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
Geoffrey Levin, "Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978" (Yale UP, 2023)
American Jews began debating Palestinian rights issues even before Israel’s founding in 1948. Geoffrey Levin recovers the voices of American Jews who, in the…
- New Books in American Studies
Alexandra Filindra, "Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
The United States has more guns than people and more gun violence than any Western democracy. Scholars in diverse fields interrogate why 21st century Americans…
- New Books in American Studies
James C. Goodall, "Nautilus to Columbia: 70 Years of the US Navy's Nuclear Submarines" (Osprey, 2023)
In Nautilus to Columbia: 70 Years of the US Navy's Nuclear Submarines (Osprey, 2023), James C. Goodall covers the origins, design and development of the US…
- New Books in American Studies
James W. Cortada, "Inside IBM: Lessons of a Corporate Culture in Action" (Columbia Business School, 2023)
IBM was the world's leading provider of information technologies for much of the twentieth century. What made it so successful for such a long time, and what…
- New Books in American Studies
Jeffrey A. Friedman, "The Commander-in-Chief Test: Public Opinion and the Politics of Image-Making in US Foreign Policy" (Cornell UP, 2023)
Americans frequently criticize US foreign policy for being overly costly and excessively militaristic. With its rising defense budgets and open-ended "forever…
- New Books in American Studies
Kathryn Mathers, "White Saviorism and Popular Culture: Imagined Africa as a Space for American Salvation" (Routledge, 2022)
In White Saviorism and Popular Culture: Imagined Africa as a Space for American Salvation (Routledge, 2022), Kathryn Mathers interrogates the white savior…
- New Books in American Studies
Aviva Ben-Ur and Wim Klooster eds., "Jewish Entanglements in the Atlantic World" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Aviva Ben-Ur and Wim Klooster's edited volume Jewish Entanglements in the Atlantic World (Cornell UP, 2024) represents the first collective attempt to reframe…
- New Books in American Studies
Emily Brooks, "Gotham’s War Within a War: Policing and the Birth of Law-and-Order Liberalism in World War II-Era New York City" (UNC Press, 2023)
Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, members of the NYPD had worked to enforce partisan political power rather than focus on crime…
- New Books in American Studies
Matt Singer, "Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever" (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2023)
Once upon a time, if you wanted to know if a movie was worth seeing, you didn’t check out Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB. You asked whether Siskel & Ebert had given…
- New Books in American Studies
Rich Cohen, "When the Game Was War: The NBA's Greatest Season" (Random House, 2023)
Four historic teams. Four legendary players. One unforgettable season. The 1980s were a transformative decade for the NBA. Since its founding in 1946, the…
- New Books in American Studies
Hajar Yazdiha, "The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement" (Princeton UP, 2023)
In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people…
- New Books in American Studies
Matthew Batt, "The Last Supper Club: A Waiter's Requiem" (U of Minnesota Press, 2023)
During a year on sabbatical from his university position, Matthew Batt realized he needed money—fast—and it just so happened that a craft brewery in…
- New Books in American Studies
Sam Lebovic, "State of Silence: The Espionage Act and the Rise of America's Secrecy Regime" (Basic Book, 2023)
In State of Silence: The Espionage Act and the Rise of America's Secrecy Regime (Basic Books, 2023), political historian Dr. Sam Lebovic uncovers the troubling…
- New Books in American Studies
Darnise C. Martin, "Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church" (NYU Press, 2005)
Darnise C. Martin's Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church (NYU Press, 2005) draws on rich ethnographic work in a Religious Science…
- New Books in American Studies
Kami Fletcher and Ashley Towle, "Grave History: Death, Race, and Gender in Southern Cemeteries" (U Georgia Press, 2023)
Kami Fletcher and Ashley Towle’s edited collection Grave History: Death, Race and Gender in Southern Cemeteries (University of Georgia Press, 2023)…
- New Books in American Studies
Patrick R. O'Malley, "The Irish and the Imagination of Race: White Supremacy Across the Atlantic in the Nineteenth Century" (U Virginia Press, 2023)
Patrick R. O'Malley's book The Irish and the Imagination of Race: White Supremacy Across the Atlantic in the Nineteenth Century (U Virginia Press, 2023)…
- New Books in American Studies
Selby Wynn Schwartz, "The Bodies of Others: Drag Dances and Their Afterlives" (U Michigan Press, 2019)
Selby Wynn Schwartz writes about gender, performance, and the politics of embodiment. Her articles have been published in Women & Performance, PAJ, Dance…
- New Books in American Studies
Jennifer Thomson, "The Wild and the Toxic: American Environmentalism and the Politics of Health" (UNC Press, 2019)
The first wealth is health, according to Emerson. Among health’s riches is its political potential. Few know this better than environmentalists. In her debut…
- New Books in American Studies
Matthew Kennedy, "On Elizabeth Taylor: An Opinionated Guide" (Oxford UP, 2024)
In the oceans of ink devoted to the monumental movie star/businesswoman/political activist Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (1932-2011), her beauty and not-so-private…
- New Books in American Studies
Robert Michael Morrissey, "People of the Ecotone: Environment and Indigenous Power at the Center of Early America" (U Washington Press, 2022)
By putting the Midwest at the center of Vast Early America, University of Illinois historian Robert Morrissey reconfigures the power dynamics in the story of…
- New Books in American Studies
Ayelet Brinn, "A Revolution in Type: Gender and the Making of the American Yiddish Press" (NYU Press, 2023)
A Revolution in Type: Gender and the Making of the American Yiddish Press (NYU Press, 2023) by Dr. Ayelet Brinn offers a fascinating glimpse into the complex…
- New Books in American Studies
Katherine Rye Jewell, "Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio" (UNC Press, 2023)
Bands like R.E.M., U2, Public Enemy, and Nirvana found success as darlings of college radio, but the extraordinary influence of these stations and their DJs on…
- New Books in American Studies
Steven Rogers, "Accountability in State Legislatures" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Political Scientist Steven Rogers’ new book focuses on the deceptively complex question of how it is that voters do or don’t/can and can’t hold their elected…
- New Books in American Studies
Alex Pappademas and Joan LeMay, "Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan" (U Texas Press, 2023)
A literary and visual exploration of the songs of Steely Dan. Steely Dan's songs are exercises in fictional world-building. No one else in the classic-rock…
- New Books in American Studies
Christopher R. Martin, "No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class" (Cornell UP, 2019)
Until the recent political shift pushed workers back into the media spotlight, the mainstream media had largely ignored this significant part of American…
- New Books in American Studies
Amy Von Lintel, "Georgia O'Keeffe's Wartime Texas Letters" (Texas A&M UP, 2020)
In 1912, at age 24, Georgia O’Keeffe boarded a train in Virginia and headed west, to the prairies of the Texas Panhandle, to take a position as art teacher for…
- New Books in American Studies
Martyn Whittock, "American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America" (Pegasus Books, 2023)
A vivid and illuminating new history--separate fact from fiction, myth from legend--exploring the early Vikings settlements in North America. Vikings are an…
- New Books in American Studies
Claire Myers Owens and the Banned Book
Why did the New York Public Library ban a novel about women’s independence? What was the Human Potential Movement? And who was Claire Myers Owens? Today’s book…
- New Books in American Studies
Susanna Phillips Newbury, "The Speculative City: Art, Real Estate, and the Making of Global Los Angeles" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
Underlying every great city is a rich and vibrant culture that shapes the texture of life within. In The Speculative City: Art, Real Estate, and the Making of…
- New Books in American Studies
Jack Glazier, "Anthropology and Radical Humanism: Native and African American Narratives and the Myth of Race" (MSU Press, 2020)
Paul Radin was one of the founding generation of American cultural anthropologists: A student of Franz Boas, and famed ethnographer of the Winnebago. Yet…
- New Books in American Studies
Margaret M. McGuinness, "Katharine Drexel and the Sisters Who Shared Her Vision" (Paulist Press, 2023)
Although Katharine Drexel has been the subject of several biographies, they have tended to treat her as a perfect human being whom the Church later transformed…
- New Books in American Studies
Robert N. Gross, “Public vs. Private: The Early History of School Choice in America” (Oxford UP, 2018)
There are numerous political debates about education policy today, but some of the most heated surround vouchers, charter schools, and other questions about…
- New Books in American Studies
W. K. Stratton, "The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
On June 18, 1969, "The Wild Bunch" premiered to critical success. Over the past 50 years it has been rightly recognized as one of the landmark films from the…
- New Books in American Studies
Stephen M. Engel and Timothy S. Lyle, "Disrupting Dignity: Rethinking Power and Progress in LGBTQ Lives" (NYU Press, 2021)
Scholars Stephen Engel and Timothy Lyle have a new book that dives into the thinking around power, political and cultural progress, and the LGBTQ+ communities…
- New Books in American Studies
Benjamin Lorr, "The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket" (Penguin, 2020)
This episode of the New Books in Economic and Business History is an interview with New York writer Benjamin Lorr. Benjamin Lorr is the author of Hell-Bent…
- New Books in American Studies
Gregg L. Frazer, "God against the Revolution: The Loyalist Clergy’s Case Against the American Revolution" (UP of Kansas, 2018)
Not everyone was convinced by the arguments of patriots during the American revolution. Among those who retained some degree of loyalty to the British crown…
- New Books in American Studies
Jonathan Scott, "How the Old World Ended: The Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution, 1500-1800" (Yale UP, 2019)
Jonathan Scott is one of the most original interpreters of the early modern world. How the Old World Ended: The Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution, 1500-1800…
- New Books in American Studies
Laura Briggs, "Taking Children: A History of American Terror" (U California Press, 2020)
Laura Briggs’s Taking Children: A History of American Terror (University of California Press 2020) is a forceful and captivating book that readers won’t be…
- New Books in American Studies
Laurent Dubois, “The Banjo: America’s African Instrument” (Harvard UP, 2016)
Most scholars of popular music use songs, artists, and clubs as the key texts and sites in their exploration of the social, cultural, political, and economic…
- New Books in American Studies
Timothy K. August, "The Refugee Aesthetic: Reimagining Southeast Asian America" (Temple UP, 2020)
In The Refugee Aesthetic: Reimagining Southeast Asian America (Temple University Press, 2021), Timothy K. August centers Southeast Asian American writers and…
New Books in American StudiesNature-Study
In this episode, John Linstrom tells us about Nature-Study, an educational movement that began in the rural classrooms of American Progressive Era. It takes…
- New Books in American Studies
Ralph H. Craig, "Dancing in My Dreams: A Spiritual Biography of Tina Turner" (Eerdmans, 2023)
When Tina Turner reclaimed her throne as the Queen of Rock 'n' Roll in the 1980s, she attributed her comeback to one thing: the wisdom and power she found in…
- New Books in American Studies
Annie McClanahan, "Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and Twenty-First Century Culture" (Stanford UP, 2016)
When teaching a public course called “The Age of Debt” this winter break, I had the strange realization that one of the the most successful readings in that…
- New Books in American Studies
D. B. Maroon, "Black Lives, American Love: Essays on Race and Resilience" (Lawrence Hill Books, 2023)
In this hard-hitting collection of essays, D.B. Maroon presents a personal biography of America, Blackness, and racial politics with unflinching style, and…
- New Books in American Studies
Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler, "Open Plan: A Design History of the American Office" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Albeit inspired by a progressive vision of a working environment without walls or hierarchies, the open plan office has come to be associated with some of the…
- New Books in American Studies
Joseph Vogel, "James Baldwin and the 1980s: Witnessing the Reagan Era" (U Illinois Press, 2018)
By the 1980s, critics and the public alike considered James Baldwin irrelevant. Yet Baldwin remained an important, prolific writer until his death in 1987…
- New Books in American Studies
Nicole Seymour, "Glitter" (Bloombury, 2022)
Glitter (Bloomsbury, 2022) by Dr. Nicole Seymour reveals the complexity of an object often dismissed as frivolous. Dr. Seymour describes how glitter's…
- New Books in American Studies
David T. Beito, "The New Deal's War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR's Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance" (Independent Institute, 2023)
The legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt enjoys regular acclaim from historians, politicians, and educators. Lauded for his New Deal policies, leadership…
- New Books in American Studies
Jeffrey Whyte, "The Birth of Psychological War: Propaganda, Espionage, and Military Violence from WWII to the Vietnam War" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Jeffrey Whyte's book The Birth of Psychological War: Propaganda, Espionage, and Military Violence from WWII to the Vietnam War (Oxford UP, 2023) explores the…
- New Books in American Studies
Julia F. Irwin, "Catastrophic Diplomacy: US Foreign Disaster Assistance in the American Century" (UNC Press, 2023)
Catastrophic Diplomacy: US Foreign Disaster Assistance in the American Century (UNC Press, 2023) offers a sweeping history of US foreign disaster assistance…
- New Books in American Studies
Bryan McCann, "The Mark of Criminality: Rhetoric, Race, and Gangsta Rap in the War-on-Crime Era" (U Alabama Press, 2017)
On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Communication at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Bryan McCann (he/his)--Associate Professor of…
- New Books in American Studies
David Courtwright, "The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business" (Harvard UP, 2019)
We are living in an age of addiction, from compulsive gaming and binge eating to pornography and opioid abuse. Today I talked with historian David Courtwright…
- New Books in American Studies
Jordana M. Saggese, "The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader" (U California Press, 2021)
In The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader (University of California Press, 2021), Jordana Moore Saggese provides the first comprehensive sourcebook on the artist…
- New Books in American Studies
Marixa Lasso, "Erased: The Untold Story of the Panama Canal" (Harvard UP, 2019)
Many of our presumptions about the Panama Canal Zone are wrong; it was not carved out of uninhabited jungle, the creation of Lake Gatún did not flood towns and…
- New Books in American Studies
Milton Gaither, "Homeschool: An American History" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
With around two million children currently enrolled in home schools in the USA, no-one can doubt that the subject of Milton Gaither’s new book is timely…
- New Books in American Studies
Tamara Venit-Shelton, "Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace" (Yale UP, 2019)
The modern popularity of acupuncture and herbal medicine belies the long history of Chinese medicine in the U.S. In Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese…
- New Books in American Studies
Thomas A. Schwartz, "Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography" (Hill and Wang, 2020)
Over the past six decades, Henry Kissinger has been America's most consistently praised--and reviled--public figure. He was hailed as a "miracle worker" for…
- New Books in American Studies
Carl Rollyson, "The Life of William Faulkner: This Alarming Paradox, 1935-1962" (U Virginia Press, 2020)
By 1935 William Faulkner was well established as an author of critically praised novels, yet the low volume of his sales forced him to seek work in Hollywood…
- New Books in American Studies
David R. Brigham, "Two Hundred Years: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1824-2024" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)
Home to the first two drafts of the U.S. Constitution, an original printer’s proof of the Declaration of Independence, and the earliest surviving American…
- New Books in American Studies
Jafari S. Allen, "There's a Disco Ball Between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life" (Duke UP, 2022)
In There's a Disco Ball Between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life (Duke UP, 2022), Jafari S. Allen offers a sweeping and lively ethnographic and intellectual…