New Books in American Studies
Episodes
Seth J. Frantzman, "After Isis: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East" (Gefen, 2019)
20 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The enterprise of journalism is in crisis. Today’s journalists face accusations of “fake news” on the one hand, and harassment, arrest, and even...
Thomas Aiello, "The Grapevine of the Black South" (U Georgia Press, 2018)
19 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the summer of 1928, William Alexander Scott began a small four-page weekly with the help of his brother Cornelius. By 1932 the Atlanta World had be...
Scott Heerman, "The Alchemy of Slavery: Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois Country" (U Pennsylvania, 2018)
19 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Scott Heerman is the author of The Alchemy of Slavery: Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois Country, published by the University of Pennsylv...
Jennifer Jensen Wallach, "What We Need Ourselves: How Food has Shaped African American Life" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019)
18 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this this interview, Dr. Carrie Tippen talks with Jennifer Jensen Wallach about the her book Getting What We Need Ourselves: How Food has Shaped Af...
Milton Gaither, "Homeschool: An American History" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
18 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With around two million children currently enrolled in home schools in the USA, no-one can doubt that the subject of Milton Gaither’s new book is ti...
Bryan Jones, "The Great Broadening: How the Vast Expansion of the Policymaking Agenda Transformed American Politics" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
18 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Bryan Jones, Sean Theriault, and Michelle Whyman are out with a big book on with a provocative thesis. In The Great Broadening: How the Vast Expansion...
Charlie Laderman, "Sharing the Burden: The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo-American Visions of Global Order" (Oxford UP, 2019)
18 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Sharing the Burden: The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo-American Visions of Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2019), C...
Sara Georgini, "Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family" (Oxford UP, 2019)
18 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Sara Georgini is a historian and series editor for The Papers of John Adams at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Household Gods: The Religious Liv...
Gregg L. Frazer, "God against the Revolution: The Loyalist Clergy’s Case Against the American Revolution" (UP of Kansas, 2018)
18 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Not everyone was convinced by the arguments of patriots during the American revolution. Among those who retained some degree of loyalty to the British...
Mark Burford, "Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field" (Oxford UP, 2019)
17 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Mahalia Jackson, the great mid-twentieth century gospel singer, thought of herself as an embodiment of the history of African Americans in the United ...
Michael F. Conlin, "The Constitutional Origins of the American Civil War" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
17 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In an incisive analysis of over two dozen clauses as well as several 'unwritten' rules and practices, The Constitutional Origins of the American Civil...
Rob Ruck, "Tropic of Football: The Long and Perilous Journey of Samoans to the NFL" (The New Press, 2018)
17 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Rob Ruck, Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, and the author of Tropic of Football: The Long and Perilous Jou...
Miroslava Chávez-García, "Migrant Longing: Letter Writing across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands" (UNC Press, 2018)
17 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Miroslava Chávez-García is the author of Migrant Longing: Letter Writing across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, published by the University of North Ca...
Larry E. Morris, "A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon" (Oxford UP, 2019)
17 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The story of the creation of the Book of Mormon has been told many times, and often ridiculed. A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon (Oxford Uni...
Lawrence Glickman, "Free Enterprise: An American History" (Yale UP, 2019)
13 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“Free enterprise” is an everyday phrase that connotes an American common sense. It appears everywhere from political speeches to pop culture. And ...
Mark Winne, "Food Town USA: Seven Unlikely Cities that are Changing the Way We Eat" (Island Press, 2019)
12 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Cities are extremely complex institutions to understand and are continually changing. A central place to make sense of the complexities of a city is t...
Tammy R. Vigil, "Moms in Chief: The Rhetoric of Republican Motherhood and the Spouses of Presidential Nominees, 1992-2016" (U Kansas Press, 2019)
12 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Tammy Vigil’s new book, Moms in Chief: The Rhetoric of Republican Motherhood and the Spouses of Presidential Nominees, 1992-2016 (University Press o...
Jeffrey Ostler, "Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas" (Yale UP, 2019)
11 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jeffrey Ostler’s Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas (Yale University Press, 20...
Travis Rieder, "In Pain: A Bioethicist’s Personal Struggle with Opioids" (Harper Collins, 2019)
11 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On a spring day in 2015, Dr. Travis Rieder’s life changed. A motorcycle accident, a shattered foot, and a long series of surgeries later, the John H...
Christine M. DeLucia, "Memory Lands: King Philip’s War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast" (Yale UP, 2018)
09 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Christine M. DeLucia is the author of Memory Lands: King Philip’s War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast, published by Yale University Press...
Amanda L. Tyler, "Habeas Corpus in Wartime: From the Tower of London to Guantanamo Bay" (Oxford UP, 2017)
09 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Amanda L. Tyler is the author of Habeas Corpus in Wartime: From the Tower of London to Guantanamo Bay, published by Oxford University Press in 2017. H...
Harriet Washington, "A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind" (Little, Brown Spark, 2019)
09 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Environmental racism is visible not only as cancer clusters or the location of grocery stores. It is responsible for the reported gap in IQ scores bet...
Anne M. Kornhauser, "Debating the American State: Liberal Anxieties and the New Leviathan, 1930-1970" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2015)
05 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The New Deal left a host of political, institutional, and economic legacies. Among them was the restructuring of the government into an administrative...
Hendrik Hartog, "The Trouble with Minna: A Case of Slavery and Emancipation in the Antebellum North" (UNC Press, 2018)
05 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the American Society for Legal History’s podcast Talking Legal History Siobhan talks with Hendrik Hartog about his book The Troub...
Patrick Andelic, "Donkey Work: Congressional Democrats in Conservative America, 1974-1994" (UP of Kansas, 2019)
05 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What happened to the Democratic Party after the 1960s? In many political histories, the McGovern defeat of 1972 announced the party’s decline—and ...
Matthew Crow, "Thomas Jefferson, Legal History, and the Art of Recollection" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
05 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Matthew Crow about his book Thomas Jefferson, Legal History, and the Art of Recollection, published by Cambridge University Press in...
Kevin M. Levin, "Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth" (UNC Press, 2019)
04 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Kevin M. Levin is the author of Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth, published by the University of North Carolin...
Vincent DiGirolamo, "Crying the News: A History of America’s Newsboys" (Oxford UP, 2019)
04 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Crying the News: A History of America’s Newsboys (Oxford University Press, 2019) looks at the legion of children and teenagers who sold newspapers o...
Keir Giles, "Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia to Confront the West" (Chatham House, 2019)
03 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
From Moscow, the world looks different. It is through understanding how Russia sees the world—and its place in it—that the West can best meet the ...
Jay Sexton, "A Nation Forged by Crisis: A New American History" (Basic Books, 2018)
02 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A popular myth in the American nationalist imaginary is that the country has been on a continued path of progress. Another is that the country’s his...
David Doddington, "Contesting Slave Masculinity in the American South" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
02 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Contesting Slave Masculinity in the American South (Cambridge University Press, 2018) demonstrates the significance of internal divisions, compariso...
Emily Dufton, "Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America" (Basic Books, 2017)
30 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Marijuana. Weed. Cannabis. Pot. Whatever term you use, this intoxicant and medical product leads to long discussions. Emily Dufton visits the podcast ...
Erik Loomis, "Empire of Timber: Labor Unions and the Pacific Northwest Forests" (Cambridge UP, 2016)
30 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Empire of Timber: Labor Unions and the Pacific Northwest Forests (Cambridge University Press, 2015), the historian Erik Loomis examines the relatio...
Andrew Newman, "Allegories of Encounter: Colonial Literacy and Indian Captivities" (UNC Press, 2019)
29 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Allegories of Encounter: Colonial Literacy and Indian Captivities (University of North Carolina Press—Chapel Hill & The Omohundro Institute of Ea...
Jennifer C. Lena, "Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts" ( Princeton UP, 2019)
29 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How did American elites change the meaning of Art? In Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts (Princeton University Press, 2019)...
Niambi Michele Carter, "American While Black: African Americans, Immigration, and the Limits of Citizenship" (Oxford UP, 2019)
28 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Just in time for the APSA annual meeting, Niambi Michele Carter has written an incredibly timely book on a central issue to American politics, America...
Cecilia Caballero et al. "The Chicana M(other)work Anthology: Porque Sin Madres No Hay Revolucion" (U Arizona Press, 2019)
28 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In The Chicana M(other)work Anthology: Porque Sin Madres No Hay Revolucion (University of Arizona Press, 2019) editors Cecilia Caballero, Yvette Marti...
Brett Krutzsch, "Dying to Be Normal: Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics" (Oxford UP, 2019)
27 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On October 14, 1998, five thousand people gathered on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to mourn the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who h...
Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, "Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean" (Princeton UP, 2019)
27 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean (Princeton University Press, 2019), historia...
Graham Thompson, "Herman Melville: Among the Magazines" (U Massachusetts Press 2018)
26 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
"What I feel most moved to write, that is banned―it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the otherway I cannot." Herman Melville wrote these words a...
Kevin Dawson, "Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
26 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Long before the rise of New World slavery, West Africans were adept swimmers, divers, canoe makers, and canoeists. They lived along riverbanks, near l...
Joseph M. Adelman, "Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019)
23 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
During the American Revolution, printed material, including newspapers, pamphlets, almanacs, and broadsides, played a crucial role as a forum for publ...
David M. Wrobel, "America's West: A History, 1890-1950" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
23 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In America's West: A History, 1890-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), David M. Wrobel describes a sixty year period of remarkable change for the...
Patricia A. Banks, "Diversity and Philanthropy at African American Museums: Black Renaissance" (Routledge, 2019)
23 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What is the future, and what is the past, of the African American Museum? In Diversity and Philanthropy at African American Museums: Black Renaissance...
Simon Balto, "Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago From Red Summer to Black Power" (UNC Press, 2019)
22 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Recent scholarship locates the origins of mass incarceration in national anticrime policy from 1960 to 1990, and has drastically reframed the “punit...
Darren E. Tromblay, "Spying: Assessing US Domestic Intelligence Since 9/11" (Lynne Rienner, 2019)
21 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Initiated in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, have the reforms of the US intelligence enterprise served their purpose? What have b...
Douglas Irwin, "Clashing over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
20 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Scholars of US history have treated trade policy in less than enthusiastic ways. One economic historian described tariffs as “extraordinarily uninte...
Joshua D. Farrington, "Black Republicans and the Transformation of the GOP" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2016)
19 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Reflecting on his fifty-year effort to steer the Grand Old Party toward black voters, Memphis power broker George W. Lee declared, "Somebody had to st...
Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi, "For Black Trans Girls Who Gotta Cuss A Mother F*cker Out When Snatching An Edge Ain’t Enough"
19 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Inspired by Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi has written her own beautifu...
Paul Finkelman, "Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation’s Highest Court" (Harvard UP, 2018)
19 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the American Society for Legal History’s podcast Talking Legal History Siobhan talks with Paul Finkelman, President of Gratz Coll...
Mary-Elizabeth Murphy, "Jim Crow Capital: Women and Black Freedom Struggles in Washington, DC, 1920-1945" (UNC Press, 2018)
16 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Though women’s roles in the black freedom struggle remain under-acknowledged, scholars continue to make their importance clear. In her new book, Jim...
Douglas K. Miller, "Indians on the Move: Native American Mobility and Urbanization in the Twentieth Century" (UNC Press, 2019)
16 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1972, the Bureau of Indian Affairs terminated its twenty-year-old Voluntary Relocation Program, which encouraged the mass migration of roughly 100,...
Kent Gramm, "Gettysburg: The Living and the Dead" (Southern Illinois UP, 2019)
16 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Using a mixture of genres, Kent Gramm captures the voices of those past and present in his book, Gettysburg: The Living and the Dead(Southern Illinois...
Shelby Wynn Schwartz, "The Bodies of Others: Drag Dances and Their Afterlives" (U Michigan Press, 2019)
16 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Selby Wynn Schwartz writes about gender, performance, and the politics of embodiment. Her articles have been published in Women & Performance, PAJ, Da...
Matthew James, "Collecting Evolution: The Galapagos Expedition that Vindicated Darwin" (Oxford UP, 2017)
16 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Matthew James talks about the 1905 Galapagos Expedition organized by the California Academy of Sciences. James is a professor of geology at Sonoma Sta...
Meredith Oda, "The Gateway to the Pacific: Japanese Americans and the Remaking of San Francisco" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
14 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In The Gateway to the Pacific: Japanese Americans and the Remaking of San Francisco (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Meredith Oda shows how city l...
Stephen Alan Bourque, "Beyond the Beach: The Allied War Against France" (Naval Institute Press, 2018)
14 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Did the Allied bombing plan for the liberation of France follow a carefully orchestrated plan, or was it executed on an ad-hoc basis with little conce...
Kevin M. Baron, "Presidential Privilege and the Freedom of Information Act" (Edinburgh UP, 2019)
14 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Kevin Baron’s new book, Presidential Privilege and the Freedom of Information Act (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), is a fascinating analysis of t...
J. C. D. Clark, "Thomas Paine: Britain, America, and France in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2018)
14 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
There are few better guides to the “long eighteenth century” that J. C. D. Clark, emeritus professor of history at the University of Kansas, whose...
Carol J. Adams, "Burger" (Bloomsbury, 2018)
13 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this this interview, Dr. Carrie Tippen talks with Carol J. Adams about two new books: Burger, from the Object Lessons series by Bloomsbury (2018), ...
Margaret O’Mara, "The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America" (Penguin Press, 2019)
13 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Seventy years ago, there was no Apple Campus or Googleplex. Silicon Valley itself didn’t even exist! The region was filled with sleepy towns, prune ...
James Tharin Bradford, "Poppies, Power, and Politics: Afghanistan and the Global History of Drugs and Diplomacy" (Cornell UP, 2019)
13 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Afghanistan and the United States have a complicated relationship. And poppies have often been at the center of the problem between the two countries....
Polina Kroik, "Cultural Production and the Politics of Women’s Work in American Film and Literature" (Routledge, 2019)
12 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How does thinking about gender and work help to rethink cultural hierarchies? In Cultural Production and the Politics of Women’s Work in American Fi...
Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan, "Vagrants and Vagabonds: Poverty and Mobility in the Early American Republic" (NYU Press, 2019)
12 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan is the author of Vagrants and Vagabonds: Poverty and Mobility in the Early American Republic, published by New York Univer...
Claudrena N. Harold, "Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity" (U Virginia Press, 2018)
10 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When hate groups descended on Charlottesville, Virginia, triggering an eruption of racist violence, the tragic conflict reverberated throughout the wo...
Cyril Ghosh, "De-Moralizing Gay Rights: Some Queer Remarks on LGBT+ Rights Politics in the US" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
09 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his book, De-Moralizing Gay Rights: Some Queer Remarks on LGBT+ Rights Politics in the US(Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Cyril Ghosh interrogates three...
Nazia Kazi, "Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018)
09 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Nazia Kazi’s Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018) is a brilliant and powerful meditation on the intersection and int...
Kaitlin Sidorsky, "All Roads Lead to Power: The Appointed and Elected Paths to Public Office for US Women" (UP Kansas, 2019)
08 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Kaitlin Sidorsky’s new book, All Roads Lead to Power: The Appointed and Elected Paths to Public Office for US Women (University Press of Kansas, 201...
Michael Zakim, "Accounting for Capitalism: The World the Clerk Made" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
08 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The clerk attended his desk and counter at the intersection of two great themes of modern historical experience: the development of a market economy a...
Lenora Warren, "Fire on the Water: Sailors, Slaves, and Insurrection in Early American Literature, 1789-1886" (Rutgers UP, 2019)
08 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Lenora Warren about her book, Fire on the Water: Sailors, Slaves, and Insurrection in Early American Literature, 1789-1886, published by Rutgers Unive...
Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, "Getting Tough: Welfare and Imprisonment in 1970s America" (Princeton UP, 2017)
07 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1970s America, politicians began "getting tough" on drugs, crime, and welfare. These campaigns helped expand the nation's penal system, discredit w...
Grégory Pierrot, "The Black Avenger in Atlantic Culture" (U Georgia Press, 2019)
07 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With the Ta-Nehisi Coates–authored Black Panther comic book series (2016), recent films Django Unchained (2012), The Birth of a Nation (2016), Nat...
Michael Beckley, "Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World's Sole Superpower" (Cornell UP, 2018)
07 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The United States has been the world's dominant power for more than a century. Now many analysts and commentators believe that other countries such as...
Sarah L. Quinn, "American Bonds: How Credit Markets Shaped a Nation" (Princeton UP, 2019)
06 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Federal housing finance policy and mortgage-backed securities have gained widespread attention in recent years because of the 2008 financial crisis, b...
Matt Oram, "The Trials of Psychedelic Therapy: LSD Psychotherapy in America" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018)
05 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Are we in the midst of a psychedelic renaissance? If so, what can we learn about the present moment through the history of psychedelic experiments in ...
Lukas Rieppel, "Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle" (Harvard UP, 2019)
02 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After the discoveries of dinosaur fossils in the American West in the late nineteenth century, the United States became world renown for vertebrate pa...
Ryan A. Quintana, "Making a Slave State: Political Development in Early South Carolina" (UNC Press, 2018)
01 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ryan A. Quintana is the author of Making a Slave State: Political Development in Early South Carolina, published by the University of North Carolina P...
Andrius Gališanka, "John Rawls: The Path to a Theory of Justice" (Harvard UP, 2019)
01 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It is hard to overestimate the influence of John Rawls on political philosophy and theory over the last half-century. His books have sold millions of ...
Sarah Seo, "Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom" (Harvard UP, 2019)
01 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How the rise of the car, the symbol of American personal freedom, inadvertently led to ever more intrusive policing-with disastrous consequences for r...
Cynthia Nicoletti, "Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
31 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Cynthia Nicoletti is the author of Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis, published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. Se...
Krishnendu Ray, "The Ethnic Restaurateur" (Bloomsbury, 2016)
31 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Academic discussions of ethnic food have tended to focus on the attitudes of consumers, rather than the creators and producers. In this ground-breakin...
Amy Collier Artman, "The Miracle Lady: Kathryn Kuhlman and the Transformation of Charismatic Christianity" (Eerdmans, 2019)
31 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On October 15, 1974, Johnny Carson welcomed his next guest on The Tonight Show with these words: “I imagine there are very few people who are not aw...
Howard Philips Smith, "Unveiling the Muse: The Lost History of Gay Carnival in New Orleans" (UP of Mississippi, 2017)
30 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Howard Philips Smith has been investigating and writing about the gay history of New Orleans for over two decades. Raised on a small farm in rural Sou...
David Resnick, "Representing Education In Film: How Hollywood Portrays Educational Thought, Settings and Issues" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
29 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
David Resnick combines two of his passions, movies and education, in his book, Representing Education In Film: How Hollywood Portrays Educational Thou...
Gabriela González, "Redeeming La Raza: Transborder Modernity, Race, Respectability and Rights" (Oxford UP, 2018)
29 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Tiffany Jasmin González speaks with Dr. Gabriela González about her award-winning book, Redeeming La Raza: Transborder Modernity, Race, Respectabili...
Monica Muñoz Martinez, "The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas" (Harvard UP, 2018)
29 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On January 28, 1918, just outside of town of Porvenir, Texas, US Army servicemen, Texas Rangers, and civilians murdered 15 unarmed Mexican men and boy...
Jessica Lowe, "Murder in the Shenandoah: Making Law Sovereign in Revolutionary Virginia" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
29 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jessica Lowe is the author of Murder in the Shenandoah: Making Law Sovereign in Revolutionary Virginia published by Cambridge University Press in 2019...
Nolan McCarty, "Polarization: What Everyone Needs to Know" (Oxford UP, 2019)
26 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Polarization: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2019), Nolan McCarty synthesizes what scholars know and don't know about the or...
Sarah Halpern-Meekin, "Social Poverty: Low-Income Parents and the Struggle for Family and Community Ties" (NYU Press, 2019)
26 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Does a person’s well-being go well beyond how much money they have in their bank account? In Social Poverty: Low-Income Parents and the Struggle for...
Celeste Watkins-Hayes, "Remaking a Life: How Women Living with HIV/AIDS Confront Inequality" (U California Press, 2019)
26 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How do women -- especially poor and low-income women with histories of childhood sexual trauma and drug addiction -- respond to and deal with an HIV/A...
Christy Clark-Pujara, "Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island" (NYU Press, 2016)
25 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island(NYU Press, 2016; paperback, 2018), Christy Clark-Pujara, Associate Professor of History in the D...
Ashley Robertson, "Mary McLeod Bethune in Florida: Bringing Social Justice to the Sunshine State" (The History Press, 2015)
25 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Mary McLeod Bethune was often called the "First Lady of Negro America," but she made significant contributions to the political climate of Florida as ...
Emrah Şahin, "Faithful Encounters: Authorities and American Missionaries in the Ottoman Empire" (McGill-Queens UP, 2018)
25 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The past decade has seen a tremendous production of scholarship on American missionary endeavors in the Middle East. In Faithful Encounters: Authoriti...
Sam Erman, "Almost Citizens: Puerto Rico, the U.S. Constitution, and Empire" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
25 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Sam Erman is the author of Almost Citizens: Puerto Rico, the U.S. Constitution, and Empire, published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. Almost Ci...
Andrew Torget, "Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850" (UNC Press, 2015)
24 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The secession of Texas from Mexico was a dry run for the slaveholder’s republic of the Confederate States of America, argues Andrew Torget in Seeds ...
Vicki Howard, "From Main Street to Mall: The Rise and Fall of the American Department Store" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2015)
24 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This week we take a break from fun and games to talk about business and consumerism–which, to be sure, is for some people also fun and games. As Vic...
William F. Trimble, "John S. McCain and the Triumph of Naval Air Power" (Naval Institute Press, 2019)
24 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The carrier task force—the symbolic and physical manifestation of the United States’ ability to project naval and air power across the globe—cam...
Jennifer A. Jones, "The Browning of the New South" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
24 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The dawn of the new millennium bore witness to an unprecedented transformation of the population in the Southeastern United States as evidenced by Dr....
Anne Twitty, "Before Dred Scott: Slavery and Legal Culture in the American Confluence, 1787-1857" (Cambridge UP, 2016)
23 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Anne Twitty is the author of Before Dred Scott: Slavery and Legal Culture in the American Confluence, 1787-1857, published by Cambridge University Pre...
Rachel B. Herrmann, "No Useless Mouth: Waging War and Fighting Hunger in the American Revolution" (Cornell UP, 2019)
22 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When the British explored the Atlantic coast of America in the 1580s, their relations with indigenous peoples were structured by food. The newcomers, ...