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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
Ashley Brown, "Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson" (Oxford UP, 2023)
From her start playing paddle tennis on the streets of Harlem as a young teenager to her eleven Grand Slam tennis wins to her professional golf career, Althea…
- New Books in American Studies
Ian C. Hartman and David Reamer, "Black Lives in Alaska: A History of African Americans in the Far Northwest" ( U Washington Press, 2022)
The history of Black Alaskans runs deep and spans generations. Decades before statehood and earlier even than the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s, Black men…
- New Books in American Studies
Jeffrey J. Matthews, "Colin Powell: Imperfect Patriot" (U Notre Dame Press, 2019)
Until he passed away in 2021, Colin Powell was revered as one of America's most trusted and admired leaders. Jeffrey J. Matthews' Colin Powell: Imperfect…
- New Books in American Studies
Leonard C. Spitale, "Victorine Du Pont: The Force Behind the Family" (U Delaware Press, 2022)
Victorine Elizabeth du Pont, the first child of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont and his wife Sophie, was seven years old when her family emigrated to America, where…
- New Books in American Studies
The Future of Democratic Capitalism: A Discussion with Martin Wolf
Does China show that capitalism works better without democracy? What can be done to secure the future of open societies in which there is wealth, tolerance and…
- New Books in American Studies
David H. Price, "The American Surveillance State: How the US Spies on Dissent" (Pluto Press, 2022)
When the possibility of wiretapping first became known to Americans they were outraged. Now, in our post-9/11 world, it's accepted that corporations are vested…
- New Books in American Studies
John Vinci, "Reconstructing the Garrick: Adler and Sullivan's Lost Masterpiece" (Alphawood Exhibitions, 2021)
For six months in 1961, Richard Nickel, John Vinci, and David Norris salvaged the interior and exterior ornamentation of the Garrick Theater, Adler &…
- New Books in American Studies
Deborah Holt Larkin, "A Lovely Girl: The Tragedy of Olga Duncan and the Trial of California's Most Notorious Killer" (Pegasus Crime, 2022)
In A Lovely Girl: The Tragedy of Olga Duncan and the Trial of California's Most Notorious Killer (Pegasus Crime, 2022), Deborah Larkin tells the incredible…
- New Books in American Studies
Elżbieta Janicka and Michael Steinlauf, "This Was Not America: A Wrangle Through Jewish-Polish-American History" (Cherry Orchard Books, 2022)
From fleeing the Warsaw Ghetto and living underground to fighting for social justice in 1960s' Seattle and helping smash the communist system in 1980s' Poland…
- New Books in American Studies
Kevin Bryant, "Spies on the Sidelines: The High-Stakes World of NFL Espionage" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)
Kevin Bryant's Spies on the Sidelines: The High-Stakes World of NFL Espionage (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) is first book to fully explore the extraordinary…
- New Books in American Studies
Tara Zahra, "Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars" (Norton, 2023)
Before the First World War, enthusiasm for a borderless world reached its height. International travel, migration, trade, and progressive projects on matters…
- New Books in American Studies
The Business of the Early NHL
Greg Marchildon interviews J. Andrew Ross about his book Joining the Clubs: The Business of the National Hockey League, 1917-1945 (University of Syracuse…
- New Books in American Studies
David Bond, "Negative Ecologies: Fossil Fuels and the Discovery of the Environment" (U California Press, 2022)
So much of what we know of clean water, clean air, and now a stable climate rests on how fossil fuels first disrupted them. Negative Ecologies: Fossil Fuels…
- New Books in American Studies
Michel Jacques Gagné, "Thinking Critically about the Kennedy Assassination: Debunking the Myths and Conspiracy Theories" (Routledge, 2022)
As we approach the 60th anniversary of the violent public assassination of President John F. Kennedy, over half of all Americans surveyed continue to believe…
- New Books in American Studies
Pete Millwood, "Improbable Diplomats: How Ping-Pong Players, Musicians, and Scientists Remade US-China Relations" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
In 1971, Americans made two historic visits to China that would transform relations between the two countries. One was by US official Henry Kissinger; the…
- New Books in American Studies
Anna Zeide, "US History in 15 Foods" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
From whiskey in the American Revolution to Spam in WWII, food reveals a great deal about the society in which it exists. Selecting 15 foods that represent key…
- New Books in American Studies
Joseph Plaster, "Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco's Tenderloin" (Duke UP, 2023)
In Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco's Tenderloin (Duke UP, 2023), Joseph Plaster explores the informal support networks that…
- New Books in American Studies
Zachary M. Schrag, "The Fires of Philadelphia: Citizen-Soldiers, Nativists, and the 1844 Riots Over the Soul of a Nation" (Pegasus, 2021)
Zachary M. Schrag's The Fires of Philadelphia: Citizen-Soldiers, Nativists, and the 1844 Riots Over the Soul of a Nation (Pegasus, 2021) is a gripping and…
- New Books in American Studies
Gerald F. Goodwin, "Race in the Crucible of War: African American Servicemen and the War in Vietnam" (U Massachusetts Press, 2023)
When African American servicemen went to fight in the Vietnam War, discrimination and prejudice followed them. Even in a faraway country, their military…
- New Books in American Studies
Lynn Cullen, "The Woman with the Cure" (Berkley Books, 2023)
The essential contribution of The Woman with the Cure (Berkley Books, 2023) can be summarized in one sentence: like most of its future readers (I assume), I…
- New Books in American Studies
Nicholas Mirzoeff, "White Sight: Visual Politics and Practices of Whiteness" (MIT Press, 2023)
From the author of How to See the World comes a new history of white supremacist ways of seeing—and a strategy for dismantling them. White supremacy is not…
- New Books in American Studies
A History of the Métis Nation
In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Indigenous rights litigator Jean Teillet on her book The Northwest is our Mother: The story of Louis Riel’s…
- New Books in American Studies
Lisa Hajjar, "The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight Against Torture" (U California Press, 2022)
The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight against Torture (University of California Press, 2022) by Dr. Lisa Hajjar examines how hundreds of lawyers mobilized to…
- New Books in American Studies
Ying Zhu, "Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Movie Market" (New Press, 2022)
With her book Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Movie Market (New Press, 2022), media scholar Ying Zhu explores the 100+ year…
- New Books in American Studies
Andrea G. McDowell, "We the Miners: Self-Government in the California Gold Rush" (Harvard UP, 2022)
When miners arrived in California seeking their fortune during the gold rush of the 1840s and early 1850s, they encountered a place with few existing legal…
- New Books in American Studies
Laura Janet Feller, "Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia: Powhatan People and the Color Line" (U Oklahoma Press, 2022)
Spanning a century of fraught history, Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia: Powhatan People and the Color Line (University of Oklahoma Press, 2022) by Dr…
- New Books in American Studies
Victor Roy, "Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines" (U California Press, 2023)
Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines (U California Press, 2023) takes readers into the struggle over a medical…
- New Books in American Studies
Elisabeth Eittreim, "Teaching Empire: Native Americans, Filipinos, and Us Imperial Education 1879-1918" (UP of Kansas, 2019)
At the turn of the twentieth century, the US government viewed education as one sure way of civilizing “others” under its sway—among them American Indians and…
- New Books in American Studies
Philip Nel, "Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books" (Oxford UP, 2017)
Racism is resilient, duplicitous, and endlessly adaptable, so it is no surprise that America is again in a period of civil rights activism. A significant…
- New Books in American Studies
Sarah Foss, "On Our Own Terms: Development and Indigeneity in Cold War Guatemala" (UNC Press, 2022)
During the Cold War, U.S. intervention in Latin American politics, economics, and society grew in scope and complexity, with diplomatic legacies evident in…
- New Books in American Studies
Stephen F. Knott, "Coming to Terms with John F. Kennedy" (UP of Kansas, 2022)
Political Scientist and presidential scholar Stephen Knott has a new book specifically focusing on the 35th president, John F. Kennedy. This book is not…
- New Books in American Studies
The Future of the Liberal Order: A Discussion with James E. Cronin
Has the liberal order been taken for granted? The post war consensus and the impact of the cold war may have helped establish a way of doing politics that in…
- New Books in American Studies
Kathy E. Ferguson, "Letterpress Revolution: The Politics of Anarchist Print Culture" (Duke UP, 2023)
While the stock image of the anarchist as a masked bomber or brick thrower prevails in the public eye, a more representative figure should be a printer at a…
- New Books in American Studies
Labor Journalism, Farmworkers, and Reynolds Tobacco with Victoria Bouloubasis
Journalist Victoria Bouloubasis discusses her career reporting on agricultural and food labor in North Carolina, her approach to labor journalism, and how she…
- New Books in American Studies
Matthew S. Henry, "Hydronarratives: Water, Environmental Justice, and a Just Transition" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)
The story of water in the United States is one of ecosystemic disruption and social injustice. From the Standing Rock Indian Reservation and Flint, Michigan…
- New Books in American Studies
Helene Stapinski and Bonnie Siegler, "The American Way: A True Story of Nazi Escape, Superman, and Marilyn Monroe" (Simon & Schuster, 2023)
In The American Way: A True Story of Nazi Escape, Superman, and Marilyn Monroe (Simon & Schuster, 2023) Helene Stapinski and Bonnie Siegler tell how the…
- New Books in American Studies
Lauron J. Kehrer, "Queer Voices in Hip Hop: Cultures, Communities, and Contemporary Performance" (U Michigan Press, 2022)
Notions of hip hop authenticity, as expressed both within hip hop communities and in the larger American culture, rely on the construction of the rapper as a…
- New Books in American Studies
Lisa Haushofer, "Wonder Foods: The Science and Commerce of Nutrition" (U California Press, 2022)
From Gail Borden’s meat biscuit to John Harvey Kellogg’s peptogenic foods for race betterment and Fleishmann’s yeast as both technology of empire and imperfect…
- New Books in American Studies
Malcolm Harris, "Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World" (Little, Brown, 2023)
Palo Alto is nice. The weather is temperate, the people are educated, rich, healthy, enterprising. Remnants of a hippie counterculture have synthesized with…
- New Books in American Studies
Maya Phillips, "Nerd: Adventures in Fandom from This Universe to the Multiverse" (Atria Books, 2022)
When Maya Phillips first saw the opening of Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, she knew her life would change forever. She then spent her formative…
- New Books in American Studies
Molly H. Bassett and Natalie Avalos, "Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes" (Equinox Publishing, 2022)
Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes (Equinox Publishing, 2022) edited by Molly H. Bassett and Natalie Avalos aims to answer many of the questions…
New Books in American StudiesThe History of Student Loans in the United States
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, an associate professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, talks about her book, Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed…
New Books in American StudiesAmerican Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D
Eric Hintz, a historian and fellowship coordinator with the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian Institution’s National…
- New Books in American Studies
How Do We Treat Opioid Addiction?
Mark Parrino has been involved with the delivery of health care and treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) since 1974. As the president of the American…
- New Books in American Studies
Lee D. Baker, "From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954" (U California Press, 1998)
On today’s podcast we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the publication of Dr. Lee D. Baker’s book From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the…
- New Books in American Studies
Leigh Campbell-Hale, "Remembering Ludlow But Forgetting the Columbine: The 1927-1928 Colorado Coal Strike" (U Colorado Press, 2023)
Remembering Ludlow But Forgetting the Columbine: The 1927-1928 Colorado Coal Strike (U Colorado Press, 2023) examines the causes, context, and legacies of the…
New Books in American StudiesGun-Detecting AI, Infrastructure, and Bureaucracy
Aaron Gordon, Senior Writer at Motherboard, Vice’s science and technology website, talks about his co-authored article, “‘The Least Safe Day’: Rollout of…
New Books in American StudiesALICE and Economic Hardship in the United States
Stephanie Hoopes, National Director of United for ALICE, a research center founded at United Way of Northern New Jersey, talks about the ALICE program with…
- New Books in American Studies
Benjamin Hoy, "A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada-United States Border Across Indigenous Lands" (Oxford UP, 2021)
A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada–United States Border across Indigenous Lands (Oxford UP, 2021), is the recipient of the AHA’s Albert Corey Prize…
- New Books in American Studies
Marvin N. Olasky and Leah Savas, "The Story of Abortion in America: A Street-Level History, 1652-2022" (Crossway, 2023)
Abortion is an issue like no other. Our attitudes towards it and how we define when life begins determine the very words we use when discussing abortion. We…
- New Books in American Studies
Mike Westhoff, "Figure It Out: My Thirty-Two-Year Journey While Revolutionizing Pro Football's Special Teams" (Mascot Books, 2022)
Simply put, Mike Westhoff is the greatest special teams coach in National Football League history. Sharp-witted, creative, and intensely focused, Westhoff…
- New Books in American Studies
The Future of the News: A Discussion with Roger Mosey
What is the future of news? In the twentieth century Western-educated journalists championed impartial, unbiased news – which always seemed rather odd as…
- New Books in American Studies
Winston James, "Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik" (Columbia UP, 2022)
One of the foremost Black writers and intellectuals of his era, Claude McKay (1889–1948) was a central figure in Caribbean literature, the Harlem Renaissance…
- New Books in American Studies
Hannah Noel, "Deflective Whiteness: Coopting Black and Latinx Identity Politics" (Ohio State UP, 2022)
In Deflective Whiteness: Coopting Black and Latinx Identity Politics (Ohio State UP, 2022), Hannah Noel repositions Whiteness studies in relation to current…
- New Books in American Studies
Kate Masur, "Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction" (Norton, 2021)
The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states enacted laws that…
New Books in American StudiesEnergy Costs, Poverty, and Race
Destenie Nock, an assistant professor in the Engineering and Public Policy and Civil and Environmental Engineering Departments at Carnegie Mellon University…
- New Books in American Studies
We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States
Today’s book is: We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States. The “Dreamer narrative” celebrates the educational…
- New Books in American Studies
Arthur Bovino, "Buffalo Everything: A Guide to Eating in Nickel City with 50 Recipes" (Countryman Press, 2018)
Buffalo isn't just a city full of great wings. There is a great hot dog tradition, from Greek- originated "Texas red hots" to year-round charcoal-grilling at…
- New Books in American Studies
Bruce Kuklick, "Fascism Comes to America: A Century of Obsession in Politics and Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
From the time Mussolini took power in Italy in 1922, Americans have been obsessed with and brooded over the meaning of fascism and how it might migrate to the…
- New Books in American Studies
Dianne M. Stewart, "Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African-American Marriage" (Seal Press, 2020)
According to the 2010 US census, more than seventy percent of Black women in America are unmarried. Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African-American…