New Books in the American South
Episodes
Christopher M. Reali, "Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals" (U Illinois Press, 2022)
12 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The forceful music that rolled out of Muscle Shoals in the 1960s and 1970s shaped hits by everyone from Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to the Roll...
John M. Shaw, "Following the Drums: African American Fife and Drum Music in Tennessee" (UP of Mississippi, 2022)
01 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Following the Drums: African American Fife and Drum Music in Tennessee (University Press of Mississippi, 2022) is an epic history of a little-kno...
Peter H. Wood, "Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion" (Norton, 1996)
29 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to New Books in African American Studies, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. I am your host, Adam Xavier McNeil. Today’s podcast is...
The Battle of Buxton: Saving a Lighthouse in the Era of Climate Change
28 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
If you tuned in to our “ideas in strange places” themed programming last week, you would have heard an episode of Darts and Letters’ predecessor...
Michael K. Beauchamp, "Instruments of Empire: Colonial Elites and U.S. Governance in Early National Louisiana, 1803–1815" (LSU Press, 2021)
27 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
M. K. Beauchamp's Instruments of Empire: Colonial Elites and U.S. Governance in Early National Louisiana, 1803–1815 (LSU Press, 2021) examines the...
John Joe Schlichtman, "Showroom City: Real Estate and Resistance in the Furniture Capital of the World" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
22 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A unique and engaging account of local urban decision-making within the globalizing world High Point, North Carolina, is known as the “Furniture Cap...
Thulani Davis, "The Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom" (Duke UP, 2022)
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom (Duke UP, 2022) Thulani Davis provides a sweeping rethinking of Reconstruc...
Katharine A. Burnett and Monica Carol Miller, "The Tacky South" (LSU Press, 2022)
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As a way to comment on a person’s style or taste, the word “tacky” has distinctly southern origins, with its roots tracing back to the so-called...
Tanya M. Peres and Aaron Deter-Wolf, "Baking, Bourbon, and Black Drink" (U Alabama Press, 2018)
14 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Understanding and explaining societal rules surrounding food and foodways have been the foci of anthropological studies since the early days of the di...
David Silkenat, "Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" (Oxford UP, 2022)
12 Jul 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...
Rain Prud'homme-Cranford and Darryl Barthé, "Louisiana Creole Peoplehood: Afro-Indigeneity and Community" (U Washington Press, 2022)
08 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over the course of more than three centuries, the diverse communities of Louisiana have engaged in creative living practices to forge a vibrant, multi...
Joseph Boone, "Furnace Creek" (Eyewear Publishing, 2021)
29 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Taking its inspiration from Great Expectations, Furnace Creek (Eyewear Publishing, 2021) teases us with the question of what Pip might have been lik...
Amy L. Stone, "Queer Carnival: Festivals and Mardi Gras in the South" (NYU Press, 2022)
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Queer Carnival: Festivals and Mardi Gras in the South (NYU Press, 2022) reveals the importance of citywide celebrations like Mardi Gras and Fiesta f...
Stephen Deusner, "Where the Devil Don't Stay: Traveling the South with the Drive-By Truckers" (U Texas Press, 2021)
08 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Stephen Deusner's Where the Devil Don't Stay: Traveling the South with the Drive-By Truckers (U Texas Press, 2021) is the book-length study Drive-B...
Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J. Gross, "Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How did Africans become 'blacks' in the Americas? Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana (Cambridge ...
Anjanette Delgado, "Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootedness" (UP of Florida Press, 2021)
27 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I spoke to Anjanette Delgado, a Puerto Rican writer and journalist based in Miami who has compiled emblematic stories and essays by writers from...
Brandon T. Jett, "Race, Crime, and Policing in the Jim Crow South" (Louisiana State UP, 2021)
27 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this groundbreaking work, Professor Brandon T. Jett unearths how police departments evolved with the urbanization of the Jim Crow South, to targ...
Glenda E. Gilmore, "Romare Bearden in the Homeland of His Imagination: An Artist's Reckoning with the South" (UNC Press, 2022)
10 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Romare Bearden in the Homeland of His Imagination: An Artist's Reckoning with the South (UNC Press, 2022), Glenda Gilmore meticulously documents...
The Future of Statues: A Conversation with Alex Von Tunzelmann
03 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What are the rights and wrongs of toppling statues? Sometimes everyone agrees it’s a good idea. After the second world war, for example, the defeat ...
Joan DeJean, "Mutinous Women: How French Convicts Became Founding Mothers of the Gulf Coast" (Basic, 2022)
02 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1719, a ship named La Mutine (the mutinous woman), sailed from the French port of Le Havre, bound for the Mississippi. It was loaded with urgentl...
João B. Chaves, "The Global Mission of the Jim Crow South: Southern Baptist Missionaries and the Shaping of Latin American Evangelicalism" (Mercer UP, 2022)
28 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
João B. Chaves analyzes the first hundred years of Southern Baptist missionary activity in Brazil to reveal how the racialized practices of Southern ...
Rana A. Hogarth, "Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840" (UNC Press, 2017)
28 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Medicine and slavery went hand-in-hand. But what was the nature of this vile partnership? In Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the ...
Nina M. Yancy, "How the Color Line Bends: The Geography of White Prejudice in Modern America" (Oxford UP, 2022)
22 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How the Color Line Bends: The Geography of White Prejudice in Modern America (Oxford UP, 2022) explores the connection between prejudice and place i...
John S. Huntington, "Far-Right Vanguard: The Radical Roots of Modern Conservatism" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021)
19 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Donald Trump shocked the nation in 2016 by winning the presidency through an ultraconservative, anti-immigrant platform, but, despite the electoral su...
Lindsey Krinks, "Praying with Our Feet: Pursuing Justice and Healing on the Streets" (Brazos, 2021)
15 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Praying with Our Feet: Pursuing Justice and Healing on the Streets (Brazos Press, 2021), written by Lindsey Krinks was published by Baker Publishing ...
Kate Clifford Larson, "Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer" (Oxford UP, 2021)
07 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
She was born the 20th child in a family that had lived in the Mississippi Delta for generations, first as enslaved people and then as sharecroppers. S...
Jenifer L. Barclay, "The Mark of Slavery: Disability, Race, and Gender in Antebellum America" (U of Illinois Press, 2021)
05 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Time and again, antebellum Americans justified slavery and white supremacy by linking blackness to disability, defectiveness, and dependency. In The ...
Mark Newman, "Desegregating Dixie: The Catholic Church in the South and Desegregation, 1945-1992" (UP of Mississippi, 2018)
01 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Desegregating Dixie: The Catholic Church in the South and Desegregation, 1945-1992 (UP of Mississippi, 2018), Mark Newman draws on a vast range ...
Erin L. Thompson, "Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments" (Norton, 2022)
30 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the United States, the national debate over public monuments often frames the removal of statutes as a revision of history. But Dr. Thompson sugg...
Steven J. Brady, "Chained to History: Slavery and US Foreign Relations to 1865" (Cornell UP, 2022)
29 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Chained to History: Slavery and US Foreign Relations to 1865 (Cornell University Press, 2022), Dr. Steven J. Brady places slavery at the centre o...
Carole Emberton, "To Walk about in Freedom: The Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner" (Norton, 2022)
17 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858 North Carolina and came of age at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a white slaveholding...
K. Stephen Prince, "The Ballad of Robert Charles: Searching for the New Orleans Riot Of 1900" (UNC Press, 2021)
17 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For a brief moment in the summer of 1900, Robert Charles was arguably the most infamous black man in the United States. After an altercation with poli...
Michael Gorra, "The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War" (Liveright Publishing, 2020)
11 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
William Faulkner, one of America's most iconic writers, is an author who defies easy interpretation. Born in 1897 in Mississippi, Faulkner wrote such ...
Sherry Scott, "Playhouses: Sexuality and Fundamentalism" (Black Rose Writing, 2022)
08 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Queer Voices of the South I talk to Dr. Sherry Scott about her new book Playhouses: Sexuality and Fundamentalism, released in Feb...
Gregg Cantrell, "The People's Revolt: Texas Populists and the Roots of American Liberalism" (Yale UP, 2020)
17 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Pundits, politicians, and scholars often use words like "liberalism" and "populism" uncritically. Dr. Gregg Cantrell, professor of history at Texas Ch...
Rachel Marie-Crane Williams, "Elegy for Mary Turner: An Illustrated Account of a Lynching" (Verso, 2021)
15 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In late May 1918 in Valdosta, Georgia, ten Black men and one Black woman—Mary Turner, eight months pregnant at the time—were lynched and tortured ...
Max Krochmal and Todd Moye, "Civil Rights in Black and Brown: Histories of Resistance and Struggle in Texas" (U Texas Press, 2021)
14 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Max Krochmal and Todd Moye’s Civil Rights in Black and Brown: Histories of Resistance and Struggle in Texas (University of Texas Press, 2021) is a...
Eric Herschthal, "The Science of Abolition: How Slaveholders Became the Enemies of Progress" (Yale UP, 2021)
11 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the context of slavery, science is usually associated with slaveholders' scientific justifications of racism. But abolitionists were equally adept ...
Frank Andre Guridy, "The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics" (U Texas Press, 2021)
03 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When I was a teenager, I spent entirely too much time at the Pontiac Silverdome watching the Detroit Pistons play basketball. In all the games I watc...
Gregory Samantha Rosenthal, "Living Queer History: Remembrance and Belonging in a Southern City" (UNC Press, 2021)
03 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Queer history is a living practice. Talk to any group of LGBTQ people today, and they will not agree on what story should be told. Many people desire ...
Ada Ferrer, "Cuba: An American History" (Scribner, 2021)
02 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“No country is ever just one thing.” In her new book Cuba: An American History (Scribner, 2021), NYU historian Ada Ferrer shows this again and a...
Baker A. Rogers, "King of Hearts: Drag Kings in the American South" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
31 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the Queer Voices of the South podcast, John Marszalek interviews author Baker A. Rogers about their research on drag kings in the S...
Tyler D. Parry, "Jumping the Broom: The Surprising Multicultural Origins of a Black Wedding Ritual" (UNC Press, 2020)
28 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Jumping the Broom: The Surprising Multicultural Origins of a Black Wedding Ritual (UNC Press, 2020), Tyler D. Parry untangles the convoluted hist...
Fay A. Yarbrough, "Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country" (UNC Press, 2021)
26 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When the Choctaw Nation was forcibly resettled in Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma in the 1830s, it was joined by enslaved Black people—the ...
Howard Philips Smith, "A Sojourn in Paradise: Jack Robinson in 1950s New Orleans" (UP of Mississippi, 2020)
24 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jack Robinson made his name as a much-sought-after fashion and celebrity photographer during the 1960s and early 1970s, and his work is well documente...
Suzanne Cope, "Power Hungry: Women of the Black Panther Party and Freedom Summer and Their Fight to Feed a Movement" (Lawrence Hill Books, 2021)
17 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Suzanne Cope about her new book Power Hungry: Women of the Black Panther Party and Freedom Summer and Their Fight to Feed a Moveme...
Andrew J. Kunka, "The Life and Comics of Howard Cruse: Taking Risks in the Service of Truth" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
12 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of QUEER VOICES OF THE SOUTH, I talk with ANDREW J. KUNKA, who is a professor of English and division chair at the University of South...
Rosa Hawkins and Steve Bergsman, "Chapel of Love: The Story of New Orleans Girl Group the Dixie Cups" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
05 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1963, sisters Barbara Ann and Rosa Hawkins and their cousin Joan Marie Johnson traveled from the segregated South to New York City under the auspic...
Warren E. Milteer Jr., "North Carolina's Free People of Color, 1715-1885" (LSU Press, 2020)
05 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Siobhan talks with Warren Eugene Milteer, Jr. about his book North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715-1885 (LSU Press, 2020)....
Catherine Gentile, "Sunday's Orphan" (Booklocker.com, 2021)
05 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Even for someone trained from birth to manage a farm, stepping into an inheritance at the age of twenty is not easy. Yet this is the situation facing ...
Sonia Hernández and John Morán González, "Reverberations of Racial Violence: Critical Reflections on the History of the Border" (U Texas Press, 2021)
04 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of protests and marches for racial and gender justice in the twenty-first century, scholars have located and argued that racial violence h...
Warren E. Milteer, Jr., "Beyond Slavery's Shadow: Free People of Color in the South" (UNC Press, 2021)
20 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We often focus on enslaved people of color but Dr. Warren E. Milteer Jr.’s Beyond Slavery's Shadow: Free People of Color in the South (UNC Press, ...
Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, "Race Brokers: Housing Markets and Segregation in 21st Century Urban America" (Oxford UP, 2021)
15 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth Korver-Glenn's book Race Brokers: Housing Markets and Segregation in 21st Century Urban America (Oxford UP, 2021) examines how housing mar...
Lee B. Wilson, "Bonds of Empire: The English Origins of Slave Law in South Carolina and British Plantation America, 1660–1783" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
15 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Lee B. Wilson is the author of Bonds of Empire: The English Origins of Slave Law in South Carolina and British Plantation America, 1660-1783, publish...
Cassandra Lane, "We Are Bridges: A Memoir" (Feminist Press, 2021)
13 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When Cassandra Lane finds herself pregnant at thirty-five, the knowledge sends her on a poignant exploration of memory to prepare for her entry into m...
Bryant Terry, "Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora" (4 Color Books, 2021)
13 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
James Beard and NAACP Image Award-winning chef and educator, Bryant Terry calls Black Food a “communal shrine to the shared culinary histories of ...
Marianne Worthington, "The Girl Singer" (Fireside Industries, 2021)
10 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In The Girl Singer (Fireside Industries, 2021), her latest collection of poems, Marianne Worthington weaves together nature writing, feminism, and c...
Mia Bay, "Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance" (Harvard UP, 2021)
09 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Mobility has been central to the American identity—think of the automobile, the perceived freedom that comes with it, the open road—but Black Amer...
Edward L. Ayers, "Southern Journey: The Migrations of the American South, 1790-2020" (LSU Press, 2020)
08 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Taking a wide focus, Southern Journey: The Migrations of the American South, 1790-2020 (LSU Press, 2020) narrates the evolution of southern history ...
Joseph C. Ewoodzie, "Getting Something to Eat in Jackson: Race, Class, and Food in the American South" (Princeton UP, 2021)
01 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Getting Something to Eat in Jackson (Princeton Press, 2021) uses food—what people eat and how—to explore the interaction of race and class in the...
Clint Smith, "How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America" (Little, Brown and Company, 2021)
26 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How do we narrate history, both the troubling past and what we chose to remember? Clint Smith sets out to wrestle with this question and its relations...
Shelby Criswell, "Queer As All Get Out: 10 People Who've Inspired Me" (Street Noise Books, 2021)
24 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of Queer Voices of the South, I talk with Shelby Criswell, whose book Queer As All Get Out: 10 People Who've Inspired Me (Street Noi...
James Bailey Blackshear and Glen Sample Ely, "Confederates and Comancheros: Skullduggery and Double-Dealing in the Texas-New Mexico Borderlands" (U Oklahoma Press, 2021)
23 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A vast and desolate region, the Texas-New Mexico borderlands have long been an ideal setting for intrigue and illegal dealings--never more so than in ...
Steven P. Brown, "Alabama Justice: The Cases and Faces That Changed a Nation" (U Alabama Press, 2020)
23 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Steven P. Brown, professor of political science at Auburn University, has written a history of notable U.S. Supreme Cases and justices that hailed fro...
Stephen Cushman, "The Generals' Civil War: What Their Memoirs Can Teach Us Today" (UNC Press, 2021)
17 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the decades following the American Civil War, several of the generals who had laid down their swords picked up their pens and published accounts of...
Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh, "The Souls of Womenfolk: The Religious Cultures of Enslaved Women in the Lower South" (UNC Press, 2021)
15 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning on the shores of West Africa in the sixteenth century and ending in the U.S. Lower South on the eve of the Civil War, Alexis Wells-Oghoghome...
Chris McLaughlin, "Mississippi Barking: Hurricane Katrina and a Life That Went to the Dogs" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
10 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On August 29, 2005, the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States devastated the city of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of Louisiana ...
Alice L Baumgartner, "South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War" (Basic Books, 2020)
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For some enslaved Americans, the path to freedom led not north, but south, argues Dr. Alice Baumgardner, an assistant professor of history at the Univ...
Elizabeth McCain, "A Lesbian Belle Tells: OUTrageous Southern Stories of Family, Loss, and Love" (Crystal Heart Imprints, 2020)
18 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Settle back for a wild ride through a Southern lesbian's life of soul-searching, rule-breaking, and truth-telling. This belle's kind of coming out was...
Aaron Cometbus and Scott Satterwhite, "A Punkhouse in the Deep South: The Oral History Of 309" (UP of Florida, 2021)
18 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Told in personal interviews, A Punkhouse in the Deep South: The Oral History of 309 (University Press of Florida, 2021) is the collective story of ...
M. E. J. Huff and Carole Ann King, "Alabama Quilts: Wilderness Through World War II, 1682-1950" (UP of Mississippi, 2020)
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Stephanie Khattak speaks with Carole Ann King, who, along with Mary Elizabeth “Sunshine” Johnson Huff, wrote Alabama Quilts: Wilderness Through W...
Kalle Kananoja, "Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
11 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa (Cambridge UP, 2021), Kalle Kananoja tells the story of how pre-colonial communities throughout the west coa...
Alecia P. Long, "Cruising for Conspirators: How a New Orleans DA Prosecuted the Kennedy Assassination As a Sex Crime" (Boundless South, 2021)
04 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison's decision to arrest Clay Shaw on March 1, 1967, set off a chain of events that culminated in the only pros...
Vanessa M. Holden, "Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner's Community" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
24 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The local community around the Nat Turner rebellion The 1831 Southampton Rebellion led by Nat Turner involved an entire community. Vanessa M. Holden r...
Thomas Michael Kersen, "Where Misfits Fit: Counterculture and Influence in the Ozarks" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
16 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
All regions and places are unique in their own way, but the Ozarks have an enduring place in American culture. Studying the Ozarks offers the ability ...
Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb, "Race Unequals: Overseer Contracts, White Masculinities, and the Formation of Managerial Identity in the Plantation Economy" (Lexington, 2021)
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb is the author of Race Unequals: Overseer Contracts, White Masculinities, and the Formation of Managerial Identity in the Plant...
Lettie Gay, "Two Hundred Years of Charleston Cooking" ( U South Carolina Press, 2021)
01 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Southern Food Historian Rebecca Sharpless discusses a new edition of Two Hundred Years of Charleston Cooking released in 2021 by University of Sou...
Michael Twitty, "Rice: A Savor the South Cookbook" (UNC Press, 2021)
20 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Rice is a central ingredient to Southern foodways, and it is one of the most versatile grains served around the world. It could be prepared as a side ...
Michael J. Bustamante, "Cuban Memory Wars: Retrospective Politics in Revolution and Exile" (UNC Press, 2021)
18 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
I had the pleasure of interviewing my mentor, Dr. Michael J. Bustamante on his first monograph, Cuban Memory Wars: Retrospective Politics in Revolut...
Mark A. Johnson, "Rough Tactics: Black Performance in Political Spectacles, 1877-1932" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
05 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
During the nadir of race relations in the United States South from 1877 to 1932, African Americans faced segregation, disfranchisement, and lynching. ...
Sarah Hepola on Drinking in a "Dry" Texas County
03 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to Cover Story, a podcast by New Books Network devoted to long form journalism. Today, we are talking to Texas-based writer Sarah Hepola. Hepo...
Robert Wooster, "The United States Army and the Making of America: From Confederation to Empire, 1775-1903" (UP of Kansas, 2021)
30 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The story of how the American military—and more particularly the regular army—has played a vital role in the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-centu...
Kevin McGruder, "Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem" (Columbia UP, 2021)
29 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Kevin McGruder about his new book Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem (Columbia UP, 2021) In a moment of hope, even faith, ...
Jeffery A. Jenkins and Justin Peck, "Congress and the First Civil Rights Era, 1861-1918" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
26 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jeffrey Jenkins and Justin Peck’s new book Congress and the First Civil Rights Era, 1861-1918 (U Chicago Press, 2021) explores how Congressional ...
Kevin Waite, "West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire" (UNC Press, 2021)
21 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The geography of American slavery was continental, argues Dr. Kevin Waite, an assistant professor at Durham University, in West of Slavery: The Sout...
Ken Ellingwood, "First to Fall: Elijah Lovejoy and the Fight for a Free Press in the Age of Slavery" (Pegasus Books, 2021)
16 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In First to Fall: Elijah Lovejoy and the Fight for a Free Press in the Age of Slavery (Pegasus Books, 2021), Ken Ellingwood takes readers back to t...
Nathan Kalmoe, "With Ballots and Bullets: Partisanship and Violence in the American Civil War" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Political Scientist Nathan Kalmoe has written a fascinating historical and political exploration of the connections between violence and partisanship ...
Candace Bailey, "Unbinding Gentility: Women Making Music in the Nineteenth-Century South" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
13 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Southern women of all classes, races, and walks of life practiced music during and after the Civil War. Dr. Candace Bailey examines the history of sou...
Sebastian N. Page, "Black Resettlement and the American Civil War" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
12 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Based on sweeping research in six languages, Sebastian N. Page's Black Resettlement and the American Civil War (Cambridge UP, 2021) offers the first...
Todd M. Kerstetter, "Flood on the Tracks: Living, Dying, and the Nature of Disaster in the Elkhorn River Basin" (Texas Tech UP, 2019)
09 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If floods are inevitable, why do humans insist on building alongside riverbanks? Todd Kerstetter, professor of history at Texas Christian University, ...
Martin Summers, "Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions" (Oxford UP, 2019)
07 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries, Saint Elizabeths Hospital was one of the United States' most important institutions for the c...
Jeanne Pitre Soileau, "Yo' Mama, Mary Mack, and Boudreaux and Thibodeaux: Louisiana Children's Folklore and Play" (UP of Mississippi, 2016)
06 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Children’s folklore is simultaneously a conservator of tradition and a site for creativity and innovation. For over five decades, Dr. Jeanne Pitre S...
Roopika Risam and Kelly Baker Josephs, "The Digital Black Atlantic" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
05 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How can scholars use digital tools to better understand the African diaspora across time, space, and disciplines? And how can African diaspora studies...
Jody Edward Ginn, "East Texas Troubles: The Allred Rangers' Cleanup of San Augustine" (U Oklahoma Press, 2019)
28 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When the gun smoke cleared, four men were found dead at the hardware store in a rural East Texas town. But this December 1934 shootout was no anomaly....
Edward G. Longacre, "Unsung Hero of Gettysburg: The Story of Union General David McMurtrie Gregg" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)
24 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Edward G. Longacre about his new book Unsung Hero of Gettysburg: The Story of Union General David McMurtrie Gregg (University of N...
Timothy D. Walker, "Sailing to Freedom: Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad" (U Massachusetts Press, 2021)
22 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
More than 70 percent of the 103 pre-Emancipation slave narratives acknowledged using waterways as their method for escaping enslavement. However, much...
No Choice: Why Is It So Hard to Get an Abortion in the South?
22 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are talking with Becca Andrews, a journalist at Mother Jones, where she writes about reproductive rights and gender. The story we discuss is ...
Todne Thomas, "Kincraft: The Making of Black Evangelical Sociality" (Duke UP, 2021)
16 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Kincraft: The Making of Black Evangelical Sociality (Duke University Press, 2021) by Todne Thomas takes a deep dive into the social and religious liv...
Joshua D. Rothman, "The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America" (Basic Book, 2021)
20 May 2021
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...
Justene Hill Edwards, "Unfree Markets: The Slaves' Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina" (Columbia UP, 2021)
19 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Justene Hill Edwards is the author of Unfree Markets: The Slaves’ Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina (Columbia University Press,...