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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
Cedric Johnson, "After Black Lives Matter: Policing and Anti-Capitalist Struggle" (Verso, 2023)
The historic uprising in the wake of the murder of George Floyd transformed the way Americans and the world think about race and policing. Why did it achieve…
- New Books in American Studies
Journalistic Collaboration (JP)
Steve Fainaru and his brother Mark Fainaru-Wada wrote a bestselling and award-winning book (and accompanying PBS documentary series) about the NFL coverup of…
- New Books in American Studies
Reece Jones, "White Borders: The History of Race and Immigration in the United States from Chinese Exclusion to the Border Wall" (Beacon Press, 2021)
Recent racist anti-immigration policies, from the border wall to the Muslim ban, have left many Americans wondering: How did we get here? In White Borders: The…
New Books in American StudiesBoomers: A Conversation with Helen Andrews
Helen Andrews, senior editor at The American Conservative, joins Madison's Notes to discuss her new book, Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and…
- New Books in American Studies
Christen T. Sasaki, "Pacific Confluence: Fighting Over the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Hawai'i" (U California Press, 2022)
What if Hawai'i wasn't the 50th state? In Pacific Confluence: Fighting Over the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Hawai'i (U California Press, 2022), UCSD assistant…
New Books in American StudiesAll Men Are Created Equal: A Conversation with Allen C. Guelzo
Is the Declaration of Independence unique? Does the Declaration prescribe a form of government? What is the relationship between the Declaration and the…
- New Books in American Studies
Chad E. Pearson, "Capital's Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century" (UNC Press, 2022)
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, employers, government officials, journalists, and powerful individuals deployed a variety of violent…
- New Books in American Studies
Susan Hartman, "City of Refugees: The Story of Three Newcomers Who Breathed Life into a Dying American Town" (Beacon Press, 2022)
How can scholars employ the practices and techniques of investigative journalism? Susan Hartman provides an answer in her intimate look at refugee experience…
- New Books in American Studies
Brian Domitrovic, "The Emergence of Arthur Laffer: The Foundations of Supply-Side Economics in Chicago and Washington, 1966–1976" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
The Emergence of Arthur Laffer: The Foundations of Supply-Side Economics in Chicago and Washington, 1966–1976 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) explores the origins…
New Books in American StudiesDowneast Maine and the Unseen Story of Rural America: A Conversation with Gigi Georges
Gigi Georges has had an extensive career in politics, public service, and academia. She joins Madison's Notes to discuss her new book, Downeast: Five Maine…
- New Books in American Studies
John Lisle, "The Dirty Tricks Department: Stanley Lovell, the OSS, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare" (St. Martin's Press, 2023)
In the summer of 1942, Stanley Lovell, a renowned industrial chemist, received a mysterious order to report to an unfamiliar building in Washington, D.C. When…
- New Books in American Studies
Annie Zaleski, "Lady Gaga: Applause" (Palazzo Editions, 2022)
As one of the world's best-selling musicians, Lady Gaga has set the musical bar high. Since her debut album, The Fame (2008), she has sold more than 124…
- New Books in American Studies
Elliott West, "Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)
In Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion (U Nebraska Press, 2023) renowned historian Elliott West presents a sweeping narrative of…
New Books in American StudiesLocke, Tocqueville, and Civic Education: A Conversation with Jeffrey Sikkenga
Why is education so important in a democracy? Are democracies capable of producing the citizens they need? What do John Locke and Alexis de Tocqueville have to…
- New Books in American Studies
Ana Schwartz, "Unmoored: The Search for Sincerity in Colonial America" (UNC Press, 2022)
New England's Puritans were devoted to self-scrutiny. Consumed by the pursuit of pure hearts, they latched on to sincerity as both an ideal and a social…
- New Books in American Studies
Charles Reagan Wilson, "The Southern Way of Life: Meanings of Culture and Civilization in the American South" (UNC Press, 2023)
How does one begin to understand the idea of a distinctive southern way of life--a concept as enduring as it is disputed? In this examination of the American…
New Books in American StudiesThis is My Body: Communion and Cannibalism in Colonial New England and New France
Carla Cevasco, Assistant Professor of American Studies at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, discusses her recent article, "This is My Body…
New Books in American StudiesHigh Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies
Author of High Weirdness, Erik Davis discusses psychedelic politics, media paranoia, conspiracy theories, and consensus reality in the time of COVID-19. A…
- New Books in American Studies
Tatiana D. McInnis, "To Tell a Black Story of Miami" (UP of Florida, 2022)
In To Tell a Black Story of Miami (UP of Florida, 2022), Tatiana McInnis examines literary and cultural representations of Miami alongside the city's material…
New Books in American StudiesThe Future of the Republican Party: A Conversation with Congressman Mike Gallagher '06
What does the future hold for the Republican Party? What are the greatest challenges facing America today? How many pull-ups should a young man be able to do?…
- New Books in American Studies
Arleen Tuchman, "Diabetes: A History of Race and Disease" (Yale UP, 2020)
Arleen Marcia Tuchman’s book, Diabetes: A History of Race and Disease (Yale UP, 2020), tells the American history of a disease that continues to defy…
- New Books in American Studies
Christina Dunbar-Hester, "Oil Beach: How Toxic Infrastructure Threatens Life in the Ports of Los Angeles and Beyond" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
How can we stop infrastructure from damaging the planet? In Oil Beach: How Toxic Infrastructure Threatens Life in the Ports of Los Angeles and Beyond (U…
- New Books in American Studies
Elizabeth Elbourne, "Empire, Kinship and Violence: Family Histories, Indigenous Rights and the Making of Settler Colonialism, 1770-1842" (Cambridge UP., 2022)
Empire, Kinship and Violence: Family Histories, Indigenous Rights and the Making of Settler Colonialism, 1770-1842 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Dr…
- New Books in American Studies
Helle Strandgaard Jensen, "Sesame Street: A Transnational History" (Oxford UP, 2023)
In Sesame Street: A Transnational History (Oxford UP, 2023), author Helle Strandgaard Jensen tells the story of how the American television show became a…
- New Books in American Studies
Kaitlin Sidorsky and Wendy J. Schiller, "Inequality across State Lines: How Policymakers Have Failed Domestic Violence Victims in the United States" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
In the United States, one in four women will be victims of domestic violence each year. Despite the passage of federal legislation on violence against women…
- New Books in American Studies
Keith Brian Wood, "Memphis Hoops: Race and Basketball in the Bluff City,1968-1997" (U Tennessee Press, 2021)
Memphis Hoops: Race and Basketball in the Bluff City, 1968-1997 (U Tennessee Press, 2021) tells the story of basketball in Tennessee’s southwestern-most…
- New Books in American Studies
Benjamin L. Carp, "The Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American Revolution" (Yale UP, 2023)
New York City, the strategic center of the Revolutionary War, was the most important place in North America in 1776. That summer, an unruly rebel army under…
- New Books in American Studies
Beth Bailey, "An Army Afire: How the US Army Confronted Its Racial Crisis in the Vietnam Era" (UNC Press, 2023)
By the Tet Offensive in early 1968, what had been widely heralded as the best qualified, best-trained army in US history was descending into crisis as the…
- New Books in American Studies
Jeffrey E. Stern, "The Mercenary: A Story of Brotherhood and Terror in the Afghanistan War" (PublicAffairs, 2023)
In the early days of the Afghanistan war, Jeff Stern was scouring the streets of Kabul for a big story. He was accompanied by a driver, Aimal, who had…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael K. Johnson, "Speculative Wests: Popular Representations of a Region and Genre" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)
The Western as a genre is alive and vibrant, argues University of Maine - Farmington professor of English literature Michael K. Johnson. In Speculative Wests…
- New Books in American Studies
Will York, "Who Cares Anyway: Post-Punk San Francisco and the End of the Analog Age" (Headpress, 2023)
In Who Cares Anyway: Post-Punk San Francisco and the End of the Analog Age (Headpress, 2023), Will York draws on over 100 interviews with musicians, artists…
- New Books in American Studies
Dwayne Epstein, "Killin' Generals: The Making of The Dirty Dozen, the Most Iconic WW II Movie of All Time" (Citadel Press, 2023)
An explosive inside look at The Dirty Dozen, the star-studded war film that broke the rules, shocked the critics, thrilled audiences, and became an all-time…
- New Books in American Studies
Nicholas Guyatt, "The Hated Cage: An American Tragedy in Britain's Most Terrifying Prison" (Basic Books, 2022)
After the War of 1812, more than five thousand American sailors were marooned in Dartmoor Prison on a barren English plain; the conflict was over but they had…
- New Books in American Studies
Paul A. Lombardo, "Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)
“Three generations of imbeciles are enough” were the infamous words U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote in 1927. In Buck v. Bell, an…
- New Books in American Studies
George Black, "The Long Reckoning: A Story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam" (Knopf, 2023)
The American war in Vietnam has left many long-lasting scars that have not yet been sufficiently examined. The worst of them were inflicted in a tiny area…
- New Books in American Studies
Joshua Myers, "Of Black Study" (Pluto Press, 2022)
Joshua Myers considers the work of thinkers who broke with the racial and colonial logic of academic disciplinarity and how the ideas of Black intellectuals…
New Books in American StudiesThe Garage: A History
On this episode of the MIT Press podcast, Olivia Erlanger and Luis Ortega Govela discuss their book, Garage. Frank Lloyd Wright invented the garage when he…
- New Books in American Studies
Thomas Aiello, "Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration: The Cultural Geography of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate" (U Georgia Press, 2023)
In this episode, Thomas Aiello joins E. James West to discuss Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration: The Cultural Geography of the Scott Newspaper…
New Books in American StudiesGeorge Washington and American Honor: A Conversation with Craig Bruce Smith
What made George Washington the "greatest man in the world"? What is his legacy outside the United States? What did "honor" mean to America's Founding Fathers…
New Books in American StudiesUnalienable Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy: A Conversation with Secretary Pompeo and Ambassador Glendon
What is the relationship between America's Founding principles and her foreign policy? What are unalienable rights and how do we know they exist? How have…
- New Books in American Studies
Benjamin E. Park, "Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier" (Liveright, 2020)
Compared to the Puritans, Mormons have rarely gotten their due, treated as fringe cultists at best or marginalized as polygamists unworthy of serious…
- New Books in American Studies
David Chrisinger, "The Soldier's Truth: Ernie Pyle and the Story of World War II" (Penguin, 2023)
Ernie Pyle, a legendary journalist and war correspondent, was widely considered one of the greatest chroniclers of World War II. His dispatches from the front…
- New Books in American Studies
Cristina Mejia Visperas, "Skin Theory: Visual Culture and the Postwar Prison Laboratory" (NYU, 2022)
An abolitionist approach to STS and the history of the life sciences: this is the model that Cristina Mejia Visperas offers in her book, Skin Theory: Visual…
- New Books in American Studies
Kathryn Cornell Dolan, "Breakfast Cereal: A Global History" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
Breakfast Cereal: A Global History (Reaktion, 2023) by Dr. Kathryn Dolan presents the long, distinguished and surprising history of breakfast cereal. Simple…
- New Books in American Studies
Benjamin E. Park, "American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in the Age of Revolutions, 1783-1833" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
America was born in an age of political revolution throughout the Atlantic world, a period when the very definition of 'nation' was transforming. Benjamin E…
- New Books in American Studies
Elizabeth S. Hurd and Winnifred F. Sullivan, "At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion" (Columbia UP, 2021)
From right to left, notions of religion and religious freedom are fundamental to how many Americans have understood their country and themselves. Ideas of…
- New Books in American Studies
Susan Burch, "Committed: Remembering Native Kinship in and Beyond Institutions" (UNC Press, 2021)
Between 1902 and 1934, the United States confined hundreds of adults and children from dozens of Native nations at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, a…
- New Books in American Studies
Ryan M. Brooks, "Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
"In other words, like David Foster Wallace — who celebrates McCain for his display of “‘moral authority’” and commitment to “‘service’ and ‘sacrifice’ and…
- New Books in American Studies
Tina Post, "Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression" (NYU Press, 2023)
Explores expressionlessness, inscrutability, and emotional withholding in Black cultural production. Arguing that inexpression is a gesture that acquires…
- New Books in American Studies
Donald Harman Akenson, "The Americanization of the Apocalypse: Creating America's Own Bible" (Oxford UP. 2023)
In the early twentieth century, a new, American scripture appeared on the scene. It was the product of a school of theological thinking known as…
New Books in American StudiesLincoln at Gettysburg: A Conversation with Allen C. Guelzo
On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. Allen C. Guelzo, Director of the James Madison Program's Initiative on Politics and…
- New Books in American Studies
The Future of Antisemitism: A Discussion with Dave Rich
Few people would describe themselves as antisemites. And yet many Jews living in Europe and the US believe that they encounter anti-semitism quite frequently –…
- New Books in American Studies
Tomiko Brown-Nagin, "Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality" (Pantheon Books, 2022)
With the US Supreme Court confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, “it makes sense to revisit the life and work of another Black woman who profoundly shaped the…
- New Books in American Studies
Daniel Neofetou, "Rereading Abstract Expressionism, Clement Greenberg and the Cold War" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Daniel Neofetou's Rereading Abstract Expressionism, Clement Greenberg and the Cold War (Bloomsbury, 2021) rereads Clement Greenberg's account of Abstract…
- New Books in American Studies
Gregory J. Kaliss, "Beyond the Black Power Salute: Athlete Activism in an Era of Change" (U Illinois Press, 2023)
Unequal opportunity sparked Jim Brown's endeavors to encourage Black development while Billie Jean King fought so that women tennis players could earn more…
- New Books in American Studies
Dror Goldberg, "Easy Money: American Puritans and the Invention of Modern Currency" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Economists endlessly debate the nature of legal tender monetary systems--coins and bills issued by a government or other authority. Yet the origins of these…
- New Books in American Studies
Abortion and the Law
Today’s Postscript focuses on abortion politics in the United States, with particular attention to the April 7, 2023 federal court decisions in Texas and…
- New Books in American Studies
Alexander Rose, "The Lion and the Fox: Two Rival Spies and the Secret Plot to Build a Confederate Navy" (Mariner Books, 2022)
From the New York Times bestselling author of Washington’s Spies, the thrilling story of the Confederate spy who came to Britain to turn the tide of the Civil…
- New Books in American Studies
Andrew Curley, "Carbon Sovereignty: Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Nation" (U Arizona Press, 2023)
For almost fifty years, coal dominated the Navajo economy. But in 2019 one of the Navajo Nation’s largest coal plants closed. This comprehensive new work…
- New Books in American Studies
Andrew Long, "Secrets of the Cold War: Espionage and Intelligence Operations from Both Sides of the Iron Curtain" (Pen and Sword History, 2022)
The Cold War was a major geopolitical contest between the United States and the Soviet Union over predominance over the entire world. Unlike the previous two…