New Books in the American South

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 ...

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...

Texas Book Festival 2024: November 16-17

08 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I spoke with Hannah Gabel, Literary Director of the Texas Book Festival. The Festival first began in 1995, and has since donated over $3.5 million to...

Aran Robert Shetterly, "Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City's Soul" (Amistad, 2024)

06 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On November 3, 1979, as activist Nelson Johnson assembled people for a march adjacent to Morningside Homes in Greensboro, North Carolina, gunshots ran...

Justene Hill Edwards, "Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank" (Norton, 2024)

03 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank (W. W. Norton, 2024), Justene Hill Edwards exposes how the rise and tragic fail...

Ashli Quesinberry Stokes and Wendy Atkins-Sayre, "Hungry Roots: How Food Communicates Appalachia's Search for Resilience" (U South Carolina Press, 2024)

31 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A journey through Southern Appalachia to explore the complex messages food communicates about the region. Depictions of Appalachian food culture and p...

Steven T. Katz, "The Holocaust and New World Slavery: A Comparative History, Volume 2" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

22 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Holocaust and New World Slavery: Volume 2 (Cambridge UP, 2019) second volume of the first, in-depth comparison of the Holocaust and new world sl...

Michael J. Alarid, "Hispano Bastion: New Mexican Power in the Age of Manifest Destiny, 1837-1860" (U New Mexico Press, 2022)

19 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Hispano Bastion: New Mexican Power in the Age of Manifest Destiny, 1837-1860 (University of New Mexico Press, 2023), historian Dr. Michael J. Ala...

Elizabeth Korver-Glenn and Sarah Mayorga, "A Good Reputation: How Residents Fight for an American Barrio" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

13 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Neighborhoods have the power to form significant parts of our worlds and identities. A neighborhood's reputation, however, doesn't always match up to ...

Steven T. Katz, "The Holocaust and New World Slavery: A Comparative History" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

30 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Holocaust and New World Slavery: A Comparative History (Cambridge UP, 2019) offers the first, in-depth comparison of the Holocaust and new world...

Wayne A. Wiegand, "In Silence or Indifference: Racism and Jim Crow Segregated Public School Libraries" (UP of Mississippi, 2024)

23 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Librarians around the country are currently on a battleground, defending their right to purchase and circulate books dealing with issues of race and s...

Anne Byrn, "Baking in the American South: 200 Recipes and Their Untold Stories" (Harper Celebrate, 2024)

17 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Witness the rise of Southern baking from the humble, make-do recipes of earlier generations to its place as one of the world's richest culinary tradit...

The Epic Story of America's Great Migration: A Talk by Isabel Wilkerson

07 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 2010, Isabel Wilkerson spoke to the Institute about the fifteen years she spent reporting and writing her book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic...

Karen Ordahl Kupperman, "Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught Between Cultures in Early Virginia" (NYU Press, 2019)

01 Sep 2024

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...

Edwin P Rutan II, "High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor" (Kent State UP, 2024)

31 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In his recent book, High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor (The Kent State University Press, 2024), Edwin P. Rutan II re...

James Barrera, "'We Want Better Education!': The 1960s Chicano Student Movement, School Walkouts, and the Quest for Educational Reform in South Texas" (Texas A&M UP, 2023)

25 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 'We Want Better Education!': The 1960s Chicano Student Movement, School Walkouts, and the Quest for Educational Reform in South Texas (Texas A&M ...

Edward Pearson, "The Enslaved and Their Enslavers: Power, Resistance, and Culture in South Carolina, 1670-1825" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

22 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In The Enslaved and Their Enslavers: Power, Resistance, and Culture in South Carolina, 1670-1825 (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023), Edward Pearson offers...

Crystal Wilkinson, "Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks" (Clarkson Potter, 2023)

14 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Poet Laureate of Kentucky Crystal Wilkinson’s food memoir, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Co...

Tore C. Olsson, "Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past" (St. Martin's Press, 2024)

06 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II, set in 1911 and 1899, are the most-played American history video games since The Oregon Trail. Beloved...

Nik Ribianszky, "Generations of Freedom: Gender, Movement, and Violence in Natchez, 1779-1865" (U Georgia Press, 2021)

03 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Generations of Freedom: Gender, Movement, and Violence in Natchez, 1779-1865 (U Georgia Press, 2021), Nik Ribianszky employs the lenses of gender...

Sheila Curran Bernard, "Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

28 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous - as was, according to ...

Donald L. Miller, "Vicksburg: Grant’s Campaign that Broke the Confederacy" (Simon and Schuster, 2019)

21 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Vicksburg: Grant’s Campaign that Broke the Confederacy (Simon & Schuster, 2019), Donald L. Miller explains in great detail how Grant ultimately s...

Toby Green, "A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution" (U Chicago Press, 2019)

15 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

All too often, the history of early modern Africa is told from the perspective of outsiders. In his book A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Ris...

Theresa McCulla, "Insatiable City: Food and Race in New Orleans" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

11 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A history of food in the Crescent City that explores race, power, social status, and labor. In Insatiable City: Food and Race in New Orleans (U Chic...

Kellie Carter Jackson, "We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance" (Seal Press, 2024)

10 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Black resistance to white supremacy is often reduced to a simple binary, between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolence and Malcolm X’s “by an...

Felicia Arriaga, "Behind Crimmigration: ICE, Law Enforcement, and Resistance in America" (UNC Press, 2023)

30 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In recent years, dozens of counties in North Carolina have partnered with federal law enforcement in the criminalization of immigration--what many hav...

Jeremy Schipper, "Denmark Vesey's Bible: The Thwarted Revolt That Put Slavery and Scripture on Trial" (Princeton UP, 2022)

27 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Denmark Vesey's Bible: The Thwarted Revolt that Put Slavery and Scripture on Trial (Princeton UP, 2022), Dr. Jeremy Schipper tells the story of...

Paula Marie Seniors, "Mae Mallory, the Monroe Defense Committee, and World Revolutions: African American Women Radical Activists" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

22 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Mae Mallory, the Monroe Defense Committee, and World Revolutions: African American Women Radical Activists (U Georgia Press, 2024) explores the signi...

Sally Stocksdale, "When Emancipation Came: The End of Enslavement on a Southern Plantation and a Russian Estate" (McFarland, 2022)

19 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Linked by declarations of emancipation within the same five-year period, two countries shared human rights issues on two distinct continents. In When...

Shannon Bontrager, "Death at the Edges of Empire: Fallen Soldiers, Cultural Memory, and the Making of an American Nation, 1863-1921" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)

11 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Hundreds of thousands of individuals perished in the epic conflict of the American Civil War. As battles raged and the specter of death and dying hung...

Financial Institutions and Enslavement

08 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this special episode, we talk to two authors about the role of financial institutions in enslavement. Sharon Ann Murphy, associate professor of his...

"Southern Humanities Review" magazine

06 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Justin Gardiner is the author of two nonfiction books and a collection of poetry. His most recent title is the book-length lyric essay Small Altars,...

Matthew D. Morrison, "Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States" (U California Press, 2024)

05 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States (U California Press, 2024) explores the sonic history of blackface minstrelsy and the ...

Robert Cochran, "Haunted Man's Report: Reading Charles Portis" (U Arkansas Press, 2024)

01 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Robert Cochran’s Haunted Man's Report: Reading Charles Portis (U Arkansas Press, 2024) is a pioneering study of the novels and other writings of ...

Stephen J. Silvia, "The UAW's Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Plants" (IRL Press, 2023)

29 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The UAW's Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Plants (IRL Press, 2023) is the first in-depth assessment of the United Auto W...

The History of Washington D.C., America’s New Rome

29 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Renowned Asia expert Michael Auslin is pivoting from Asia instead of towards it: today, he joins Madison's Notes to discuss his new project on the...

Dan Chapman, "A Road Running Southward: Following John Muir's Journey Through an Endangered Land" (Island Press, 2022)

11 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1867, John Muir set out on foot to explore the botanical wonders of the South, keeping a detailed journal of his adventures as he traipsed from Ken...

Kendra Y. Hamilton, "Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

10 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Kendra Y. Hamilton’s Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess (University of Georgia Press, 2024) is a literary and cultural history ...

Robert K. D. Colby, "An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South" (Oxford UP, 2024)

10 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Confederate States of America was born in defense of slavery and, after a four-year struggle to become an independent slaveholding republic, died ...

Crystal Wilkinson, "Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks" (Clarkson Potter, 2023)

02 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Years ago, when O. Henry Prize-winning writer Crystal Wilkinson was baking a jam cake, she felt her late grandmother’s presence. She soon realized t...

John H. Cable, "Southern Enclosure: Settler Colonialism and the Postwar Transformation of Mississippi" (UP of Kansas, 2023)

28 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Historians of the American South have come to consider the mechanization and consolidation of cotton farming—the “Southern enclosure movement”—...

Joseph M. Thompson, "Cold War Country: How Nashville's Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism" (UNC Press, 2024)

06 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Country music maintains a special, decades-long relationship to American military life, but these ties didn't just happen. This readable history revea...

Greg Jarrell, "Our Trespasses: White Churches and the Taking of American Neighborhoods" (Fortress Press, 2024)

03 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Greg Jarrell's book Our Trespasses: White Churches and the Taking of American Neighborhoods (Fortress Press, 2024) uncovers how race, geography, po...

Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt, "Boardinghouse Women: How Southern Keepers, Cooks, Nurses, Widows, and Runaways Shaped Modern America" (UNC Press, 2023)

31 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Boardinghouse Women: How Southern Keepers, Cooks, Nurses, Widows, and Runaways Shaped Modern America (UNC Press, 2023), Elizabeth Engelhardt argu...

Max Fraser, "Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class" (Princeton UP, 2023)

20 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, as many as eight million whites left the economically depressed southern countryside and migrated ...

Jonathan W. White, "Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)

15 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023), historian Jonat...

Whitney Nell Stewart, "This Is Our Home: Slavery and Struggle on Southern Plantations" (UNC Press, 2023)

15 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The cultural memory of plantations in the Old South has long been clouded by myth. A recent reckoning with the centrality of slavery to the US nationa...

Thomas Mareite, "Conditional Freedom: Free Soil and Fugitive Slaves from the U.S. South to Mexico's Northeast, 1803-1861" (Brill, 2024)

13 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

While the literature on slave flight in nineteenth-century North America has commonly focused on fugitive slaves escaping to the U.S. North and Canada...

Sean M. Kelley, "American Slavers: Merchants, Mariners, and the Transatlantic Commerce in Captives, 1644-1865" (Yale UP, 2023)

10 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A total of 305,000 enslaved Africans arrived in the New World aboard American vessels over a span of two hundred years as American merchants and marin...

Ilyon Woo, "Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom" (Simon and Schuster, 2023)

09 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ilyon Woo's Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom (Simon and Schuster, 2023) tells the remarkable true story of Ellen a...

Edda Fields-Black, "Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War" (Oxford UP, 2023)

07 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Most Americans know of Harriet Tubman's legendary life: escaping enslavement in 1849, she led more than 60 others out of bondage via the Underground R...

Kristine M. McCusker, "Just Enough to Put Him Away Decent: Death Care, Life Extension, and the Making of a Healthier South, 1900-1955" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

02 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Kristine M. McCusker's book Just Enough to Put Him Away Decent: Death Care, Life Extension, and the Making of a Healthier South, 1900-1955 (U Illino...

Neema Avashia, "Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place" (West Virginia UP, 2022)

25 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Neema Avashia is the daughter of Indian immigrants and was born and raised in southern West Virginia. She has been an educator and activist in the Bos...

Matthew Fox-Amato, "Exposing Slavery: Photography, Human Bondage, and the Birth of Modern Visual Politics in America" (Oxford UP, 2019)

24 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Shortly after its introduction, photography transformed the ways Americans made political arguments using visual images. In the mid-19th century, phot...

Gregory D. Smithers, "Native Southerners: Indigenous History from Origins to Removal" (U Oklahoma Press, 2019)

23 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In his book, Native Southerners: Indigenous History from Origins to Removal(University of Oklahoma Press, 2019), Dr. Gregory D. Smithers effectively a...

Norman Hill and Velma Murphy Hill, "Climbing the Rough Side of the Mountain: The Extraordinary Story of Love, Civil Rights, and Labor Activism" (Regalo Press, 2023)

17 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The remarkable story of a couple who came together during the civil rights movement and made fighting for equality and civil and workers' rights their...

Jeanne Theoharis, "The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North: Segregation and Struggle outside of the South" (NYU Press, 2019)

12 Feb 2024

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...

Todd Mildfelt and David D. Schafer, "Abolitionist of the Most Dangerous Kind: James Montgomery and His War on Slavery" (U Oklahoma Press, 2023)

05 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A controversial character largely known (as depicted in the movie Glory) as a Union colonel who led Black soldiers in the Civil War, James Montgomery...

Elizabeth Varon, "Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South" (Simon & Schuster, 2023)

04 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

An authoritative biography of the controversial Confederate general, who later embraced Reconstruction and became an outcast in the South. It was the ...

Ethel Morgan Smith, "Path to Grace: Reimagining the Civil Rights Movement" (UP of Mississippi, 2023)

26 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The civil rights movement is often defined narrowly, relegated to the 1950s and 1960s, and populated by such colossal figures as Martin Luther King Jr...

Joseph C. Russo, "Hard Luck and Heavy Rain: The Ecology of Stories in Southeast Texas" (Duke UP, 2022)

21 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Hard Luck and Heavy Rain: The Ecology of Stories in Southeast Texas (Duke UP, 2022) (Duke UP, 2023), Joseph C. Russo takes readers into the ever...

Scott Gac, "Born in Blood: Violence and the Making of America" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

18 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Scott Gac's Born in Blood: Violence and the Making of America (Cambridge UP, 2023) investigates one of history's most violent undertakings: The Unit...

Bradley R. Clampitt, "Lost Causes: Confederate Demobilization and the Making of Veteran Identity" (LSU Press, 2022)

18 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Lost Causes: Confederate Demobilization and the Making of Veteran Identity (LSU Press, 2022) by Dr. Bradley R. Clampitt is a groundbreaking analysis...

Aimee Loiselle, "Beyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class" (UNC Press, 2023)

17 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the late 1970s, Hollywood producers took the published biography of Crystal Lee Sutton, a white southern textile worker, and transformed it into a ...

Kami Fletcher and Ashley Towle, "Grave History: Death, Race, and Gender in Southern Cemeteries" (U Georgia Press, 2023)

11 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Kami Fletcher and Ashley Towle’s edited collection Grave History: Death, Race and Gender in Southern Cemeteries (University of Georgia Press, 2023...

Amy Von Lintel, "Georgia O'Keeffe's Wartime Texas Letters" (Texas A&M UP, 2020)

06 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1912, at age 24, Georgia O’Keeffe boarded a train in Virginia and headed west, to the prairies of the Texas Panhandle, to take a position as art ...

Laurent Dubois, “The Banjo: America’s African Instrument” (Harvard UP, 2016)

30 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Most scholars of popular music use songs, artists, and clubs as the key texts and sites in their exploration of the social, cultural, political, and e...

Claudia Smith Brinson, "Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina" (U South Carolina Press, 2020)

29 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina (U South Carolina Press, 2020), longtime journalist Claudia Smith Brinson deta...

Carl Rollyson, "The Life of William Faulkner: This Alarming Paradox, 1935-1962" (U Virginia Press, 2020)

25 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

By 1935 William Faulkner was well established as an author of critically praised novels, yet the low volume of his sales forced him to seek work in Ho...

Yael A. Sternhell, "War on Record: The Archive and the Afterlife of the Civil War" (Yale UP, 2023)

23 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Yael A. Sternhell's War on Record: The Archive and the Aftermath of the Civil War (Yale University Press, 2023) is a history of the United States' g...

Jack D. Noe, "Contesting Commemoration: The 1876 Centennial, Independence Day, and the Reconstruction-Era South" (LSU Press, 2021)

18 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Examining identity and nationalism in the Reconstruction-era South, Jack Noe’s Contesting Commemoration: The 1876 Centennial, Independence Day, and...

Michelle R. Scott, "T.O.B.A. Time: Black Vaudeville and the Theater Owners' Booking Association in Jazz-Age America" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

18 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Black vaudevillians and entertainers joked that T.O.B.A. stood for "tough on black artists." But the Theater Owner's Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) pl...

Rachel Stephens, "Hidden in Plain Sight: Concealing Enslavement in American Visual Culture" (U Arkansas Press, 2023)

01 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, abolitionists crafted a variety of visual messages about the plight of enslaved people, portraying the vio...

Edward L. Ayers, "American Visions: The United States, 1800-1860" (Norton, 2023)

25 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

American Visions: The United States, 1800-1860 (Norton, 2023) is a revealing history of the formative period when voices of dissent and innovation d...

William S. Kiser, "Illusions of Empire: The Civil War and Reconstruction in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021)

23 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The 19th-century Mexican-American borderlands were a complicated place. By the 1860s, Confederates, Americans, Mexicans, French, and various Native so...

Jennifer E. Brooks, "Resident Strangers: Immigrant Laborers in New South Alabama" (LSU Press, 2022)

12 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Immigrant laborers who came to the New South in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries found themselves poised uncomfortably between white ...

Cecilia Márquez, "Making the Latino South: A History of Racial Formation" (UNC Press, 2023)

12 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The presence of Latinx people in the American South has long confounded the region's persistent racial binaries. In Making the Latino South: A Histor...

Matthew J. Clavin, "Symbols of Freedom: Slavery and Resistance Before the Civil War" (NYU Press, 2023)

07 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the early United States, anthems, flags, holidays, monuments, and memorials were powerful symbols of an American identity that helped unify a divid...

Greg Beets and Richard Whymark, "A Curious Mix of People: The Underground Scene of '90s Austin" (U Texas Press, 2023)

05 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ask anyone outside of Austin what they know about the city and chances are the first thing they'll mention is the music. While the Armadillo Era has b...

Drew A. Swanson, "A Man of Bad Reputation: The Murder of John Stephens and the Contested Landscape of North Carolina Reconstruction" (UNC Press, 2023)

04 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Five years after the Civil War, North Carolina Republican state senator John W. Stephens was found murdered inside the Caswell County Courthouse. Step...

Nikki M. Taylor, "Brooding over Bloody Revenge: Enslaved Women's Lethal Resistance" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

28 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From the colonial through the antebellum era, enslaved women in the US used lethal force as the ultimate form of resistance. By amplifying their voice...

Marisel C. Moreno, "Crossing Waters: Undocumented Migration in Hispanophone Caribbean and Latinx Literature and Art" (U Texas Press, 2022)

27 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Debates over the undocumented migration of Latin Americans invariably focus on the southern US border, but most migrants never cross that arbitrary li...

Danielle N. Boaz, "Voodoo: The History of a Racial Slur" (Oxford UP, 2023)

21 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Coined in the middle of the nineteenth century, the term "voodoo" has been deployed largely by people in the U.S. to refer to spiritual practices--rea...

Nick Tabor, "Africatown: America's Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created" (St. Martin's Press, 2023)

16 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An evocative and epic story, Nick Tabor's Africatown: America's Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created (St. Martin's Press, 2023) charts the f...

Kristen Green, "The Devil's Half Acre: The Untold Story of How One Woman Liberated the South's Most Notorious Slave Jail" (Seal Press, 2022)

14 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The inspiring true story of an enslaved woman who liberated an infamous slave jail and transformed it into one of the nation’s first HBCUs. In The ...

Alejandra Dubcovsky, "Talking Back: Native Women and the Making of the Early South" (Yale UP, 2023)

13 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Historian Alejandra Dubcovsky tells a story of war, slavery, loss, remembrance, and the women whose resilience and resistance transformed the colonial...

Robert Greene and Tyler D. Parry, "Invisible No More: The African American Experience at the University of South Carolina" (U South Carolina Press, 2021)

13 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Since its founding in 1801, African Americans have played an integral, if too often overlooked, role in the history of the University of South Carolin...

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, "The Vice President's Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn" (UNC Press, 2023)

10 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Vice President's Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn (UNC Press, 2023), award-winning historian Amrita Chakrabarti Myers has recovered...

Scott Creney and Brigette Adair Herron, "The Story of the B-52s: Neon Side of Town" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

07 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Story of the B-52s: Neon Side of Town (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) is the first critical history of one of the most legendary and influential band...

Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson, "Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution" (Polity, 2023)

04 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In their remarkable new book Slavery, Capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution (Polity, 2023), Professor Maxine Berg and Professor Pat Hudson “fo...

Rebecca J. Fraser, "Black Female Intellectuals in 19th Century America: Born to Bloom Unseen?" (Routledge, 2022)

01 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Drawing on letters, personal testimony, works of art, novels, and historic Black newspapers, this book is an interdisciplinary exploration of Black wo...

Dylan C. Penningroth, "Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights" (Liveright, 2023)

26 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A prize-winning scholar draws on astonishing new research to demonstrate how Black people used the law to their advantage long before the Civil Rights...

Laura F. Edwards, "The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South" (UNC Press, 2009)

25 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Do individuals have the right to “keep and bear” arms? Do “the people” have any collective rights to public safety? Now that the United States...

Diane Flynt, "Wild, Tamed, Lost, Revived: The Surprising Story of Apples in the South" (UNC Press, 2023)

20 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For anyone who's ever picked an apple fresh from the tree or enjoyed a glass of cider, writer and orchardist Diane Flynt offers a new history of the a...

Christopher F. Zurn, "Splitsville USA: A Democratic Argument for Breaking Up the United States" (Routledge, 2023)

16 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

At the end of the day, I have faith in the wisdom of democracy: the idea that good political solutions only arise from widely dispersed discussion, de...

Robert F. Moss, "The Lost Southern Chefs: A History of Commercial Dining in the Nineteenth-Century South" (U Georgia Press, 2022)

13 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In recent years, food writers and historians have begun to retell the story of southern food. Heirloom ingredients and traditional recipes have been r...

A Better Way to Buy Books

12 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has alre...

Padraic X. Scanlan, "Slave Empire: How Slavery Built Modern Britain" (Robinson, 2021)

11 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The British empire, in sentimental myth, was more free, more just and more fair than its rivals. But this claim that the British empire was 'free' and...

Race and Electrical Infrastructure in the Jim Crow South

11 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Conor Harrison, Associate Professor of Geography and the School of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at the University of South Carolina, talks about his ...

Isabel Machado, "Carnival in Alabama: Marked Bodies and Invented Traditions in Mobile" (UP of Mississippi, 2023)

10 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Mobile is simultaneously a typical and unique city in the postwar United States. It was a quintessential boomtown during World War II. That prosperity...