New Books in American Studies
Episodes
Joel S. Franks, "Asian American Basketball: A Century of Sport, Community and Culture" (McFarland, 2016)
27 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When Jeremy Lin shot (pardon the pun) to stardom with his unexpected scoring run with the New York Knickerbockers in 2012 many aficionados of basketba...
Bonny H. Miller, "Augusta Browne: Composer and Woman of Letters in Nineteenth-Century America" (U Rochester Press, 2020)
26 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Born around 1820, Augusta Browne was a pianist, organist, composer, music pedagogue, entrepreneur, music critic, and writer. In Augusta Browne: Compos...
Felicia Angeja Viator, "To Live and Defy in LA: How Gangsta Rap Changed America" (Harvard UP, 2020)
26 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1985, Greg Mack, a DJ working for Los Angeles radio station KDAY, played a song that sounded like nothing else on West Coast airwaves: Toddy Tee’...
Neil Shister, "Radical Ritual: How Burning Man Changed the World" (Counterpoint, 2019)
26 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Written from Neil Shister’s perspective as a journalist, student of American culture, and six-time participant in Burning Man, Radical Ritual: How B...
Anthony L. Gardner, "Stars with Stripes: The Essential Partnership between the European Union and the United States" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
23 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If the US is – in the words of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright – the "indispensible nation" then the economic, democratic and institu...
Sara Luna, "Love in the Drug War: Selling Sex and Finding Jesus on the Mexico-US Border" (U Texas Press, 2020)
23 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sex, drugs, religion, and love are potent combinations in la zona, a regulated prostitution zone in the city of Reynosa, across the border from Hidal...
Ellen Wayland-Smith, "The Angel in the Marketplace: Adwoman Jean Wade Rindlaub and the Selling of America" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
23 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ellen Wayland-Smith is an associate professor of writing at University of Southern California. Her book The Angel in the Marketplace: Adwoman Jean Wad...
Scott Laderman, "The 'Silent Majority' Speech: Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, and the Origins of the New Right" (Routledge, 2019)
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On November 3, 1969 Richard M. Nixon addressed the nation in what would come to be known as “The Silent Majority Speech”. In 32 minutes, the presi...
Simone C. Drake, "Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century" (Duke UP, 2020)
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Simone C. Drake and Dwan K. Henderson's Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century (Duke UP, 2020) is an engaging and in...
Heather Lende, "Of Bears and Ballots: An Alaskan Adventure in Small-Town Politics" (Algonquin Books, 2020)
21 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Heather Lende was one of the thousands of women inspired to take a more active role in politics during the past few years. Though her entire campaign ...
Richard L. Hasen, "Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy" (Yale UP, 2020)
21 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As the 2020 presidential campaign begins to take shape, there is widespread distrust of the fairness and accuracy of American elections. In Election M...
Dan Royles, "To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle Against HIV/AIDS" (UNC Press, 2020)
21 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the decades since it was identified in 1981, HIV/AIDS has devastated African American communities. Members of those communities mobilized to fight ...
Maria Hinojosa, "Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America" (Atria Books, 2020)
21 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Maria Hinojosa is an award-winning journalist who, for nearly thirty years, has reported on stories and communities in America that often go ignored b...
Nadia Nurhussein, "Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America" (Princeton UP, 2019)
21 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America (Princeton University Press, 2019), Nadia Nurhussein explores late nineteenth and twentieth c...
Michael Walzer, "A Foreign Policy for the Left" (Yale UP, 2018)
20 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In my old age, I try to argue more quietly, though I still believe that sharp disagreement is a sign of political seriousness. What engaged citizens t...
Eric San Juan, "The Films of Martin Scorsese: Gangsters, Greed, and Guilt" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020)
20 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Few mainstream filmmakers have as pronounced a disregard for the supposed rules of filmmaking as Martin Scorsese. His inventiveness displays a reactio...
Valerie Olson, "Into the Extreme: U.S. Environmental Systems and Politics Beyond Earth" (U Minnesota Press, 2018)
20 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What if outer space is not outside the human environment but, rather, defines it? This is the unusual starting point of Valerie Olson’s Into the Ext...
Spencer Critchley, "Patriots of Two Nations: Why Trump Was Inevitable and What Happens Next" (McDavid Media, 2020)
19 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
America is in a Cold Civil War, between people who see each other as threats to the country — but themselves as patriots. How can that be? They are ...
Janet Jakobsen, "The Sex Obsession: Perversity and Possibility in American Politics" (NYU Press, 2020)
19 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Why are Americans, and American politicians more specifically, obsessed with sex? Why, in the words of Janet Jakobsen, are gender and sexuality such r...
K. Grenier and A. Mushal, "Cultures of Memory in the Nineteenth Century: Consuming Commemoration" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
19 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Cultures of Memory in the Nineteenth Century: Consuming Commemoration (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) explores commemorative practices as they developed in...
Alexandra J. Finley, "An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America’s Domestic Slave Trade" (UNC Press, 2020)
16 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Alexandra J. Finley is the author of An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America’s Domestic Slave Trade, published by the University of N...
Paul Howe, "Teen Spirit: How Adolescence Transformed the Adult World" (Cornell UP, 2020)
16 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Howe's book Teen Spirit: How Adolescence Transformed the Adult World (Cornell UP, 2020) offers a novel and provocative perspective on how we cam...
Jessica Zychowicz, "Superfluous Women: Art, Feminism, and Revolution in Twenty-First Century Ukraine" (U Toronto Press, 2020)
16 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Superfluous Women: Art, Feminism, and Revolution in Twenty-First Century Ukraine (University of Toronto Press, 2020) tells the unique story of a gener...
Tahseen Shams, "Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World" (Stanford UP, 2020)
16 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World (Stanford University Press, 2020) by Tahseen Shams (Assistant Pro...
Seth Masket, "Learning from Loss: The Democrats, 2016-2020" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Seth Masket’s new book, Learning from Loss: The Democrats, 2016-2020 (Cambridge UP, 2020) takes the outcome of the 2016 presidential race and Donal...
Why are Blacks Democrats?: An Interview with Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Black Americans are by far the most unified racial group in American electoral politics, with 80 to 90 percent identifying as Democrats—a surprising...
Ian Haney López, "Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America" (The New Press, 2019)
14 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Greedy elites are purposefully stoking racial division and laughing all the way to the bank. That is the bottom line of Ian Haney López’s Merge Lef...
A. B. Cox and C. M. Rodríguez, "The President and Immigration Law" (Oxford UP, 2020)
14 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Who truly controls immigration law in the United States? Though common sense might suggest the U.S. Congress, legal scholars Adam B. Cox and Cristina ...
Ernest Freeberg, "A Traitor to His Species: Henry Bergh and the Birth of the Animal Rights Movement" (Basic Books, 2020)
13 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Gilded Age America, people and animals lived cheek-by-jowl in environments that were dirty and dangerous to man and animal alike. The industrial ci...
Rhodri Jeffreys Jones, "The Nazi Spy Ring in America: Hitler’s Agents, the FBI and the Case that Stirred the Nation" (Georgetown UP, 2020)
13 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, The Nazi Spy Ring in America: Hitler’s Agents, the FBI & the Case that Stirred the Nation (Georgetown University Press, 2020), Rh...
Farzaneh Hemmasi, "Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California's Iranian Pop Music" (Duke UP, 2020)
12 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Farzaneh Hemmasi is the author of Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California's Iranian Pop Music (Duke UP, 2020). The title...
Chris Lombardi, "I Ain’t Marching Anymore: Dissenters, Deserters and Objectors to America’s Wars" (The New Press, 2020)
09 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Before the U.S. Constitution had even been signed, soldiers and new veterans protested. Dissent, the hallowed expression of disagreement and refusal t...
R. Rosenberg and R. Rubinstein, "Teaching Jewish American Literature" (MLA, 2020)
09 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview, Roberta Rosenberg and Rachel Rubinstein (editors), engage our listeners in a conversation about different approaches to teaching J...
Hannah L. Walker, "Mobilized by Injustice: Criminal Justice Contact, Political Participation, and Race" (Oxford UP, 2020)
08 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Hannah Walker’s new book, Mobilized by Injustice: Criminal Justice Contact, Political Participation, and Race (Oxford UP, 2020), brings together the...
Jerry Gershenhorn, "Louis Austin and the Carolina Times: A Life in the Long Black Freedom Struggle" (UNC Press, 2018)
07 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Louis Austin and the Carolina Times: A Life in the Long Black Freedom Struggle (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) by Jerry Gershenhorn is a hi...
Daniel Macfarlane, "Fixing Niagara Falls: Environment, Energy, and Engineers at the World’s Most Famous Waterfall" (UBC Press, 2020)
07 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Water and diplomatic historian Dan MacFarlane has written a fascinating book on a fundamental debate in environmental history: What is a natural lands...
Christopher Capozzola, "Bound By War: How the United States and the Philippines Built America’s First Pacific Century" (Basic Books, 2020)
06 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since American troops occupied the Philippines in 1898, generations of Filipinos have served in and alongside the U.S. armed forces. In Bound By ...
Jennifer Lisa Koslow, "Exhibiting Health: Public Health Displays in the Progressive Era" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
05 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the early twentieth century, public health reformers approached the task of ameliorating unsanitary conditions and preventing epidemic diseases wit...
Stephen C. Kepher, "COSSAC: Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan and the Genesis of Operation OVERLORD" (Naval Institute Press, 2020)
05 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
D-Day, June 6, 1944, looms large in both popular and historical imaginations as the sin qua non, or single defining moment, of the Second World War. T...
D. Benge and N. Pickowicz, "The American Puritans" (Reformation Heritage Books, 2020)
02 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On the four hundredth anniversary of the arrival in the new world of the Mayflower, Dustin Benge and Nate Pickowicz have written a lively and accessib...
Denise E. Bates, "Basket Diplomacy: Leadership, Alliance-Building, and Resilience among the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, 1884-1984" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)
02 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Before the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana became one of the state’s top private employers—with its vast landholdings and economic enterprises—they...
Armstrong Williams, "What Black and White America Must Do Now: A Prescription to Move Beyond Race" (Hot Books, 2020)
02 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What Black and White America Must Do Now: A Prescription to Move Beyond Race (Hot Books, 2020) explores the complexity of race and culture in the Unit...
EQ Spotlight Special: Roundtable on the 2020 Presidential Race
02 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What are we to make of the year’s first presidential debate? Listen in as John R. Hibbing, Jonathan Weiler and I discuss this question and others su...
Laura J. Arata, "Race and the Wild West" (U Oklahoma Press, 2020)
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
After Laura Arata first visited Virginia City, Montana in graduate school, she became fascinated by the story of one historical figure—Sarah Bickfor...
Christopher J. Blythe, "Terrible Revolution: Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse" (Oxford UP, 2020)
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Terrible Revolution: Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse (Oxford UP, 2020), Christopher James Blythe examines apocalypticism across the h...
Rogers M. Smith, "That Is Not Who We Are!: Populism and Peoplehood" (Yale UP, 2020)
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Rogers M. Smith, the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, has written a new book on t...
Andrew C. Isenberg, "The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920" (Cambridge UP, 2000)
30 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1800, tens of millions of bison roamed the North American Great Plains. By 1900, fewer than 1,000 remained. In The Destruction of the Bison: An Env...
Glenn Kenny, "Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas" (Hanover Square, 2020)
30 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For the thirtieth anniversary of its premiere comes the vivid and immersive history behind Martin Scorsese’s signature film Goodfellas, hailed by cr...
Michele Goodwin, "Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
30 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood (Cambridge University Press, 2020) a brilliant but shocking account of the cr...
Ariella Rotramel, "Pushing Back: Women of Color-Led Grassroots Activism in New York City" (U Georgia Press, 2020)
29 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Pushing Back: Women of Color–Led Grassroots Activism in New York City (U Georgia Press, 2020) explores women of color’s grassroots leadership in o...
Gene Ludwig, "The Vanishing American Dream" (Disruption Books, 2020)
28 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Gene Ludwig cares. The former banker, government regulator, and serial entrepreneur cares deeply about the hollowing out of the American middle class ...
Gregory A. Daddis, "Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
25 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his compelling evaluation of Cold War popular culture, Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines (Cambridge UP, 2020), G...
William L. Patterson, "We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People" (International Publishers, 2017)
25 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 2017, We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People, the historic petition authored by William L. Patterson, was published i...
Giorgio Bertellini, "The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and the Political Leadership in 1920s America" (U California Press, 2019)
25 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1927, the Hollywood stars (and spouses), Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr stood outside their California home, arms raised in fascist salute...
Jennifer Cobbina, "Hands Up, Don’t Shoot: Why the Protests in Ferguson and Baltimore Matter, and How They Changed America" (NYU Press, 2019)
24 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Following the high-profile deaths of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and twenty-five-year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryla...
James L. Nolan, Jr., "Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age" (Harvard UP, 2020)
24 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
After his father died, James L. Nolan, Jr., took possession of a box of private family materials. To his surprise, the small secret archive contained...
Rachel M. Gillum, "Muslims in a Post-9/11 America" (U Michigan Press, 2018)
23 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Muslims in a Post-9/11 America (University of Michigan Press, 2018) examines how public fears about Muslims in the United States compare with the real...
Carla Yanni, "Living on Campus: An Architectural History of the American Dormitory" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)
22 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Every fall on move-in day, parents tearfully bid farewell to their beloved sons and daughters at college dormitories: it is an age-old ritual. The res...
Justin Q. Olmstead, "The United States' Entry into the First World War: The Role of British and German Diplomacy" (Boydell Press, 2019)
22 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The complicated situation which led to the American entry into the First World War in 1917 is often explained from the perspective of public opinion, ...
Diana Greene Foster, "The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having—or Being Denied—an Abortion" (Scribner, 2020)
22 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when a woman seeking an abortion is turned away? Diana Greene Foster, PhD, decided to find out. With a team of scientists—psychologists...
Maurice S. Crandall, "These People Have Always Been a Republic: Indigenous Electorates in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1598–1912" (UNC Press, 2019)
22 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Spanning three hundred years and the colonial regimes of Spain, Mexico, and the United States, Maurice S. Crandall’s These People Have Always Been a...
Robert Kolker, "Hidden Valley Road: Inside The Mind of An American Family" (Doubleday, 2020)
21 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Hidden Valley Road: Inside The Mind of An American Family (Doubleday, 2020) is the story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of ...
David Paul Kuhn, "The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2020)
21 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On the eve of the November 2020 presidential election, Americans often present increased polarization as the result of Trumpian extremism or America’...
Jody A. Forrester, "Guns Under the Bed: Memories of a Young Revolutionary" (Odyssey Books, 2020)
18 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It is 1969 and Jody A. Forrester is in her late teens, transitioning from a Sixties love child to pacifist anti-Vietnam War activist to an ardent revo...
E. Bazzano and M. Hermansen, "Varieties of American Sufism" (SUNY Press, 2020)
18 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sufism in America is now a developed sub-field of study that exists at the intersection of Islamic Studies, American religions, and popular spirituali...
Alexander Keyssar, "Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?" (Harvard UP, 2020)
17 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The title of Harvard historian Alexander Keyssar,’s new book poses the question that comes up every presidential election cycle: Why Do We Still Hav...
Victor McFarland, "Oil Powers: A History of the US-Saudi Alliance" (Columbia UP, 2020)
17 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia is a critical feature of the modern international system. It binds the global hegemon to a...
Teresa A. Goddu, "Selling Antislavery: Abolition and Mass Media in Antebellum America" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)
16 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Selling Antislavery: Abolition and Mass Media in Antebellum America (University of Pennsylvania Press) is a richly illustrated history of the American...
J. Iber and M. Longoria, "Latinos in American Football: Pathbreakers on the Gridiron, 1927 to the Present" (McFarland, 2020)
16 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Jorge Iber, Professor of History and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Science at Texas Tech, and Mario Longoria, a lon...
M. Ramirez and D. Peterson, "Ignored Racism: White Animus Toward Latinos (Cambridge UP, 2020)
15 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost e...
Sherry L. Smith, "Bohemians West: Free Love, Family, and Radicals in Twentieth-Century America" (Heyday Books, 2020)
15 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The opening years of the twentieth century saw a grand cast of radicals and reformers fighting for a new America, seeking change not only in labor pic...
Joseph Clark, "News Parade: The American Newsreel and the World as Spectacle" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
15 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When weekly newsreels launched in the early twentieth century, they offered the U.S. public the first weekly record of events that symbolized “indis...
Ellen M. Snyder-Grenier, "The House on Henry Street: The Enduring Life of a Lower East Side Settlement" (NYU Press, 2020)
15 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On a cold March day in 1893, 26-year-old nurse Lillian Wald rushed through the poverty-stricken streets of New York’s Lower East Side to a squalid b...
Gerald Posner, "Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America" (Simon and Schuster, 2020)
14 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is investigative journalist and author, Gerald Posner. His new book, Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America (Simon and Schu...
Postscript: A Discussion of Race, Anger and Citizenship in the USA
14 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How do we have a serious conversation about race that moves beyond the brevity of Twitter or an op-ed? In this episode of Post-Script (a New Books in ...
Mariana Mogilevich, "The Invention of Public Space: Designing for Inclusion in Lindsay's New York" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
14 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As suburbanization, racial conflict, and the consequences of urban renewal threatened New York City with “urban crisis,” the administration of May...
Pernille Røge, "Economistes and the Reinvention of Empire: France in the Americas and Africa c. 1750-1802" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
11 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Economistes and the Reinvention of Empire: France in the Americas and Africa, c. 1750-1802 (Cambridge UP, 2020), Dr. Pernille Røge c...
Glenda Goodman, "Cultivated by Hand: Amateur Musicians in the Early American Republic" (Oxford UP, 2020)
10 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven were all working in Europe during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, so perhaps it is no surprise that musicolog...
B. Heersink and J. A. Jenkins, "Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865-1968" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
10 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Prior to the 1960s, Democrats were seen as having a lock on the South in national and local electoral politics, while Republicans had strengths in oth...
Roundtable Discussion of Jennifer Morgan's "Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery" (UPenn Press, 2004)
10 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to New Books in African American Studies, a channel on the New Books Network. I am your host Adam McNeil. Today is part 2 of my discussion abo...
Hettie V. Williams, "Bury My Heart in a Free Land: Black Women Intellectuals in Modern U.S. History" (Praeger, 2018)
10 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Black women intellectuals have traditionally been overlooked in the academic study of American intellectual history. Bury My Heart in a Free Land: Bla...
Jennifer L. Morgan, "Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2004)
09 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 2004, Dr. Jennifer L. Morgan’s Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (University of Pennsylvania Press) was published. Six...
Muhammed Fraser-Rahim, "America’s Other Muslims" (Lexington Books, 2020)
09 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
America's Other Muslims: Imam W.D. Mohammed, Islamic Reform, and the Making of American Islam explores the oldest and perhaps the most important Musli...
Joshua Greenberg, "Bank Notes and Shinplasters: The Rage for Paper Money in the Early Republic" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)
09 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What is money? No, really, what is money? It turns out the answer is not so simple. During the course of the 20th century, most of us have gotten used...
Federico R. Waitoller, "Excluded by Choice: Urban Students with Disabilities in the Education Marketplace" (Teachers College Press, 2020)
09 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I speak with Federico R. Waitoller about his book, Excluded by Choice: Urban Students with Disabilities in the Education Marketplace ...
Matthew Yglesias, "One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger" (Portfolio, 2020)
08 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What would actually make America great? More people. If the most challenging crisis in living memory has shown us anything, it’s that America has lo...
Stooges Brass Band, "Can’t Be Faded: Twenty Years in the New Orleans Brass Band Game" (U Mississippi Press, 2020)
07 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Can’t Be Faded: Twenty Years in the New Orleans Brass Band Game (University of Mississippi Press, 2020) is a collaboration between musician and ethn...
Postscript: Shirley Chisholm as Principled Political Strategist
07 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“I stand before you today as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States of America. “I am not the candidate...
Charles Allan McCoy, "Diseased States: Epidemic Control in Britain and the United States" (U Massachusetts Press, 2020)
04 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Outbreaks of Ebola, SARS, MERS, and pandemic influenza are brutal reminders of the dangers of infectious disease. Comparing the development of disease...
Kristin Kobez Du Mez, "Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation" (Liveright, 2020)
03 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most perplexing elements of Donald Trumps’s 2016 electoral victory was the overwhelming support he received from white Evangelicals, a de...
Nathan J. Kelly, "America's Inequality Trap" (U of Chicago Press, 2020)
03 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
America's Inequality Trap (University of Chicago Press, 2020) focuses on the relationship between economic inequality and American politics. Nathan J....
John F. Marszalek III, "Coming Out of the Magnolia Closet: Same-Sex Couples in Mississippi" (U Mississippi Press, 2020)
02 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Coming Out of the Magnolia Closet: Same-Sex Couples in Mississippi (University of Mississippi Press, 2020), John F. Marszalek III shares conversat...
Richard G. Moore, "The Writings of Oliver Olney: April 1842 to February 1843-Nauvoo, Illinois" (Greg Kofford Books, 2020)
01 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Oliver H. Olney, an early convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, fled to Nauvoo, Illinois, following persecution in Missouri. In ...
Philip Nash, "Breaking Protocol: America's First Female Ambassadors, 1933-1964" (UP of Kentucky, 2020)
01 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
"It used to be," soon-to-be secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright said in 1996, "that the only way a woman could truly make her foreign policy view...
Sara Mayeux, "Free Justice: A History of the Public Defender in Twentieth-Century America" (UNC Press, 2020)
01 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sara Mayeux is the author of Free Justice: A History of the Public Defender in Twentieth-Century America, published by the University of North Carolin...
Rafael Medoff, "The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust" (JPS, 2019)
31 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Like so many Americans, American Jews supported President Roosevelt. They adored him. They believed in him. They idolized him. Perhaps they shouldn’...
João Costa Vargas, "The Denial of Antiblackness: Multiracial Redemption and Black Suffering" (U of Minnesota Press, 2018)
28 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
An incisive new look at the black diaspora, examining the true roots of antiblackness and its destructive effects on all of society. Thanks to movemen...
Dan Edelstein, "On the Spirit of Rights" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
28 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
By the end of the eighteenth century, politicians in America and France were invoking the natural rights of man to wrest sovereignty away from kings a...
Chris Yogerst, "Hollywood Hates Hitler!: Jew-bating, Anti-Nazism, and the Senate Investigation into Warmongering in Motion Pictures" (U Mississippi, 2020)
28 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In September 1941, a handful of isolationist senators set out to tarnish Hollywood for warmongering. The United States was largely divided on the poss...
Paul Moyer, "Detestable and Wicked Arts: New England and Witchcraft in the Early Modern Atlantic World" (Cornell UP, 2020)
28 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble.” These famous lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth elicit popular images of sinister...