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
Gwynne Kuhner Brown, "William L. Dawson" (University of Illinois Press, 2024)
William L. Dawson (University of Illinois Press, 2024) by Gwynne Kuhner Brown is a biography of the Black American composer, conductor and pedagogue. She gives…
- New Books in American Studies
Sladja Blažan, "Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World in Early America" (University of Virginia Press, 2025)
In Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World in Early America (University of Virginia Press, 2025), Dr. Sladja Blažan explains the…
- New Books in American Studies
Brando Simeo Starkey, "Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System" (Doubleday, 2025)
Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System (Doubleday, 2025) takes readers from the…
- New Books in American Studies
Questions: A Discussion with Leslie Butler and Holly Case
BOOKS UNDER DISCUSSION: Leslie Butler, Consistent Democracy: The "Woman Question" and Self-Government in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford University Press…
- New Books in American Studies
Brittany Friedman, "Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons" (UNC Press, 2025)
In Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons, Dr. Brittany Friedman delves into how the California Department of Corrections deployed…
- New Books in American Studies
Dionne Koller, "More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport" (U California Press, 2025)
Tens of millions of children in the United States participate in youth sport, a pastime widely believed to be part of a good childhood. Yet most children who…
- New Books in American Studies
Bonnie Yochelson, "Too Good to Get Married: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen" (Fordham UP, 2025)
In Too Good to Get Married: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen (Fordham University Press, 2025) by Dr. Bonnie Yochelson, explore Gilded Age New York…
- New Books in American Studies
Robert Chernomas, Gregory Chernomas, and Ian Hudson, "The American Gene: Unnatural Selection Along Class, Race, and Gender Lines" (Routledge, 2025)
Biological justification for all forms of inequality has a long history, with the claim that particular groups suffer disproportionately from inherited flaws…
- New Books in American Studies
Andy Oler, "Old-Fashioned Modernism: Rural Masculinity and Midwestern Literature" (LSU Press, 2019)
In light of recent conversations about the crisis of masculinity, let's revisit Dr. Andy Oler's book Old-Fashioned Modernism: Rural Masculinity and Midwestern…
- New Books in American Studies
Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, "Burdens of Belonging: Race in an Unequal Nation" (NYU Press, 2025)
Burdens of Belonging: Race in an Unequal Nation By Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon W.E.B. Du Bois famously pondered a…
- New Books in American Studies
Jon Shelton, "The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy" (Cornell UP, 2023)
The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy (Cornell UP, 2023) questions the idea that education represents the best, if not the only, way…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael A. Meyer, "Above All, We Are Jews: A Biography of Rabbi Alexander Schindler" (CCAR Press, 2025)
Reform Judaism looks different today than it did a century ago. There are a lot of factors that lead to that change, but among these is Rabbi Alexander…
- New Books in American Studies
Victoria Bynum, "Deep Roots, Broken Branches: A History and Memoir" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)
Historian Victoria Bynum turns now to her own history in this multigenerational American saga spanning from 1840 to 1979. Through meticulous historical…
- New Books in American Studies
Jennifer Lynn Gross, "Sisterhood of the Lost Cause: Confederate Widows in the New South" (LSU Press, 2025)
Historians have thoroughly documented the vast devastation of the Civil War. In the attention they have paid to aspects of that destruction, however, one of…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael D. Gambone, "The New Praetorians: American Veterans, Society, and Service from Vietnam to the Forever War" (U Massachusetts Press, 2021)
Contemporary veterans belong to an exclusive American group. Celebrated by most of the country, they are nevertheless often poorly understood by the same…
- New Books in American Studies
False Dawn: A Conversation with George Selgin on Recovering from the Great Depression
Join us on Madison's Notes as we sit down with George Selgin, senior fellow and director emeritus of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial…
- New Books in American Studies
Nneka D. Dennie, "Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth Century Black Radical Feminist" (Oxford UP, 2023)
In 1849, the Mary Ann Shadd Cary had not yet become one of the first Black woman newspaper editors in North America. She was decades away from being admitted…
- New Books in American Studies
Robert F. Darden and Stephen M. Newby, "Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Gospel singer and seven-time Grammy winner Andraé Crouch (1942-2015) hardly needs introduction. His compositions--"The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power,"…
- New Books in American Studies
William Haldeman, "Meeting the Moment: Inspiring Presidential Leadership That Transformed America" (SUNY Press, 2024)
The histories presented in Meeting the Moment: Inspiring Presidential Leadership That Transformed America (SUNY Press, 2024) are of a select group of US…
- New Books in American Studies
Karida L. Brown, "The Battle for the Black Mind" (Legacy Lit, 2025)
A gripping chronicle of the relentless fight for Black educational freedom--and the bold strategies to protect, nourish, and empower Black minds. The Battle…
- New Books in American Studies
Ryan J. Vander Wielen et al., "The House that Fox News Built?: Representation, Political Accountability, and the Rise of Partisan News" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
The influence of partisan news is presumed to be powerful, but evidence for its effects on political elites is limited, often based more on anecdotes than…
- New Books in American Studies
Pollyanna Rhee, "Natural Attachments: The Domestication of American Environmentalism, 1920–1970" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
A massive oil spill in the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara, California, in 1969 quickly became a landmark in the history of American environmentalism, helping…
- New Books in American Studies
Constitutional Crisis or a Stalemate?
At the 100 day mark of Donald Trump’s second term as president, the political scientists at Bright Line Watch released their 25th report on the state of…
- New Books in American Studies
Ken Conca, "After the Floods: The Search for Resilience in Ellicott City" (Oxford UP, 2024)
One small town, two "thousand-year floods" in the span of two years: how does a community become resilient in the face of the ever-increasing risks of climate…
- New Books in American Studies
Executive Power and the President Who Would Not Be King: A Conversation with Michael McConnell
In this episode of Madison’s Notes, Michael McConnell examines the gap between the Founders’ vision of a limited presidency and today’s expansive executive…
- New Books in American Studies
Mike Miley, "David Lynch’s American Dreamscape: Music, Literature, Cinema" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
How are David Lynch's films as much in dialogue with literary and musical traditions as they are cinematic ones? By interrogating this question, David Lynch’s…
- New Books in American Studies
Elyssa Ford and Rebecca Scofield, "Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo" (U Washington Press, 2023)
What would a rodeo open to anyone and everyone look like? In their new book, Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo (U Washington, 2023), history…
- New Books in American Studies
Daniel MacFarlane, "The Lives of Lake Ontario: An Environmental History" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2024)
Join me for a fascinating conversation with one of today’s leading voices in environmental studies, Daniel Macfarlane, as we explore his new book The Lives of…
- New Books in American Studies
Ruth Braunstein, "My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America" (Princeton UP, 2025)
In My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America (Princeton University Press, 2025), Ruth Braunstein maps the contested moral landscape in which…
- New Books in American Studies
Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik, "Watching TV: American Television Season by Season, Fourth Edition" (Syracuse UP, 2024)
In their fourth edition of Watching TV: American Television Season by Season (Syracuse University Press, 2025), Harry Castleman and Walter Podrazik present a…
- New Books in American Studies
Becky Aikman, "Spitfires: The American Women Who Flew in the Face of Danger during World War II" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
They were crop dusters and debutantes, college girls and performers in flying circuses-all of them trained as pilots. Because they were women, they were denied…
- New Books in American Studies
Katherine Stewart, "Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Today, and for the past several years, many people both here and abroad have been trying to make sense of the radical right and its financial and ideological…
- New Books in American Studies
Claudia Rowe, "Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care" (Abrams Press, 2025)
Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care (Abrams Press, 2025) is compelling exploration of the broken American foster care system, told…
- New Books in American Studies
Brian VanDeMark, "Kent State: An American Tragedy" (Norton, 2024)
Fifty-five years after the terrible shooting at Kent State University, I spoke with Brian VanDeMark, a Professor of History at the US Naval Academy, about his…
- New Books in American Studies
Aaron Robertson, "The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America" (FSG, 2024)
How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in other…
- New Books in American Studies
Hasia R. Diner, "Opening Doors: The Unlikely Alliance Between the Irish and the Jews in America" (St. Martin's Press, 2024)
Opening Doors: The Unlikely Alliance Between the Irish and the Jews in America (St. Martin's Press, 2024) tells the extraordinary story of how Irish and Jewish…
- New Books in American Studies
Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin, "Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America" (Island Press, 2025)
This is the shocking true-life story of how PFAS—a set of toxic chemicals most people have never heard of—poisoned the entire country. Based on original…
- New Books in American Studies
Benjamin Schrader, "Fight to Live, Live to Fight Veteran Activism after War: Veteran Activism after War" (SUNY Press, 2019)
While veterans are often talked about, in Fight to Live, Live to Fight Veteran Activism after War: Veteran Activism after War (SUNY Press, 2019), Dr. Benjamin…
- New Books in American Studies
Chloe Ahmann, "Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Factory fires, chemical explosions, and aerial pollutants have inexorably shaped South Baltimore into one of the most polluted places in the country. In…
- New Books in American Studies
Lynn Downey, "American Dude Ranch: A Touch of the Cowboy and the Thrill of the West" (U Oklahoma Press, 2022)
In American Dude Ranch: A Touch of the Cowboy and the Thrill of the West (U Oklahoma Press, 2022), historian Lynn Downey offers a cultural history of the dude…
- New Books in American Studies
Eunji Kim, "The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy" (Princeton UP, 2025)
In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite all…
- New Books in American Studies
Stephen H. Legomsky, "Reimagining the American Union: The Case for Abolishing State Government" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Since American president Donald Trump was elected to a second term, it is common to hear citizens, journalists, and public officials distinguish between the…
- New Books in American Studies
No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice
When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground. Polarizing debates over their meaning have intensified into legislative maneuvering to…
- New Books in American Studies
William Kiser, "The Business of Killing Indians: Scalp Warfare and the Violent Conquest of North America" (Yale UP, 2025)
In Cormac McCarthy's 1985 Western, Blood Meridian, the story follows infamous scalp hunter John Joel Glanton through the Mexican borderlands in the mid-19th…
- New Books in American Studies
Steven Hahn, "Illiberal America: A History" (Norton, 2024)
If your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That’s not us,' think again. In Illiberal America: A History (Norton…
- New Books in American Studies
Adam Kissel et al., "Slacking: A Guide to Ivy League Miseducation" (Encounter Books, 2025)
What does a general education from an Ivy League mean? What structures produce the course catalogues that students can choose to customize their education…
- New Books in American Studies
Max Hastings, “Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975” (Harper, 2018)
People of various political stripes in many countries (particularly those countries where various political stripes are allowed) have been arguing about the…
- New Books in American Studies
Reginald K. Ellis et al., "Black Citizens and American Democracy: Fighting for the Soul of a Nation" (UP of Florida, 2025)
In 2020, Black Americans continued a centuries-long pursuit of racial equality and justice in the streets and at the polls. Arguing that this year was not a…
- New Books in American Studies
Frederick Knight, "Black Elders: The Meaning of Age in American Slavery and Freedom" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
Would there have been a Frederick Douglass if it were not for Betsy Bailey, the grandmother who raised him? Would Harriet Jacobs have written her renowned…
- New Books in American Studies
Katie Rose Hejtmanek, "The Cult of CrossFit: Christianity and the American Exercise Phenomenon" (NYU Press, 2025)
CrossFit in the United States has become increasingly popular, around which a fascinating culture has developed which shapes everyday life for the people…
- New Books in American Studies
Alfred L. Martin, Jr., "Fandom for Us, by Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences" (NYU Press, 2025)
Boldly going where few fandom scholars have gone before, Fandom for Us, by Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences (NYU Press, 2025) breaks from our…
- New Books in American Studies
Jonathan D. Cohen, "Losing Big: America's Dangerous Sports Gambling Boom" (Columbia Global Reports, 2025)
In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have done so…
- New Books in American Studies
Neil Kraus, "The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement" (Temple UP, 2023)
Wage stagnation, growing inequality, and even poverty itself have resulted from decades of neoliberal decision making, not the education system, writes Neil…
- New Books in American Studies
Henry Jenkins, "Where the Wild Things Were: Boyhood and Permissive Parenting in Postwar America" (NYU Press, 2025)
The 60s produced a Baby Boom generation that catalyzed the dawn of a new era—the space age, the age of television, the global age, and the beginnings of civil…
- New Books in American Studies
Colleen A. Dunlavy, "Small, Medium, Large: How Government Made the U.S.into a Manufacturing Powerhouse" (Polity Press, 2024)
Small, Medium, Large: How Government Made the U.S. into a Manufacturing Powerhouse, published by Polity Books in 2024, offers a bold reinterpretation of…
- New Books in American Studies
Ross Benes, "1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times" (UP of Kansas, 2025)
In 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted our Bizarre Times (2025, University of Kansas Press) journalist Ross Benes examines low culture…
- New Books in American Studies
Maurice Jackson, "Rhythms of Resistance and Resilience: How Black Washingtonians Used Music and Sports in the Fight for Equality" (Georgetown UP, 2025)
In the Nation's Capital, music and sports have played a central role in the lives of African Americans, often serving as a barometer of social conflict and…
- New Books in American Studies
Davida Siwisa James, "Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill: Alexander Hamilton’s Old Harlem Neighborhood Through the Centuries" (Fordham UP, 2024)
For last 100 years, the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City has stood as the capital of Black America and the capital of the global African diaspora. Yet…
- New Books in American Studies
Engage and Evade in 2025: Asad L. Asad on Latino Immigrants in America
Today I’m speaking with Asad L. Asad, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stanford University. He is the author of Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant…
- New Books in American Studies
The Great Gatsby is an American Dystopia
It’s the UConn Popcast, and on the 100th anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, we explore what The Great Gatsby means in America today. In this…