New Books in American Studies

Sara E. Lampert, "Starring Women: Celebrity, Patriarchy, and American Theater, 1790-1851" (U Illinois Press, 2020)

10 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Women performers played a vital role in the development of American and transatlantic entertainment, celebrity culture, and gender ideology. In Star...

Ursula Hackett, "America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

09 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Political Scientist Ursula Hackett’s new book, America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State (Cambridge UP, 2020), is the winne...

Cynthia J. Cranford, "Home Care Fault Lines: Understanding Tensions and Creating Alliances" (ILR Press, 2020)

08 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The COVID-19 pandemic is changing how we think about care. Care work has long been devalued – the daily labors of sustaining the well-being of indiv...

Jeffrey Kuhlman and Daniel Peach, "Transformative Healthcare: A Physician-Led Prescription to Save Thousands of Lives and Millions of Dollars" (Advent Health, 2021)

08 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today's guests are Dr. Jeffrey Kuhlman and Dr. Daniel Peach. Dr. Kuhlman is a former White house physician. From 2007 to 2011, he served as Chief of t...

Gender Ideologies, Conservative Christianity, and Legislation in the U.S.

08 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Gender, and regulations of and discourses on it, have historically been a cornerstone of the conservative Christian belief system. The stance of the C...

Ken Meter, "Building Community Food Webs" (Island Press, 2021)

08 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Our current food system has decimated rural communities and confined the choices of urban consumers. Even while America continues to ramp up farm prod...

Teresa Irene Gonzales, "Building a Better Chicago: Race and Community Resistance to Urban Redevelopment" (NYU Press, 2021)

06 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Despite promises from politicians, nonprofits, and government agencies, Chicago's most disadvantaged neighborhoods remain plagued by poverty, failing ...

Hillary Kaell, "Christian Globalism at Home: Child Sponsorship in the United States" (Princeton UP, 2020)

06 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Child sponsorship, originally a project of nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries, has become one of today’s most profitable private fund-raisin...

Melissa Daniels-Rauterkus, "Afro-Realisms and the Romances of Race: Rethinking Blackness in the African American Novel" (LSU Press, 2020)

06 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

From the 1880s to the early 1900s, a particularly turbulent period of U.S. race relations, the African American novel provided a powerful counternarra...

Charles C. Camosy, "Losing Our Dignity: How Secularized Medicine is Undermining Fundamental Human Equality" (New City Press, 2021)

06 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that an enormous proportion of medical care worldwide is provided under the auspices of religious organizatio...

Christopher R. Martin, "No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class" (Cornell UP, 2019)

03 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Until the recent political shift pushed workers back into the media spotlight, the mainstream media had largely ignored this significant part of Ameri...

Keith Pluymers, "No Wood, No Kingdom: Political Ecology in the English Atlantic" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021)

03 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Pushing back against the traditional narratives assuming that the American colonies served as resource “windfalls” which released Europe from the ...

Herbert M. Kritzer, "Judicial Selection in the States: Politics and the Struggle for Reform" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

02 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Herbert “Bert” Kritzer, the Marvin J. Sonosky Chair of Law and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota Law School, has a new book that explor...

Sarah Bunin Benor et al., "Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps" (Rutgers UP, 2020)

02 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Each summer, tens of thousands of American Jews attend residential camps, where they may see Hebrew signs, sing and dance to Hebrew songs, and hear a ...

Karen Cook Bell, "Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

02 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island and neither are we, so we reached across our mentor network to bri...

Lettie Gay, "Two Hundred Years of Charleston Cooking" ( U South Carolina Press, 2021)

01 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Southern Food Historian Rebecca Sharpless discusses a new edition of Two Hundred Years of Charleston Cooking released in 2021 by University of Sou...

Katherine Wiltenburg Todrys, "Black Snake: Standing Rock, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and Environmental Justice" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)

01 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) made headlines around the world in 2016. Supporters called the pipeline key to safely transporting Ame...

Susan V. Spellman, "Cornering the Market: Independent Grocers and Innovation in American Small Business" (Oxford UP, 2016)

01 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode for the Economic and Business History channel, I interviewed Dr. Susan V. Spellman, Associate Professor of History at Miami University...

Paul Sabin, "Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism" (Norton, 2021)

31 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1960s and 1970s, an insurgent attack on traditional liberalism took shape in America. It was built on new ideals of citizen advocacy and the pu...

Caseen Gaines, "Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way" (Sourcebooks, 2021)

31 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Caseen Gaines' Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way (Sourcebooks, 2021) is a rollicking, entertaining, and fasc...

Mark P. Bradley and Mary L. Dudziak, "Making the Forever War: Marilyn Young on the Culture and Politics of American Militarism" (U Massachusetts Press, 2021)

30 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Making the Forever War: Marilyn Young on the Culture and Politics of American Militarism (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021) is a timely col...

Donald A. Barr, "Crossing the American Health Care Chasm: Finding the Path to Bipartisan Collaboration in National Health Care Policy" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)

30 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Why is there such a deep partisan division within the United States regarding how health care should be organized and financed and how can we encourag...

Josephine Ensign, "Skid Road: On the Frontier of Health and Homelessness in an American City" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)

30 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Home to over 730,000 people, with close to four million people living in the metropolitan area, Seattle has the third-highest homeless population in t...

Gregory Bourke, "Gay, Catholic, and American: My Legal Battle for Marriage Equality and Inclusion" (U Notre Dame Press, 2021)

27 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Catholic Greg Bourke's profoundly moving memoir about growing up gay and overcoming discrimination in the battle for same-sex marriage in the US. In t...

Iker Saitua, "Basque Immigrants and Nevada's Sheep Industry: Geopolitics and the Making of an Agricultural Workforce, 1880-1954" (U Nevada Press, 2019)

27 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Ranching in the West meant more than cowboys and cattle drives, writes Dr. Iker Saitua, and assistant professor of public policy and economic history ...

Iker Saitua, "Basque Immigrants and Nevada's Sheep Industry: Geopolitics and the Making of an Agricultural Workforce, 1880-1954" (U Nevada Press, 2019)

27 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Ranching in the West meant more than cowboys and cattle drives, writes Dr. Iker Saitua, and assistant professor of public policy and economic history ...

Ella L. J. Bell Smith and Stella M. Nkomo, "Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity" (Harvard Business Press, 2021)

26 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Ella L. J. Bell Smith and Stella M. Nkomo, Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity (Harvard Business Pre...

Barrett Holmes Pitner, "The Crime Without a Name: Combatting Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America" (Counterpoint, 2021)

26 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Can new language reshape our understanding of the past and expand the possibilities of the future? The Crime Without a Name: Combatting Ethnocide and...

Lorna N. Bracewell, "Why We Lost the Sex Wars: Sexual Freedom in the #MeToo Era" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)

26 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Why We Lost the Sex Wars: Sexual Freedom in the #MeToo Era (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) helps us to understand not only the history of the “...

Christopher Gehrz, "Charles Lindbergh: A Religious Biography of America's Most Infamous Pilot" (William B. Eerdmans, 2021)

25 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The narrative surrounding Charles Lindbergh's life has been as varying and complex as the man himself. Once best known as an aviator--the first to com...

AAAS Book Awards Part 4: Kandice Chuh’s "The Difference Aesthetics Makes"

25 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This is the last episode of a four-part series featuring the winners and honorable mentions of the 2021 Book Awards for the Association of Asian Ameri...

Rohit Khanna, "Misunderstanding Health: Making Sense of America's Broken Health Care System" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)

24 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

With technological advances and information sharing so prevalent, health care should be more transparent and easier to access than ever before. So why...

Christopher M. Elias, "Gossip Men: J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and the Politics of Insinuation" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

24 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

If information is power, then so too is gossip. In Gossip Men: J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and the Politics of Insinuation (U Chicago P...

Thomas C. Hubka, "Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England" (UP of New England, 2004)

24 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

“Big house, little house, back house, barn”―this rhythmic cadence was sung by nineteenth-century children as they played. It also portrays the f...

Jenny Stuber, "Aspen and the American Dream: How One Town Manages Inequality in the Era of Supergentrification" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

24 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How is it possible for a town to exist where the median household income is about $73,000, but the median home price is about $4,000,000? In Aspen an...

Michael Dennis, "The Full Employment Horizon in 20th-Century America: The Movement for Economic Democracy" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

23 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

One of the unfulfilled goals of the American left during the 1930s was that of an economy in which every American would enjoy the opportunity for gain...

Ken Starr, "Religious Liberty in Crisis: Exercising Your Faith in an Age of Uncertainty" (Encounter, 2021)

23 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

“Religious liberty” is a phrase that we often hear, particularly in news stories revolving around Supreme Court decisions. But what is religious...

LaFleur Stephens-Dougan, "Race to the Bottom: How Racial Appeals Work in American Politics" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

23 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Race to the Bottom: How Racial Appeals Work in American Politics (U Chicago Press, 2020), LaFleur Stephens-Dougan argues that we focus on the use...

Larry Kirwan, "Rockaway Blue" (Cornell UP, 2021)

23 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Twenty years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the novel Rockaway Blue (Cornell UP, 2021) probes the griefs, trauma and resilience ...

John Coffey, "The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions: The Post-Reformation Era, 1559-1689" (Oxford UP, 2020)

23 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions: The Post-Reformation Era, 1559-1689 (Oxford UP, 2020) traces the emergence of Anglophone Prot...

Joseph Stieb, "The Regime Change Consensus: Iraq in American Politics, 1990-2003" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

20 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Why did the United States invade Iraq, setting off a chain of events that profoundly changed the Middle East and the US global position? In The Regim...

Michael Twitty, "Rice: A Savor the South Cookbook" (UNC Press, 2021)

20 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Rice is a central ingredient to Southern foodways, and it is one of the most versatile grains served around the world. It could be prepared as a side ...

Emalani Case, "Everything Ancient Was Once New: Indigenous Persistence from Hawaiʻi to Kahiki" (U Hawaii Press, 2021)

20 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Everything Ancient Was Once New: Indigenous Persistence from Hawai‘i to Kahiki (U Hawaii Press, 2021), Emalani Case draws on her own life ex...

Tom Mould, "Overthrowing the Queen: Telling Stories of Welfare in America" (Indiana UP, 2020)

20 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It is a familiar story: A recipient of public assistance funds is caught buying expensive steaks, seafood, or other luxury foods with food stamps at t...

Carol Anderson, "The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

20 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout American history to the twenty-first century, regardless of the laws, court decisions, and changing political environment, the Second Amend...

Adam Henig, "Watergate's Forgotten Hero: Frank Wills, Night Watchman" (McFarland, 2021)

18 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book, Watergate's Forgotten Hero: Frank Wills, Night-Watchman (McFarland & Co., 2021), Adam Henig sheds new light on a widely forgotten ...

David E Campbell et al., "Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics" (Cambridge UP. 2020)

18 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

American society is rapidly secularizing – a radical departure from its historically high level of religiosity–and politics is a big part of the r...

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, "Names of New York: Discovering the City's Past, Present, and Future Through Its Place-Names" (Pantheon, 2021)

18 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Geographer and writer Joshua Jelly-Schapiro has a sharp appreciation for place, history, and the stories we tell to give meaning to our lives. All of ...

James W. Cortada, "IBM: The Rise and Fall and Reinvention of a Global Icon" (MIT Press, 2019)

18 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Retired from life after 38 years in several roles at IBM, the prolific academic production of James W. Cortada now continues telling his side of the s...

Amy J. Rutenberg, "Rough Draft: Cold War Military Manpower Policy and the Origins of Vietnam-Era Draft Resistance" (Cornell UP, 2019)

18 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Rough Draft: Cold War Military Manpower Policy and the Origins of Vietnam-Era Draft Resistance (Cornell University Press, 2019) draws the curtain on...

Covering New York Politics: A Conversation with David Freedlander

17 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

David Freedlander is a veteran New York City-based journalist. He writes long-form features about politics and the arts, people and ideas, and has app...

Alexander Menrisky, "Wild Abandon: American Literature and the Identity Politics of Ecology" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

16 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Despite the proliferation of scientific ecology in the second half of the 20th C emphasizing the interconnection between environment and humanity, Wi...

Islam in America: An Conversation with Amir Hussain

16 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Listen in as Raj Balkaran speaks with Amir Hussain (Chair, Theological Studies at Layola Marymount University) about his scholarship on Muslims in Ame...

Jennifer Morton, "Moving Up Without Losing Your Way: The Ethical Costs of Upward Mobility" (Princeton UP. 2021)

16 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Upward mobility through the path of higher education has been an article of faith for generations of working-class, low-income, and immigrant college ...

Kevin McGruder, "Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem" (Columbia UP, 2021)

13 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What was Harlem before its Renaissance, and how did it come to be? In Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem (Columbia University Press, 2021), h...

Samantha Barbas, "The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst, Free Speech Renegade" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

13 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Over the course of a long and successful legal career, Morris Ernst established himself as one of Americas foremost civil libertarians. Yet his advoca...

Hannah Wohl, "Bound by Creativity: How Contemporary Art Is Created and Judged" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

13 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What is creativity? While our traditional view of creative work might lead us to think of artists as solitary visionaries, the creative process is pro...

Richard Alba, "The Great Demographic Illusion: Majority, Minority, and the Expanding American Mainstream" (Princeton UP, 2020)

12 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Richard Alba, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, has written an intriguing new book on our unde...

Buzzy Kerbox, "Making Waves" (Legacy Isle Publishing, 2019)

11 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Who is the most interesting man in the world? The guy from the Dos Equis beer ads? Nope, it’s Buzzy Kerbox. This haole kid from O’ahu, Hawai’i b...

Cian T. McMahon, "The Coffin Ship: Life and Death at Sea during the Great Irish Famine" (NYU Press, 2021)

09 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Cian T. McMahon is an associate professor of history at University of Nevada-Las Vegas. His research focuses on the history and identity of the Irish ...

Megan Goodwin, "Abusing Religion: Literary Persecution, Sex Scandals, and American Minority Religions" (Rutgers UP, 2020)

09 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Sex abuse happens in all communities, but American minority religions often face disproportionate allegations of sexual abuse. Why, in a country that ...

Alison Rose Jefferson, "Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)

09 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites During the Jim Crow Era (Nebraska, 2020) is about the places where the past and future me...

Benjamin T. Smith, "The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade" (W. W. Norton, 2021)

06 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

For over a century Mexico has been embroiled in a drug war dictated by the demands of their neighbor to the north. In The Dope: The Real History of t...

Mark A. Johnson, "Rough Tactics: Black Performance in Political Spectacles, 1877-1932" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)

05 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

During the nadir of race relations in the United States South from 1877 to 1932, African Americans faced segregation, disfranchisement, and lynching. ...

John Lovett, "The Politics of Herding Cats: When Congressional Leaders Fail" (U Michigan Press, 2021)

05 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In considering how legislation moves forward in the American political system, we often think about elected representatives sitting in committee heari...

Leo Casey, "The Teacher Insurgency: A Strategic and Organizing Perspective" (Harvard Education Press, 2020)

04 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In The Teacher Insurgency: A Strategic and Organizing Perspective (Harvard Education Press, 2020), Leo Casey addresses how the unexpected wave of re...

Brian Masaru Hayashi, "Asian American Spies: How Asian Americans Helped Win the Allied Victory" (Oxford UP, 2021)

03 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Spies deep behind enemy lines; double agents; a Chinese American James Bond; black propaganda radio broadcasters; guerrilla fighters; pirates; smuggle...

Brendan Goff, "Rotary International and the Selling of American Capitalism" (Harvard UP, 2021)

03 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Rotary International and the Selling of American Capitalism (Harvard University Press, 2021), Professor Brendan Goff traces the history of Rotary...

Greg Larson, "Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)

03 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today we are joined by Greg Larson, author of Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir (University of Nebraska, 2021). In Clubbie, Larson shares his...

Sarah Hepola on Drinking in a "Dry" Texas County

03 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to Cover Story, a podcast by New Books Network devoted to long form journalism. Today, we are talking to Texas-based writer Sarah Hepola. Hepo...

Susan Lee Johnson, "Writing Kit Carson: Fallen Heroes in a Changing West" (UNC Press, 2020)

30 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Writing Kit Carson: Fallen Heroes in a Changing West (UNC Press, 2020), Susan Lee Johnson braids together lives over time and space, telling tale...

Ben Railton, "Of Thee I Sing: The Contested History of American Patriotism" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021)

30 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Ben Railton's book Of Thee I Sing: The Contested History of American Patriotism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) is a cogently written history of the i...

Robert Wooster, "The United States Army and the Making of America: From Confederation to Empire, 1775-1903" (UP of Kansas, 2021)

30 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The story of how the American military—and more particularly the regular army—has played a vital role in the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-centu...

Kevin McGruder, "Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem" (Columbia UP, 2021)

29 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Kevin McGruder about his new book Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem (Columbia UP, 2021) In a moment of hope, even faith, ...

Stephen Skowronek et al., "Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic: The Deep State and the Unitary Executive" (Oxford UP, 2021)

29 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic: The Deep State and the Unitary Executive (Oxford UP, 2021) helps us think about the complexity of the American p...

Jason Bruner, "Imagining Persecution: Why American Christians Believe There Is a Global War Against Their Faith" (Rutgers UP, 2021)

28 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Many American Christians have come to understand their relationship to other Christian denominations and traditions through the lens of religious pers...

Anthony Q. Hazard, "Boasians at War: Anthropology, Race, and World War II" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)

28 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The realities of race that continue to plague the United States have direct ties to the anthropology. Anthropologists often imagine their discipline a...

Michael G. Hillard, "Shredding Paper: The Rise and Fall of Maine's Mighty Paper Industry" (Cornell UP, 2021)

27 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

From the early twentieth century until the 1960s, Maine led the nation in paper production. The state could have earned a reputation as the Detroit of...

Jeffery A. Jenkins and Justin Peck, "Congress and the First Civil Rights Era, 1861-1918" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

26 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Jeffrey Jenkins and Justin Peck’s new book Congress and the First Civil Rights Era, 1861-1918 (U Chicago Press, 2021) explores how Congressional ...

Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko, "Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon" (Redwood Press, 2021)

26 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Two experts of extremist radicalization take us down the QAnon rabbit hole, exposing how the conspiracy theory ensnared countless Americans, and show ...

Andre E. Johnson, "No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry Mcneal Turner" (U Mississippi Press, 2020)

26 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (U Mississippi Press, 2020) is a history of the career of Bishop He...

Chris A. Barcelos, "Distributing Condoms and Hope: The Racialized Politics of Youth Sexual Health" (U California Press, 2020)

23 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Distributing Condoms and Hope: The Racialized Politics of Youth Sexual Health (U California Press, 2020) is a feminist ethnographic account of how yo...

Meena Bose and Andrew Rudalevige, "Executive Policymaking: The Role of the OMB in the Presidency" (Brookings, 2020)

22 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is sometimes described as “the most important governmental office no one has ever heard of” and it certa...

Emalani Case, "Everything Ancient Was Once New: Indigenous Persistence from Hawaiʻi to Kahiki" (U Hawaii Press, 2021)

21 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Everything Ancient Was Once New: Indigenous Persistence from Hawaiʻi to Kahiki (U Hawaii Press, 2021), Emalani Case explores Indigenous persiste...

Deborah Willis, "The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship" (NYU Press, 2021)

21 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Photography emerged in the 1840s in the United States, and it became a visual medium that documents the harsh realities of enslavement. Similarly, the...

Andrew Jenks, "Collaboration in Space and the Search for Peace on Earth" (Anthem Press, 2021)

21 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Andrew Jenks' book Collaboration in Space and the Search for Peace on Earth (Anthem Press, 2021) explores the era of space collaboration (from 1970...

Kevin Waite, "West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire" (UNC Press, 2021)

21 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The geography of American slavery was continental, argues Dr. Kevin Waite, an assistant professor at Durham University, in West of Slavery: The Sout...

Phillip T. Lohaus, "Power and Complacency: American Survival in an Age of International Competition" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)

21 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Why has the United States, the world’s premier military and economic power, struggled recently to achieve its foreign policy desiderata? How might A...

Mary Louise Roberts, "Sheer Misery: Soldiers in Battle in WWII" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

21 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Marching across occupied France in 1944, American GI Leroy Stewart had neither death nor glory on his mind: he was worried about his underwear. "I ran...

Nadya Bair, "The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market" (U California Press, 2020)

20 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The legendary Magnum photo agency has long been associated with heroic lone wolf male photographers such as Frank Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, roam...

Knitting and Politics in the Age of Trump: A Discussion with Carrie Battan

20 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today we are talking to a New Yorker staff writer Carrie Battan about her piece from March of this year "How Politics Tested Ravelry and the Craftin...

Mary Beth Meehan and Fred Turner, "Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

20 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It’s hard to imagine a place more central to American mythology today than Silicon Valley. To outsiders, the region glitters with the promise of ext...

Megan D. McFarlane, "Militarized Maternity: Experiencing Pregnancy in the U. S. Armed Forces" (U California Press, 2021)

19 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The rights of pregnant workers as well as (the lack of) paid maternity leave have increasingly become topics of a major policy debate in the United St...

Mallory E. SoRelle, "Democracy Declined: The Failed Politics of Consumer Financial Protection" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

19 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Americans rely on credit to provide for their food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and other daily necessities and the 2008 financial crisis demon...

Ariana Brown, "We Are Owed." (Grieveland Press, 2021)

16 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Poet Ariana Brown searches for new origins in her debut book We Are Owed. (Grieveland Press, 2021). Brown has had over ten years of experience wri...

Ken Ellingwood, "First to Fall: Elijah Lovejoy and the Fight for a Free Press in the Age of Slavery" (Pegasus Books, 2021)

16 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In First to Fall: Elijah Lovejoy and the Fight for a Free Press in the Age of Slavery (Pegasus Books, 2021), Ken Ellingwood takes readers back to t...

Syl Sobel and Jay Rosenstein, "Boxed Out of the NBA: Remembering the Eastern Professional Basketball League" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021)

16 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Eastern Professional Basketball League (1946-78) was fast and physical, often played in tiny, smoke-filled gyms across the northeast and featuring...

Simon Miles, "Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2020)

16 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In a narrative-redefining approach, Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War (Cornell UP, 2020) dr...

Karma R. Chávez, "The Borders of AIDS: Race, Quarantine, and Resistance" (U Washington Press, 2021)

16 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

As soon as US media and politicians became aware of AIDS in the early 1980s, fingers were pointed not only at the gay community but also at other coun...

Nathan Kalmoe, "With Ballots and Bullets: Partisanship and Violence in the American Civil War" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

15 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Political Scientist Nathan Kalmoe has written a fascinating historical and political exploration of the connections between violence and partisanship ...