New Books in American Studies
Episodes
Anne Balay, "Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers" (UNC Press, 2018)
03 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this multi-layered ethnography that centers truck drivers, Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers (University of North...
Christopher Childers, "The Webster-Hayne Debate: Defining Nationhood in the Early American Republic" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018)
31 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
No, not the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Perhaps even more important than that Illinois contest of 1858 was the Webster-Hayne debate of 1830. Confused? Dr...
Christopher J. Galdieri, "Stranger in a Strange State: The Politics of Carpetbagging from Robert Kennedy to Scott Brown" (SUNY Press, 2019)
31 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Chris Galdieri has written an engaging analysis of carpetbagging in American politics. Stranger in a Strange State: The Politics of Carpetbagging from...
Veronica Hinke, "The Last Night on the Titanic: Unsinkable Drinking, Dining, and Style" (Regnery History, 2019)
30 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Fascination with The Titanic has not faded, though more than 105 years have passed since its tragic sinking when so many lives were lost, and an era o...
Noam Maggor, "Brahmin Capitalism: Frontiers of Wealth and Populism in America's First Gilded Age" (Harvard UP, 2017)
30 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Tracking the movement of finance capital toward far-flung investment frontiers, Noam Maggor, Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, re-conceives...
Brian A. Jackson, "Practical Terrorism Prevention" (RAND Corporation, 2019)
30 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Practical Terrorism Prevention: Reexamining U.S. National Approaches to Addressing the Threat of Ideologically Motivated Violence (RAND Corporation, 2...
Jennifer Fluri and Rachel Lehr, "The Carpetbaggers of Kabul and Other American-Afghan Entanglements" (U Georgia Press, 2017)
29 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For most people, geopolitics is something that happens out there, in boardrooms and on battlefields. But critical geographers, and feminist political ...
Ryan Hanley, "Beyond Slavery and Abolition: Black British Writing, c. 1770 -1830" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
29 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
To our eyes, eighteenth-century Britain can look like a world of opposites. On one hand everything was new: political parties and a ‘prime’ minist...
Amy Murrell Taylor, "Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps" (UNC Press, 2018)
29 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Civil War was just days old when the first enslaved men, women, and children began fleeing their plantations to seek refuge inside the lines of th...
Alexander Barnes, "Play Ball! Doughboys and Baseball during the Great War" (Schiffer Publishing, 2019)
28 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Alexander Barnes, who co-wrote Play Ball! Doughboys and Baseball during the Great War (Schiffer Publishing, 2019) with Peter F....
Timothy A. Sayle, "Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order" (Cornell UP, 2019)
28 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization regularly appears in newspapers and political science scholarship. Surprisingly, historians have yet to devote ...
Linda M. Grasso, "Equal under the Sky: Georgia O’Keefe and Twentieth-Century Feminism" (U New Mexico Press, 2017)
27 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Linda M. Grasso's Equal under the Sky: Georgia O’Keeffe & Twentieth-Century Feminism (University of New Mexico Press, 2017) provides an in-depth loo...
John J. Curley, "Global Art and the Cold War" (Laurence King Publishers, 2019)
27 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It was the passionate amateur painter, Winston Churchill, who introduced one of the Cold War’s key metaphors: The Iron Curtain. As John J. Curley ar...
James Crossland, "War, Law and Humanity: The Campaign to Control Warfare, 1853-1914" (Bloomsbury, 2018)
27 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in the mid-1850s, a number of people in Europe and the United States undertook a range of efforts in response to the horrors of war. In his ...
A. Harkins and M. McCarroll, "Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy" (West Virginia UP, 2019)
27 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy (West Virginia University Press, 2019) is a retort, at turn rigorous, critical, angry, and...
Martin Collins, "A Telephone for the World: Motorola, Iridium, and the Making of a Global Age" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018)
23 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It’s easy to take for granted that one can pick up a cell phone and call someone on the other side of the planet. But, until very recently, this had...
Gwendoline M. Alphonso, "Polarized Families, Polarized Parties: Contesting Values and Economics in American Politics" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
23 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Gwendoline M. Alphonso's new book Polarized Families, Polarized Parties: Contesting Values and Economics in American Politics (University of Pennsylva...
Lisa Blee and Jean M. O'Brien, "Monumental Mobility: The Memory Work of Massasoit" (UNC Press, 2019)
22 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Installed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1921 to commemorate the tercentenary of the landing of the Pilgrims, Cyrus Dallin's statue Massasoit was inte...
Jeremy Black, "The World at War, 1914-1945" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019)
22 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In one of his latest books, The World at War, 1914-1945 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), Professor of History at Exeter University, Jeremy Black, the mos...
Anne A. Cheng, "Ornamentalism" (Oxford UP, 2019)
22 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In her original and thought-provoking book Ornamentalism (Oxford University Press, 2019), Anne A. Cheng illustrates the longstanding relationship betw...
Matthew Green, "Legislative Hardball: The House Freedom Caucus and the Power of Threat-Making in Congress" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
21 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“You think I am crazy, and I know you are not” is what future-White House Chief of Staff and then-House Freedom Caucus leader Congressman Mick Mul...
Hilary Plum, "Watchfire" (Rescue Press, 2016)
21 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today, I speak with Hilary Plum. She’s the author of Watchfires (Rescue Press, 2016), which isn’t so much a book as an exploratory biopsy of our b...
Sarah Miller-Davenport, "Gateway State: Hawai’i and the Cultural Transformation of American Empire" (Princeton UP, 2019)
21 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
One of my talking points when hanging out with my fellow diplomatic historians is the painful absence of scholarship on Hawaii. Too many political his...
Quincy D. Newell, "Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon" (Oxford UP, 2019)
21 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
"Dear Brother," Jane Manning James wrote to Joseph F. Smith in 1903, "I take this opportunity of writing to ask you if I can get my endowments and als...
Jerry T. Watkins III, "Queering the Redneck Riviera: Sexuality and the Rise of Florida Tourism" (UP of Florida, 2018)
21 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As the title suggests, Jerry T. Watkins III’s Queering the Redneck Riviera: Sexuality and the Rise of Florida Tourism (University Press of Florida, ...
Marixa Lasso, "Erased: The Untold Story of the Panama Canal" (Harvard UP, 2019)
20 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Many of our presumptions about the Panama Canal Zone are wrong; it was not carved out of uninhabited jungle, the creation of Lake Gatún did not flood...
Jennifer Thomson, "The Wild and the Toxic: American Environmentalism and the Politics of Health" (UNC Press, 2019)
17 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The first wealth is health, according to Emerson. Among health’s riches is its political potential. Few know this better than environmentalists. In ...
J. Dyck and E. Lascher, "Initiatives without Engagement: A Realistic Appraisal of Direct Democracy’s Secondary Effects" (U Michigan Press, 2019)
17 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ballot initiatives offer voters the chance to directly determine the outcome of state policy change. Do Americans who vote on initiatives grow in poli...
Max Edelson, "The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America before Independence" (Harvard UP, 2017)
16 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of the history of the British empire we tend to think big: oceans were crossed; colonies grew from small settlements to territories many...
Peter B. Josephson and R. Ward Holder, "Reinhold Niebuhr in Theory and Practice: Christian Realism and Democracy in America in the Twenty-First Century" (Lexington Books, 2018)
15 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Josephson and Ward Holder collaborated on their second book on theologian and political theorist Reinhold Niebuhr in producing this new book, sp...
Derrick Spires, "The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019)
15 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With talk about birthright citizenship and border walls running rampant in Trump’s America, there are many scholars reaching back to antebellum Amer...
Diane Tober, "Romancing the Sperm: Shifting Biopolitics and the Making of Modern Families" (Rutgers UP, 2019)
15 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The development of a whole suite of new reproductive technologies in recent decades has contributed to broad cultural conversations and controversies ...
Heather R. White, "Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the Rise of Gay Rights" (UNC Press, 2015)
14 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With a focus on mainline Protestants and gay rights activists in the twentieth century, Heather R. White challenges the usual picture of perennial adv...
Aram Gousouzian, "The Men and the Moment: The Election of 1968 and the Rise of Partisan Politics in America" (UNC Press, 2019)
14 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The endlessly fascinating 1968 presidential race transformed American politics in ways that are still being felt. Aram Goudsouzian explores the charac...
Henry Kissinger and Winston Lord, "Kissinger on Kissinger: Reflections on Diplomacy, Grand Strategy, and Leadership" (All Points Books, 2019)
14 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In a series of riveting and in depth interviews, America's senior statesman, former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, discusses the challenges of d...
Ali Michael, "Raising Race Questions: Whiteness and Inquiry in Education" (Teachers College Press, 2015)
13 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I talked with Ali Michael on her award-winning book, Raising Race Questions: Whiteness and Inquiry in Education (Teachers College Pre...
Dan Golding, "Star Wars after Lucas: A Critical Guide to the Future of the Galaxy" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)
13 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 2012 George Lucas shocked the entertainment world by selling the Star Wars franchise, along with Lucasfilm, to Disney. This is the story of how, ov...
David Courtwright, "The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business" (Harvard UP, 2019)
10 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We are living in an age of addiction, from compulsive gaming and binge eating to pornography and opioid abuse. Today I talked with historian David Cou...
Karin Rosemblatt, "The Science and Politics of Race in Mexico and the United States, 1910–1950" (UNC Press, 2018)
09 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Karin Rosemblatt’s new book, The Science and Politics of Race in Mexico and the United States, 1910–1950 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018...
Carrie Baker, "Fighting the US Youth Sex Trade: Gender, Race, and Politics" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
08 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Campaigns against prostitution of young people in the United States have surged and ebbed multiple times over the last fifty years. Carrie Baker's Fig...
Fernando Orejuela and Stephanie Shonekan, "Black Lives Matter and Music: Protest, Intervention, Reflection" (Indiana UP, 2018)
07 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Music has always been integral to the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, with songs such as Kendrick Lamar’s "Alright," J. Cole’s "...
Jack Wertheimer, "The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice their Religion Today" (Princeton UP, 2018)
06 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Countless sociological studies and surveys present a rather bleak picture of religion and religious engagement in the United States. Attendance at wor...
Susan Lepselter, "The Resonance of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, and UFOs in the American Uncanny" (U Michigan Press, 2016)
06 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When we talk about stories of alien abduction in the United States, we often do so through a framework of belief vs. disbelief. Do I think this story ...
Peter Daou, "Digital Civil War: Confronting the Far-Right Menace" (Melville House, 2019)
06 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Democratic political adviser Peter Daou has long toggled between the world of presidential campaigns and online activism. He worked for the presidenti...
Ernest McGowen III, "African Americans in White Suburbia: Social Networks and Political Behavior" (UP of Kansas 2017)
06 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Relative wealth has given suburban African Americans employment opportunities and political resources--but not necessarily neighbors, coworkers, or el...
Jeanne Theoharis, "The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North: Segregation and Struggle outside of the South" (NYU Press, 2019)
06 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this New Books Network/Gotham Center for NYC History podcast, guest host Beth Harpaz, editor of the City University of New York website SUM, interv...
Erin M. Kempker, "Big Sister: Feminism, Conservatism and Conspiracy in the Heartland" (U Illinois, 2018)
03 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Erin M. Kempker is an associate professor of history at Mississippi University for Women and the author of Big Sister: Feminism, Conservatism and Cons...
Michael A. Cohen, "Clear and Present Safety: The World Has Never Been Better and Why That Matters to Americans" (Yale UP, 2019)
02 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We are fed a steady stream of doom and gloom—terrorist attacks, erosion of democracy, robots taking our jobs. But Michael A. Cohen and his co-author...
William Poole, "Milton and the Making of Paradise Lost" (Harvard UP, 2017)
02 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) is widely recognised as the greatest epic poem in the English language – and it is buried in the commentary of ...
Joan Watts, "The Collected Letters of Alan Watts" (New World Library, 2017)
01 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Alan Watts (1915-1973) was one of the first to interpret Eastern wisdom for a Western audience. Joan Watts, Alan's eldest daughter, is the co-editor (...
Eric T. Kasper and Quentin D. Vieregge, "The United States Constitution in Film: Part of Our National Culture" (Lexington Books, 2018)
30 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The U.S. Constitution is often depicted in popular films, teaching lessons about what this founding document means and what it requires. The United St...
Michael J. Mazarr, "Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America’s Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy" (Public Affairs, 2019)
30 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Michael J. Mazarr has written a history of the policy planning process leading up to the Iraq War in 2003. Mazarr has conducted over one hundred int...
Jeffrey S. McDonald, "John Gerstner and the Renewal of Presbyterian and Reformed Evangelicalism in Modern America" (Pickwick, 2017)
29 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most important trends within evangelicalism over the last half-century has been a renewal of Reformed theology. In this important new book,...
Pang Yang Huei, "Strait Rituals: China, Taiwan, and the United States in the Taiwan Strait Crises, 1954-1958" (Hong Kong UP, 2019)
29 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Taiwan Strait Crises of 1954-55 and 1958 occurred at the height of the Cold War. Mao’s China bombarded Nationalist-controlled islands, and U.S. ...
Ann Gleig, "American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity" (Yale UP, 2019)
26 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity (Yale University Press, 2019), Ann Gleig makes a major contribution to scholarship on Amer...
Anne Watts, "The Collected Letters of Alan Watts" (New World Library, 2017)
25 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Anne Watts is one of the co-editors of the new book, The Collected letters of Alan Watts, released in January 2018 from New World Library. Anne Watts ...
Nancy Tomes, "Remaking the American Patient" (UNC Press, 2016)
25 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In a work that spans the twentieth century, Nancy Tomes questions the popular--and largely unexamined--idea that in order to get good health care, peo...
Matthew Fox-Amato, "Exposing Slavery: Photography, Human Bondage, and the Birth of Modern Visual Politics in America" (Oxford UP, 2019)
25 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Shortly after its introduction, photography transformed the ways Americans made political arguments using visual images. In the mid-19th century, phot...
Kenneth I. Helphand, "Lawrence Halprin" (Library of American Landscape History, 2017)
24 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
During a career spanning six decades, Lawrence Halprin (1916–2009) became one of the most prolific and outspoken landscape architects of his generat...
William Gale, "Fiscal Therapy: Curing America's Debt Addiction and Investing in the Future" (Oxford UP, 2019)
24 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The US government is laboring under an enormous debt burden, one that will impact the living standards of future generations of Americans by limiting ...
Tricia Bruce, "Parish and Place: Making Room for Diversity in the American Catholic Church" (Oxford UP, 2017)
24 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What does a typical American Catholic parish look like? Tricia Bruce, an affiliate of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Religio...
Jacob Lee, "Masters of the Middle Waters: Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions Along the Mississippi" (Harvard UP, 2019)
23 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
America’s waterways were once the superhighways of travel and communication. Coursing through a central line across the landscape, with tributaries ...
Patrick S. McKay, "Healing the Breach: Mormonism, Metaphors, and the Pieces of the Puzzle" (Lulu Press, 2018)
23 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Patrick S. McKay, an apostle of the Joint Conference of Restoration Branches, believes that the Latter Day Saint movement is fractured. But one day so...
E. MacDonald et al., "Time and a Place: An Environmental History of Prince Edward Island" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2016)
22 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With its long and well-documented history, Prince Edward Island makes a compelling case study for thousands of years of human interaction with a speci...
Christof Spieler, "Trains, Buses, People: An Opinionated Atlas of US Transit" (Island Press, 2018)
22 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Christof Spieler, PE, LEED AP, is a Vice President and Director of Planning at Huitt-Zollars and a lecturer in Architecture and Engineering at Rice Un...
Kristin L. Hoganson, "The Heartland: An American History" (Penguin, 2019)
22 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Great West. Middle America. Flyover Country. The expanse of plains, lakes, forests, and farms, between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains has car...
Harold Holzer, "Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel Chester French" (Princeton Architectural Press, 2019)
19 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Harold Holzer has written a biography of one of America’s greatest public artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Daniel Chester Fren...
Chip Colwell, "Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America's Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2017)
19 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Five decades ago, Native American leaders launched a crusade to force museums to return their sacred objects and allow them to rebury their kin. Today...
Andra Gillespie, "Race and the Obama Administration: Substance, Symbols, and Hope" (Manchester UP, 2019)
18 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Scholars and pundits have been busy trying to assess the legacy of President Barack Obama. Few have done so with the nuance and comparative approach o...
Naomi Pullin, "Female Friends and the Making of Trans-Atlantic Quakerism, 1650-1750" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
17 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Naomi Pullin, who is Assistant Professor of Early Modern British History at the University of Warwick, UK, has just published an outstanding account o...
Michael R. Cohen, "Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneurship in the Reconstruction Era" (NYU Press, 2017)
17 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Michael R. Cohen is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Tulane University, where he holds a Sizeler Professorship. He is the author of the newly ...
Anand Prahlad, "The Secret Life of a Black Aspie: A Memoir" (U Alaska Press, 2017)
17 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Anand Prahlad was born on a former plantation in Virginia in 1954. This memoir, vividly internal, powerfully lyric, and brilliantly impressionistic, i...
Robert Matzen, "Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II" (GoodKnight Books, 2019)
16 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Audrey Hepburn was justly known for her long acting career, yet her early life is largely unknown. In his book, Robert Matzen describes how she lived ...
Pamela S. Nadell, "America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today" (Norton, 2019)
16 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jewish women have consistently played a vital and significant role in American history more broadly, and American Jewish history specifically. Through...
Christian Philip Peterson, "The Routledge History of World Peace Since 1750" (Routledge, 2018)
15 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Christian Philip Peterson joins us today to talk about The Routledge History of World Peace since 1750 (Routledge, 2018), which he co-edited with Will...
Kelly J. Beard, "An Imperfect Rapture" (Zone 3 Press, 2018)
15 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Many of you listening to this now probably recall growing up in a household of faith. You may have fond memories of the familiar rituals, the holidays...
Lincoln A. Mitchell, "Baseball Goes West: The Dodgers, the Giants, and the Shaping of the Major Leagues"
11 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ask a Brooklynite over the age of fifty and they’ll likely tell you that baseball’s golden age ended the day the Dodgers and Giants packed up and ...
Randall Stephens, "The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock n’ Roll" (Harvard UP, 2018)
10 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
I was immediately drawn to the book The Devil’s Music by Dr. Randall Stephens, Associate Professor of British and American Studies at the University...
Mickey and Dick Flacks, "Making History/Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America" (Rutgers UP, 2018)
10 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Mickey and Dick Flacks' new book Making History/Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America (Rutgers UP, 2018) ...
Max Felker-Kantor, "Policing Los Angeles: Race, Resistance, and the Rise of the LAPD" (UNC Press, 2018)
09 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years, the treatment of African Americans by police departments around the country has come under increased public scrutiny. As any student ...
Anthony Nownes, "Organizing for Transgender Rights: Collective Action, Group Development, and the Rise of a New Social Movement" (SUNY Press, 2019)
09 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Hard won transgender rights have been under attack by the Trump administration. Officials across government have sought to overturn decisions made by ...
Allison Schrager, "An Economist Walks Into A Brothel And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk" (Portfolio, 2019)
09 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Whether you are a commuter weighing options of taking the bus vs walking to get you to work on time or a military general leading troops into war, ris...
Patrick Sharma, "Robert McNamara’s Other War: The World Bank and International Development" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2017)
08 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Robert McNamara is best remembered today for his momentous term as Secretary of Defense in the 1960s. Often overlooked because of this is his even lon...
Sigrid Lien, "Pictures of Longing: Photography and the Norwegian-American Migration" (U Minnesota Press, 2018)
08 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In one of history’s largest migrations, hundreds of thousands of Norwegians immigrated to North American during the 1800s and early 1900s. In additi...
Sarah Reckhow, "Outside Money in School Board Elections: The Nationalization of Education Politics" (Harvard Education Press, 2019)
05 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Who funds local school board elections? Local residents or major donors living elsewhere? Jeffrey R. Henig, Rebecca Jacobsen, and Sarah Reckhow seek t...
Su'ad Abdul Khabeer, “Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States” (NYU Press, 2016)
05 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Islam in American has been profoundly shaped by the Black Muslim experience. However, Black Muslims are often marginalized both within their own relig...
Christopher Herbert, "Gold Rush Manliness: Race and Gender on the Pacific Slope" (U Washington Press, 2018)
04 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Not all gold rushes are created equal, argues Christopher Herbert, Associate Professor of History at Columbia Basin College. Dr. Herbert’s new book,...
Michael A. Schoeppner, "Moral Contagion: Black Atlantic Sailors, Citizenship, and Diplomacy in Antebellum America" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
04 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1822 and 1857, eight Southern states barred the ingress of all free black maritime workers. According to lawmakers, they carried a 'moral cont...
Rósa Magnúsdóttir, "Enemy Number One: The United States of American in Soviet Ideology and Propaganda, 1945-1959" (Oxford UP, 2019)
04 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Enemy Number One: The United States of American in Soviet Ideology and Propaganda, 1945-1959 (Oxford University Press, 2019), Dr. Rósa Magnúsdót...
Racquel J. Gates, "Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture" (Duke UP, 2018)
03 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Racquel J. Gates’ new book, Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture (Duke University Press, 2018), interrogates understandings of Afric...
Nancy Yunhwa Rao, "Chinatown Opera Theater in North America" (U Illinois Press, 2017)
03 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The story of popular entertainment in American immigrant communities is only just beginning to be told. Chinatown Opera Theater in North America by Na...
LaTanya McQueen, "And It Begins Like This" (Black Lawrence Press, 2018)
03 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today, I spoke with LaTanya McQueen, whose new collection of essays reckons with intriguing and timely questions about history, race, family, place, a...
Kathleen Burk, "The Lion and the Eagle: The Interaction of the British and American Empires, 1783-1972" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
02 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout modern history, British and American rivalry has gone hand in hand with common interests. Now renown diplomatic historian Professor Kathlee...
Vivian Percy, "Saving Jenny: Rescuing Our Youth from America's Opioid and Suicide Epidemic" (Radius Books, 2018)
01 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Normal turned to PTSD and a substance abuse nightmare for Jenny the instant a taxi struck her, catapulting her twenty feet across a busy New York City...
Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, "They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South" (Yale UP, 2019)
29 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Bridging women’s history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in A...
Bruce Van Orden, "We’ll Sing and We’ll Shout: The Life and Times of W. W. Phelps" (BYU, 2018)
29 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If you’re a Latter Day Saint, you’ve probably heard of W. W. Phelps, and no doubt, you’ve probably sung some of his hymns. But did you know that...
Joseph Vogel, "James Baldwin and the 1980s: Witnessing the Reagan Era" (U Illinois Press, 2018)
28 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
By the 1980s, critics and the public alike considered James Baldwin irrelevant. Yet Baldwin remained an important, prolific writer until his death in ...
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, "Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught Between Cultures in Early Virginia" (NYU Press, 2019)
27 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught Between Cultures in Early Virginia(New York University Press, 2019), Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Silver Profess...
Candis Watts Smith, "Black Politics in Transition: Immigration, Suburbanization, and Gentrification" (Routledge, 2019)
27 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Candis Watts Smith and Christina Greer are the editors of Black Politics in Transition: Immigration, Suburbanization, and Gentrification (Routledge, 2...
Linda K. Wertheimer, "Faith Ed: Teaching About Religion in an Age of Intolerance" (Beacon Press, 2017)
27 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Faith Ed: Teaching About Religion in an Age of Intolerance (Beacon Press, 2017) by Linda K. Wertheimer profiles the beauty and difficulty of teaching ...