New Books in the American South

Jeanne K. Firth, "Feeding New Orleans: Celebrity Chefs and Reimagining Food Justice" (UNC Press, 2023)

09 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, many high-profile chefs in New Orleans pledged to help their city rebound from the flooding. Several formed their own...

Kidada E. Williams, "I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

03 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The story of Reconstruction is often told from the perspective of the politicians, generals, and journalists whose accounts claim an outsized place in...

Kathryn J. Edin et al., "The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America" (Mariner Books, 2023)

01 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A sweeping and surprising new understanding of extreme poverty in America from the authors of the acclaimed $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in ...

Ana Lucia Araujo, "Museums and Atlantic Slavery" (Routledge, 2021)

29 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ana Lucia Araujo's book Museums and Atlantic Slavery (Routledge, 2021) explores how slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, and enslaved people are repre...

Mbaye Lo and Carl W. Ernst, "I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar Ibn Said's America" (UNC Press, 2023)

25 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Carl Ernst’s and Mbaye Lo’s new book I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar Ibn Said's America (UNC Press, 2023) is a fascin...

Christopher C. Sellers, "Race and the Greening of Atlanta: Inequality, Democracy, and Environmental Politics in an Ascendant Metropolis" (U Georgia Press, 2023)

21 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Race and the Greening of Atlanta: Inequality, Democracy, and Environmental Politics in an Ascendant Metropolis (U Georgia Press, 2023) turns an envi...

Jennifer Cearns, "Circulating Culture: Transnational Cuban Networks of Exchange" (UP of Florida, 2023)

20 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

“In this subtle and beautifully crafted ethnography, Cearns invites us to travel through the many Cuban circuits of exchange that give shape to muta...

Carl Van Ness, "The Making of Florida's Universities: Public Higher Education at the Turn of the Twentieth Century" (UP of Florida, 2023)

17 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Making of Florida's Universities: Public Higher Education at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (UP of Florida, 2023), Carl Van Ness describes...

Bobby J. Smith II, "Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement" (UNC Press, 2023)

16 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Bobby J. Smith II's book Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (UNC Press, 2023 )unearths a food story burie...

Jennifer Ritterhouse, "Discovering the South: One Man's Travels through a Changing America in the 1930s" (UNC Press, 2017)

16 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

During the Great Depression, the American South was not merely "the nation's number one economic problem," as President Franklin Roosevelt declared. I...

Linda Skeens, "Linda Skeens' Blue Ribbon Kitchen: Recipes & Tips from America's Favorite County Fair Champion" (83 Press, 2023)

08 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Appalachian grandmother Linda Skeens became an internet sensation in the summer of 2022 after taking home dozens of blue ribbons in canning, baking, a...

Driving While Black: African Americans and the Automobile

07 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Gretchen Sorin, Director and Distinguished Professor of the Cooperstown Graduate Program at the State University of New York - Oneonta, talks about he...

Thurka Sangaramoorthy, "Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America" (UNC Press, 2023)

03 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America (UNC Press, 2023) examines the ways immigrants, mainly from Latin America and the Caribbe...

Blair Kelley, "Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class" (LIveright, 2023)

31 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the United States, the stoicism and importance of the “working class” is part of the national myth. The term is often used to conjure the contr...

Finola O'Kane, "Landscape Design and Revolution in Ireland and the United States, 1688-1815" (Paul Mellon Centre, 2023)

30 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Landscape Design and Revolution in Ireland and the United States, 1688-1815 (Yale University Press, 2023) by Dr. Finola O’Kane explores how revolut...

Erica Abrams Locklear, "Appalachia on the Table: Representing Mountain Food and People" (U Georgia Press, 2023)

28 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When her mother passed along a cookbook made and assembled by her grandmother, Erica Abrams Locklear thought she knew what to expect. But rather than ...

Rebecca Sharpless, "Grain and Fire: A History of Baking in the American South" (UNC Press, 2022)

25 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

While a luscious layer cake may exemplify the towering glory of southern baking, like everything about the American South, baking is far more complica...

African American Women on the American Railroad: A Conversation with Miriam Thaggert

17 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Miriam Thaggert, Professor of English at the University of Buffalo, talks about her book, Riding Jane Crow: African American Women on the American Ra...

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

15 Jul 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...

Thomas A. Castillo, "Working in the Magic City: Moral Economy in Early Twentieth-Century Miami" (U Illinois Press, 2022)

06 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the early twentieth century, Miami cultivated an image of itself as a destination for leisure and sunshine free from labor strife. In Working in ...

Sarah L. Hall, "Sown in the Stars: Planting by the Signs" (UP of Kentucky, 2023)

03 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to p...

Kathryn Olivarius, "Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom" (Harvard UP, 2022)

10 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Disease is thought to be a great leveler of humanity, but in antebellum New Orleans acquiring immunity from the scourge of yellow fever magnified the ...

Kidada E. Williams, "I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

02 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The story of Reconstruction is often told from the perspective of the politicians, generals, and journalists whose accounts claim an outsized place in...

Joel Lafayette Fletcher III, "With Hawks and Angels: Episodes from a Southern Life" (UP of Mississippi, 2023)

28 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of Queer Voices I talk to Joel Lafayette Fletcher III about his book With Hawks and Angels: Episodes from a Southern Life (UP of Mis...

Ed Mitchell et al., "Ed Mitchell's Barbeque" (Ecco, 2023)

26 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ed Mitchell’s journey in the barbeque business began in 1991 with a lunch for his mama, who was grieving the loss of Ed’s father. Ed drove to the ...

Rebecca Brückmann, "Massive Resistance and Southern Womanhood: White Women, Class, and Segregation" (U Georgia Press, 2021)

22 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Massive Resistance and Southern Womanhood: White Women, Class, and Segregation (U Georgia Press, 2021) offers a comparative sociocultural and spatia...

Book Talk 60: Cleo McNellly Kearns on Mark Twain’s "Huckleberry Finn"

20 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Celebrated, censored, canceled: Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn cannot be avoided. William Faulkner called Twain “the father of Amer...

The Life and Legacy of Robert E. Lee: A Conversation with Allen C. Guelzo

16 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why should we study Robert E. Lee? Why did he make the fateful decision to betray his country? How should we judge Robert E. Lee? Allen C. Guelzo, Dir...

Bill Steigerwald, "30 Days a Black Man: The Forgotten Story That Exposed the Jim Crow South" (Lyons Press, 2017)

13 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The dangerous, trailblazing work of a white journalist and black leader who struck a shocking early blow against legal segregation In 1948, most white...

Kyla Sommers, "When the Smoke Cleared: The 1968 Rebellion and the Unfinished Battle for Civil Rights in the Nation's Capital" (New Press, 2023)

08 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In April 1968, following the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., a wave of uprisings swept across America. None was more visible—or resulted in more p...

Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, "Between Heaven and Russia: Religious Conversion and Political Apostasy in Appalachia" (Fordham UP, 2022)

08 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How is religious conversion transforming American democracy? In one corner of Appalachia, a group of American citizens has embraced the Russian Orthod...

Chad E. Pearson, "Capital's Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century" (UNC Press, 2022)

02 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, employers, government officials, journalists, and powerful individuals deployed a variety o...

Charles Reagan Wilson, "The Southern Way of Life: Meanings of Culture and Civilization in the American South" (UNC Press, 2023)

29 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How does one begin to understand the idea of a distinctive southern way of life--a concept as enduring as it is disputed? In this examination of the A...

Tatiana D. McInnis, "To Tell a Black Story of Miami" (UP of Florida, 2022)

28 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In To Tell a Black Story of Miami (UP of Florida, 2022), Tatiana McInnis examines literary and cultural representations of Miami alongside the city'...

Thomas Aiello, "Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration: The Cultural Geography of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate" (U Georgia Press, 2023)

22 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Thomas Aiello joins E. James West to discuss Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration: The Cultural Geography of the Scott News...

Keith Brian Wood, "Memphis Hoops: Race and Basketball in the Bluff City,1968-1997" (U Tennessee Press, 2021)

21 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Memphis Hoops: Race and Basketball in the Bluff City, 1968-1997 (U Tennessee Press, 2021) tells the story of basketball in Tennessee’s southwester...

Alexander Rose, "The Lion and the Fox: Two Rival Spies and the Secret Plot to Build a Confederate Navy" (Mariner Books, 2022)

08 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From the New York Times bestselling author of Washington’s Spies, the thrilling story of the Confederate spy who came to Britain to turn the tide...

Mari N. Crabtree, "My Soul Is a Witness: The Traumatic Afterlife of Lynching" (Yale UP, 2023)

08 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In My Soul Is a Witness: The Traumatic Afterlife of Lynching (Yale UP, 2023), Mari N. Crabtree traces the long afterlife of lynching in the South t...

Leah Mickens, "In the Shadow of Ebenezer: A Black Catholic Parish in the Age of Civil Rights and Vatican II" (NYU Press, 2022)

07 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The history and practices of African American Catholics has been vastly understudied, and Black Catholics are often written off as a fringe sector of ...

Katherine Johnston, "The Nature of Slavery: Environment and Plantation Labor in the Anglo-Atlantic World" (Oxford UP, 2022)

03 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Nature of Slavery: Environment and Plantation Labor in the Anglo-Atlantic World (Oxford UP, 2022) interrogates how people with an interest in Afr...

Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd, "Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South" (U Georgia Press, 2022)

27 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd's book Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South (U Georgia Press, 2022) explains a curiosity: why a fem...

David Wright Faladé, "Black Cloud Rising" (Grove Press, 2022)

26 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

By fall of 1863, Union forces had taken control of Tidewater Virginia, and established a toehold in eastern North Carolina, including along the Outer ...

Robin M. Morris, "Goldwater Girls to Reagan Women: Gender, Georgia, and the Growth of the New Right" (U Georgia Press, 2022)

23 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Goldwater Girls to Reagan Women: Gender, Georgia, and the Growth of the New Right (U Georgia Press, 2022) is a statewide study of women’s part in ...

Damian Alan Pargas, "Freedom Seekers: Fugitive Slaves in North America, 1800–1860" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

13 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Freedom Seekers: Fugitive Slaves in North America, 1800–1860 (Cambridge UP, 2021), Damian Alan Pargas introduces a new conceptualization of 'sp...

Jefferson Cowie, "Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power" (Basic Book, 2022)

10 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jefferson Cowie discusses his book Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power (Basic Books, 2022), beginning with the book’...

T. R. Johnson, "New Orleans: A Writer's City" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

09 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

New Orleans is an indispensable element of America's national identity. As one of the most fabled cities in the world, it figures in countless novels,...

Jovan Scott Lewis, "Violent Utopia: Dispossession and Black Restoration in Tulsa" (Duke UP, 2022)

05 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Violent Utopia: Dispossession and Black Restoration in Tulsa (Duke UP, 2022), Jovan Scott Lewis retells the history and afterlife of the 1921 Tul...

Thomas Aiello, "Dixieball: Race and Professional Basketball in the Deep South, 1947-1979" (U Tennessee Press, 2019)

03 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Dixieball: Race and Professional Basketball in the Deep South, 1947-1979 (U Tennessee Press, 2019), Thomas Aiello considers the cultural functio...

Saida Grundy, "Respectable: Politics and Paradox in Making the Morehouse Man" (U California Press, 2022)

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How does it feel to be groomed as the "solution" to a national Black male "problem"? This is the guiding paradox of Respectable: Politics and Paradox...

Jonathan W. White and Lydia J. Davis, ed., "My Work Among the Freedmen: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of Harriet M. Buss" (U Virginia Press, 2021)

26 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Between 1863 and 1871, Harriet M. Buss of Sterling, Massachusetts, taught former slaves in three different regions of the South, in coastal South Caro...

Laura Janet Feller, "Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia: Powhatan People and the Color Line" (U Oklahoma Press, 2022)

17 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Spanning a century of fraught history, Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia: Powhatan People and the Color Line (University of Oklahoma Press, 2022...

Labor Journalism, Farmworkers, and Reynolds Tobacco with Victoria Bouloubasis

15 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Journalist Victoria Bouloubasis discusses her career reporting on agricultural and food labor in North Carolina, her approach to labor journalism, and...

M. V. Hood and Seth C. McKee, "Rural Republican Realignment in the Modern South: The Untold Story" (U South Carolina Press, 2022)

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Beginning with the Dixiecrat Revolt of 1948 and extending through the 2020 election cycle, political scientists M.V. Hood III and Seth C. McKee trace ...

Emily Strasser, "Half-Life of a Secret: Reckoning with a Hidden History" (UP of Kentucky, 2023)

05 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1942, the US government began construction on a sixty-thousand-acre planned community named Oak Ridge in a rural area west of Knoxville, Tennessee....

Michael Lawrence Dickinson, "Almost Dead: Slavery and Social Rebirth in the Black Urban Atlantic, 1680-1807" (U Georgia Press, 2022)

02 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Beginning in the late seventeenth century and concluding with the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, Almost Dead: Slavery and Social Rebirth in t...

J. Brent Morris, "Dismal Freedom: A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp" (UNC Press, 2022)

31 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The massive and foreboding Great Dismal Swamp sprawls over 2,000 square miles and spills over parts of Virginia and North Carolina. From the early sev...

Viola Franziska Müller, "Escape to the City: Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum Urban South" (UNC Press, 2022)

20 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Escape to the City: Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum Urban South (UNC Press, 2022), Viola Franziska Müller examines runaways who camouflaged t...

Emily A. Owens, "Consent in the Presence of Force: Sexual Violence and Black Women's Survival in Antebellum New Orleans" (UNC Press, 2023)

19 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In histories of enslavement and in Black women's history, coercion looms large in any discussion of sex and sexuality. At a time when sexual violence ...

The History of the Black Urban Working-Class in the United States

16 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joe William Trotter, Jr., Giant Eagle University Professor of History and Founder and Director of the Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the...

Poverty, Race, and Rural Sanitation

10 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Catherine Coleman Flowers, activist, author, founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, and MacArthur “genius prize” wi...

Jonathan W. White, "To Address You as My Friend: African Americans' Letters to Abraham Lincoln" (UNC Press, 2021)

08 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Many African Americans of the Civil War era felt a personal connection to Abraham Lincoln. For the first time in their lives, an occupant of the White...

Felicity M. Turner, "Proving Pregnancy: Gender, Law, and Medical Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America" (UNC Press, 2022)

01 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Examining infanticide cases in the United States from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, Felicity M. Turner's Proving Pregnancy: ...

"Gone with the Wind" Revisited

28 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this week’s episode from the Institute’s Vault, Molly Haskell talks about her 2009 book, Frankly, My Dear: "Gone with the Wind" Revisited, pub...

Jefferson Cowie, "Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power" (Basic Books, 2022)

28 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

"History recalls Wallace’s inaugural address as a set piece in the larger drama of defending Southern segregation, which it was. But the speech was ...

Kevin R. C. Gutzman, "The Jeffersonians: Presidents Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe, 1801-1825" (St. Martin's Press, 2022)

25 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Kevin R. C. Gutzman's The Jeffersonians: Presidents Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe, 1801-1825 (St. Martin's Press, 2022) marks t...

Lauren N. Haumesser, "The Democratic Collapse: How Gender Politics Broke a Party and a Nation, 1856-1861" (UNC Press, 2022)

23 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Lauren N. Haumesser's The Democratic Collapse: How Gender Politics Broke a Party and a Nation, 1856-1861 (UNC Press, 2022) offers a fresh examinati...

Michael Ayers Trotti, "The End of Public Execution: Race, Religion, and Punishment in the American South" (UNC Press, 2022)

23 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Michael Ayers Trotti's The End of Public Execution: Race, Religion and Punishment in the American South (The University of North Carolina Press, 202...

Sonya Y. Ramsey, "Bertha Maxwell-Roddey: A Modern-Day Race Woman and the Power of Black Leadership" (UP of Florida, 2022)

18 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Bertha Maxwell-Roddey: A Modern-Day Race Woman and the Power of Black Leadership (UP of Florida, 2022) examines a life of remarkable achievements and...

Gregory Smithsimon, "Liberty Road: Black Middle-Class Suburbs and the Battle Between Civil Rights and Neoliberalism" (NYU Press, 2022)

16 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Half of Black Americans who live in the one hundred largest metropolitan areas are now living in suburbs, not cities. In Liberty Road: Black Middle-C...

Yasmine Ali, "Walk Through Fire: The Train Disaster That Changed America" (Citadel Press, 2023)

14 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The first book to examine the rarely-acknowledged Waverly Train Disaster of 1978 - the catastrophic accident that changed America forever and led to t...

Catherine Bateson, "Irish American Civil War Songs: Identity, Loyalty, and Nationhood" (Louisiana UP, 2022)

14 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Catherine Bateson is Associate Lecturer of American History at the University of Kent. She researches and writes about the role of song in the Amer...

Elizabeth N. Ellis. "The Great Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)

14 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Great Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022) tackles questions of Native power past and pres...

Norm Cohen et al., "An American Singing Heritage: Songs from the British-Irish-American Oral Tradition as Recorded in the Early Twentieth Century" (A-R Editions, 2021)

08 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Music of the United States of America Series of musical editions is a monumental undertaking funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities w...

Virginia L. Summey, "The Life of Elreta Melton Alexander: Activism within the Courts" (U Georgia Press, 2022)

07 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Virginia L. Summey's book The Life of Elreta Melton Alexander: Activism within the Courts (U Georgia Press, 2022) explores the life and contribution...

Barbara E. Mattick, "Teaching in Black and White: The Sisters of St. Joseph in the American South" (Catholic U of America Press

07 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Teaching in Black and White: The Sisters of St. Joseph in the American South (Catholic University of America Press, 2022) discusses the work of the S...

Char Miller, "West Side Rising: How San Antonio's 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice Movement" (Maverick Books, 2022)

02 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On September 9, 1921, a tropical storm raged above San Antonio, Texas. The rain that night flooded the city's many waterways, distributing unequal de...

Christopher Willoughby, "Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in US Medical Schools" (UNC Press, 2022)

24 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Medical science in antebellum America was organized around a paradox: it presumed African Americans to be less than human yet still human enough to be...

Anna Arabindan-Kesson, "Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World" (Duke UP, 2021)

23 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World (Duke UP, 2021), Anna Arabindan-Kesson uses cotton, a commodity centra...

Caroline Grego, "Hurricane Jim Crow: How the Great Sea Island Storm of 1893 Shaped the Lowcountry South" (UNC Press, 2022)

22 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On an August night in 1893, the deadliest hurricane in South Carolina history struck the Lowcountry, killing thousands—almost all African American. ...

R. Isabela Morales, "Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom" (Oxford UP, 2022)

15 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When Samuel Townsend died at his home in Madison County, Alabama, in November 1856, the fifty-two-year-old white planter left behind hundreds of slave...

David Silkenat, "Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" (Oxford UP, 2022)

10 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

They worked Virginia's tobacco fields, South Carolina's rice marshes, and the Black Belt's cotton plantations. Wherever they lived, enslaved people fo...

Clayton J. Butler, "True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South during the Civil War and Reconstruction" (LSU Press, 2022)

02 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

During the American Civil War, thousands of citizens in the Deep South remained loyal to the United States. Though often overlooked, this small number...

Andrew McIlwaine Bell, "The Origins of Southern College Football: How an Ivy League Game Became a Dixie Tradition" (LSU Press, 2020)

02 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

College football is a massive enterprise in the United States, and southern teams dominate poll rankings and sports headlines while generating billion...

Sam W. Haynes, "Unsettled Land: From Revolution to Republic, the Struggle for Texas" (Basic Books, 2022)

31 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Texas Revolution has long been cast as an epic episode in the origins of the American West. As the story goes, larger-than-life figures like Sam H...

Regina L. Wagner, "Electoral Patterns in Alabama: Local Change and Continuity Amid National Trends" (Palgrave MacmIllan, 2022)

28 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

While significant attention in political science is devoted to national level elections, a comprehensive look at state level political dynamics in the...

Guy Lancaster, "American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching" (U Arkansas Press, 2021)

26 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Lynching is often viewed as a narrow form of violence: either the spontaneous act of an angry mob against accused individuals, or a demonstration of w...

Dan Immergluck, "Red Hot City: Housing, Race, and Exclusion in Twenty-First-Century Atlanta" (U California Press, 2022)

25 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Atlanta, the capital of the American South, is at the red-hot core of expansion, inequality, and political relevance. In recent decades, central Atlan...

Charles Sawyer, "B. B. King: From Indianola to Icon: A Personal Odyssey with the 'King of the Blues'" (Schiffer Publishing, 2022)

14 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Want to take a trip with the king of the Blues? As B.B. King’s photographer and original biographer, Charlie Sawyer was along for the ride. In B.B....

Alena Pirok, "The Spirit of Colonial Williamsburg: Ghosts and Interpreting the Recreated Past" (U Massachusetts Press, 2022)

12 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On any given night, hundreds of guests walk the darkened streets of Colonial Williamsburg looking for ghosts. Since the early 2000s, both the museum a...

Robert P. Watson, "George Washington's Final Battle: The Epic Struggle to Build a Capital City and a Nation" (Georgetown UP, 2021)

29 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

George Washington is remembered for leading the Continental Army to victory, presiding over the Constitution, and forging a new nation, but few know t...

Wendy Gonaver, "The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840–1880" (UNC Press, 2019)

22 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Wendy Gonaver discusses her book, The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840-1880 (University of North Carolina Press, 201...

Timothy Paul Bowman, "You Will Never Be One of Us: A Teacher, a Texas Town, and the Rural Roots of Radical Conservatism" (U of Oklahoma Press, 2022)

20 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As the 1974 school year began, Wayne Woodward was a beloved high school teacher in a rural Texas town. By the following spring, he was embroiled in a ...

Kenneth H. Kolb, "Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate" (U California Press, 2021)

20 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate (U California Press, 2021) examines the failure of recent efforts to improve Americans' diets by ...

Emily Bingham, "My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song" (Knopf, 2022)

19 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Any song as old and as familiar as “My Old Kentucky Home” is bound to have accrued many different meanings and an interesting history. Emily Bingh...

Carl A. Brasseaux and Donald W. Davis, "Asian-Cajun Fusion: Shrimp from the Bay to the Bayou" (UP of Mississippi, 2022)

13 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Shrimp is easily America’s favorite seafood, but its very popularity is the wellspring of problems that threaten the shrimp industry’s existence. ...

Amy Potter et al., "Remembering Enslavement: Reassembling the Southern Plantation Museum" (U Georgia Press, 2022)

13 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Remembering Enslavement: Reassembling the Southern Plantation Museum (U Georgia Press, 2022) explores plantation museums as sites for contesting and ...

Jodi Skipper, "Behind the Big House: Reconciling Slavery, Race, and Heritage in the U.S. South" (U Iowa Press, 2022)

09 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When residents and tourists visit sites of slavery, whose stories are told? All too often the lives of slaveowners are centered, obscuring the lives o...

Davida Breier, "Sinkhole" (U New Orleans Press, 2022)

07 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Davida Breier talks about her debut novel Sinkhole (University of New Orleans Press, 2022). Humidity, lovebugs, and murder. Lies from the past and...

Marissa R. Moss, "Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be" (Henry Holt, 2022)

07 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It was only two decades ago, but, for the women of country music, 1999 seems like an entirely different universe. With Shania Twain, country's biggest...

Marcus Nevius on Becoming a Historian, Marronage, Slave Resistance, and More!

03 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today's episode of "New Books in African American Studies" is special. Why, you might ask? Because today's episode marks my 100th episode on the NBN...