. Gabrielle Foreman and Jim Casey, "The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century" (UNC Press, 2021)
18 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
P. Gabrielle Foreman and Jim Casey's edited volume The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century (UNC Press, 2021) is...
Claudia Goldin, "Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey toward Equity" (Princeton UP, 2021)
15 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A century ago, it was a given that a woman with a college degree had to choose between having a career and a family. Today, there are more female coll...
Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper, "A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate, and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg" (Yale UP, 2021)
15 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Hasidic community in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn is famously one of the most separatist, intensely religious, and politically savvy group...
Will Mari, "The American Newsroom: A History, 1920-1960" (U Missouri Press, 2021)
15 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The story of the American newsroom is that of modern American journalism. In The American Newsroom: A History, 1920-1960 (University of Missouri Pre...
Robert Hellyer, "Green with Milk and Sugar: When Japan Filled America's Tea Cups" (Columbia UP, 2021)
15 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Hellyer’s Green with Milk and Sugar: When Japan Filled America's Tea Cups (Columbia UP, 2021) is a tale of American and Japanese teaways, s...
Rachel M. Blum, "How the Tea Party Captured the GOP: Insurgent Factions in American Politics" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
14 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The discussion of factions in American politics is as old as the republic itself. But there is more to consider, particularly in terms of the way that...
Edward Schatz, "Slow Anti-Americanism: Social Movements and Symbolic Politics in Central Asia" (Stanford UP, 2021)
14 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
I could not think of a better way to start my tenure as host of New Books in Central Asian Studies than discussing Slow Anti-Americanism: Social Mov...
Erica R. Edwards, "The Other Side of Terror: Black Women and the Culture of US Empire" (NYU Press, 2021)
14 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Erica R. Edwards's The Other Side of Terror: Black Women and the Culture of US Empire (New York University, 2021) reveals the troubling intimac...
Jessica M. Kim, "Imperial Metropolis: Los Angeles, Mexico, and the Borderlands of American Empire, 1865–1941" (UNC Press, 2019)
14 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1865 and 1900, the population of Los Angeles grew from around 5,000 people to over 100,000. With population growth that explosive came the opp...
Luci Marzola, "Engineering Hollywood: Technology, Technicians, and the Science of Building the Studio System" (Oxford UP, 2021)
13 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Luci Marzola's book Engineering Hollywood: Technology, Technicians, and the Science of Building Studio System (Oxford University Press, 2021) tells...
Christopher Phelps and Robin Vandome, "Marxism and America: New Appraisals" (Manchester UP, 2021)
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If the United States has been so hostile to Marxism, what accounts for Marxism's recurrent attractiveness to certain Americans? Marxism and America: ...
M. E. J. Huff and Carole Ann King, "Alabama Quilts: Wilderness Through World War II, 1682-1950" (UP of Mississippi, 2020)
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Stephanie Khattak speaks with Carole Ann King, who, along with Mary Elizabeth “Sunshine” Johnson Huff, wrote Alabama Quilts: Wilderness Through W...
Anne Pollock, "Sickening: Anti-Black Racism and Health Disparities in the United States" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
11 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
An event-by-event look at how institutionalized racism harms the health of African Americans in the twenty-first century A crucial component of anti-B...
Phil Rosenzweig, "Reginald Rose and the Journey of 12 Angry Men" (Fordham UP, 2021)
11 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Phil Rosenzweig's Reginald Rose and the Journey of 12 Angry Men (Fordham Press, 2021) is the first biography of a great television writer, and the s...
J.C. Salyer, "Court of Injustice: Law Without Recognition in U.S. Immigration" (Stanford UP, 2020)
08 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
J.C. Salyer’s Court of Injustice: Law Without Recognition in U.S. Immigration (Stanford UP, 2020) is an important look at the histories and proce...
David Eugene Price, "The Congressional Experience: An Institution Transformed" (Routledge, 2020)
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
With years of experience as the Representative of the Fourth District in North Carolina, as an educator, a writer, and a political scientist, David Pr...
Christina Lane, "Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock" (Chicago Review Press, 2020)
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A platinum beauty with an ugly secret; a tall, dark, and handsome husband with murder in his eyes; starkly lit interiors that may or may not include t...
Mark Atwood Lawrence, "The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era" (Princeton UP, 2021)
06 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Histories of the Vietnam War are not in short supply. In U.S. history, it ranks alongside the Civil War and World War Two in terms of author coverag...
James M. Curry and Frances E. Lee, "The Limits of Party: Congress and Lawmaking in a Polarized Era" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
06 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
To many observers, Congress has become a deeply partisan institution where ideologically-distinct political parties do little more than engage in legi...
Christian M. Anderson, "Urbanism Without Guarantees: The Everyday Life of a Gentrifying West Side Neighborhood" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
05 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Vigilante action. Renegades. Human intrigue and the future at stake in New York City. In Urbanism without Guarantees, Christian M. Anderson offers a ...
John Wigger, "PTL: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's Evangelical Empire" (Oxford UP, 2017)
05 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1974 Jim and Tammy Bakker launched their television show, the "PTL Club," from a former furniture store in Charlotte, N.C. with half a dozen frien...
Alecia P. Long, "Cruising for Conspirators: How a New Orleans DA Prosecuted the Kennedy Assassination As a Sex Crime" (Boundless South, 2021)
04 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison's decision to arrest Clay Shaw on March 1, 1967, set off a chain of events that culminated in the only pros...
Jonathan Marks, "Let's Be Reasonable: A Conservative Case for Liberal Education" (Princeton UP, 2021)
04 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Do we really need universities and colleges anymore? Have they become too politicized? Many conservatives have started to write off American academia....
William Souder, "Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck" (Norton, 2020)
01 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The first full-length biography of America's most celebrated novelist of the Great Depression to appear in a quarter century, Mad at the World illum...
Pamela J. Prickett, "Believing in South Central: Everyday Islam in the City of Angels" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
01 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Believing in South Central: Everyday Islam in the City of Angels (University of Chicago Press, 2021) by Pamela J. Prickett is an ethnographic study o...
Gregory Jones-Katz, "Deconstruction: An American Institution" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
01 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The basic story of the rise, reign, and fall of deconstruction as a literary and philosophical groundswell is well known among scholars. In this intel...
Daniel Larsen, "Plotting for Peace: American Peacemakers, British Codebreakers, and Britain at War, 1914–1917" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
30 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
With Britain by late 1916 facing the prospect of an economic crisis and increasingly dependent on the US, rival factions in Asquith's government battl...
Joshua Preiss, "Just Work for All: The American Dream in the 21st Century" (Taylor & Francis, 2020)
29 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This is a book about the American Dream: how to understand this central principle of American public philosophy, the ways in which it is threatened by...
Jonathan Zimmerman, "The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of Jonathan Zimmerman, Professor of History of Education at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and a...
Shayna Maskell, "Politics as Sound: The Washington, DC, Hardcore Scene, 1978-1983" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Washington, DC is known as the birthplace of hardcore punk. The raw, innovative, new sound coming out of the nation’s capital in the late 1970s is e...
Eric. S. Hintz, "American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D" (MIT Press, 2021)
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Wonder how America's individual inventors persisted alongside corporate R&D labs as an important source of inventions beginning at the turn of the ea...
Peter Cajka, "Follow Your Conscience: The Catholic Church and the Spirit of the Sixties" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
27 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What is your conscience? Is it, as Peter Cajka asks in this provocative book, “A small, still voice? A cricket perched on your shoulder? An angel an...
Vanessa M. Holden, "Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner's Community" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
24 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The local community around the Nat Turner rebellion The 1831 Southampton Rebellion led by Nat Turner involved an entire community. Vanessa M. Holden r...
Amanda Konkle and Charles Burnetts, "Perspectives on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Nuanced Postnetwork Television" (Syracuse UP, 2020)
24 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The new collection, Perspectives on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Nuanced Postnetwork Television (Syracuse University Press, 2021) by Amanda Konkle and Charl...
Heather Pool, "Political Mourning: Identity and Responsibility in the Wake of Tragedy" (Temple UP, 2021)
23 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Political Mourning: Identity and Responsibility in the Wake of Tragedy (Temple UP, 2021) moves us, as readers, beyond the stages of grief to consider...
Laura Paskus, "At the Precipice: New Mexico's Changing Climate" (U New Mexico Press, 2020)
23 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
At the Precipice: New Mexico's Changing Climate (U New Mexico Press, 2020) explores the question many of us have asked ourselves: What kind of world ...
Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler, "Open Plan: A Design History of the American Office" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
22 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Albeit inspired by a progressive vision of a working environment without walls or hierarchies, the open plan office has come to be associated with som...
Caley Horan, "Insurance Era: Risk, Governance, and the Privatization of Security in Postwar America" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
21 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Actuarial thinking is everywhere in contemporary America, an often unnoticed byproduct of the postwar insurance industry’s political and economic in...
Robinson Woodward-Burns, "Hidden Laws: How State Constitutions Stabilize American Politics" (Yale UP, 2021)
21 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Robinson Woodward-Burns is the author of Hidden Laws: How the State Constitutions Stabilize American Politics, published by Yale University Press in ...
Peter Richardson, "American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams" (U California Press, 2019)
20 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Historian Kevin Starr described Carey McWilliams as "the finest nonfiction writer on California—ever" and "the state's most astute political observ...
Paul Shankman, "Margaret Mead" (Berghahn Books, 2021)
17 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Tracing Mead’s career as an ethnographer, as the early voice of public anthropology, and as a public figure, this elegantly written biography links ...
Robin Globus Veldman, "The Gospel of Climate Skepticism: Why Evangelical Christians Oppose Action on Climate Change" (U California Press, 2019)
17 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Why are white evangelicals the most skeptical major religious group in America regarding climate change? Previous scholarship has pointed to cognitive...
Karla Slocum, "Black Towns, Black Futures: The Enduring Allure of a Black Place in the American West" (UNC Press, 2019)
17 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Oklahoma's Black towns aren't just places of the past - they maintain an enduring allure, and look toward the future, argues Karla Slocum in her new b...
Susanna Phillips Newbury, "The Speculative City: Art, Real Estate, and the Making of Global Los Angeles" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
17 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Underlying every great city is a rich and vibrant culture that shapes the texture of life within. In The Speculative City: Art, Real Estate, and the ...
Thomas Michael Kersen, "Where Misfits Fit: Counterculture and Influence in the Ozarks" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
16 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
All regions and places are unique in their own way, but the Ozarks have an enduring place in American culture. Studying the Ozarks offers the ability ...
J. P. M. Drury and S. A. M. Drury, "Rhetoric, Politics, and Hamilton: an American Musical" (Peter Lang, 2021)
16 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Hamilton: An American Musical made its record-breaking Broadway debut in 2015—but the musical has reached far beyond typical Broadway audiences to ...
Luke Epplin, "Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball" (Flatiron Books, 2021)
16 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In July 1947, not even three months after Jackie Robinson debuted on the Brooklyn Dodgers, snapping the color line that had segregated Major League Ba...
Martin Harris, "Leatherface Vs. Tricky Dick: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as Political Satire" (Headpress, 2021)
15 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Watergate scandal was a horror show. What better way to satirize it than with a horror movie? The Texas Chain Saw Massacre written by Tobe Hoop...
Bernard F. Dick, "Engulfed: The Death of Paramount Pictures and the Birth of Corporate Hollywood" (U Kentucky Press, 2021)
15 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From Double Indemnity to The Godfather, the stories behind some of the greatest films ever made pale beside the story of the studio that made them. In...
Yoosun Park, "Facilitating Injustice: The Complicity of Social Workers in the Forced Removal and Incarceration of Japanese Americans, 1941-1946" (Oxford UP, 2019)
15 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1942 and 1945, the United States government forcibly removed approximately 120,000 people "of Japanese ancestry" from their homes and into sel...
Covering Donald Trump: A Conversation with Allen Salkin
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What's it like to cover Donald Trump? In this episode, veteran American journalist Allen Salkin explains. For over three decades, Salkin has writt...
Gene Slater, "Free to Discriminate: How the Nation's Realtors Created Housing Segregation and the Conservative Vision of American Freedom" (Hayday Books, 2021)
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Gene Slater's book Free to Discriminate: How the Nation's Realtors Created Housing Segregation and the Conservative Vision of American Freedom (Hayd...
Farah Jasmine Griffin, "Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature" (Norton, 2021)
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Before Farah Jasmine Griffin’s father died, he wrote to her a note ending with a line “read until you understand.” He would die years later when...
Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb, "Race Unequals: Overseer Contracts, White Masculinities, and the Formation of Managerial Identity in the Plantation Economy" (Lexington, 2021)
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb is the author of Race Unequals: Overseer Contracts, White Masculinities, and the Formation of Managerial Identity in the Plant...
Richard W. Maass, "The Picky Eagle: How Democracy and Xenophobia Limited U. S. Territorial Expansion" (Cornell UP, 2020)
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Picky Eagle: How Democracy and Xenophobia Limited U. S. Territorial Expansion (Cornell UP, 2020) explains why the United States stopped annexing ...
Patrick T. Reardon, "The Loop: The 'L' Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago" (Southern Illinois UP, 2020)
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Every day Chicagoans rely on the loop of elevated train tracks to get to their jobs, classrooms, or homes in the city’s downtown. But how much do th...
David Hollinger, “Battling Protestants” (Open Agenda, 2021)
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Battling Protestants is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and intellectual historian David Hollinger, UC Berkeley, and e...
Virginia Miller, "Child Sexual Abuse Inquiries and the Catholic Church: Reassessing the Evidence" (Firenze UP, 2021)
13 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Child Sexual Abuse Inquiries and the Catholic Church: Reassessing the Evidence (Firenze UP, 2021), Dr Miller analyses empirical findings, method...
Jessica DuLong, "Saved at the Seawall: Stories from the September 11 Boat Lift" (Cornell UP, 2021)
13 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When terrorists struck the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 a small fleet of boats on a rescue mission converged on lower Manhattan. In one of...
Postscript: The Changing Landscape of Abortion Politics
13 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s Postscript (a special series that allows scholars to comment on pressing contemporary issues) engages the latest chapter in American abort...
Jeanne Sheehan, "American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government" (Palgrave Macmillian, 2021)
13 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Public disenchantment with and distrust of American government is at an all-time high and who can blame them? In the face of widespread challenges--ev...
Thomas Aiello, "The Life and Times of Louis Lomax: The Art of Deliberate Disunity" (Duke UP, 2021)
10 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In The Life and Times of Louis Lomax: The Art of Deliberate Disunity (Duke University Press, 2021), Thomas Aiello traces the complicated and fasci...