New Books in American Studies

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...

Jeffrey Thomas Perry, "Law in American Meetinghouses: Church Discipline and Civil Authority in Kentucky, 1780–1845" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)

27 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Most Americans today would not think of their local church as a site for arbitration and would probably be hesitant to bring their property disputes, ...

Laureen D. Hom, "The Power of Chinatown: Searching for Spatial Justice in Los Angeles" (U California Press, 2024)

27 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Chinatown neighborhoods in the United States are about more than restaurants, shops, and architecture, argues San Jose State urban studies associate p...

Mike Sielski, "Magic in the Air: The Myth, the Mystery, and the Soul of the Slam Dunk" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The evolution of basketball, and much of the social and cultural change in America, can be traced through one powerful act on the court: the slam dunk...

Linh Thuy Nguyen, "Displacing Kinship: The Intimacies of Intergenerational Trauma in Vietnamese American Cultural Production" (Temple UP, 2024)

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Nearly fifty years after the end of the war in Vietnam, American children of Vietnamese refugees continue to process the meanings of the war and its c...

Religious Freedom: A Conversation on the Conservative Tradition with John D. Wilsey

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this conversation, we sit down with John D. Wilsey, Professor of Church History and Philosophy at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Sen...

Aure Schrock on Politics Recoded: The Infrastructural Organizing of Code for America

24 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Aure Schrock, an interdisciplinary technology scholar and writing coach and editor at Indelible Voice, a...

Postscript: How to Fight Back: Charting Opposition to the Actions of the Trump Administration

24 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Shortly after Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 47th American president, he issued 37 executive orders and, subsequently, the Trump administration h...

Benjamin Heber Johnson, "Texas: An American History" (Yale UP, 2025)

23 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There's more to Texas than hats, oil, and BBQ, writes Benjamin Johnson in his sweeping new synthesis, Texas: An American History (Yale UP: 2025) - ...

Ilan Stavans, "Latino USA: A Cartoon History" (Basic Books, 2024)

22 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This interview includes Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera, Professor of Humanities, Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez (UPR-M); Annette Martínez-Iñesta, Inst...

The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Our book is: The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker (Mariner Books, 2024) by Dr. Amy Reading, which is a lively and intimate bi...

Adam R. Nelson, "Exchange of Ideas: The Economy of Higher Education in Early America" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

18 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Exchange of Ideas: The Economy of Higher Education in Early America (U Chicago Press, 2023) launches a breathtakingly ambitious new economic history ...

Lori A. Flores, "Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to Covid-19" (UNC Press, 2025)

18 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Though Latinx foodways are eagerly embraced and consumed by people across the United States, the nation exhibits a much more fraught relationship with...

Yoni Appelbaum, "Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of Prosperity" (Random House, 2025)

18 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We take it for granted that good neighborhoods—with good schools and good housing—are inaccessible to all but the very wealthy. But, in America, t...

The Soundworld of Harriet Tubman

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Just in time for Black History Month, we share an episode we’ve been excitedly working on for a number of months now. Ethnomusicologist Maya Cunning...

Mary Frances Phillips, "Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins" (NYU Press, 2025)

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this groundbreaking biography, Mary Frances Phillips immerses readers in the life and legacy of Ericka Huggins, a revered Black Panther Party membe...

Hunter Price, "Sacred Capital: Methodism and Settler Colonialism in the Empire of Liberty" (U Virginia Press, 2024)

16 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the early years of American independence, Methodism emerged as the new republic’s fastest growing religious movement and its largest voluntary as...

Jessica A. Brockmole, "Pink Cars and Pocketbooks: How American Women Bought Their Way Into the Driver's Seat" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025)

16 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since the commercial introduction of the automobile, US automakers have always sought women as customers and advertised accordingly. How, then, did ca...

Allison Rank et al., "Civic Pedagogies: Teaching Civic Engagement in an Era of Divisive Politics" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

14 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Political Scientists Lauren C. Bell, Allison Rank, and Carah Ong Whaley have a new edited volume, Civic Pedagogies: Teaching Civic Engagement in an E...

Randall Fuller, "Bright Circle: Five Remarkable Women in the Age of Transcendentalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)

13 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In November 1839, a group of young women in Boston formed a conversation society "to answer the great questions" of special importance to women: "What...

Mountain Memories: A Conversation with Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Robert P. George

12 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Henry Louis Gates and Robert P. George share a powerful conversation about their unlikely beginnings in West Virginia. Recorded in De...

Adam Laats, "Mr. Lancaster's System: The Failed Reform That Created America's Public Schools" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

11 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Two centuries ago, London school reformer Joseph Lancaster swept into New York City to revolutionize its public schools. Pennsylvania and Massachusett...

Jeff Copeland, "Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn" (Feral House, 2025)

11 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn (Feral House, 2025), Jeff Copeland brings readers into Hollywood in the 1980s and shares his story of writing a b...

Rebecca Davis Gibbons, "The Hegemon's Tool Kit: US Leadership and the Politics of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime" (Cornell UP, 2022)

11 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At a moment when the nuclear nonproliferation regime is under duress, Rebecca Davis Gibbons provides a trenchant analysis of the international system ...

American Higher Education Under the Second Trump Administration

11 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Director John Torpey speaks with Steven Brint, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy ...

Katie Beisel Hollenbach, "The Business of Bobbysoxers: Cultural Production in 1940s Frank Sinatra Fandom" (Oxford UP, 2024)

09 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Business of Bobbysoxers: Cultural Production in 1940s Frank Sinatra Fandom (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Katie Beisel Hollenbach reconsi...

Peter J. Bowler, "Evolution for the People: Shaping Popular Ideas from Darwin to the Present" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

09 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From Darwin's The Origin of Species to the twenty-first century, Peter Bowler reinterprets the long Darwinian Revolution by refocussing our attention ...

Martín Alberto Gonzalez, "Why You Always So Political?: The Experiences and Resiliencies of Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx Students in Higher Education" (Viva Oxnard, 2023)

08 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As of 2018, only about one in ten Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx (MMAX) students graduate with a college degree. Drawing on in-depth interviews, part...

Stan Bunger, "Mornings with Madden: My Radio Life With An American Legend" (Triumph, 2024)

08 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

John Madden is synonymous with football. He was the television face and voice of the nation's most popular sport, the namesake of its best-selling spo...

Jeff Gomez, "There Was No Alternative: Generation X, AIDS, and the Making of a Classic Nineties Record" (McFarland, 2023)

08 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Grunge. Flannel. Generation X. In 1993, Seattle was the capital of the world, Nirvana was king, and slackers were everywhere. When the Red Hot organiz...

Hiroshi Motomura, "Borders and Belonging: Toward a Fair, Realistic, and Sustainable Immigration Policy" (Oxford UP, 2024)

08 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Immigration is now a polarizing issue across most advanced democracies. But too much that is written about immigration fails to appreciate the complex...

Corinne Mitsuye Sugino, "Making the Human: Race, Allegory, and Asian Americans" (Rutgers UP, 2024)

07 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, I talked to Corinne Sugino, whose book Making the Human: Race, Allegory, and Asian Americans (Rutgers UP, 2024) examines how mains...

Zai Liang. "From Chinatown to Every Town: How Chinese Immigrants Have Expanded the Restaurant Business in the United States" (U California Press, 2023)

07 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From Chinatown to Every Town: How Chinese Immigrants Have Expanded the Restaurant Business in the United States (University of California Press, 2024...

Samantha Ege, "South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago's Classical Music Scene" (U Illinois Press, 2024)

07 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago’s Classical Music Scene by Samantha Ege (University of Illinois Press, 2014) is a collec...

Anthony E. Kaye, "Nat Turner, Black Prophet: A Visionary History" (FSG, 2024)

06 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In August 1831, a group of enslaved people in Southampton County, Virginia, rose up to fight for their freedom. They attacked the plantations on which...

Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Lost Souls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War" (Princeton UP, 2024)

05 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When World War II ended, about one million people whom the Soviet Union claimed as its citizens were outside the borders of the USSR, mostly in the We...

Sophia Rosenfeld, "The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life" (Princeton UP, 2025)

05 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Choice touches virtually every aspect of our lives, from what to buy and where to live to whom to love, what profession to practice, and even what to ...

Patricia A. Roos, "Surviving Alex: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction" (Rutgers UP, 2024)

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2015, Patricia Roos’s twenty-five-year-old son Alex died of a heroin overdose. Turning her grief into action, Roos, a professor of sociology at R...

Derek W. Black, "Dangerous Learning: The South's Long War on Black Literacy" (Yale UP, 2025)

30 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Few have ever valued literacy as much as the enslaved Black people of the American South. For them, it was more than a means to a better life; it was ...

Edward Westermann, "Hitler's Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars: Comparing Genocide and Conquest" (U Oklahoma Press, 2016)

29 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As he prepared to wage his war of annihilation on the Eastern Front, Adolf Hitler repeatedly drew parallels between the Nazi quest for Lebensraum, or...

Benjamin Carter Hett, "The Nazi Menace: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War" (Henry Holt, 2020)

28 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Berlin, November 1937. Adolf Hitler meets with his military commanders to impress upon them the urgent necessity for a war of aggression in eastern Eu...

Peter Harmsen, "Fury and Ice: Greenland, the United States and Germany in World War II" (Casemate, 2024)

27 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Peter Harmsen about his book Fury and Ice: Greenland, the United States and Germany in World War II (Casemate, 2024). The wartime...

Taylor N. Carlson, "Through the Grapevine: Socially Transmitted Information and Distorted Democracy" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

26 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Accurate information is at the heart of democratic functioning. For decades, researchers interested in how information is disseminated have focused on...

Adam Jortner, "A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom" (Oxford UP, 2024)

25 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today I’m speaking with Adam Jortner, Goodwin-Philpott Professor of History at Auburn University. We are discussing his latest book, A Promised Lan...

The Cambridge Centennial Edition of The Great Gatsby

25 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Great Gatsby is often called the great American novel. Emblematic of an entire era, F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic tale of illicit desire, grand il...

Leonne M. Hudson, "Black Americans in Mourning: Reactions to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln" (Southern Illinois UP, 2024)

24 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth carried out the first presidential assassination in United States history. The euphoria resulting from General Le...

Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor, "America Under the Hammer: Auctions and the Emergence of Market Values" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

24 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As the first book-length study of auctions in early America, America Under the Hammer: Auctions and the Emergence of Market Values (U Pennsylvania P...

Ryan Tan Wander, "Settler Tenses: Queer Time and Literatures of the American West" (Texas Tech UP, 2024)

23 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In today’s cultural and political climate of relative LGBTQ+ inclusion, Settler Tenses: Queer Time and Literatures of the American West (Texas Tec...

Truth Matters: A Conversation with Robert P. George and Cornel West

22 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the latest episode of Madison’s Notes, we are privileged to join a profound conversation between Robert P. George and Cornel West, two toweri...

Carol Cleaveland and Michele Waslin. "Private Violence: Latin American Women and the Struggle for Asylum" (NYU Press, 2024)

20 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How the US asylum process fails to protect against claims of gender-based violence. Through eyewitness accounts of closed-court proceedings and powerf...

Monica A. Hershberger, "Women in American Operas of The 1950s: Undoing Gendered Archetypes" (U Rochester Press, 2023)

20 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 1950s looks placid from the outside, but underneath that calm post-war exterior roiled the intellectual and activist beginnings of the political m...

Brigid Schulte, "Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life" (Henry Holt, 2024)

20 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Following Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulte's groundbreaking examination of time management and stress, the prizewinning journalist now turns her attention...

James Michael Buckley, "City of Wood: San Francisco and the Architecture of the Redwood Lumber Industry" (U Texas Press, 2024)

18 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

California’s 1849 gold rush triggered creation of the “instant city” of San Francisco as a to base exploit the rich natural resources of the Ame...

Elizabeth L. Block, "Beyond Vanity: The History and Power of Hairdressing" (MIT Press, 2024)

17 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the nineteenth century, the complex cultural meaning of hair was not only significant—it could affect one’s place in society. After the Civil W...

Anthony Walton, "The End of Respectability: Notes of a Black American Reckoning with His Life and His Nation" (David R. Godine, 2024)

15 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Born into the Civil Rights Movement, author Anthony Walton observed firsthand the opening of opportunity for racial reconciliation. He also saw system...

Beretta E. Smith-Shomade, "Finding God in All the Black Places: Sacred Imaginings in Black Popular Culture" (Rutgers UP, 2024)

15 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Finding God in All the Black Places: Sacred Imaginings in Black Popular Culture (Rutgers UP, 2024), Beretta E. Smith-Shomade contends that Black ...

Stephen Watt, "From the 'Troubles' to Trumpism: Ireland and America, 1960-2023" (Anthem Press, 2024)

15 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Stephen Watt is the Provost Professor of English at Indiana University. His research interests include drama and theatre of the 19th and 20th centurie...

Congressional Deliberation: A Conversation with Kevin J. Burns and Jordan T. Cash

15 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, we sit down with Professors Jordan T. Cash and Kevin J. Burns to discuss their recently published book, Congressional Deliberation: ...

Brett Bannor, "American Sheep: A Cultural History" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

14 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why did Thomas Jefferson write that he would be happy if all dogs went extinct? What economic opportunity did attorney John Lord Hayes envision for th...

Bernard J. Dobski, "Mark Twain’s Joan of Arc: Political Wisdom, Divine Justice, and the Origins of Modernity" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024)

13 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Political Theorist B.J. (Bernard J.) Dobski has a new book focusing on Mark Twain’s final published novel, Personal Reflections of Joan of Arc. As ...

Patrick Dixon, "Nuggets of Gold: Further Processed Chicken and the Making of the American Diet" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

13 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For McDonald’s, the Chicken McNugget, the flagship product of further processed chicken, represented a once-in-a-generation innovation, a snack item...

Andrew Gomez, "Constructing Cuban America: Race and Identity in Florida's Caribbean South, 1868–1945" (U Texas Press, 2024)

13 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How Black and white Cubans navigated issues of race, politics, and identity during the post-Civil War and early Jim Crow eras in South Florida. On Jul...

Nora Gross, "Brothers in Grief: The Hidden Toll of Gun Violence on Black Boys and Their Schools" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

13 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A heartbreaking account of grief, Black boyhood, and how we can support young people as they navigate loss. JahSun, a dependable, much-loved senior at...

Jorge Duany, "Puerto Rico: What Everyone Needs to Know" (Oxford UP, 2024)

12 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the second edition of Puerto Rico: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford UP, 2024), Jorge Duany unravels the fascinating and turbulent past and pre...

Susan A. Brewer, "The Best Land: Four Hundred Years of Love and Betrayal on Oneida Territory" (Three Hills, 2024)

12 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Dr. Susan A. Brewer's fascinating The Best Land: Four Hundred Years of Love and Betrayal on Oneida Territory (Cornell University Press, 2024), sh...

Jennifer Greenburg, "At War with Women: Military Humanitarianism and Imperial Feminism in an Era of Permanent War" (Cornell UP, 2023)

11 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At War with Women: Military Humanitarianism and Imperial Feminism in an Era of Permanent War (Cornell University Press, 2023) by Jennifer Greenburg r...

Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove, "White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy" (Liveright, 2024)

10 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

My guest today is Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove. Wilson-Hartgrove is a writer, preacher, and moral activist. He is an assistant director at the Center for...

Gabriele Badano and Alasia Nuti, "Politicizing Political Liberalism: On the Containment of Illiberal and Antidemocratic Views" (Oxford UP, 2024)

09 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How should broadly liberal democratic societies stop illiberal and antidemocratic views from gaining influence while honouring liberal democratic valu...

Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins's Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany

09 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Our book is: Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts To Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany (Citadel Press, 2025)  by Dr. Rebecca Bre...

Stacey Diane Arañez Litam, "Patterns that Remain: A Guide to Healing for Asian Children of Immigrants" (Oxford UP, 2025)

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This empowering book blends history, storytelling, and culturally grounded techniques to equip readers with the tools needed to promote self-reflectio...

Rebecca Charbonneau, "Mixed Signals: Alien Communication Across the Iron Curtain" (Polity, 2024)

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the shadow of the Cold War, whispers from the cosmos fueled an unlikely alliance between the US and USSR. The search for extraterrestrial intellige...

Sarah B. Rodriguez, "The Love Surgeon: A Story of Trust, Harm, and the Limits of Medical Regulation" (Rutgers UP, 2020)

07 Jan 2025

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...

Simon Hall, "Ten Days in Harlem: Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s" (Faber and Faber, 2020)

07 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book Ten Days in Harlem: Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s (Faber, 2020), Simon Hall, a Professor of Modern History at the Univer...

Christopher Phelps and Robin Vandome, "Marxism and America: New Appraisals" (Manchester UP, 2021)

07 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If the United States has been so hostile to Marxism, what accounts for Marxism's recurrent attractiveness to certain Americans? Marxism and America: ...

Jennie Lightweis-Goff, "Captive City: Meditations on Slavery in the Urban South" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

07 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Cities are fraught sites in the national imagination, turned into identity markers when “urban” and “rural” indicate tastes rather than places...

Joshua Brinkman on American Farming Culture and the History of Technology

06 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Joshua Brinkman, Assistant Teaching Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at North Carolina Stat...

Dean Itsuji Saranillio, "Unsustainable Empire: Alternative Histories of Hawai‘i Statehood" (Duke UP, 2018)

06 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Unsustainable Empire: Alternative Histories of Hawai‘i Statehood (Duke University Press, 2018), Dean Itsuji Saranillio offers a bold challenge to...

Judith Giesberg, “Sex and the Civil War: Soldiers, Pornography, and the Making of American Morality” (UNC Press, 2017)

06 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Judith Giesberg, an expert on the history of women and gender during the Civil War, is professor and director of graduate studies in the history depar...

Theresa Keeley, "Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict Over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America" (Cornell UP, 2020)

06 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict Over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America (Cornell UP, 2020), Theresa Keeley analyzes ...

Amy Aronson, "Chrystal Eastman: A Revolutionary Life" (Oxford UP, 2019)

05 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Amy Aronson is an Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Fordham University and former editor at Working Woman and Ms. magazines. Her ...

Matthew C. Godfrey, ed., "The Joseph Smith Papers: Documents, Volume 7" (Church Historians Press, 2018)

05 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Joseph Smith, the nineteenth-century American prophet who founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, can, at times, be considered an elu...

Devin Fergus, “Land of the Fee: Hidden Costs and the Decline of the American Middle Class” (Oxford UP, 2018)

05 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Politicians, economists, and the media have put forth no shortage of explanations for the mounting problem of wealth inequality – a loss of working ...

Joshua D. Rothman, "The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America" (Basic Book, 2021)

04 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Joshua Rothman’s The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America was published by Basic Books in 2021, and tells a sprawling h...

Simon Miles, "Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2020)

04 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In a narrative-redefining approach, Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War (Cornell UP, 2020) dr...

Marc Gallicchio, "Unconditional: The Japanese Surrender in World War II" (Oxford UP, 2020)

04 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Signed on September 2, 1945 aboard the American battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay by Japanese and Allied leaders, the instrument of surrender for...

Benjamin T. Smith, "The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade" (W. W. Norton, 2021)

03 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For over a century Mexico has been embroiled in a drug war dictated by the demands of their neighbor to the north. In The Dope: The Real History of t...

Patrick T. Reardon, "The Loop: The 'L' Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago" (Southern Illinois UP, 2020)

03 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Every day Chicagoans rely on the loop of elevated train tracks to get to their jobs, classrooms, or homes in the city’s downtown. But how much do th...

Carl Rollyson, "The Life of William Faulkner: The Past Is Never Dead, 1897-1934" (UVA Press, 2020)

02 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As a novelist, short story author, screenwriter, and Nobel laureate, William Faulkner looms large in modern American literature. Yet the very range of...

Rachel Louise Moran, "Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

02 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

New motherhood is often seen as a joyful moment in a woman’s life; for some women, it is also their lowest moment. For much of the twentieth century...

I. Augustus Durham, "Stay Black and Die: On Melancholy and Genius" (Duke UP, 2023)

02 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Stay Black and Die: On Melancholy and Genius (Duke UP, 2023), I. Augustus Durham examines melancholy and genius in black culture, letters, and me...

Deborah Willis, "The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship" (NYU Press, 2021)

02 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Photography emerged in the 1840s in the United States, and it became a visual medium that documents the harsh realities of enslavement. Similarly, the...

Shannan Clark, "The Making of the American Creative Class: New York's Culture Workers and 20th-Century Consumer Capitalism" (Oxford UP, 2020)

02 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

During the middle decades of the twentieth century, the production of America’s consumer culture was centralized in New York to an extent unparallel...

Michael Newton, "It's a Wonderful Life" (British Film Institute, 2023)

02 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is one of the best-loved films of Classical Hollywood cinema, a story of despair and redemption in the aftermath...

Donna Tesiero, "A Revolutionary Woman: Elizabeth Freeman and the Abolition of Slavery in the North" (McFarland, 2024)

01 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At the end of the American Revolution, Elizabeth Freeman was an enslaved widow and mother living in Massachusetts. Hearing the words of the new Massac...

Kent Michael Shaw, "Missiology Reimagined: The Missions Theology of the Nineteenth-Century African American Missionary" (Pickwick, 2024)

01 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Missiology Reimagined: The Missions Theology of the Nineteenth-Century African American Missionary (Pickwick, 2024), Kent Michael Shaw I examines...

Nick Yablon, "Remembrance of Things Present: The Invention of the Time Capsule" (U Chicago Press, 2019)

31 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Remembrance of Things Present: The Invention of the Time Capsule (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Nick Yablon traces the birth of the time caps...

James Baldwin’s Use of Mechanisms of Defense in this Story “Going to Meet the Man”

31 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man” is a powerful short story that describes the life of Jesse, a 42-year-old white police officer whose exp...

Hugh Wilford, "The CIA: An Imperial History" (Basic Books, 2024)

31 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As World War II ended, the United States stood as the dominant power on the world stage. In 1947, to support its new global status, it created the CIA...

Crystal R. Sanders, "A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs" (UNC Press, 2024)

30 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs (UNC Press, 2024) tells the little-known story ...