New Books in American Studies
Episodes
J. E. Zelizer, "Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party" (Penguin, 2020)
27 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Nearly everyone in the United States is aware of the fiery rhetoric and divisive political stratagems of Donald Trump and the contemporary Republican ...
Ellyn Lem, "Gray Matters: Finding Meaning in the Stories of Later Life" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
27 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As Baby Boomers reach the tipping point of aging into later life, the record numbers of seniors int the 65 and over crowd generates greater interest a...
Jeffery D. Long, "Hinduism in America" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020)
26 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Hinduism in America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) Jeffrey D. Long traces two worlds that converge – that of Hindu immigrants to America who strive ...
Lou Hernandez, "Bobby Maduro and the Cuban Sugar Kings" (McFarland, 2019)
26 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There are two key elements of today’s professional baseball that are informed by Lou Hernandez’s wonderful book Bobby Maduro and the Cuban Sugar K...
Thomas A. Schwartz, "Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography" (Hill and Wang, 2020)
26 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past six decades, Henry Kissinger has been America's most consistently praised--and reviled--public figure. He was hailed as a "miracle worke...
Robert G. Boatright and Valerie Sperling, "Trumping Politics as Usual: Masculinity, Misogyny, and the 2016 Elections" (Oxford UP, 2019)
24 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How did the Trump and Hillary Clinton campaigns affect other elections in 2016? How did the use of gender stereotypes and insulting references to wome...
Lauren F. Klein, "An Archive of Taste: Race and Eating in the Early United States" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
24 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There is no eating in the archive. This is not only a practical admonition to any would-be researcher but also a methodological challenge, in that the...
Steven C. Smith, "Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood’s Most Influential Composer" (Oxford UP, 2020)
21 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
During a seven-decade career that spanned from 19th century Vienna to 1920s Broadway to the golden age of Hollywood, three-time Academy Award winner M...
David Moon, "The American Steppes: The Unexpected Russian Roots of Great Plains Agriculture, 1870s-1930s" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
21 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in the 1870s, migrant groups from Russia's steppes settled in the similar environment of the Great Plains. Many were Mennonites. They brough...
Uzma Quraishi, "Redefining the Immigrant South" (UNC Press, 2020)
21 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Redefining the Immigrant South: Indian and Pakistani Immigration to Houston During the Cold War (University of North Carolina Press), Uzma Quraishi...
Joy Knoblauch, "The Architecture of Good Behavior" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020)
21 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Inspired by the rise of environmental psychology and increasing support for behavioral research after the Second World War, new initiatives at the fed...
Waleed Mahdi, "Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation" (Syracuse UP, 2020)
20 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Waleed Mahdi’s book, Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation (Syracuse University Press) offers a...
Elspeth H. Brown, "Work! A Queer History of Modelling" (Duke UP, 2019)
20 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
From the haute couture runways of Paris and New York and editorial photo shoots for glossy fashion magazines to reality television, models have been a...
John R. Hibbing, "The Securitarian Personality: What Really Motivates Trump’s Base and Why It Matters for the Post-Trump Era" (Oxford UP, 2020)
20 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What are the policy implications due to a fundamental distrust and dislike of “outsiders”? Today I talked to political scientist John R. Hibbing a...
L. D'Amour and K. Pearl, "Milton: A Performance and Community Engagement Experiment" (53rd State Press, 2019)
20 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 2012, Lisa D'Amour and Katie Pearl--known collectively as PearlDamour--began visiting five small American towns named Milton. From these visits eme...
Kerri Arsenault, "Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains" (Martin's Press, 2020)
20 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working-class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs mo...
David R. B. Beck, "Unfair Labor?: American Indians and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago" (U Nebraska Press, 2019)
19 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition was in many ways the crowning event of the nineteenth century United States. Held in Chicago, the metropolis o...
Khary O. Polk, "Contagions of Empire: Scientific Racism, Sexuality, and Black Military Workers Abroad, 1898-1948" (UNC Press, 2020)
19 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Khary Oronde Polk is the author of Contagions of Empire: Scientific Racism, Sexuality, and Black Military Workers Abroad, 1898-1948, published by the ...
Lauren Michele Jackson, "White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue ... and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation" (Beacon, 2019)
19 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue ... and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation (Beacon, 2019), Lauren Michele Jackson analyzes Christi...
Lucas E. Morel, "Lincoln and the American Founding" (SIUP, 2020)
18 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“Four score and seven years ago…” Those are some of the most famous words in American history. Most of us know that President Abraham Lincoln sp...
Colin Woodard, "Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood" (Viking, 2020)
18 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Colin Woodard's new book Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood (Viking, 2020) tells the story of the struggle to create a...
Ryan Hall, "Beneath the Backbone of the World: Blackfoot People and the North American Borderlands, 1720-1877" (UNC Press, 2020)
18 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ryan Hall is the author of Beneath the Backbone of the World: Blackfoot People and the North American Borderlands, 1720-1877, published by the Univers...
Laura Gómez, "Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism" (The New Press, 2020)
17 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Latinos have long influenced everything from electoral politics to popular culture, yet many people instinctively regard them as recent immigrants rat...
Kimberly Brown Pellum, "Black Beauties: African American Pageant Queens in the Segregated South" (History Press, 2020)
17 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Florida A&M University professor and former Miss FAMU Kimberly Brown Pellum, Ph.D., recently released her book, Black Beauties: African American Pagea...
Katie Day Good, "Bring the World to the Child: Technologies of Global Citizenship in American Education" (MIT Press, 2020)
17 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, boosters of digital educational technologies emphasized that these platforms are vital tools for cultivating global...
Julia Rose Kraut, "Threat of Dissent: A History of Ideological Exclusion and Deportation in the United States" (Harvard UP, 2020)
17 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How does the United States use immigration to suppress free speech? Should interests of “national security” take priority over individual libertie...
Aaron Carico, "Black Market: The Slave's Value in National Culture after 1865" (UNC Press, 2020)
17 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On the eve of the Civil War, the estimated value of the U.S. enslaved population exceeded $3 billion--triple that of investments nationwide in factori...
Lauren R. Kerby, "Saving History: How White Evangelicals Tour the Nation’s Capital and Redeem a Christian America" (UNC Press, 2020)
17 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Millions of tourists visit Washington D.C. every year, vying to see its landscape, museums, and buildings and learn about seminal moments in US histor...
John W. Compton, "The End of Empathy: Why White Protestants Stopped Loving their Neighbors" (Oxford UP, 2020)
14 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We’re all familiar with the statistic that 81% of white evangelical voters supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. But what if a d...
S. Daulatzai and J. Rana, “With Stones in Our Hands: Reflections on Racism, Muslims and US Empire” (U Minnesota Press, 2018)
14 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this current moment it has become increasingly clear that US society is deeply entangled in racist policies and logics of white supremacy. While th...
Duane Tananbaum, "Herbert H. Lehman: A Political Biography" (SUNY Press, 2017)
14 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Over the course of three decades of public service, Herbert Lehman dedicated himself tirelessly to advances the causes in which he believed. In Herber...
Post Script: Kamala Harris as Vice President
13 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This is our second podcast in a new series from New Books in Political Science called POST-SCRIPT in which Susan and I invite authors back to the podc...
Andrea Benjamin, "Racial Coalition Building in Local Elections: Elite Cues and Cross-Ethnic Voting" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
13 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What explains voting behavior in local elections? More specifically, what explains how ethnic and racial blocs vote in local elections, especially whe...
Erik Gellman, "Troublemakers: Chicago Freedom Struggles Through the Lens of Art Shay" (Chicago UP, 2020)
13 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
James West speaks with Erik Gellman, an associate professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, about his new book Troub...
Kyle Barnett, "Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry" (U Michigan Press, 2020)
13 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry (University of Michigan Press, 2020), Kyle Barnett tells the story of the smalle...
Christopher Newfield, "The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2016)
12 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), Christopher Newfield diagnose...
Jill A. Fisher, "Adverse Events: Race, Inequality, and the Testing of New Pharmaceuticals" (NYU Press, 2020)
12 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine that you volunteer for the clinical trial of an experimental drug. The only direct benefit of participating is that you will receive up to $5,...
Amy Von Lintel, "Georgia O'Keeffe's Wartime Texas Letters" (Texas A&M UP, 2020)
11 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1912, at age 24, Georgia O’Keeffe boarded a train in Virginia and headed west, to the prairies of the Texas Panhandle, to take a position as art ...
Deborah E. Kanter, "Chicago Católico: Making Catholic Parishes Mexican" (U Illinois Press, 2020)
11 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when a new group of migrants enters not just the social and economic life of a city, but also its religious institutions? Deborah E. Kant...
Emily Pawley, "The Nature of the Future: Agriculture, Science, and Capitalism in the Antebellum North" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
11 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The nostalgic mist surrounding farms can make it hard to write their history, encrusting them with stereotypical rural virtues and unrealistically sep...
LaDale Winling, "Building the Ivory Tower: Universities and Metropolitan Development in the Twentieth Century" (U Penn Press, 2018)
10 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Universities have become state-like entities, possessing their own hospitals, police forces, and real estate companies. To become such behemoths, high...
Thomas Borstelmann, "Just Like Us: The American Struggle to Understand Foreigners" (Columbia UP, 2020)
07 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The American attitude towards outsiders has always been ambivalent. The United States, it is commonly said, is a nation of immigrants; today, it’s t...
J. Browning and T. Silver, "An Environmental History of the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2020)
06 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This sweeping new history recognizes that the Civil War was not just a military conflict but also a moment of profound transformation in Americans' re...
John C. McManus, "Fire and Fortitude: The US Army in the Pacific War, 1941-1943 (Dutton Caliber, 2019)
06 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For most Americans, the war the United States waged in the Pacific in the Second World War was one fought primarily by the Navy and the Marine Corps. ...
Joshua Nall, "News from Mars: Mass Media and the Forging of a New Astronomy, 1860-1910" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2019)
06 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re hearing an awful lot about the fraught relationship between science and media. In his book, News from M...
Alex Sayf Cummings, "Brain Magnet: Research Triangle Park and the Idea of the Idea Economy" (Columbia UP, 2020)
05 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in the 1950s, a group of academics, businesspeople, and politicians set out on an ambitious project to remake North Carolina’s low-wage ec...
Thomas Richards Jr., "Breakaway Americas: The Unmanifest Future of Jacksonian America" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
05 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Breakaway Americas: The Unmanifest Future of Jacksonian America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020), Thomas Richards Jr., a history teacher at S...
Samuel Morris Brown, "Joseph Smith's Translation: The Words and Worlds of Early Mormonism" (Oxford UP, 2020)
05 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mormonism's founder, Joseph Smith, claimed to have translated ancient scriptures. He dictated an American Bible from metal plates reportedly buried by...
Anne Lindsay, "Reconsidering Interpretation of Heritage Sites: America in the Eighteenth Century" (Routledge, 2020)
04 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
2020 had been an intense year for Americans reflecting on their nation’s history. From attacks on statues to public debates about the 1619 Project t...
Michael Rectenwald, "Beyond Woke" (New English Review Press, 2020)
04 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A few short years ago, Michael Rectenwald was a Marxist professor at NYU, pursuing his career and contemplating becoming a Trotskyist, when the politi...
Lesly-Marie Buer, "RX Appalachia: Stories of Treatment and Survival in Rural Kentucky" (Haymarket, 2020)
03 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Using the narratives of women who use(d) drugs, this account challenges popular understandings of Appalachia spread by such pundits as JD Vance by doc...
Melissa J. Wilde, "Birth Control Battles: How Race and Class Divided American Religion" (U California Press, 2020)
03 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Although it has largely been erased from the collective memory of American Christianity, the debate over eugenics was a major factor in the history of...
Michael A. Olivas, "Perchance to DREAM: A Legal and Political History of the DREAM Act and DACA" (NYU Press, 2020)
03 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Why did the DREAM Act (for the Development, Relief, and Education of Alien Minors) never pass Congress – even though it was popular with Republicans...
Caridad Svich, "Mitchell and Trask’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch" (Routledge, 2019
03 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mitchell and Trask’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Routledge, 2019) is Caridad Svich’s love letter to the 1998 musical that introduced the world to i...
Aya Gruber, "The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration" (U California Press, 2020)
31 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Aya Gruber, a professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School, has written a history of how the women’s movement in America has shaped the...
Sunny Stalter-Pace, "Imitation Artist: Gertrude Hoffman’s Life in Vaudeville and Dance" (Northwestern UP, 2020)
31 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Gertrude Hoffman is one of many entertainers who were big stars in vaudeville before World War I, but whose celebrity faded as the American public was...
Lindsay M. Chervinsky, "The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution" (Harvard UP, 2020)
30 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution (Harvard University Press, 2020), historian Lindsay M. Ch...
Brett Dakin, "American Daredevil: Comics, Communism, and The Battles of Lev Gleason" (Chapterhouse Publishing, 2020)
30 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In American Daredevil: Comics, Communism, and The Battles of Lev Gleason (Chapterhouse Publishing, 2020), Brett Dakin, Gleason’s great-nephew delves...
Sarah B. Rodriguez, "The Love Surgeon: A Story of Trust, Harm, and the Limits of Medical Regulation" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
30 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. James Burt believed women’s bodies were broken, and only he could fix them. In the 1950s, this Ohio OB-GYN developed what he called “love surg...
David A. Harris, "A City Divided: Race, Fear and the Law in Police Confrontations" (Anthem Press, 2020)
30 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How do we move police forces from a warrior culture to connecting better with communities they serve? Today I talked to David A. Harris about his new ...
Ann Tucker, "Newest Born of Nations: European Nationalist Movements and the Making of the Confederacy" (UVA Press, 2020)
29 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
From the earliest stirrings of southern nationalism to the defeat of the Confederacy, analysis of European nationalist movements played a critical rol...
Sophie White, "Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2019)
29 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her prize-winning study Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Colonial Louisiana (Omohundro Institute of Early American Histor...
Amity Shlaes, "Great Society: A New History" (Harper, 2019)
29 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
National concern about income inequalities. Race relations at a boiling point. Riots in the streets. Cries on the left for massive allocations of fede...
JoAnna Poblete, "Balancing the Tides: Marine Practices in American Samoa" (U Hawai’i Press, 2020)
28 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Balancing the Tides: Marine Practices in American Samoa (University of Hawai’i Press, 2020), JoAnna Poblete demonstrates how western-style econom...
Theresa Kaminski, "Dr. Mary Walker's Civil War: One Woman's Journey to the Medal of Honor and the Fight for Women's Rights" (Lyons Press, 2020)
28 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Among the tens of thousands of Americans who volunteered their services during the Civil War was Mary Walker, a daring young woman who was one of the ...
Jan Doering, "Us versus Them: Race, Crime, and Gentrification in Chicago Neighborhoods" (Oxford UP, 2020)
28 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With such high levels of residential segregation along racial lines in the United States, gentrifying neighborhoods present fascinating opportunities ...
Kathleen Bachynski, "No Game for Boys to Play: The History of Youth Football and the Origins of a Public Health Crisis" (UNC Press, 2019)
27 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Kathleen Bachynski, Assistant Professor of Public Health at Muhlenberg College, and author of No Game for Boys to Play: The His...
Verónica Martínez-Matsuda, "Migrant Citizenship: Race, Rights, and Reform in the U.S. Farm Labor Camp Program" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)
27 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Verónica Martínez-Matsuda about her book Migrant Citizenship: Race, Rights, and Reform in the U.S. Farm Labor Camp Program (University of Pennsylvan...
R. K. Jefferson and H. B. Johnson, "Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court (NYU Press, 2020)
27 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Before Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court in 1981, nine highly qualified women were on the shortlist. What do the stor...
Thomas Bishop, "Every Home a Fortress: Cold War Fatherhood and the Family Fallout Shelter" (UMass Press, 2020)
24 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Every Home a Fortress: Cold War Fatherhood and the Family Fallout Shelter (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020), Thomas Bishop details the rema...
Emily Wallace, "Road Sides: An Illustrated Companion to Dining and Driving in the American South" (U Texas Press, 2019)
24 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Emily Wallace, author and illustrator of the new book Road Sides: An Illustrated Companion to Dining ...
Katherine Zien, "Sovereign Acts: Performing Race, Space, and Belonging in Panama and the Canal Zone" (Rutgers UP, 2017)
24 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Sovereign Acts: Performing Race, Space, and Belonging in Panama and the Canal Zone (Rutgers University Press, 2017), Katherine Zien examines the wa...
Justin Gomer, "White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights" (UNC Press, 2020)
24 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Justin Gomer is the author of White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights, published by the University of Nort...
Andrew S. Baer, "Beyond the Usual Beating" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
23 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1970s and 1980s, a group of Chicago police officers routinely tortured criminal suspects in their custody, while fellow cops, state attorneys a...
John B. Holbein, "Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes into Action" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
23 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the United States, each election cycle reminds us that younger voters vote at much lower rates than their older counterparts. This discrepancy is o...
Manuel Betancourt, "Judy Garland's Judy at Carnegie Hall" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020)
23 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Judy Garland's Judy at Carnegie Hall (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), Manuel Betancourt explores what makes Judy Garland’s landmark album great, and...
Raymond Winbush, "The Osiris Papers: Reflections on the Life and Writing of Dr. Frances Cress Welsing" (Black Classics Press, 2019)
22 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s interview is with Dr. Raymond Winbush a research professor and the Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University. ...
God, The Founders, and Natural Law: A Conversation with Phil Muñoz
20 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How did the American Founders understand religious liberty? Why should students study the Founding? What is the relationship between the Declaration o...
Kevin Escudero, "Organizing While Undocumented: Immigrant Youth’s Political Activism Under the Law" (NYU Press, 2020)
20 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Undocumented youth activists are at the forefront of the present-day immigrant rights movement. This is especially true surrounding the activism of th...
Christina Dunbar-Hester, "Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures" (Princeton UP, 2020)
20 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Hacking Diversity: The Politics of inclusion in Open Technology Cultures (Princeton University Press, 2020), Christina-Dunbar Hester, an associate ...
God, The Founders, and Natural Law: A Conversation with Phil Muñoz
20 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How did the American Founders understand religious liberty? Why should students study the Founding? What is the relationship between the Declaration o...
Walter Johnson, "The Broken Heart of America" (Basic Books, 2020)
17 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
St. Louis, Missouri is the city with the highest rate of police shootings in the United States. It’s the city with an 18 year difference in life exp...
Xueli Wang, "On My Own: The Challenge and Promise of Building Equitable STEM Transfer Pathways" (Harvard Education Press, 2020)
17 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I speak with Dr. Xueli Wang from the University of Wisconsin-Madison on her new book, “On My Own: The Challenge and Promise of Buil...
Mark Anderson, "From Boas to Black Power: Racism, Liberalism and American Anthropology" (Stanford UP, 2019)
17 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Anderson’s From Boas to Black Power: Racism, Liberalism and American Anthropology (Stanford University Press) is at once a story about US anthr...
Leslie Dorrough Smith, "Compromising Positions: Sex Scandals, Politics, and American Christianity" (Oxford UP, 2019)
17 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sex scandals are ubiquitous in American politics. In Compromising Positions: Sex Scandals, Politics, and American Christianity (Oxford University Pres...
Nick Estes, "Our History is the Future" (Verso, 2019)
16 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For the second time, Nick Estes has been gracious enough to participate in a New Books Network podcast to discuss his book Our History is the Future: ...
Brian F. Harrison, "A Change is Gonna Come: How to Have Effective Political Conversations in a Divided America" (Oxford UP, 2020)
16 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The United States takes pride in its democratic model and the idea that citizens deliberate in a process to form political opinions. However, in recen...
Greil Marcus, “Under the Red White and Blue" (Yale UP, 2020)
16 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If Jay Gatsby is the embodiment of patriotism, what does that mean for America? Join NBN host Lee Pierce and author Greil Marcus as they take a deep d...
Jennifer L. Holland, "Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement" (U California Press, 2020)
13 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sandie Holguín speaks with Jennifer L. Holland about her book, Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement (University of California ...
Philip M. Plotch, "Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City" (Cornell UP, 2020)
13 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since New York City built one of the world’s great subway systems, no promise has been more tantalizing than the proposal to build a new subway...
Ismael Garcia-Colon, "Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire: Puerto Rican Workers on U.S. Farms" (U California Press, 2020)
10 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire: Puerto Rican Workers on U.S. Farms (University of California Press, 2020) is the first in-depth look at the ...
Frank Dimatteo, "Lord High Executioner: The Legendary Mafia Boss Albert Anastasia" (Citadel, 2020)
10 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Though not as well known today as many of his contemporaries, few American mob bosses were as feared as Albert Anastasia. As head of “Murder Inc.”...
Nancy Beck Young, "Two Suns of the Southwest" (U Kansas Press, 2019)
10 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What does the 1964 presidential election have to teach us about party dynamics, civil rights and polarization? While many scholars have treated the dr...
Melissa K. Merry, "Warped Narratives: Distortion in the Framing of Gun Policy" (U Michigan Press, 2020)
10 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If gun violence kills so many Americans, why don’t we see more effective solutions? How much does the way we frame an issue impact how we feel about...
Christopher Bonanos, "Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous" (Henry Holt, 2018)
10 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the middle of the twentieth century, a newspaper photographer who went by the name of Weegee took memorable pictures of New York City’s street li...
Crystal Mun-hye Baik, "Reencounters: On the Korean War and Diasporic Memory Critique" (Temple UP, 2020)
10 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This interview coincides with the 70th anniversary of the Korean War, a war that, as Baik reminds us, has not officially ended. How are the particular...
Peniel E. Joseph, "The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr." (Basic, 2020)
09 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How do the political afterlives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. continue to shape American democracy? How does a common myth of opposition di...
Richard Gergel, "Unexampled Courage" (Sarah Crichton Books, 2019)
08 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring (Sara...
Mia Fischer, "Terrorizing Gender: Transgender Visibility and the Surveillance Practices of the U.S. Security State" (U Nebraska Press, 2019)
08 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Terrorizing Gender: Transgender Visibility and the Surveillance Practices of the U.S. Security State, Mia Fischer traces how media and state actors...
Greg Mitchell, "The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (The New Press, 2020)
07 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
dSoon after atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, MGM set out to make a movie studio chief Louis B. Mayer called “the most impo...