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
Guthrie P. Ramsey, "Who Hears Here?: On Black Music, Pasts and Present" (U California Press, 2022)
Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., is an award-winning musicologist, music historian, composer, and pianist whose prescient theoretical and critical interventions have…
New Books in American StudiesOn "The U.S. Constitution"
The story of the Constitution of the United States began long before the American Revolutionary War. This document was influenced by centuries old English law…
New Books in American StudiesThe Hundred Year War for the American Right: A Conversation with Matthew Continetti
What is the American Right, where does it come from, and how has it changed over time? Journalist and author Matthew Continetti discusses his recent book: The…
- New Books in American Studies
Mikkael A. Sekeres, "Drugs and the FDA: Safety, Efficacy, and the Public's Trust" (MIT Press, 2022)
How the FDA was shaped by public health crises and patient advocacy, told against a background of the contentious hearings on the breast cancer drug Avastin…
- New Books in American Studies
92 Janet McIntosh on "Let's Go Brandon," QAnon and Alt-Right Language (EF, JP)
Elizabeth and John talk with Brandeis linguistic anthropologist Janet McIntosh about the language of US alt-right movements. Janet's current book project on…
- New Books in American Studies
Richard V. Reeves, "Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It" (Brookings Institution, 2022)
Today I talked to Richard Reeves about his important new book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It…
- New Books in American Studies
Timothy W. Burns, "Leo Strauss on Democracy, Technology, and Liberal Education" (SUNY Press, 2021)
There are few thinkers who engender as much debate about their legacy as Leo Strauss (1899 –1973). His critics and biographers often don’t even agree about…
- New Books in American Studies
Andrew McIlwaine Bell, "The Origins of Southern College Football: How an Ivy League Game Became a Dixie Tradition" (LSU Press, 2020)
College football is a massive enterprise in the United States, and southern teams dominate poll rankings and sports headlines while generating billions in…
- New Books in American Studies
Bruce G. Carruthers, "The Economy of Promises: Trust, Power, and Credit in America" (Princeton UP, 2022)
A comprehensive and illuminating account of the history of credit in America, The Economy of Promises: Trust, Power & Credit in America (Princeton UP, 2022) by…
- New Books in American Studies
Clayton J. Butler, "True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South during the Civil War and Reconstruction" (LSU Press, 2022)
During the American Civil War, thousands of citizens in the Deep South remained loyal to the United States. Though often overlooked, this small number of…
- New Books in American Studies
David Kaiser, "Well, Doc, You're In: Freeman Dyson’s Journey through the Universe" (MIT Press, 2022)
Freeman Dyson (1923–2020)—renowned scientist, visionary, and iconoclast—helped invent modern physics. Not bound by disciplinary divisions, he went on to…
- New Books in American Studies
Herman Melville, "Moby-Dick" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Today I talked to Hester Blum, editor of a new edition of Moby-Dick (Oxford UP, 2022). "It will be a strange sort of a book, tho', I fear; blubber is blubber…
- New Books in American Studies
Jeremi Suri, "Civil War by Other Means: America's Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy" (PublicAffairs, 2022)
In 1865, the Confederacy was defeated, but the military victory did not end the tensions of the war or signal acceptance of a new, more equal nation. In Civil…
- New Books in American Studies
Matthew Delmont, "Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad" (Viking, 2022)
Today I talked to Matthew Delmont about his new book Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad (Viking, 2022)…
- New Books in American Studies
Shaken and Stirred
We couldn’t do a season on the Cold War without talking about Bond . . . James Bond. He was there from the beginning and has of course survived into the…
- New Books in American Studies
Elizabeth Drame et al., "The Resistance, Persistence and Resilience of Black Families Raising Children with Autism" (Peter Lang, 2020)
The Resistance, Persistence and Resilience of Black Families Raising Children with Autism (Peter Lang, 2020) presents nuanced perspectives in the form of…
- New Books in American Studies
Mike Owen Benediktsson, "In the Midst of Things: The Social Lives of Objects in the Public Spaces of New York City" (Princeton UP, 2022)
How ordinary urban objects influence our behavior, exacerbate inequality, and encourage social change Assumptions about human behavior lie hidden in plain…
- New Books in American Studies
Sarah Quesada, "The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2022) unearths a buried African archive within widely-read Latinx writers…
- New Books in American Studies
Darts Transit Commission: Silicon Valley’s Car Culture
Paris Marx is one of the sharpest modern writers on Silicon Valley and transit. We have been talking a lot lately about the idea of techno-utopian thinking…
- New Books in American Studies
Emily Weinstein and Carrie James, "Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (and Adults Are Missing)" (MIT Press, 2022)
What are teens actually doing on their smartphones? Contrary to many adults' assumptions, they are not simply "addicted" to their screens, oblivious to the…
- New Books in American Studies
Beyond Meat? Dietary Shifts and Meat Contestations in China, India and Vietnam
What explains the uneven meatification of diets in three of Asia’s core ‘emerging economies’? How and why is meat consumption changing today, and what role…
- New Books in American Studies
Joseph McBride, "The Whole Durn Human Comedy: Life According to the Coen Brothers" (Anthem Press, 2022)
The Coen Bros. have attracted a wide following and have been rewarded with Oscars and other honors. Some of their films such as Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and No…
- New Books in American Studies
Regina L. Wagner, "Electoral Patterns in Alabama: Local Change and Continuity Amid National Trends" (Palgrave MacmIllan, 2022)
While significant attention in political science is devoted to national level elections, a comprehensive look at state level political dynamics in the United…
- New Books in American Studies
Ross Cole, "The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination" (U California Press, 2021)
In The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination (U California Press, 2021), Ross Cole revisits the remarkable upswell of interest in folk songs in…
- New Books in American Studies
Elizabeth F. Schwartz, "Before I Do: A Legal Guide to Marriage, Gay and Otherwise" (New Press, 2016)
Not long ago, same-sex couples had to jump through endless hoops to make their relationships even close to legal. Happily, those days are over. But here's the…
- New Books in American Studies
A. Carly Buxton, "Un-Thinking Collaboration: American Nisei in Transwar Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)
Today I will be talking to Carly Buxton about her book Unthinking collaboration: American Nisei in transwar Japan, which came out this year [2022] with the…
- New Books in American Studies
Guy Lancaster, "American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching" (U Arkansas Press, 2021)
Lynching is often viewed as a narrow form of violence: either the spontaneous act of an angry mob against accused individuals, or a demonstration of white…
- New Books in American Studies
Jose O. Fernandez, "Against Marginalization: Convergences in Black and Latinx Literatures" (Ohio State UP, 2022)
In Against Marginalization: Convergences in Black and Latinx Literatures (Ohio State University Press, 2022), Jose O. Fernandez examines thematic, aesthetic…
- New Books in American Studies
Jose O. Fernandez, "Against Marginalization: Convergences in Black and Latinx Literatures" (Ohio State UP, 2022)
In Against Marginalization: Convergences in Black and Latinx Literatures (Ohio State University Press, 2022), Jose O. Fernandez examines thematic, aesthetic…
- New Books in American Studies
Kelisha B. Graves, ed., "Nannie Helen Burroughs: A Documentary Portrait of an Early Civil Rights Pioneer, 1900-1959" (U Notre Dame Press, 2019)
Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961) is just one of the many African American intellectuals whose work has long been excluded from the literary canon. In her…
- New Books in American Studies
Larry Ceplair, "The Hollywood Motion Picture Blacklist: Seventy-Five Years Later" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)
Seventy-five years ago, the Hollywood blacklist ruined lives, stifled creativity, and sent waves of proscription and censorship throughout United States…
- New Books in American Studies
Lynn M. Hudson, "West of Jim Crow: The Fight Against California's Color Line" (U Illinois Press, 2020)
California was born "under the shadow of slavery," writes Lynn Hudson, professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In West of Jim Crow: The…
- New Books in American Studies
Mallory Lewis and Nat Segaloff, "Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop: The Team That Changed Children's TV" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)
Two decades after Lewis and Lamb Chop last graced television with their presence, Lewis' daughter Mallory and author Nat Segaloff have set the record straight…
- New Books in American Studies
Shall We Play A Game?
Remember Khrushchev-Nixon Kitchen Debate? America recognized its consumer culture was a Cold War weapon. By the early 80s, the home computer in the hands of…
- New Books in American Studies
Dan Immergluck, "Red Hot City: Housing, Race, and Exclusion in Twenty-First-Century Atlanta" (U California Press, 2022)
Atlanta, the capital of the American South, is at the red-hot core of expansion, inequality, and political relevance. In recent decades, central Atlanta has…
- New Books in American Studies
Kenyon Gradert, "Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
Modern imagination of the Puritans typically casts them in a repressive, conservative light. But that wasn't always the case. Abolitionist activists in the…
- New Books in American Studies
Kenyon Gradert, "Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
Modern imagination of the Puritans typically casts them in a repressive, conservative light. But that wasn't always the case. Abolitionist activists in the…
- New Books in American Studies
Rachel Schreiber, "Elaine Black Yoneda: Jewish Immigration, Labor Activism, and Japanese American Exclusion and Incarceration" (Temple UP, 2021)
During World War II, Elaine Black Yoneda, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, spent eight months in a concentration camp--not in Europe, but in…
- New Books in American Studies
Ahmed White, "Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers" (U California Press, 2022)
In 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World was rapidly gaining strength and members. Within a decade, this radical union was effectively destroyed, the…
- New Books in American Studies
Robert Hutchinson, "After Nuremberg: American Clemency for Nazi War Criminals" (Yale UP, 2022)
Robert Hutchinson's After Nuremberg: American Clemency for Nazi War Criminals (Yale UP, 2022) is about the fleeting nature of American punishment for German…
- New Books in American Studies
Sara Wallace Goodman, "Citizenship in Hard Times: How Ordinary People Respond to Democratic Threat" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
What do citizens do in response to threats to democracy? Citizenship in Hard Times: How Ordinary People Respond to Democratic Threat (Cambridge UP, 2022)…
- New Books in American Studies
Gwen Shuni D'Arcangelis, "Bio-Imperialism: Disease, Terror, and the Construction of National Fragility" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
Gwen Shuni D'Arcangelis's book Bio-Imperialism: Disease, Terror, and the Construction of National Fragility (Rutgers UP, 2020) focuses on an understudied…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael Keevak, "On Saving Face: A Brief History of Western Appropriation" (Hong Kong UP, 2022)
In On Saving Face: A Brief History of Western Appropriation (Hong Kong UP, 2022), Michael Keevak traces the Western reception of the Chinese concept of “face”…
- New Books in American Studies
On Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
By the early 19th century, slavery was still a brutal reality in southern U.S. states, and a growing movement to abolish slavery nationwide was taking hold. In…
- New Books in American Studies
Scott Bukatman, "Black Panther" (U Texas Press, 2022)
Black Panther was the first Black superhero in mainstream American comics. Black Panther was a cultural phenomenon that broke box office records. Yet it wasn’t…
- New Books in American Studies
Eric Jay Dolin, "Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution" (Liveright, 2022)
The bestselling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters reclaims the daring freelance sailors who proved essential to the winning of the Revolutionary War. The…
- New Books in American Studies
Randall Balmer, "Passion Plays: How Religion Shaped Sports in North America" (UNC Press, 2022)
Randall Balmer was a late convert to sports talk radio, but he quickly became addicted, just like millions of other devoted American sports fans. As a…
- New Books in American Studies
Jeffers Lennox, "North of America: Loyalists, Indigenous Nations, and the Borders of the Long American Revolution" (Yale UP, 2022)
The story of the Thirteen Colonies’ struggle for independence from Britain is well known to every American schoolchild. But at the start of the Revolutionary…
- New Books in American Studies
John Briscoe, "Crush: The Triumph of California Wine" (U Nevada Press, 2018)
In 1910, the future of California wine looked dim. Beset by crises ranging from earthquakes to insect infestations, and with momentum moving toward…
- New Books in American Studies
John Suval, "Dangerous Ground: Squatters, Statesmen, and the Antebellum Rupture of American Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2022)
The squatter—defined by Noah Webster as "one that settles on new land without a title"—had long been a fixture of America's frontier past. In the antebellum…
- New Books in American Studies
Wolverines!
This episode and the next look back at films that came out in the 1980s, a decade when Hollywood seemed to cater to teenage audiences like never before. So it…
- New Books in American Studies
Anita Wohlmann, "Metaphor in Illness Writing: Fight and Battle Reused" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)
Metaphor in Illness Writing: Fight and Battle Reused (Edinburgh UP, 2022) argues that even when a metaphor appears problematic and limiting, it need not be…
- New Books in American Studies
David Weinfeld, "An American Friendship: Horace Kallen, Alain Locke, and the Development of Cultural Pluralism" (Cornell UP, 2022)
In An American Friendship: Horace Kallen, Alain Locke, and the Development of Cultural Pluralism (Cornell UP, 2022), David Weinfeld presents the biography of…
- New Books in American Studies
Diane Negra, "Shadow of a Doubt" (Auteur, 2021)
Today I talked to Diane Negra about Shadow of a Doubt (Auteur, 2021). Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was British-born Alfred Hitchcock's fifth American film and the…
- New Books in American Studies
John F. Lyons, "Joy and Fear: The Beatles, Chicago and the 1960s" (Permuted Press, 2020)
For many, the Beatles offered a delightful alternative to the dull and the staid, while for others, the mop-top haircuts, the unsettling music, and the…
- New Books in American Studies
Patricia A. Turner, "Trash Talk: Anti-Obama Lore and Race in the Twenty-First Century" (U California Press, 2022)
Barack Obama and his family have been the objects of rumors, legends, and conspiracy theories unprecedented in US politics. Outbreaks of anti-Obama lore have…
- New Books in American Studies
Robert P. Crease, "The Leak: Politics, Activists, and Loss of Trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory" (MIT Press, 2022)
In 1997, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory found a small leak of radioactive water near their research reactor. Brookhaven was--and is--a…
- New Books in American Studies
Robert Steven Levine et al., "The Norton Anthology of American Literature" (Norton, 2022)
The Tenth Edition introduces diverse, compelling, relevant texts-from Civil War songs and stories to The Turn of the Screw to The Great Gatsby to poems by Juan…
- New Books in American Studies
The Future of Cold War: A Discussion with Sergey Radchenko
Are we in a new cold war? And if so, is the US up against China or Russia? Join Owen Bennett Jones for a discussion with Sergey Radchenko, the Wilson E…
- New Books in American Studies
Erin Keane, "Runaway: Notes on the Myths That Made Me" (Belt Publishing, 2022)
From Erin Keane, editor in chief at Salon, comes Runaway: Notes in the Myths that Made Me (Belt Publishing, 2022), a touching memoir about the search for…