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
Jennifer Keys Adair and Kiyomi Sánchez-Suzuki Colegrove, "Segregation by Experience: Agency, Racism, and Learning in the Early Grades" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
Early childhood can be a time of rich discovery, a period when educators have an opportunity to harness their students’ fascination to create unique learning…
- New Books in American Studies
Stephen Aron, "Peace and Friendship: An Alternative History of the American West" (Oxford UP, 2022)
The history of the American West has typically been told in one of two ways: as triumph, or as tragedy. Stephen Aron, accomplished scholar of the West…
- New Books in American Studies
Carl Van Ness, "The Making of Florida's Universities: Public Higher Education at the Turn of the Twentieth Century" (UP of Florida, 2023)
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 the…
- New Books in American Studies
Ramzi Fawaz, "The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics" (NYU Press, 2016)
Today’s guest is Ramzi Fawaz, the Romnes Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Published by NYU Press in 2016, The New Mutants…
- New Books in American Studies
Bobby J. Smith II, "Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement" (UNC Press, 2023)
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 buried deep…
- New Books in American Studies
In Praise of Reason: Why Rationality Matters for Democracy
Why does reason matter, if (as many people seem to think) in the end everything comes down to blind faith or gut instinct? Why not just go with what you…
- New Books in American Studies
Jennifer Ritterhouse, "Discovering the South: One Man's Travels through a Changing America in the 1930s" (UNC Press, 2017)
During the Great Depression, the American South was not merely "the nation's number one economic problem," as President Franklin Roosevelt declared. It was…
- New Books in American Studies
Lauren S. Foley, "On the Basis of Race: How Higher Education Navigates Affirmative Action Policies" (NYU Press, 2023)
Diversity in higher education is under attack as the Supreme Court limits the use of race-conscious admissions practices at American colleges and universities…
- New Books in American Studies
Earl Cureton and Jake Uitti, "Earl the Twirl: My Life in Basketball" (McFarland, 2023)
Today I talked to Earl Careton about his new book (co-authored with Jake Uitti), Earl the Twirl: My Life in Basketball (McFarland, 2023) Earl "The Twirl"…
- New Books in American Studies
Benjamin Y. Fong, "Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge" (Verso, 2023)
Benjamin Y. Fong is author of the new book Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge, which was just released in July, 2023 by…
- New Books in American Studies
Paratroopers in the Pacific: A Conversation with James Fenelon
In the final episode of Season 3, Annika sits down with James Fenelon, a veteran-turned-historian, who served in the Army for over a decade and is a graduate…
- New Books in American Studies
How Uber Disrupted Washington, D.C.: A Conversation with Katie Wells and Kafui Attoh
Katie Wells, a Postdoctoral Fritz Fellow with Georgetown University's Tech and Society Initiative, and Kafui Attoh, Associate Professor of Urban Studies in the…
- New Books in American Studies
Nicholas Tochka, "Rocking in the Free World: Popular Music and the Politics of Freedom in Postwar America" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Progressive and libertarian, anti-Communist and revolutionary, Democratic and Republican, quintessentially American but simultaneously universal. By the late…
- New Books in American Studies
Julia Wertz, "Tenements, Towers & Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City" (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2017)
Tenements, Towers & Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2017) is a comically illustrated chronicle of a young…
- New Books in American Studies
Keith A. Mayes, "The Unteachables: Disability Rights and the Invention of Black Special Education" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
The Unteachables: Disability Rights and the Invention of Black Special Education (U Minnesota Press, 2023) examines the overrepresentation of Black students in…
- New Books in American Studies
Marsha Gordon, "Becoming the Ex-Wife: The Unconventional Life and Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott" (U California Press, 2023)
Credited with popularizing the label "ex-wife" in 1929, Ursula Parrott wrote provocatively about divorcées, career women, single mothers, work-life balance…
- New Books in American Studies
Ashley Robertson Preston, "Mary Mcleod Bethune the Pan-Africanist" (UP of Florida, 2023)
This book examines the Pan-Africanism of Mary McLeod Bethune through her work, which internationalized the scope of Black women's organizations to create…
- New Books in American Studies
Donovan X. Ramsey, "When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era" (One World, 2023)
The crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s is arguably the least examined crisis in American history. Beginning with the myths inspired by Reagan's war on…
- New Books in American Studies
Kris Marsh, "The Love Jones Cohort: Single and Living Alone in the Black Middle Class" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Drawing from stratification economics, intersectionality, and respectability politics, Kris Marsh's The Love Jones Cohort: Single and Living Alone in the Black…
- New Books in American Studies
Sophie Bjork-James, "The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism's Politics of the Family" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism's Politics of the Family (Rutgers University Press, 2021) provides an account of how a theology of the family came…
- New Books in American Studies
The Future of Underground/Sea Cables: A Discussion with Henry Farrell
How much of US power is underground? We hear a lot about the US military assets used on land, on the sea, and in the air - but not much about what’s going on…
- New Books in American Studies
Charlotte Karem Albrecht, "Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling" (U California Press, 2023)
Many of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who immigrated to the US beginning in the 1870s worked as peddlers. Men were able to transgress Syrian norms…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael J. Diamond, "Ruptures in the American Psyche: Containing Destructive Populism in Perilous Times" (Phoenix Publishing, 2022)
Michael J. Diamond's book Ruptures in the American Psyche: Containing Destructive Populism in Perilous Times (Phoenix Publishing, 2022) describes Trumpism: the…
- New Books in American Studies
Phillip Reid, "A Boston Schooner in the Royal Navy, 1768-1772: Commerce and Conflict in Maritime British America" (Boydell Press, 2023)
The small Boston-built schooner Sultana served as a customs-enforcement interceptor on the North American eastern seaboard in the period leading up to the…
- New Books in American Studies
Michell D. Jones and Elisabeth A. Nelson, "Besides, Who Would Believe a Prisoner?: Indiana Women's Carceral Institutions, 1848-1920" (New Press, 2023)
What if prisoners were to write the history of their own prison? What might that tell them--and all of us--about the roots of the system that incarcerates so…
- New Books in American Studies
Wendy A. Woloson, "Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
Why are our lives filled with so much stuff? In Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America (U Chicago Press, 2023), Wendy Woloson, Professor and Chair in the…
- New Books in American Studies
William J. Mann, "Bogie and Bacall: The Surprising True Story of Hollywood's Greatest Love Affair" (Harper, 2023)
From the noted Hollywood biographer comes this celebration of the great American love story—the romance between Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart—capturing its…
- New Books in American Studies
Driving While Black: African Americans and the Automobile
Gretchen Sorin, Director and Distinguished Professor of the Cooperstown Graduate Program at the State University of New York - Oneonta, talks about her book…
- New Books in American Studies
Postscript: Protecting the Public? Guns, Intimate Partner Violence, and the US Supreme Court
Postscript invites scholars to react to contemporary political events and today’s podcast welcomes an expert on domestic violence and firearms law to analyze a…
- New Books in American Studies
Andreas Killen, "Nervous Systems: Brain Science in the Early Cold War" (Harper, 2023)
In this eye-opening chronicle of scientific research on the brain in the early Cold War era, the acclaimed historian Andreas Killen traces the complex…
- New Books in American Studies
Erika Marie Bsumek, "The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam: Infrastructures of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau" (U Texas Press, 2023)
The Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River provides electricity for some forty million people, and is one of the largest sources of water in the American West…
- New Books in American Studies
Landon Mascareñaz and Doannie Tran, "The Open System: Redesigning Education and Reigniting Democracy" ((Harvard Education Press, 2023)
Landon Mascareñaz and Doannie Tran propose that, even as events of this decade have exposed stress points in existing top-down, closed systems within education…
- New Books in American Studies
Christine Keiner, "Deep Cut: Science, Power, and the Unbuilt Interoceanic Canal" (U Georgia Press, 2020)
The Atlantic-Pacific Central American sea-level canal is generally regarded as a spectacular failure. However, Deep Cut: Science, Power, and the Unbuilt…
- New Books in American Studies
Daniel G Hummel, "The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation" (William B. Eerdmans, 2023)
In The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation (William B. Eerdmans, 2023), Daniel G. Hummel…
- New Books in American Studies
Andy Cowan, "B-Side: Pop History Via Its Greatest B-Sides, 1917-2017" (Headpress, 2023)
In his new book B-Sides: Pop History Via Its Greatest B-Sides, 1917-2017 (Headpress, 2023), Andy Cowan explores a century of music b-sides. Pop music would be…
- New Books in American Studies
Breaking Out: An Indian Woman's American Journey
Padma Desai grew up in the 1930s in the provincial world of Surat, India, where she had a sheltered and strict upbringing in a traditional Gujarati Anavil…
- New Books in American Studies
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song, "Families on the Edge: Experiences of Homelessness and Care in Rural New England" (MIT Press, 2023)
An intimate account of rural New England families living on the edge of homelessness, as well as the practices and policies of care that fail them. Families on…
- New Books in American Studies
Tamara J. Walker, "Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad" (Crown, 2023)
Part historical exploration, part travel memoir, Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad (Crown, 2023) reveals poignant histories of a diverse…
- New Books in American Studies
Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey, "Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America" (UNC Press, 2023)
Twentieth-century African American history cannot be told without accounting for the significant influence of Pan-African thought, just as the story of U.S…
- New Books in American Studies
Jill L. Newmark, "Without Concealment, Without Compromise: The Courageous Lives of Black Civil War Surgeons" (Southern Illinois UP, 2023)
Of some twelve thousand Union Civil War surgeons, only fourteen were Black men. This book is the first-ever comprehensive exploration of their lives and…
- New Books in American Studies
Joshua Cohen’s "The Netanyahus" (JP, Eugene Sheppard)
n this episode (originally aired by our partner Novel Dialogue) John and his Brandeis colleague Eugene Sheppard speak with Joshua Cohen about The Netanyahus…
- New Books in American Studies
Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program
In July 1969, ninety-four percent of American televisions were tuned to coverage of Apollo 11's mission to the moon. How did space exploration, once the…
- New Books in American Studies
Olivier Burtin, "A Nation of Veterans: War, Citizenship, and the Welfare State in Modern America" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
In examining how the veterans' movement inscribed martial citizenship onto American law, politics, and culture, A Nation of Veterans: War, Citizenship, and the…
- New Books in American Studies
Thurka Sangaramoorthy, "Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America" (UNC Press, 2023)
Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America (UNC Press, 2023) examines the ways immigrants, mainly from Latin America and the Caribbean…
- New Books in American Studies
Colleen M. Grogan, "Grow and Hide: The History of America's Health Care State" (Oxford UP, 2023)
A sweeping history of the American health care state that reveals the public has been intentionally misled about the true role of government. The US government…
- New Books in American Studies
James B. Conroy, "The Devils Will Get No Rest: FDR, Churchill, and the Plan That Won the War" (Simon and Schuster, 2023)
The Devils Will Get No Rest: FDR, Churchill, and the Plan That Won the War (Simon and Schuster, 2023) is a character-driven account of the Casablanca…
- New Books in American Studies
Nicholas Lemann, "Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream" (FSG, 2019)
Nicholas Lemann is a staff writer at the New Yorker and a professor of journalism at Columbia. He is the author of four books, the most recent of which is…
- New Books in American Studies
Kathryn Cramer Brownell, "24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News" (Princeton UP, 2023)
As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens…
- New Books in American Studies
Talking Clarence Thomas: A Conversation with Amul Thapar
As the last few months of landmark Supreme Court decisions have showcased, Clarence Thomas is one of the most important men in America. To wrap up our Summer…
- New Books in American Studies
Blair Kelley, "Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class" (LIveright, 2023)
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 contributions and…
- New Books in American Studies
Powering American Farms: A Conversation with Richard Hirsh
Richard Hirsh, Professor of History at Virginia Tech, talks about his book, Powering American Farms: The Overlooked Origins of Rural Electrification (Johns…
- New Books in American Studies
Adom Getachew and Jennifer Pitts eds. "W. E. B. Du Bois: International Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the most significant American political thinkers of the twentieth century. This volume collects 24 of his essays and speeches on…
- New Books in American Studies
Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy, "Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Anchored in the principles of free-market economics, neoliberalism emerged in the 1990s as the world's most dominant economic paradigm. It has been associated…
- New Books in American Studies
Matthew Bentley and John D. Bloom, "The Imperial Gridiron: Manhood, Civilization, and Football at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
The Imperial Gridiron: Manhood, Civilization, and Football at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (University of Nebraska Press, 2022) examines the competing…
- New Books in American Studies
Phil Klay, "Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War" (Penguin, 2022)
When Phil Klay left the Marines a decade ago after serving as an officer in Iraq, he found himself a part of the community of veterans who have no choice but…
- New Books in American Studies
Rob Eschmann,, "When the Hood Comes Off: Racism and Resistance in the Digital Age" (U California Press, 2023)
From cell phone footage of police killing unarmed Black people to leaked racist messages and even comments from friends and family on social media, online…
- New Books in American Studies
Benjamin Studebaker, "The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way Is Shut" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)
Today I talked to Benjamin Studebaker about his new book The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way Is Shut (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023) American…
- New Books in American Studies
Erica Abrams Locklear, "Appalachia on the Table: Representing Mountain Food and People" (U Georgia Press, 2023)
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 finding a…
- New Books in American Studies
Stephen C. Taysom, "Like a Fiery Meteor: The Life of Joseph F. Smith" (U of Utah Press, 2023)
Joseph F. Smith was born in 1838 to Hyrum Smith and Mary Fielding Smith. Six years later both his father and his uncle, Joseph Smith Jr., the founding prophet…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael J. Seth, "Korea at War: Conflicts That Shaped the World" (Tuttle Publishing, 2023)
The Korean War “ended” exactly fifty years ago at Panmunjom. On July 27, 1953, United States and United Nations commanders on one side, and the North Koreans…