Shows / New Books in American Studies
New Books in American Studies
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in American Studies
Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census with danah boyd (U Chicago Press, 2026)
In this episode, danah discusses proposed changes to the census that could lead to population undercounts, distort congressional apportionment, and have other…
- New Books in American Studies
How Bright the Path Grows: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the March on Washington with Marcia Chatelain (Random House, 2026)
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Franchise comes How Bright the Path Grows: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the March on Washington (Pantheon…
- New Books in American Studies
Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s…
- New Books in American Studies
Stewards of the Land: Race and Reclaiming Environmental Labor in the American West with Stevie Ruiz (UNC Press, 2026)
The history of the environmental movement-from environmentalism of the nineteenth century to the environmental justice struggles of the late twentieth…
- New Books in American Studies
The Course of Human Events: The Declaration of Independence and the Historical Origins of the United States with Steven Sarson (U Virginia Press, 2025)
How reading the Declaration of Independence as a document of history explains its intended meaning Thomas Jefferson chose his words carefully. Few could have…
- New Books in American Studies
The Fog of Accountability: How Institutions Keep Voters from Holding Their Local Governments Accountable with Justin de Benedictis-Kessner (U Chicago Press, 2026)
In the United States, hundreds of thousands of elected and appointed officials serve more than 50,000 subnational governments, making important decisions about…
- New Books in American Studies
American Amazigh: Remaking North African Indigeneity and Belonging in the Diaspora with Heide Castañeda (NYU Press, 2026)
American Amazigh: Remaking North African Indigeneity and Belonging in the Diaspora (NYU Press, 2026) by Dr. Heide Castañeda examines the complex identity…
- New Books in American Studies
Rehearsing the Future: The Thought and Practice of James and Grace Lee Boggs with Michael Doan (AK Press, 2026)
In Rehearsing the Future: The Thought and Practice of James and Grace Lee Boggs (AK Press, 2026), Michael Doan explores the work and legacy of James and Grace…
- New Books in American Studies
Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City with Elijah Anderson (Norton, 2026)
Inner-city black America is often stereotyped as a place of random violence, but in fact, violence in the inner city is regulated through an informal but…
- New Books in American Studies
Standing Up to Trump: Canada and the Future of U.S.-Canadian Relations
How has Donald Trump’s return to the White House transformed the relationship between Canada and the United States? In this episode of International Horizons…
- New Books in American Studies
From Blood to Ink: How the Press Covered the Gettysburg Campaign with Matthew J. Larson (U Georgia Press, 2026)
The first book ever on how the press covered the Gettysburg campaign, From Blood to Ink: How the Press Covered the Gettysburg Campaign (U Georgia Press, 2026)…
- New Books in American Studies
Jefferson’s Wolf: A Founding Father’s Troubling Answer to the Problem of Slavery with Christa Dierksheide and Nicholas Guyatt (Belknap Press, 2026)
In this episode, Matthew Mason (Professor of History at Brigham Young University) interviews Christa Dierksheide (Brockman Foundation Jefferson Scholars…
- New Books in American Studies
Troop Movements: Labor, Race, and Global Freedom Struggles in America’s World War II with Tejasvi Nagaraja (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)
Tejasvi Nagaraja joins Michael Stauch to talk about Troop Movements: Labor, Race, and Global Freedom Struggles in America’s World War II (U Pennsylvania Press…
- New Books in American Studies
Revolutionary Ink: New York Printers and the Promise of Democracy, 1693-1804 with Mark J. Noonan (Cambridge UP, 2026)
In Revolutionary Ink: New York Printers and the Promise of Democracy, 1693-1804 (Cambridge UP, 2026), my guest Mark J. Noonan explores the careers of New York…
- New Books in American Studies
Safar: Finding Home, History, and Culture through Punjabi Food in the American West with Madhushree Ghosh (Bloomsbury, 2026)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Madhushree Ghosh about her memoir Safar: Finding Home, History, and Culture through Punjabi Food in the…
- New Books in American Studies
Traveling the Yellow Brick Road with Steven Keslowitz (McFarland, 2026)
In Traveling the Yellow Brick Road: What We Learn from The Wizard of Oz and Wicked (McFarland, 2026) Steven Keslowitz explores how The Wizard of Oz and Wicked…
- New Books in American Studies
Art for War: Heritage Looting, Blood Antiquities, and the International Fight Against Terrorism Financing with Costanza Musu (Stanford UP, 2026)
Understanding the world of art—particularly antiquities and archaeological artifacts—requires tracing how objects are removed from the ground, displaced by…
- New Books in American Studies
Forgive Us Our Debts: How Black Churches Use Bankruptcy to Survive with Pamela Foohey (U Chicago Press, 2026)
When American churches face financial difficulties, a disproportionately high number of Black churches reorganize under chapter 11 bankruptcy. There are no…
- New Books in American Studies
Outed: LBJ’s Confidant and the Arrest that Transformed a Presidency with Timothy Stewart-Winter (U Chicago Press, 2026)
Timothy Stewart-Winter joins Michael Stauch to discuss the arrest that transformed Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. In 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson’s longest-serving…
- New Books in American Studies
Declarations of Independence: Indigenous Resilience, Colonial Rivalries, and the Cost of Revolution with Christopher R. Pearl (U Virginia Press, 2024)
Chris Pearl's Declarations of Independence: Indigenous Resilience, Colonial Rivalries, and the Cost of Revolution (U Virginia Press, 2024) is a fascinating…
- New Books in American Studies
Justice Was Her Calling: The Fierce and Fascinating Life of Dorothy Kenyon with Jennifer L. Brinkley (U California Press, 2026)
Before Ruth Bader Ginsburg persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down sex discrimination, Dorothy Kenyon drew the legal blueprint. Justice Was Her Calling: The…
- New Books in American Studies
Parties on the Ground: A Study of Nominations for the House of Representatives with Kathleen Bawn and Knox Brown (U Chicago Press, 2026)
Parties on the Ground: A Study of Nominations for the House of Representatives (U Chicago Press, 2026) is a study of political parties and party nominations…
- New Books in American Studies
Searching for Jane Crow: Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America from the Auction Block to the Cell Block with Talitha LeFlouria (Beacon Press, 2022)
In Searching for Jane Crow: Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America from the Auction Block to the Cell Block (Beacon Press, 2022), historian Talitha L…
- New Books in American Studies
Spanish Louisiana: Contest for Borderlands, 1763–1803 with Frances Kolb Turnbell (LSU Press, 2024)
Sandwiched between the long period of French colonization, and the brief return to the French empire before the Americans enter the scene, the Spanish period…
- New Books in American Studies
Action Bodies: VFX, Identity, and Embodiment in Blockbuster Cinema with Drew Ayers (U Texas Press, 2026)
Exploring how digital visual effects have changed the representations of the body and identity in action films. When Harrison Ford appeared digitally de-aged…
- New Books in American Studies
Beneath the Wage: Tips, Tasks, and Gigs in the Age of Service Work with Annie McClanahan (Princeton UP, 2026)
Beneath the Wage: Tips, Tasks, and Gigs in the Age of Service Work (Princeton UP, 2026) retheorizes capitalism from the perspective of the service economy…
- New Books in American Studies
Fire in the Heart of the City: The Triangle Shirtwaist Tragedy and the Origins of Modern Charity with David Conrad-Pérez (NYU Press, 2026)
In American history, few tragedies have been as consequential—and as enduringly misunderstood—as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911. Long remembered…
- New Books in American Studies
Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago's Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent with John William Nelson (UNC Press, 2023)
Edward Blum interviews John William Nelson, Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago’s Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent (UNC Press, 2023) In early…
- New Books in American Studies
Multiracial Mandarin: Asian Americans and Impossible Language with David Shuang Song (U of Minnesota Press, 2026)
Who has the “right” to learn Mandarin Chinese? In Multiracial Mandarin: Asian Americans and Impossible Language (U Minnesota Press, 2026), Dr. David Shuang…
- New Books in American Studies
Night Hawk: A Nineteenth-Century Superhero and the Dawn of American Mass Culture with Matthew Warner Osborn (U Chicago Press, 2026)
On July 5, 1828, more than a century before Superman arrived on Earth, a superhero took flight in Philadelphia’s night sky. Buried on page three of a small…
- New Books in American Studies
An Inconvenient Woman: The Extraordinary Life of Lillian Smith, the Southerner Who Defied Jim Crow America with Keri Leigh Merritt (St. Martin's Press, 2026)
Born in Florida to a religious family, Lillian Smith (1897-1966) was a white Southern woman living in the Jim Crow South who defied all stereotypes: She lived…
- New Books in American Studies
Freedom Round the Globe: A World History of the American Revolution with Sarah M. S. Pearsall (Doubleday, 2026)
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • In a groundbreaking global exploration of the ideas that drove the American Revolution, a prize-winning…
- New Books in American Studies
How Dungeons and Dragons Changed the Way We Play with Aaron Trammell (Duke UP, 2026)
First released in 1974, Dungeons & Dragons revolutionized game design and interactive media by allowing players to create and perform their own fictional…
- New Books in American Studies
Presidentess: The Life of First Lady Julia Gardner Tyler with Christopher J. Leahy and Sharon Williams Leahy (UP of Kansas, 2026)
The first full biography of the controversial and complex First Lady Julia Gardiner Tyler--an unjustly scandalized New Yorker, the second wife to President…
- New Books in American Studies
Skipping School: A History of American Homeschooling and How It Went Mainstream with Dixie Dillon Lane (Eerdmans, 2026)
Discover the untold story of why homeschooling moved from the margins to the mainstream of American education. In this groundbreaking study Skipping School: A…
- New Books in American Studies
The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People's Constitution with Jesse Wegman (Celadon Books, 2026)
David N. Gellman interviews Jesse Wegman on The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution (Celadon Books, 2026). Jesse…
- New Books in American Studies
American Bread: A History with Andrew Coe (U California Press, 2026)
There is no humbler food than bread, none easier to take for granted. So ancient that it shows up in prehistoric sites, bread is still full of surprises…
- New Books in American Studies
Hidden Terrors: The Scourge of Cholera in Jackson's America with Paul Kelton (Oxford UP, 2026)
In this episode of In Conversation, Lilyanna D'Amato speaks with Paul Kelton about his new book, Hidden Terrors: The Scourge of Cholera in Jackson's America…
- New Books in American Studies
Poles and Jews: A Call for Myth Reconstruction with Jennifer Stark-Blumenthal (Academic Studies Press, 2024)
Nationalism’s global resurgence has upended societies. With the rise of the Polish nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, and American Jewry’s swift reaction…
- New Books in American Studies
Chicana Spiritual Activism: Making Change, Making Soul with Brenda L. Sendejo (U Arizona Press, 2026)
Chicana Spiritual Activism: Making Change, Making Soul (U Arizona Press, 2026) explores the profound impact of spiritual activism within the Chicana feminist…
- New Books in American Studies
Inquisition for Blood: The Making of a Black Female Serial Killer in the Jim Crow South with Lauren Nicole Henley (LSU Press, 2026)
For three years in the early 1900s, a serial killer zigzagged across the rice belt region of the United States, using an everyday ax to slaughter Black…
- New Books in American Studies
Realism After the Individual: Women, Desire, and the Modern American Novel with Rafael Walker (U Chicago Press, 2025)
The realist novel, so the story goes, isn’t really an American genre but a European and British one. And what the realist novel does—again, according to…
- New Books in American Studies
Seniorland: Aging in a Retirement Metropolis with Galit Nimrod (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Despite the abundance of retirement communities in the US, none compare to The Villages in Central Florida. Home to nearly 150,000 residents and spanning an…
- New Books in American Studies
Creating an Informed Citizenry: Knowledge and Democracy in the Early American Republic with George D. Oberle (U Virginia Press, 2025)
When the founding fathers of the United States inaugurated a system of government that was unprecedented in the modern world, they knew that a functioning…
- New Books in American Studies
Crime and No Punishment: Wealth, Power, and Violence in America with Marie Gottschalk (Princeton UP, 2026)
The United States is an exceptionally violent country, increasingly unable or unwilling to stem violence in its many forms. A growing corporate crime wave has…
- New Books in American Studies
Troubled Times: The Boston Courthouse Bombing Of 1976 with Kevin Galvin (Brandeis UP, 2026)
Kevin Galvin's Troubled Times: The Boston Courthouse Bombing Of 1976 (Brandeis UP, 2026), interweaves the stories of a revolutionary and a bombing victim to…
- New Books in American Studies
God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America with Jacob Ware (Columbia UP, 2024)
In this episode, I spoke with Jacob Ware, co-author, with Bruce Hoffman, of God, Guns and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America, published in 2024 by…
- New Books in American Studies
Painting Paranoia: Cold War Art and Anti-Communism with Julia Bailey (U Illinois Press, 2026)
The Soviet Union’s rise as a totalitarian state and economic rival to the United States sparked a cultural cold war. The conflict was colored by paranoia and a…
- New Books in American Studies
Yiddish Scholarship Comes to America: The YIVO Institute at 100 with Kalman Weiser (Wayne State UP, 2026)
This comprehensive history of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research—a groundbreaking American Jewish cultural organization, library, and research…
- New Books in American Studies
The Biggest Lie: The Prehistory of American Fascism, 1818-1915
When American fascists suddenly goose-stepped down Main Street in the 1930s, fascism was seen by the rest of the country as a terrifying and radical new…
- New Books in American Studies
The Centrality of Slavery: Empire and Enslavement in Colonial Illinois and Missouri with John Craig Hammond (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
The Centrality of Slavery: Empire and Enslavement in Colonial Illinois and Missouri (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) examines how French and American colonizers…
- New Books in American Studies
A Healthy Union: How States Can Lead on Environmental Health with Susan Kaplan (Island Press, 2025)
In the absence of adequate federal safeguards against pollution and toxic chemicals, state policies are the strongest tools available to create safe…
- New Books in American Studies
Sojourners, Sultans, and Slaves: America and the Indian Ocean in the Age of Abolition and Empire with Gunja SenGupta (U California Press, 2023)
In the nineteenth century, global systems of capitalism and empire knit the North Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds into international networks in contest over…
- New Books in American Studies
Strung Up: How White America Learned to Lynch Black Children with Stacey Patton (Beacon Press, 2026)
A powerful, unsettling, and unflinching exploration that forces readers to confront lynching as a devastating legacy of white childhood conditioning, and to…
- New Books in American Studies
Bernardo de Gálvez: Spanish Hero of the American Revolution with Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia (UNC Press, 2026)
Although Spain was never a formal ally of the United States during the American Revolution, its entry into the war definitively tipped the balance against…
- New Books in American Studies
Our Common Life: Folksong from the Front Porch to the Concert Hall with Stephen Wade
Our Common Life: Folk Song from the Front Porch to the Concert Hall (U Illinois Press, 2026) by Stephen Wade is part memoir, part meditation on American…
- New Books in American Studies
Racist by Design: Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration Control with Kelly Lytle Hernández (Norton, 2026)
Kelly Lytle Hernández joins Michael Stauch to discuss how the US immigration system has always been “racist by design.” Many Americans’ understanding of the…
- New Books in American Studies
The Real Pain of Punishment: Prison, Belonging, and the Quest for Humanized Justice with Federica Coppola (Cambridge UP, 2026)
The Real Pain of Punishment: Prison, Belonging, and the Quest for Humanized Justice (Cambridge UP, 2026) highlights the concept of 'belonging' as an…
- New Books in American Studies
Credit to the Nation: Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Bankers and the Shaping of American Finance, 1873–1930 with Rebecca Kobrin (Harvard UP, 2026)
From a leading historian, the story of how entrepreneurial Jewish immigrants transformed commercial banking and enabled the economic and social advancement of…
- New Books in American Studies
Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for Housing with Rahim Kurwa (U California Press, 2025)
In this episode, Lilyanna D'Amato speaks with Rahim Kurwa about his book Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for Housing (U California Press…