New Books in American Studies

Karida L. Brown, "The Battle for the Black Mind" (Legacy Lit, 2025)

27 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A gripping chronicle of the relentless fight for Black educational freedom--and the bold strategies to protect, nourish, and empower Black minds. The...

Ryan J. Vander Wielen et al., "The House that Fox News Built?: Representation, Political Accountability, and the Rise of Partisan News" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

25 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The influence of partisan news is presumed to be powerful, but evidence for its effects on political elites is limited, often based more on anecdotes ...

Pollyanna Rhee, "Natural Attachments: The Domestication of American Environmentalism, 1920–1970" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

24 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A massive oil spill in the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara, California, in 1969 quickly became a landmark in the history of American environmentalism...

Constitutional Crisis or a Stalemate?

23 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At the 100 day mark of Donald Trump’s second term as president, the political scientists at Bright Line Watch released their 25th report on the s...

Ken Conca, "After the Floods: The Search for Resilience in Ellicott City" (Oxford UP, 2024)

22 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

One small town, two "thousand-year floods" in the span of two years: how does a community become resilient in the face of the ever-increasing risks of...

Mike Miley, "David Lynch’s American Dreamscape: Music, Literature, Cinema" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

21 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How are David Lynch's films as much in dialogue with literary and musical traditions as they are cinematic ones? By interrogating this question, Dav...

Executive Power and the President Who Would Not Be King: A Conversation with Michael McConnell

21 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of Madison’s Notes, Michael McConnell examines the gap between the Founders’ vision of a limited presidency and today’s expansi...

Elyssa Ford and Rebecca Scofield, "Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo" (U Washington Press, 2023)

20 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What would a rodeo open to anyone and everyone look like? In their new book, Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo (U Washington, 2023),...

Daniel MacFarlane, "The Lives of Lake Ontario: An Environmental History" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2024)

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Join me for a fascinating conversation with one of today’s leading voices in environmental studies, Daniel Macfarlane, as we explore his new book T...

Ruth Braunstein, "My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America" (Princeton UP, 2025)

18 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America (Princeton University Press, 2025), Ruth Braunstein maps the contested moral landscape in w...

Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik, "Watching TV: American Television Season by Season, Fourth Edition" (Syracuse UP, 2024)

17 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In their fourth edition of Watching TV: American Television Season by Season (Syracuse University Press, 2025), Harry Castleman and Walter Podrazi...

Becky Aikman, "Spitfires: The American Women Who Flew in the Face of Danger during World War II" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

16 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

They were crop dusters and debutantes, college girls and performers in flying circuses-all of them trained as pilots. Because they were women, they we...

Katherine Stewart, "Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

15 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, and for the past several years, many people both here and abroad have been trying to make sense of the radical right and its financial and ideo...

Claudia Rowe, "Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care" (Abrams Press, 2025)

14 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care (Abrams Press, 2025) is compelling exploration of the broken American foster care system...

Brian VanDeMark, "Kent State: An American Tragedy" (Norton, 2024)

13 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Fifty-five years after the terrible shooting at Kent State University, I spoke with Brian VanDeMark, a Professor of History at the US Naval Academy, a...

Aaron Robertson, "The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America" (FSG, 2024)

12 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in ...

Hasia R. Diner, "Opening Doors: The Unlikely Alliance Between the Irish and the Jews in America" (St. Martin's Press, 2024)

11 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Opening Doors: The Unlikely Alliance Between the Irish and the Jews in America (St. Martin's Press, 2024) tells the extraordinary story of how Irish...

Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin, "Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America" (Island Press, 2025)

10 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This is the shocking true-life story of how PFAS—a set of toxic chemicals most people have never heard of—poisoned the entire country. Based on or...

Benjamin Schrader, "Fight to Live, Live to Fight Veteran Activism after War: Veteran Activism after War" (SUNY Press, 2019)

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While veterans are often talked about, in Fight to Live, Live to Fight Veteran Activism after War: Veteran Activism after War (SUNY Press, 2019), Dr...

Chloe Ahmann, "Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

08 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Factory fires, chemical explosions, and aerial pollutants have inexorably shaped South Baltimore into one of the most polluted places in the country. ...

Lynn Downey, "American Dude Ranch: A Touch of the Cowboy and the Thrill of the West" (U Oklahoma Press, 2022)

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In American Dude Ranch: A Touch of the Cowboy and the Thrill of the West (U Oklahoma Press, 2022), historian Lynn Downey offers a cultural history ...

Eunji Kim, "The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy" (Princeton UP, 2025)

06 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite al...

Stephen H. Legomsky, "Reimagining the American Union: The Case for Abolishing State Government" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since American president Donald Trump was elected to a second term, it is common to hear citizens, journalists, and public officials distinguish betwe...

No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice

04 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground. Polarizing debates over their meaning have intensified into legislative maneuvering...

William Kiser, "The Business of Killing Indians: Scalp Warfare and the Violent Conquest of North America" (Yale UP, 2025)

03 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Cormac McCarthy's 1985 Western, Blood Meridian, the story follows infamous scalp hunter John Joel Glanton through the Mexican borderlands in the ...

Steven Hahn, "Illiberal America: A History" (Norton, 2024)

02 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That’s not us,' think again. In Illiberal America: A History (...

Adam Kissel et al., "Slacking: A Guide to Ivy League Miseducation" (Encounter Books, 2025)

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What does a general education from an Ivy League mean? What structures produce the course catalogues that students can choose to customize their educa...

Max Hastings, “Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975” (Harper, 2018)

30 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

People of various political stripes in many countries (particularly those countries where various political stripes are allowed) have been arguing abo...

Reginald K. Ellis et al., "Black Citizens and American Democracy: Fighting for the Soul of a Nation" (UP of Florida, 2025)

29 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2020, Black Americans continued a centuries-long pursuit of racial equality and justice in the streets and at the polls. Arguing that this year ...

Frederick Knight, "Black Elders: The Meaning of Age in American Slavery and Freedom" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Would there have been a Frederick Douglass if it were not for Betsy Bailey, the grandmother who raised him? Would Harriet Jacobs have written her reno...

Katie Rose Hejtmanek, "The Cult of CrossFit: Christianity and the American Exercise Phenomenon" (NYU Press, 2025)

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

CrossFit in the United States has become increasingly popular, around which a fascinating culture has developed which shapes everyday life for the peo...

Alfred L. Martin, Jr., "Fandom for Us, by Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences" (NYU Press, 2025)

27 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Boldly going where few fandom scholars have gone before, Fandom for Us, by Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences (NYU Press, 2025) brea...

Jonathan D. Cohen, "Losing Big: America's Dangerous Sports Gambling Boom" (Columbia Global Reports, 2025)

26 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have d...

Neil Kraus, "The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement" (Temple UP, 2023)

25 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Wage stagnation, growing inequality, and even poverty itself have resulted from decades of neoliberal decision making, not the education system, write...

Henry Jenkins, "Where the Wild Things Were: Boyhood and Permissive Parenting in Postwar America" (NYU Press, 2025)

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 60s produced a Baby Boom generation that catalyzed the dawn of a new era—the space age, the age of television, the global age, and the beginning...

Colleen A. Dunlavy, "Small, Medium, Large: How Government Made the U.S.into a Manufacturing Powerhouse" (Polity Press, 2024)

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Small, Medium, Large: How Government Made the U.S. into a Manufacturing Powerhouse, published by Polity Books in 2024, offers a bold reinterpretation ...

Ross Benes, "1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times" (UP of Kansas, 2025)

22 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted our Bizarre Times (2025, University of Kansas Press) journalist Ross Benes examin...

Maurice Jackson, "Rhythms of Resistance and Resilience: How Black Washingtonians Used Music and Sports in the Fight for Equality" (Georgetown UP, 2025)

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the Nation's Capital, music and sports have played a central role in the lives of African Americans, often serving as a barometer of social conflic...

Davida Siwisa James, "Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill: Alexander Hamilton’s Old Harlem Neighborhood Through the Centuries" (Fordham UP, 2024)

20 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For last 100 years, the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City has stood as the capital of Black America and the capital of the global African diaspo...

Engage and Evade in 2025: Asad L. Asad on Latino Immigrants in America

19 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today I’m speaking with Asad L. Asad, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stanford University. He is the author of Engage and Evade: How Latino Im...

The Great Gatsby is an American Dystopia

18 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s the UConn Popcast, and on the 100th anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, we explore what The Great Gatsby means in America to...

James Davison Hunter, "Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis" (Yale UP, 2024)

17 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Liberal democracy in America has always contained contradictions—most notably, a noble but abstract commitment to freedom, justice, and equality tha...

Lesley J. Gordon, "Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Those who fought in the Civil War were expected to overcome their fear of injury or death as they charged into a hail of bullets. Soldiers could expec...

Rebecca Zorach, "Temporary Monuments: Art, Land, and America's Racial Enterprise" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

15 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Art has long played a key role in constructing how people understand and imagine America. Starting with contemporary controversies over public monumen...

Martha S. Jones, "The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir" (Basic Books, 2025)

14 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Martha S. Jones grew up feeling her Black identity was obvious to all who saw her. But weeks into college, a Black Studies classmate challenged Jones’...

Julie Malnig, "Dancing Black, Dancing White: Rock 'n' Roll, Race, and Youth Culture of the 1950s and Early 1960s" (Oxford UP, 2023)

13 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dancing Black, Dancing White: Rock 'n' Roll, Race, and Youth Culture of the 1950s and Early 1960s (Oxford University Press, 2023) offers a new look ...

Jonathan Rauch, "Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy" (Yale UP, 2025)

12 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today I’m speaking with Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and a contributing editor of The Atlant...

Megan Hunt, "Southern by the Grace of God: Religion, Race, and Civil Rights in Hollywood's American South" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

11 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Megan Hunt joins us to talk about her recent book, Southern By the Grace of God, which was published i...

Tiffany D. Joseph, "Not All In: Race, Immigration, and Health Care Exclusion in the Age of Obamacare" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025)

10 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Despite progressive policy strides in health care reform, immigrant communities continue to experience stark disparities across the United States. In ...

Bridget Kies, "Murder, She Wrote" (Wayne State UP, 2025)

09 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As part of the TV Milestones Series, Bridget Kies explores Murder, She Wrote (Wayne State University Press, 2025). Embark on a journey through the ...

Kathleen Thelen, "Attention, Shoppers!: American Retail Capitalism and the Origins of the Amazon Economy" (Princeton UP, 2025)

08 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The United States is widely recognized as the quintessential consumer society, one where huge companies like Walmart and Amazon are famous for enticin...

Walls, Warnings, and the War on Fentanyl: Peter Andreas on Trump’s Border Politics

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of International Horizons, Peter Andreas, John Hay Professor of International Studies at Brown University and author of Border Games...

Jason Cannon, "A Time for Reflection: The Parallel Legacies of Baseball Icons Willie McCovery and Billy Williams" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025)

06 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Professional baseball has featured a bevy of superstars over the past century and a half, but only a few of them have impacted their sport and cities ...

Peder Anker, "For The Love of Bombs: The Trail of Nuclear Suffering" (Anthem Press, 2025)

05 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The truism that history is written by its winners reflects the literature about how the bomb came about, with apologetic books most often written by U...

Lincoln A. Mitchell, "Three Years Our Mayor: George Moscone and the Making of Modern San Francisco" (U Nevada Press, 2025)

04 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Those who recognize Mayor George Moscone's name may think of him as the career politician who was assassinated along with Harvey Milk, but there was m...

James M. O’Toole, "For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Confession in America" (Harvard UP, 2025)

03 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For generations, American Catholics went faithfully to confession, admitting their sins to a priest and accepting through him God’s forgiveness. The...

Mary Anne Hunting and Kevin D. Murphy, "Women Architects at Work: Making American Modernism" (Princeton UP, 2025)

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the decades preceding World War II, professional architecture schools enrolled increasing numbers of women, but career success did not come easily....

James Tejani, "A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles and America" (Norton, 2024)

01 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Port of Los Angeles is all around us. Objects we use on a daily basis pass through it: furniture, apparel, electronics, automobiles, and much more...

Making Radio History

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Elena Razlogova is an Associate Professor of History at Concordia University. She is the author of The Listener’s Voice: Early Radio and the Ameri...

Jason L. Newton, "Cutover Capitalism: The Industrialization of the Northern Forest" (West Virginia UP, 2024)

29 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What happened to the loggers of America’s past when lumbermen moved west and south in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? How did the...

Tom Lynch, "Outback and Out West: The Settler-Colonial Environmental Imaginary" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)

29 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

People make sense of the world through stories, and stories about places inevitably shape how we treat, live on, and use those places. In Outback and...

Jehanne Dubrow, "Civilians" (LSU Press, 2025)

28 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The final volume in Dr. Jehanne Dubrow’s groundbreaking trilogy about the experience of being a modern military spouse, Civilians (LSU Press, 2025...

Michael Vorenberg, "Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War" (Knopf, 2025)

27 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

One historian’s journey to find the end of the Civil War—and, along the way, to expand our understanding of the nature of war itself and how socie...

Heather Akou, "Afterthought: A Family Story" (Indiana U Libraries, 2025)

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Afterthought: A Family Story (Indiana University Bloomington Libraries Publishing, 2025) by Dr. Heather Akou focuses on the life of her grandmother, ...

David D. Grafton, "Muhammad in the Seminary: Protestant Teaching about Islam in the Nineteenth Century" (NYU Press, 2024)

25 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Uncovers what Christian seminaries taught about Islam in their formative years Throughout the nineteenth century, Islam appeared regularly in the curr...

Paul R. Laird and Elizabeth A. Wells, "The Cambridge Companion to West Side Story" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

25 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Over sixty years after its opening night, West Side Story is perhaps the most famous and beloved of twentieth-century musicals and stands as a colos...

Postscript: Not a Matter of Left or Right: Historians Fighting Censorship

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The presidents of the American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians join the podcast to talk about the effects of historical...

Amanda M. Greenwell, "The Child Gaze: Narrating Resistance in American Literature" (UP of Mississippi, 2024)

23 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Child Gaze: Narrating Resistance in American Literature (UP of Mississippi, 2024) theorizes the child gaze as a narrative strategy for social cr...

Tracie Canada, "Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation in Big-Time College Football" (U California Press, 2025)

22 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Big-time college football promises prestige, drama, media attention, and money. Yet most athletes in this unpaid, amateur system encounter a different...

Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, "The Age of Revolutions: And the Generations Who Made It" (Basic Books, 2024)

21 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A panoramic new history of the revolutionary decades between 1760 and 1825, from North America and Europe to Haiti and Spanish America, showing how pr...

Matt Lodder, "Tattoos: The Untold History of a Modern Art" (Yale UP, 2024)

20 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There is a pervasive stereotype of tattoo culture as relating to an underworld of scoundrels, sailors, and ne’er-do-wells, yet it has existed in the...

In Covid’s Wake: How our Politics Failed Us--A Conversation with Stephen Macedo (Part 2)

19 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Madison’s Notes, we continue our discussion with Stephen Macedo, co-author of In COVID’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us (Princeto...

Richard Buttny, "Unfracked: The Struggle to Ban Fracking in New York" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024)

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Richard Buttny, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at S...

Douglas Field, "Walking in the Dark: James Baldwin, My Father and I" (Manchester UP, 2024)

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A moving exploration of the life and work of the celebrated American writer, blending biography and memoir with literary criticism. Since James Baldwi...

Laurel Leff, "Well Worth Saving: American Universities' Life-And-Death Decisions on Refugees from Nazi Europe" (Yale UP, 2019)

17 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Well Worth Saving (Yale University Press, 2019), Professor Laurel Leff explores how American universities responded to the sudden and urgent appe...

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, "Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2023)

16 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Every year between 1998 to 2020 except one, Louisiana had the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the nation and thus the world. Prison Capit...

Postscript: Donald Trump is Erasing History – What YOU Can Do about it

15 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On January 20th, Donald Trump issued an executive order entitled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to t...

Postscript: How Trump’s Executive Order Contradicts Birthright Citizenship

14 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Birthright citizenship is established in the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution – yet Donald Trump’s rec...

Nima Bassiri, "Madness and Enterprise: Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

13 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Uncovers a powerful relationship between pathology and money: beginning in the nineteenth century, the severity of mental illness was measured against...

In Covid’s Wake: How our Politics Failed Us: A Conversation with Frances Lee

12 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the first part of our two-part conversation on Madison’s Notes, we speak with Frances Lee, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton...

Jennifer L. Freeman Marshall, "Ain't I an Anthropologist: Zora Neale Hurston Beyond the Literary Icon" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

11 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Iconic as a novelist and popular cultural figure, Zora Neale Hurston remains underappreciated as an anthropologist. Is it inevitable that Hurston's li...

"Steadfast Democrats" Five Years Later: A Conversation with Chryl N. Laird

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today I’m speaking with Chryl Laird, Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. We are discussing he...

Lina-Maria Murillo, "Fighting for Control: Power, Reproductive Care, and Race in the US-Mexico Borderlands" (UNC Press, 2025)

09 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The first birth control clinic in El Paso, Texas, opened in 1937. Since then, Mexican-origin women living in the border cities of El Paso and Ciudad J...

Andrew C. Isenberg, "The Age of the Borderlands: Indians, Slaves, and the Limits of Manifest Destiny, 1790-1850" (UNC Press, 2025)

09 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Most US history textbooks contain a familiar map: shaded colors stretch across North America, clearly and neatly demarcating the extent of US expansi...

Kristin A. Olbertson, "The Dreadful Word: Speech Crime and Polite Gentlemen in Massachusetts, 1690–1776" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

09 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Dreadful Word: Speech Crime and Polite Gentlemen in Massachusetts, 1690–1776 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Dr. Kristin Olbertson is the...

Richard Heppner, "Woodstock: From World War to Culture Wars" (SUNY Press, 2024)

07 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Few towns in America are as famous as Woodstock, New York—although Woodstock may be most famous for an event that happened many miles away! Long bef...

Gary Griggs, "California Catastrophes: The Natural Disaster History of the Golden State" (U California Press, 2024)

07 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

California has more natural hazards per square mile than any other state, but this hasn’t deterred people from moving here. Entire California towns ...

Rachelle Bergstein, "The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us" (Atria, 2024)

07 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone knows Judy Blume. Her books have garnered her fans of all ages for decades and sold tens of millions of copies. But why were people so drawn ...

Georgia Finnegan, "Grace & Grit: A History of Ballet in Minnesota" (Afton Historical Society, 2024)

06 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The names are iconic and familiar to anyone in Minnesota with an interest in dance: the Andaházy School of Classical Ballet, Minnesota Dance Theatre,...

Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law--A Conversation with Janie Nitze

05 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the latest episode of Madison’s Notes, I spoke with Janie Nitze, co-author of Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law (Harper, 2004), a boo...

Arwen P. Mohun, "American Imperialist: Cruelty and Consequence in the Scramble for Africa" (Chicago UP, 2023)

05 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This biography of “African explorer” Richard Dorsey Mohun, written by one of his descendants, reveals how American greed and state power helped sh...

Elizabeth T. Craft, "Yankee Doodle Dandy: George M. Cohan and the Broadway Stage" (Oxford UP, 2024)

05 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

George M. Cohan was one of those rare Broadway figures who was a composer, lyricist, playwright, performer, director, theater owner, and star actor. H...

Jack Dempsey, "Warriors for Liberty: William Dollarson & Michigan's Civil War African Americans" (Michigan Civil War Association, 2024)

04 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Michigan's African Americans played critical roles in winning the Civil War and setting millions of fellow Americans forever free. The 1st Michigan Co...

Michael Visontay, "Noble Fragments: The Gripping Story of the Antiquarian Bookseller Who Broke Up a Gutenberg Bible" (Scribe, 2024)

04 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

One hundred years ago, Gabriel Wells, a New York bookseller, committed a crime against history. He broke up the world’s greatest book, the Gutenberg...

Kate Fortmueller and Luci Marzola, "Hollywood Unions" (Rutgers UP, 2024)

04 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hollywood Unions (Rutgers UP, 2024) is a unique collection that tells the stories of the unions and guilds that have organized motion picture and te...

Erik Baker, "Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America" (Harvard UP, 2025)

02 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How Americans think about work changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century. Thrift and persistence came to seem old-fashioned. Success...

Hallie Franks, "Ancient Sculpture and Twentieth-Century American Womanhood: Venus Envy" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

02 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ancient Sculpture and Twentieth-Century American Womanhood: Venus Envy (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Hallie Franks examines the reception of Graeco-Roman...

Dawn Day Biehler, "Animating Central Park: A Multispecies History" (U Washington Press, 2024)

01 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From deer and beavers to “free range” pigs and goats in and around Seneca Village, what we now know as Central Park has long been home to an abund...

Timothy P. R. Weaver, "Inequality, Crime, and Resistance in New York City" (Temple UP, 2025)

01 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Looking closely at New York City's political development since the 1970s, three "political orders"--conservativism, neoliberalism, and egalitarianism-...

Big Box USA: The Environmental Impact of America's Biggest Retail Stores

27 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Our book is: Big Box USA: The Environmental Impact of America’s Biggest Retail Stores (UP of Colorado, 2024) which presents a new look at how th...