New Books in American Studies
Episodes
Mike Madrid, "The Latino Century: How America's Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy" (Simon and Schuster, 2024)
30 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2020, Latinos became the second largest ethnic voting group in the country. They make up the largest plurality of residents in the most populous st...
Susanna Ashton, "A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin" (New Press, 2024)
29 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In December of 1850, a faculty wife in Brunswick, Maine, named Harriet Beecher Stowe hid a fugitive slave in her house. While John Andrew Jackson stay...
Farina King, "Diné dóó Gáamalii: Navajo Latter-day Saint Experiences in the Twentieth Century" (UP of Kansas, 2023)
26 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this deeply personal account, University of Oklahoma associate professor of Native American Studies Dr. Farina King describes the history and prese...
Lisa Sheryl Jacobson. "Intoxicating Pleasures: The Reinvention of Wine, Beer, and Whiskey After Prohibition" (U California Press, 2024)
25 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In popular memory the repeal of US Prohibition in 1933 signaled alcohol’s decisive triumph in a decades-long culture war. But as Dr. Lisa Jacobson r...
Vincent Haddad, "The Detroit Genre: Race, Dispossession, and Resilience in American Literature and Film, 1967-2023" (Lever Press, 2024)
24 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Detroit has an essential relationship to genre in American literature and popular culture. The contemporary formations of the suburban sitcom, the pos...
Jess A. Goldberg, "Abolition Time: Grammars of Law, Poetics of Justice" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
24 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How can Black Atlantic literature challenge conventions and redefine literary scholarship? Abolition Time: Grammars of Law, Poetics of Justice (U Min...
Jeremy Dauber, "American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond" (Algonquin Books, 2024)
22 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the acclaimed author of American Comics comes a sweeping and entertaining narrative that details the rise and enduring grip of horror in Americ...
Scott Huver, "Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, Sin, & Scandal in 90210" (Post Hill Press, 2024)
22 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, Sin, & Scandal in 90210 (Post Hill Press, 2024) explores the city’s true crime history, delving deep inside cases that ...
Linda M. Clemmons, "Unrepentant Dakota Woman: Angelique Renville & the Struggle for Indigenous Identity, 1845-1876" (SDHS Press, 2023)
22 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For much of her life, Angelique Renville had decisions made for her. Where to live, who to live with, where to attend school, what to do with her land...
Emily Mitchell-Eaton, "New Destinations of Empire: Mobilities, Racial Geographies, and Citizenship in the Transpacific United States" (U Georgia Press, 2024)
22 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1986 the Compact of Free Association marked the formal end of U.S. colonialism in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, while simultaneously re-ent...
Joseph McBride, "George Cukor's People: Acting for a Master Director" (Columbia UP, 2024)
21 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The director of classic films such as Sylvia Scarlett, The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, Adam's Rib, A Star Is Born, and My Fair Lady, George Cu...
Lindsay Weinberg, "Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)
21 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), Lindsay Weinberg evaluates how this latest era ...
Free Inquiry in the Academy and Beyond
18 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Madison’s Notes, we’re joined by Professors Amna Khalid and Jeff Snyder for a thought-provoking discussion on the state of fre...
Stephen Jackson, "The Patchwork of World History in Texas High Schools" (Routledge, 2022)
18 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Patchwork of World History in Texas High Schools (Routledge, 2022) traces the historical development of the World History course as it has been t...
Tom Clavin, "Bandit Heaven: The Hole-in-the-Wall Gangs and the Final Chapter of the Wild West" (St. Martin's Press, 2024)
17 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From multiple New York Times bestselling author Tom Clavin comes the thrilling true story of the most infamous hangout for bandits, thieves and murder...
Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler, "Partisan Nation: The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
17 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
American democracy is in trouble. At the heart of the contemporary crisis is a mismatch between America's Constitution and today's nationalized, parti...
Tom Jenks, "James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues" (Oxford UP, 2024)
17 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues (Oxford University Press, 2024), Tom Jenks follows a scene-by-scene, sometimes line-by-line, discussion of the patt...
Bob Kuska, "Balls of Confusion: Pro Baskelball Goes to War (1965-1970)" (From Way Downtown, 2024)
17 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Balls of Confusion: Pro Basketball Goes to War(1965-70) is the first of a two-part story about one of the most transformative events inpro basketball...
Brian Martin, "From Underground Railroad to Rebel Refuge: Canada and the Civil War" (ECW Press, 2022)
16 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Despite all we know about the Civil War, its causes, battles, characters, issues, impacts, and legacy, few books have explored Canada’s role in the ...
Postscript: Violence, Consent, and Coercion in American Football
16 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, the press focused on what the press repeatedly characterized as an “ugly” fight between American college football players that broke ou...
Dianne Ashton and Melissa R. Klapper, "The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai" (NYU Press, 2024)
15 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Emma Mordecai lived an unusual life. She was Jewish when Jews comprised less than 1 percent of the population of the Old South, and unmarried in a cul...
Oliver Rosales, "Civil Rights in Bakersfield: Segregation and Multiracial Activism in the Central Valley" (U Texas Press, 2024)
14 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Civil Rights in Bakersfield: Segregation and Multiracial Activism in the Central Valley (University of Texas Press, 2024), Oliver Rosales uncover...
Carrie M. Lane, "More Than Pretty Boxes: How the Rise of Professional Organizing Shows Us the Way We Work Isn't Working" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
14 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This study of organizing and decluttering professionals helps us understand—and perhaps alleviate—the overwhelming demands society places on our t...
Robert Danisch, "Rhetorical Democracy: How Communication Shapes Political Culture" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024)
14 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Rhetorical Democracy: How Communication Shapes Political Culture (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024) offers an explanation and diagnosis of the current st...
Leslie Beth Ribovich, "Without a Prayer: Religion and Race in New York City Public Schools" (NYU Press, 2024)
13 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The processes of secularization and desegregation were among the two most radical transformations of the American public school system in all its hist...
Melissa B. Jacoby, "Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal" (New Press, 2024)
13 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In theory, bankruptcy in America exists to cancel or restructure debts for people and companies that have way too many--a safety valve designed to pro...
Barbara A. Biesecker, "Reinventing World War II: Popular Memory in the Rise of the Ethnonationalist State" (Penn State Press, 2024)
13 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
By the 1970s, World War II had all but disappeared from US popular culture. But beginning in the mid-eighties it reemerged with a vengeance, and for n...
Beth Kaplan, "Finding the Jewish Shakespeare: The Life and Legacy of Jacob Gordin" (Syracuse UP, 2007)
12 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Born of an Anglican mother and a Jewish father who disdained religion, Kaplan knew little of her Judaic roots and less about her famed great-grandfath...
Ana Lucia Araujo, "Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
12 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, more than twelve million enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas in cramped, inhumane ...
Holly M. Karibo, "Rehab on the Range: A History of Addiction and Incarceration in the American West" (U Texas Press, 2024)
11 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1929, the United States government approved two ground-breaking and controversial drug addiction treatment programs. At a time when fears about a s...
S4E18 Who Cares? A Conversation with Emily Kenway
11 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Emily Kenway shares insights from her powerful new book Who Cares: The Hidden Crisis of Caregiving, and How We Solve It (Seal Press...
Jeremy Brecher, "The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy" (U Illinois Press, 2024)
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy (U Illinois Press, 2024) offers a visionary program ...
Rebecca Brenner Graham, "Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins's Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany" (Citadel Press, 2025)
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
She was the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, the longest-serving Labor Secretary, and an architect of the New Deal. Yet beyond these ce...
Caroline Winterer, "How the New World Became Old: The Deep Time Revolution in America" (Princeton UP, 2024)
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In How the New World Became Old: The Deep Time Revolution in America (Princeton UP, 2024), Caroline Winterer, William Robertson Coe Professor of His...
Aisha M Beliso-de Jesús, "Excited Delirium: Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease" (Duke UP, 2024)
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1980, Charles Wetli---a Miami-based medical examiner and self-proclaimed “cult expert” of Afro-Caribbean religions---identified what he called ...
Susan Gaunt Stearns. "Empire of Commerce: The Closing of the Mississippi and the Opening of Atlantic Trade" (U Virginia Press, 2024)
09 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Shortly after the ratification of the US Constitution in 1789, twenty-two-year-old Andrew Jackson pledged his allegiance to the king of Spain. Prior t...
Casey B. K. Dominguez, "Commander in Chief: Partisanship, Nationalism, and the Reconstruction of Congressional War Powers" (UP of Kansas, 2024)
09 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The balance of power between the United States Congress and the president is particularly contested when it comes to war powers. The U.S. Constitution...
F. K. Clementi, "South of My Dreams: Finding My American Home, A Memoir" (U South Carolina Press, 2024)
09 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
South of My Dreams: Finding My American Home, A Memoir (U South Carolina Press, 2024) by F. K. Clementi follows the adventures and misadventures of F...
Stacy Torres, "At Home in the City: Growing Old in Urban America" (U California Press, 2025)
08 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
To understand elders' experiences of aging in place, sociologist Stacy Torres spent five years with longtime New York City residents as they coped wit...
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, "Did It Happen Here?: Perspectives on Fascism and America" (W. W. Norton, 2024)
08 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I’m speaking with Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins about the new, edited volume, Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America (W.W. Norto...
Victoria Sturtevant, "It's All in the Delivery: Pregnancy in American Film and Television Comedy" (U Texas Press, 2024)
08 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Victoria Sturtevant's It’s All in the Delivery: Pregnancy in American Film and Television Comedy (University of Texas Press, 2024) is about how c...
Deondra Rose, "The Power of Black Excellence: HBCUs and the Fight for American Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2024)
07 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From their founding, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) educated as many as 90 percent of Black college students in the United State...
Jonathan Conlin, "The Met: A History of a Museum and Its People" (Columbia UP, 2024)
07 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world’s greatest cultural institutions. Its holdings encompass a vast range—including p...
Carrie N. Baker, "Abortion Pills: US History and Politics" (Amherst College Press, 2024)
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this compelling and informative interview, Carrie N. Baker discusses her newest book, Abortion Pills: US History and Politics (Amherst College Pr...
That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s book is: That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America (Bloomsbury, 2024) by Amanda Jones, which offers her story of life as ...
Helena Hansen et al., "Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America" (U California Press, 2023)
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The phrase "racial capitalism" was used by Cedric Robinson to describe an economy of wealth accumulation extracted from cheap labor, organized by ra...
Caroline Alexander, "Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World" (Viking, 2024)
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During the Second World War, FDR promised thousands of tons of US material to Chiang Kai Shek in order to keep China in the war and keep Japan distrac...
Matthew Gardner Kelly, "Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequity" (Cornell UP, 2024)
04 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequity (Cornell UP, 2024), Matthew Gardner Kelly takes aim at the racial an...
Laura C. Chávez-Moreno, "How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America" (Harvard Education Press, 2024)
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America (Harvard Education Press, 2025), Dr. Laura C. Chávez-Moreno uncovers the process...
Rachel Hope Cleves, "Lustful Appetites: An Intimate History of Good Food and Wicked Sex" (Polity, 2024)
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We take the edible trappings of flirtation for granted: chocolate covered strawberries and romance, oysters on the half shell and desire, the eggplant...
Terry H. Anderson, "Why the Nineties Matter" (Oxford UP, 2024)
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nearly a quarter century after the decade of the 1990s ended, what really mattered in America during that era is finally coming into focus. Many of th...
Voices Part 1: Hut-Hut-Hike
02 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this first episode of a three-part series called Voices, we’re listening to the sound of American football—specifically the role of voices in ...
Corey Brettschneider, "The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It" (W. W. Norton, 2024)
02 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2024, people around the world focus on an American president who calls for the imprisonment of critics, spreads the culture of white supremacy, and...
Amy J. Binder and Jeffrey L. Kidder, "The Channels of Student Activism: How the Left and Right Are Winning (and Losing) in Campus Politics Today" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
02 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The past six years have been marked by a contentious political atmosphere that has touched every arena of public life, including higher education. Tho...
Sidney A. Shapiro and Joseph P. Tomain, "How Government Built America" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
01 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How Government Built America (Cambridge UP, 2024) challenges growing, anti-government rhetoric by highlighting the role government has played in par...
Karen Lystra, "Love and the Working Class: The Inner Worlds of Nineteenth Century Americans" (Oxford UP, 2024)
30 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Love and the Working Class: The Inner Worlds of Nineteenth Century Americans (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Karen Lystra is a unique look at ...
Olivia Chilcote, "Unrecognized in California: Federal Acknowledgment and the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians" (U Washington Press, 2024)
30 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
California has more unrecognized Native tribes than any other state - what led to this strange state of affairs, and what does this mean in practice? ...
Mary Ellen Curtin, "She Changed the Nation: Barbara Jordan's Life and Legacy in Black Politics" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
28 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During her keynote speech at the 1976 Democratic Party convention, Barbara Jordan of Texas stood before a rapt audience and reflected on where America...
Trump’s Mass Deportation Plan: Can He Really Do It?
28 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kitty Calavita, Chancellor’s Professor Emerita of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine, discuss the historical conte...
Daniel J. Mallinson and A. Lee Hannah, "Green Rush: The Rise of Medical Marijuana in the United States" (NYU Press, 2024)
28 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Political Scientists Dan Mallinson and Lee Hannah, both experts on state-level politics and the policy making process, have a new book that focuses on...
Yii-Jan Lin, "Immigration and Apocalypse: How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration" (Yale UP, 2024)
28 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The metaphor of New Jerusalem has long been used to justify dueling narratives of America as the land of freedom with open gates and the walled city...
Disabled Ecologies: Lessons From a Wounded Desert
27 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Deep below the ground in Tucson, Arizona, lies an aquifer forever altered by the detritus of a postwar Superfund site. Disabled Ecologies: Lessons Fr...
Sabrina Strings, "The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance" (Beacon Press, 2024)
27 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
More men than ever are refusing loving partnerships and commitment, and instead seeking out “situationships.” When these men deign to articulate w...
W. Paul Reeve, et al., "This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah" (Oxford UP, 2024)
26 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On July 22, 1847, a group of about forty refugees entered the Salt Lake Valley. Among them were three enslaved men, two of whom shared the religion, M...
Osamah F. Khalil, "A World of Enemies: America's Wars at Home and Abroad from Kennedy to Biden" (Harvard UP, 2024)
26 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A sobering account of how the United States trapped itself in endless wars—abroad and at home—and what it might do to break free. Over the past ha...
David Suisman, "Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America's Soldiers" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
25 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Instrument of War: Music and the Making of the America's Soldiers (University of Chicago Press, 2024), David Suisman shows that t...
Daniel S. Goldberg, "Tackle Football and Traumatic Brain Injuries: Law, Ethics, and Public Health" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)
25 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Football is the national game in the United States – and many families and friends bond over their love of the sport. While few people play professi...
Kevin B. Smith, "The Jailer's Reckoning: How Mass Incarceration Is Damaging America" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)
24 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How does a Black man in Austin get sent to prison on a 70-year sentence for stealing a tuna sandwich, likely costing Texas taxpayers roughly a million...
Elizabeth Garner Masarik, "The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State" (U Georgia Press, 2024)
24 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State (University of Georgia Press, 2024), Dr. Elizabeth Garner Masarik ...
Beverly Tomek and Matthew J. Hetrick, "New Directions in the Study of African American Recolonization" (UP of Florida, 2017)
24 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
New Directions in the Study of African American Recolonization (UP of Florida, 2017) examines the movement to resettle black Americans in Africa, an ...
Katherine C. Epstein, "Analog Superpowers: How Twentieth-Century Technology Theft Built the National Security State" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
24 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At the beginning of the twentieth century, two British inventors, Arthur Pollen and Harold Isherwood, became fascinated by a major military question: ...
Liliana M. Naydan, "Flat-World Fiction: Digital Humanity in Early Twenty-First-Century America" (U Georgia Press, 2021)
23 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Flat-World Fiction: Digital Humanity in Early Twenty-First-Century America (University of Georgia Press, 2021) Dr. Liliana Naydan analyses representa...
Lauren D. Olsen, "Curricular Injustice: How U.S. Medical Schools Reproduce Inequalities" (Columbia UP, 2024)
23 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Medical schools have increasingly incorporated the humanities and social sciences into their teaching, seeking to make future physicians more empathet...
Travis A. Weisse, "Health Freaks: America's Diet Champions and the Specter of Chronic Illness" (UNC Press, 2024)
23 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Health Freaks: America's Diet Champions and the Specter of Chronic Illness (University of North Carolina Press, 2024) Dr. Travis A. Weisse tells ...
138c Herbert Hoover gave us Woody Guthrie (with David Cunningham)
23 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the final episode of What Just Happened, a Recall This Book experiment. In it you will hear three friends of RTB reacting to the 2024 e...
Jordan S. Carroll, "Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
22 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Fascists such as Richard Spencer interpret science fiction films and literature as saying only white men have the imagination required to invent a hig...
Timothy E. Nelson, "Blackdom, New Mexico: The Significance of the Afro-Frontier, 1900-1930" (Texas Tech UP, 2023)
22 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
By most accounts, Blackdom, New Mexico existed from 1900-1930. However, as historian and artist Dr. Timothy Nelson argues in his new book, the Black ...
138b Ronald Reagan Gave Us Punk Rock (with Vincent Brown)
22 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to What Just Happened, a Recall This Book experiment. In it you will hear three friends of RTB reacting to the 2024 election and discussin...
Joan L. Bryant, "Reluctant Race Men: Black Challenges to the Practice of Race in Nineteenth-century America" (Oxford UP, 2024)
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Activists in the earliest Black antebellum reform endeavors contested and deprecated the concept of race. Attacks on the logic and ethics of dividing,...
Debra Bruno, "A Hudson Valley Reckoning: Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in My Dutch American Family" (Cornell UP, 2024)
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A Hudson Valley Reckoning: Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in My Dutch American Family (Cornell University Press, 2024) tells the ...
Peter Singer, "Consider the Turkey" (Princeton UP, 2024)
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A turkey is the centerpiece of countless Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Yet most of us know almost nothing about today’s specially bred, commer...
Christopher Bell, "Walking East Harlem: A Neighborhood Experience" (Rutgers UP, 2024)
20 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
They call it Spanish Harlem or sometimes just El Barrio. But for over a century, East Harlem has been a melting pot of many ethnic groups, including P...
Benjamin Barson, "Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons" (Wesleyan UP, 2024)
19 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons (Wesleyan UP, 2024) recasts the birth of jazz, unearthing vibrant narratives of New Orle...
Carrie J. Preston, "Complicit Participation: The Liberal Audience for Theater of Racial Justice" (Oxford UP, 2024)
19 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this incisive critique of the ways performances of allyship can further entrench white privilege, author Carrie J. Preston analyses her own complic...
Domingo Morel, "Developing Scholars: Race, Politics, and the Pursuit of Higher Education" (Oxford UP, 2023)
19 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past fifty years, debates concerning race and college admissions have focused primarily on the policy of affirmative action at elite institut...
Andrew Stone Higgins, "Higher Education for All: Racial Inequality, Cold War Liberalism, and the California Master Plan" (UNC Press, 2023)
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education remains to this day the largest and most ambitious attempt to provide free, universal college edu...
Laura F. Edwards, "Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States" (Oxford UP, 2022)
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What can dresses, bedlinens, waistcoats, pantaloons, shoes, and kerchiefs tell us about the legal status of the least powerful members of American soc...
Connie DeNave, "The Image Maker: Shattering Rock and Roll's Glass" (2023)
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Image Maker: Shattering Rock and Roll's Glass Ceiling (2023), Connie DeNave shares her experiences in the public relations world during the...
D. Andrew Johnson, "Enslaved Native Americans and the Making of Colonial South Carolina" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1708, the governor of South Carolina responded to a request from London to provide a detailed account of the colony's population. Among the groups ...
Ian Miller, "Self-Esteem: An American History" (Polity Press, 2024)
17 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
By the end of the twentieth century, the idea of self-esteem had become enormously influential. A staggering amount of psychological research and self...
Karen M. Dunak, "Our Jackie: Public Claims on a Private Life" (NYU Press, 2024)
17 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis became First Lady of the United States over sixty years ago, she stepped into the public spotlight. Although Jackie is...
Deborah Parker, "Becoming Belle Da Costa Greene: A Visionary Librarian Through Her Letters" (Villa I Tatti, 2024)
16 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Becoming Belle da Costa Greene: A Visionary Librarian through Her Letters (Harvard University Press, October 2024), Deborah Parker chronicles th...
Risk
16 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of High Theory, Faye Raquel Gleisser tells us about Risk. A calculable danger in economics, athletics, sociology, or healthcare, risk ...
Erin Lee Mock, "Changed Men: Veterans in American Popular Culture after World War II" (U Virginia Press, 2024)
16 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Millions of GIs returned from overseas in 1945. A generation of men who had left their families and had learned to kill and to quickly dispatch sexual...
D. M. Giangreco, "Truman and the Bomb: The Untold Story" (Potomac Books, 2023)
15 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many myths have grown up around President Harry S. Truman’s decision to use nuclear weapons against Imperial Japan. In destroying these myths, D. M....
Agustina Paglayan, "Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education" (Princeton UP, 2024)
15 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How the expansion of primary education in the West emerged not from democratic ideals but from the state's desire to control its citizens. Nearly ever...
We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance
14 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s book is: We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance (Seal Press, 2024) by Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson. Black resistance to white sup...
Postscript: Reflections on the 2024 American Presidential Election
14 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many pundits are rushing to judgement – claiming to identify the “one” reason that Donald Trump won or Kamala Harris lost the 2024 Presidential ...
The Disappearance and Return of Inequality Studies in Economics
13 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is episode three Cited Podcast’s new season, the Use & Abuse of Economic Expertise. This season tells stories of the political and scholarl...
Sara Glass, "Kissing Girls on Shabbat: A Memoir" (Atria, 2024)
13 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Growing up in the Hasidic community of Brooklyn’s Borough Park, Sara Glass knew one painful truth: what was expected of her and what she desperately...