New Books in American Studies
Episodes
Joshua Gunn, "Political Perversion: Rhetorical Aberration in the Time of Trumpeteering" (U of Chicago Press, 2020)
14 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When Trump became president, much of the country was repelled by what they saw as the vulgar spectacle of his ascent, a perversion of the highest offi...
Allison B. Wolf, "Just Immigration in the Americas: A Feminist Account" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020)
13 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Allison B. Wolf's Just Immigration in the Americas: A Feminist Account (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020) proposes a pioneering, interdisciplinary, fem...
Richard White, "California Exposures: Envisioning Myth and History" (Norton, 2020)
13 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This book began as a bet between a father and son: could Richard White, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University and renowned historian of the Ameri...
Karen Petrou, "Engine of Inequality: The Fed and the Future of Wealth in America" (Wiley, 2021)
13 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Following the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy placed much greater focus on stabilizing the market than on helping strug...
B. K. Mitchell, et al., "Monumental: Oscar Dunn and His Radical Fight in Reconstruction Louisiana" (HNOC, 2021)
12 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Brian K. Mitchell describes Reconstruction as the most misunderstood period in American history. In the Jim Crow era, there was a concerted effort...
Sheila E. Jelen, "Salvage Poetics: Post-Holocaust American Jewish Folk Ethnographies" (Wayne State UP, 2020
12 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Salvage Poetics: Post-Holocaust American Jewish Folk Ethnographies (Wayne State University Press, 2020), Sheila Jelen explores how American Jewis...
Julio Capó Jr., "Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami before 1940" (UNC Press, 2017)
12 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami before 1940 (University of North Carolina Press, 2017)highlights how transnational forces—including (im)migration...
Michael Rosino, "Debating the Drug War: Race, Politics, and Media in the War on Drugs Debate" (Routledge, 2021)
09 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Since President Nixon coined the phrase, the "War on Drugs" has presented an important change in how people view and discuss criminal justice practice...
Bing West, "The Last Platoon: A Novel of the Afghanistan War" (Bombardier Books, 2020)
09 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Last Platoon: A Novel of the Afghanistan War (Bombardier Books, 2020) is a riveting book of infantry ground combat. As a work of fiction it is su...
Anne Searcy, "Ballet in the Cold War: A Soviet-American Exchange" (Oxford UP, 2020)
09 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
During the Cold War, cultural diplomacy was one way that the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union tried to cultivate goodwill towards...
Alison Mountz, "The Death of Asylum: Hidden Geographies of the Enforcement Archipelago" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
09 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Death of Asylum: Hidden Geographies of the Enforcement Archipelago (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) arrives at an extraordinarily consequen...
Brad A. Jones, "Resisting Independence: Popular Loyalism in the Revolutionary British Atlantic" (Cornell UP, 2021)
09 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The American Revolution has traditionally been presented as one of the thirteen colonies standing up to a tyrannical empire. Not only does this gloss ...
Elyssa Ford, "Rodeo as Refuge, Rodeo as Rebellion: Race, Gender, and Identity in the American Rodeo" (UP of Kansas, 2020)
09 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine a rodeo rider atop a bucking bronco, hat in hand, straining to remain astride. Is the rider in your mind's eye white? Is the person male? Pop...
Danielle Fuentes Morgan, "Laughing to Keep from Dying: African American Satire in the 21st Century" (U Illinois Press, 2020)
08 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The election of Barack Obama propelled the idea of a post-racial United States, or that the country had moved beyond race as a defining feature of soc...
Monique M. Ingalls, "Singing the Congregation: How Contemporary Worship Music Forms Evangelical Community" (Oxford UP, 2018)
08 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The choices that churches make about their musical style do more than simply change the sounds one hears in their gatherings, but actually form certai...
Bertram Levine and Grande Lum, "America's Peacemakers: The Community Relations Service and Civil Rights" (U Missouri Press, 2020)
08 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Community Relations Service (CRS) came into being alongside the Voting Rights Act—as part of the Act itself. And this organization was integrate...
Christopher R. Dietrich, "A Companion to U.S. Foreign Relations: Colonial Era to the Present" (John Wiley & Sons, 2020)
08 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The field of US foreign-relations history is not what it used to be, and that’s a good thing. Earlier historians narrowly defined the field as diplo...
Rory Kress, "The Doggie in the Window: How One Dog Led Me from the Pet Store to the Factory Farm to Uncover the Truth of Where Puppies Really Come From" (Sourcebooks, 2018)
07 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When journalist Rory Kress met Izzie, she didn’t think twice before bringing her home. She found the twelve-week-old wheaten terrier in a pet shop a...
Dennis McDougal, "Operation White Rabbit: LSD, the DEA, and the Fate of the Acid King" (Simon and Schuster, 2020)
07 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Operation White Rabbit: LSD, the DEA, and the Fate of the Acid King (Simon and Schuster, 2020) traces the rise and fall—and rise and fall again—...
Roundtable on Asian Migrant Sex Work
06 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This episode features three interviews with organizers and scholars concerned with Asian migrant sex work: SWAN Vancouver (Alison Clancey and Kelly ...
Shannan Clark, "The Making of the American Creative Class: New York's Culture Workers and 20th-Century Consumer Capitalism" (Oxford UP, 2020)
06 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
During the middle decades of the twentieth century, the production of America’s consumer culture was centralized in New York to an extent unparallel...
Jack Glazier, "Anthropology and Radical Humanism: Native and African American Narratives and the Myth of Race" (MSU Press, 2020)
06 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Radin was one of the founding generation of American cultural anthropologists: A student of Franz Boas, and famed ethnographer of the Winneb...
David Ostrowsky, "Pro Sports in 1993: A Signature Season in Football, Basketball, Hockey and Baseball" (McFarland, 2020)
05 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
America and Canada both saw historic sports milestones in 1993. While the Dallas Cowboys and Chicago Bulls reigned supreme, the Toronto Blue Jays won ...
Lucas Richert, "Break on Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture" (MIT Press, 2020)
05 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"Antipsychiatry," Esalen, psychedelics, and DSM III: Radical challenges to psychiatry and the conventional treatment of mental health in the 1970s. Th...
Amanda Ann Klein, "Millennials Killed the Video Star: MTV's Transition to Reality Programming" (Duke UP, 2021)
05 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Millennials Killed the Video Star: MTV’s Transition to Reality Programming (Duke University Press, 2021), Dr. Amanda Ann Klein examines the ...
M. I. Devine, "Warhol's Mother's Pantry: Art, America, and the Mom in Pop" (Mad Creek Books, 2020)
02 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Warhol's Mother's Pantry: Art America and the Mom in Pop (Mad Creek Press, 2020), M.I. Devine introduces readers to a collection of 21st-centur...
Cristina V. Groeger, "The Education Trap: Schools and the Remaking of Inequality in Boston" (Harvard UP, 2021)
02 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Education is thought to be the route out of poverty, but history disagrees. For generations, Americans have looked to education as the solution to eco...
Lindsay Thomas, "Training for Catastrophe: Fictions of National Security after 9/11" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
02 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Training for Catastrophe: Fictions of National Security After 9/11 (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), author Lindsay Thomas studies the rel...
Daina R. Berry and Kali N. Gross, "A Black Women's History of the United States" (Beacon Press, 2020)
01 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Kali Nicole Gross about her new book (co-authored with Daina Ramey Berry) A Black Women's History of the United States (Beacon P...
Thomas C. Holt, "The Movement: The African American Struggle for Civil Rights" (Oxford UP, 2021)
01 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The civil rights movement was among the most important historical developments of the twentieth century and one of the most remarkable mass movements ...
Melvin L. Rogers and Jack Turner, "African American Political Thought: A Collected History" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
01 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Political theorists Melvin Rogers and Jack “Chip” Turner have produced a truly magisterial edited volume centering the work by African American th...
Lucas Bessire, "Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains" (Princeton UP, 2021)
01 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Ogallala aquifer has nourished life on the American Great Plains for millennia. But less than a century of unsustainable irrigation farming has ta...
Mary Ann Cherry, "Morris Kight: Humanist, Liberationist, Fantabulist: A Story of Gay Rights and Gay Wrongs" (Process, 2020)
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How did the gay movement, which began as a sedate group of intellectuals, become what is arguably the most dynamic civil rights crusade in America? Ho...
Roberto Lovato, "Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas" (Harper, 2020)
30 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The child of Salvadoran immigrants, Roberto Lovato grew up in 1970s and 80s San Francisco as MS-13 and other notorious Salvadoran gangs were forming i...
Douglas A. Sweeney and Jan Stievermann, "The Oxford Handbook of Jonathan Edwards" (Oxford UP, 2021)
30 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Oxford Handbook of Jonathan Edwards (Oxford UP, 2021) offers a state-of-the-art summary of scholarship on Edwards by a diverse, international, a...
Elizabeth L. Jemison, "Christian Citizens: Reading the Bible in Black and White in the Post-Emancipation South" (UNC Press, 2020)
30 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth L. Jemison, who teaches American religious history at Clemson University, South Carolina, has written an outstanding new book, Christian C...
Crawford Gribben, "Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest" (Oxford UP, 2021)
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In America's Pacific Northwest a group of conservative Protestants have been conducting a new experiment in cultural transformation. Dissatisfied with...
Saher Selod, "Forever Suspect: Racialized Surveillance of Muslim Americans in the War on Terror" (Rutgers UP, 2018)
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How does a specific American religious identity acquire racial meaning? What happens when we move beyond phenotypes and include clothing, names, and ...
Tyler Sonnichsen, "Capitals of Punk: DC, Paris, and Circulation in the Urban Underground" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019)
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This one's personal. Tyler Sonnichsen's Capitals of Punk: DC, Paris, and Circulation in the Urban Underground (Palgrave, 2019) was an amazing book f...
Zach Sell, "Trouble of the World: Slavery and Empire in the Age of Capital" (UNC Press, 2021)
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The middle decades of the 19th century witnessed the expansion of slavery and white settlement and dispossession of Indigenous lands west of the Missi...
Karen Woods Weierman, "The Case of the Slave-Child, Med: Free Soil in Antislavery Boston" (U Massachusetts Press, 2019)
26 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1836, an enslaved six-year-old girl named Med was brought to Boston by a woman from New Orleans who claimed her as property. Learning of the girl's...
Nate Chinen, "Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century" (Vintage, 2019)
26 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Nate Chinen's Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century (Vintage, 2019) is an essential guide to 21st century jazz. Named a best book of the year by...
Chuck Collins, "The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions" (Polity, 2021)
26 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, a secret army of tax attorneys, accountants and wealth managers has been developing into the shadowy Wealth Defense Industry. These ‘ag...
David A. Less, "Memphis Mayhem: A Story of the Music That Shook Up the World" (ECW Press, 2020)
25 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to David A. Lees about his book Memphis Mayhem: A Story of the Music That Shook Up the World (ECW Press, 2020) David Less has studie...
Karen Stollznow, "On the Offensive: Prejudice in Language Past and Present" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
24 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Whether framed as complaints about cancel culture or as increased awareness of prejudice, stories about offensive language are common in our daily new...
Michael Kluger and Richard Evans, "Roosevelt's and Churchill's Atlantic Charter: A Risky Meeting at Sea that Saved Democracy" (Naval Institute Press, 2021)
24 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Winston Churchill was no stranger to storms. They had engulfed him in various ways throughout his long career and he had always turned to face them wi...
Elisabeth Piller, "Selling Weimar: German Public Diplomacy and the United States, 1918-1933" (Franz Steiner Verlag, 2020)
24 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the decade after World War I, German-American relations improved swiftly. While resentment and bitterness ran high on both sides in 1919, Weimar Ge...
Angela Firkus, "America's Early Women Celebrities: The Famous and Scorned from Martha Washington to Silent Film Star Mary Fuller" (McFarland, 2021)
23 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Hello Everyone and welcome back to New Books in History, a network on the New Books Network. I’m Jana Byars, your host, and I’m here today with A...
Richard V. Barbuto, "New York's War of 1812: Politics, Society, and Combat" (U Oklahoma Press, 2021)
23 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From its use as a staging ground for invasions of Canada to the blockading of its ports, New York found itself at the forefront of America’s war wit...
Jeffrey Shandler, "Yiddish: Biography of a Language" (Oxford UP, 2020)
22 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The most widely spoken Jewish language on the eve of the Holocaust, Yiddish continues to play a significant role in Jewish life today, from Hasidim fo...
Thomas C. Hubka, "How the Working-Class Home Became Modern, 1900-1940" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
19 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
At the turn of the nineteenth century, the average American family still lived by kerosene light, ate in the kitchen, and used an outhouse. By 1940, e...
Courtney E. Thompson, "An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
19 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America (Rutgers UP, 2021) explores the origins of both popular and elite t...
Aaron Griffith, "God’s Law and Order: The Politics of Punishment in Evangelical America" (Harvard UP, 2020)
19 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The rise of Neo-Evangelicalism as a social and political American movement accompanied shifting attitudes in broader American criminal justice policie...
Bryce Traister, "American Literature and the New Puritan Studies" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
19 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bryce Traister has edited a collection of 13 original essays exploring the shifting landscape in the historiography of American Puritanism in America...
Steven Blush, "Bustin' Balls: World Team Tennis 1974-1978, Pro Sports, Pop Culture and Progressive Politics" (Feral Press, 2020)
18 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Steven Blush's new book Bustin' Balls (Feral Press, 2020) tells the strange but true story of World Team Tennis (1974-1978) that attempted to trans...
Linda Heidenreich, "Nepantla Squared: Transgender Mestiz@ Histories in Times of Global Shift" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)
17 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the Nahuatl language, nepantla refers to the ancient Mesoamerican “philosophy that views the world through motion-change,” binding past, pres...
Max Edling, "Perfecting the Union: National and State Authority in the US Constitution" (Oxford UP, 2020)
16 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On the face of things, the Constitution is concerned with individual and collective rights - to free speech, assembly, religion and that part about gu...
Jonathan S. Holloway, "The Cause of Freedom: A Concise History of African Americans" (Oxford UP, 2021)
15 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to be an American? The story of the African American past demonstrates the difficulty of answering this seemingly simple question. I...
Dying from Despair in the USA: A Discussion with Anne Case
15 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row—a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in m...
J. DeLapp-Birkett and Aaron Sherber, "Appalachian Spring: Original Ballet Version" (A-R Edtions, 2019)
15 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Premiered in 1944, Appalachian Spring is a ballet developed in a close collaboration between the composer Aaron Copland and choreographer Martha Gra...
Cas Mudde, "The Far Right Today" (Polity, 2019)
15 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What is the difference between Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front and Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president? Why should we understand Trump as...
William C. Kashatus, "William Still: The Underground Railroad and the Angel at Philadelphia" (U Notre Dame Press, 2021)
12 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
William Still looms large in the history of the Underground Railroad, both for his role coordinating the Eastern Line and the records he maintained of...
Liat Ben-Moshe, "Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
12 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Prison abolition and decarceration are increasingly debated, but it is often without taking into account the largest exodus of people from carceral fa...
Edward A. David, "A Christian Approach to Corporate Religious Theory" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)
12 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How does individual religious liberty apply to religiously affiliated groups? Edward A. David investigates the polarized ways legal theorists seek...
Michael P. F. Smith, "The Good Hand: A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood, and Transformation in an American Boomtown" (Viking, 2021)
11 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Michael P. F. Smith about his book The Good Hand: A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood, and Transformation in an American Boomtown (Viki...
Christopher T. Stout, "The Case for Identity Politics: Polarization, Demographic Change, and Racial Appeals" (U Virginia Press, 2020)
11 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Case for Identity Politics: Polarization, Demographic Change, and Racial Appeals (University of Virginia Press, 2020) dives into the discussion ...
Monica D. Fitzgerald, "Puritans Behaving Badly: Gender, Punishment, and Religion in Early America" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
11 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Puritans of Early America did not start out with gendered society and piety. Instead, Monica D. Fitzerald suggests, growing tensions between lay m...
B. Brian Foster, "I Don't Like the Blues: Race, Place, and the Backbeat of Black Life" (UNC Press, 2020)
11 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Foster, self-identified Black boy from rural Mississippi, joins us today for a conversation about his book, I Don't Like the Blues: Race, Place...
Stephen J. Nichols, "R. C. Sproul: A Life" (Crossway, 2021)
10 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. R.C. Sproul (1939–2017) was a pastor, theologian, and trusted teacher. Most fundamentally, he was a man in awe of the holiness of God. In R.C. ...
Michael J. Pfeifer, "The Making of American Catholicism: Regional Culture and the Catholic Experience" (NYU Press, 2021
09 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Michael J. Pfeifer's The Making of American Catholicism: Regional Culture and the Catholic Experience (NYU Press, 2021 traces the development of Cat...
Michael Hattem, "Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution" (Yale UP, 2020)
09 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Hattem’s Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution (Yale, 2020) is a fascinating new look at how eighteenth-centur...
Kara M. Schlichting, "New York Recentered: Building the Metropolis from the Shore" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
09 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Providing a fresh perspective is one of the biggest challenges for historians of New York City. Kara Murphy Schlichting, however, has managed to do ju...
Melissa Moschella, "To Whom Do Children Belong?: Parental Rights, Civic Education, and Children's Autonomy" (Cambridge UP, 2016)
09 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton, which ruled that the Title VII prohibition on sex discrimination in employment extends to discri...
Rihan Yeh, "Passing: Two Publics in a Mexican Border City" (U of Chicago Press, 2017)
09 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Tijuana is the largest of Mexico’s northern border cities, and although it has struggled during the United States’ dramatic escalation of border e...
JeVon McCormick: Entrepreneur, Author and Speaker
08 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
JeVon McCormick was born the son of a black pimp father and a white orphan mother. Hear how, as a nine year old, he critiqued the way his father manag...
Gabriel Winant, "The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America" (Harvard UP, 2021)
08 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In his book The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Healthcare in Rust Belt America (Harvard University Press, 2021), Gabriel Winant ex...
Theodore D. Segal, "Point of Reckoning: The Fight for Racial Justice" (Duke UP, 2021)
08 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Duke University officially integrated its student body in the early 1960s, but the University itself did little to make students of color feel as thou...
Karen Jones, "Calamity: The Many Lives of Calamity Jane" (Yale UP, 2020)
08 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Calamity Jane is an enigma of Western history. Clad in men’s clothing, she rode across the American West in the latter half of the 19th century, ma...
Evan Friss, "The Cycling City: Bicycles and Urban America in the 1890s" (U Chicago Press, 2015)
05 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today on New Books in History, Dr. Evan Friss, associate professor of history at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia in the US to talk...
Mark R. Rank, "Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong about Poverty" (Oxford UP, 2021)
04 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Few topics have as many myths, stereotypes, and misperceptions surrounding them as that of poverty in America. The poor have been badly misunderstood ...
Tom Philpott, "Perilous Bounty: The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
04 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Perilous Bounty: The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020) is an unsettling journey into the ...
W. P. Leeman and J. B. Hattendorf, Forging the Trident: Theodore Roosevelt and the United States Navy" (Naval Institute Press, 2021)
03 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Theodore Roosevelt was a titan of American politics, society, and culture. Rarely soft spoken, always eager to brandish a big stick, and animated by a...
Ty Seidule, "Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause" (St. Martin's Press, 2021)
02 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We're very fortunate to be joined by the editor of The West Point History of the Civil War (Simon and Schuster, 2014), the Head of the History Depa...
Robert Elder, "Calhoun: American Heretic" (Basic Books, 2021)
02 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Calhoun: American Heretic (Basic Books, 2021), historian Robert Elder documents the life and thought of one of America's most controversial state...
erin Khuê Ninh, "#WeToo Reader" (JAAS, 2021)
01 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this inaugural episode, we discuss a unique special issue of The Journal of Asian American Studies: #WeToo, a reader of Art, Poetry, Fiction, and ...
Evan Rapport, "Damaged: Musicality and Race in Early American Punk" (UP of Mississippi, 2020)
01 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Damaged: Musicality and Race in Early American Punk (University Press of Mississippi, 2020) is the first book-length portrait of punk as a musical s...
Bradford Pearson, "The Eagles of Heart Mountain: A True Story of Football, Incarceration and Resistance in World War II America" (Atria, 2021)
01 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Many scholars have interrogated the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese-Americans during WWII – with an eye to understanding the particular type of ra...
Shonna Trinch and Edward Snajdr, "What the Signs Say: Language, Gentrification, and Place-Making in Brooklyn" (Vanderbilt UP, 2020)
01 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Two stores sit side-by-side. One with signage overflowing with text: a full list of business services (income tax returns, notary public, a variety of...
L. Cox Han and C. Heldman, "Madam President?: Gender and Politics on the Road to the White House" (Lynne Rienner, 2020)
25 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Lori Cox Han and Caroline Heldman, both scholars of gender and politics as well as scholars of the American Presidency, have assembled a wide array of...
Candacy Taylor, "Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America" (Abrams Press, 2020)
25 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Candacy Taylor about her book Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America (Abrams Press, 2020). T...
Kaitland M. Byrd, "Real Southern Barbecue: Constructing Authenticity in Southern Food Culture" (Lexington, 2019)
25 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Kaitland Byrd’s new book Real Southern Barbecue: Constructing Authenticity in Southern Food Culture (Lexington Press, 2019) examines an archive of...
John D. Wilsey, "God's Cold Warrior: The Life and Faith of John Foster Dulles" (Eardmans, 2021)
24 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When John Foster Dulles died in 1959, he was given the largest American state funeral since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s in 1945. President Eisenhowe...
Daphne A. Brooks, "Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound" (Harvard UP, 2021)
23 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound (Harvard University Press, 2021) by Dr. Daphne Brooks is a lyrical mast...
Ray Rhodes Jr., "Yours, Till Heaven: The Untold Love Story of Charles and Susie Spurgeon" (Moody Publishers, 2021)
23 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Enter the remarkable untold love story of Charles and Susie Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon is esteemed for his writing, preaching, and passion for the L...
Stephanie McCurry, "Women's War: Fighting and Surviving the Civil War" (Harvard UP, 2019)
23 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Women's War: Fighting and Surviving the Civil War (Harvard UP, 2019), the award-winning author of Confederate Reckoning challenges the idea th...
U. Baer and S. Dayal, "Fictions of America: The Book of Firsts" (Warbler Press, 2020)
23 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of New Books in Literary Studies, Miranda Corcoran speaks to Ulrich Baer and Smaran Dayal about their unique anthology, Fictions ...
Robert L. Stone, "Can’t Nobody Do Me Like Jesus! Photographs from the Sacred Steel Community" (U of Mississippi Press, 2020)
23 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Folklorist Robert L. Stone presents a rare collection of high-quality documentary photos of the sacred steel guitar musical tradition and the commun...
I. Stavans and J. Lambert, "How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish" (Restless Books, 2020)
23 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Is it possible to conceive of the American diet without bagels? Or Star Trek without Mr. Spock? Are the creatures in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild...
Dominic Johnson, "Strategic Instincts: The Adaptive Advantages of Cognitive Biases in International Politics" (Princeton UP, 2020)
23 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Strategic Instincts: The Adaptive Advantages of Cognitive Biases in International Politics (Princeton University Press, 2020), Dominic Johnson ...
Sydney Stern, "The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics" (U Mississippi Press, 2019)
22 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Herman J. (1897–1953) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993) wrote, produced, and directed over 150 pictures. With Orson Welles, Herman wrote the sc...