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
Simon J. Gilhooley, "The Antebellum Origins of the Modern Constitution: Slavery and the Spirit of the American Founding" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
The Antebellum Origins of the Modern Constitution: Slavery and the Spirit of the American Founding (Cambridge University Press, 2020) argues that conflicts…
- New Books in American Studies
Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, "After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency" (Lawfair Press, 2020)
Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, two attorneys who have worked, respectively, in the Barack Obama and the George W. Bush Administrations, have written a blueprint…
- New Books in American Studies
Jonathan Zimmerman, "The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
Jonathan Zimmerman’s The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020) is the first full-length history of college teaching…
- New Books in American Studies
Matt Christman, "The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason" (Simon & Schuster, 2019)
Let’s face it, 2020 has been a hell of a year. We could all use a good laugh. But as historians and/or fans of history, we have to read something historically…
- New Books in American Studies
Miriam Kalman Friedman, "Rivers of Light: The Life of Claire Myers Owens" (Syracuse UP, 2019)
Growing up in a conservative, middle-class family in Texas, Claire Myers Owens sought adventure and freedom at an early age. At twenty years old, she left home…
- New Books in American Studies
Isar P. Godreau, "Scripts of Blackness: Race, Cultural Nationalism, and U.S. Colonialism in Puerto Rico" (U Illinois Press, 2015)
This is part of our Special Series on Third World Nationalism. In the wake of a rise in nationalism around the world, and its general condemnation by liberals…
- New Books in American Studies
Peter Maguire and Mike Ritter, "Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammers and the Untold Story of the Marijuana Trade" (Columbia UP, 2013)
In the 1970s surfing and smoking pot went hand in hand. As surfers traveled the world in search of perfect waves in places like Bali, Indonesia, some of them…
- New Books in American Studies
Ashon T. Crawley, "The Lonely Letters" (Duke UP, 2020)
In The Lonely Letters (Duke UP, 2020), A tells Moth: “Writing about and thinking with joy is what sustains me, daily. It nourishes me. I do not write about joy…
- New Books in American Studies
Edwin Wilson, "Magic Time, a Memoir: Notes on Theatre & Other Entertainment" (Smith & Kraus, 2020)
Edwin Wilson's book Magic Time, a Memoir: Notes on Theatre & Other Entertainment (Smith & Kraus, 2020) is a spirited memoir of a long and fruitful career in…
- New Books in American Studies
J. A. Ball and T. Burroughs, "A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable's Malcolm X" (Black Classic Press, 2015)
This is part of our Special Series on Malcolm X and Black Nationalism. In this series, we delve into the background of Malcolm X's action and thought in the…
- New Books in American Studies
Pete Croatto, "From Hang Time to Prime Time: Business, Entertainment, and the Birth of the Modern-Day NBA" (Atria Books, 2020)
The birth of the modern-day NBA is often attributed to Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan and David Stern. In From Hang Time to Prime Time: Business…
- New Books in American Studies
Alicia Puglionesi, "Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science" (Stanford UP, 2020)
Séances, clairvoyance, and telepathy captivated public imagination in the United States from the 1850s well into the twentieth century. Though skeptics…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael E. Sawyer, "Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X" (Pluto Press, 2020)
This episode is part of a Special Series on Malcolm X and Black Nationalism. In this series, we delve into the background of Malcolm X's action and thought in…
- New Books in American Studies
Steven W. Webster, "American Rage: How Anger Shapes Our Politics" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
Today I talked to Steven W. Webster about his book American Rage: How Anger Shapes Our Politics (Cambridge UP, 2020). We discuss the behavioral implications of…
- New Books in American Studies
Daniel S. Lucks, "Reconsidering Reagan: Racism, Republicans, and the Road to Trump" (Beacon Press, 2020)
Ronald Reagan is regarded today as one of the most consequential presidents of the postwar era, yet many aspects of his legacy are largely unappreciated. In…
- New Books in American Studies
Erica Armstrong Dunbar, "Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge" (Simon and Schuster, 2017)
A startling and eye-opening look into America’s First Family, Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (Simon and…
- New Books in American Studies
Ian Ayres and Fredrick E. Vars, "Weapon of Choice: Fighting Gun Violence While Respecting Gun Rights" (Harvard UP, 2020)
In the United States, gun violence is in a state of national crisis, yet efforts to reform gun regulation face significant political and constitutional…
- New Books in American Studies
Mark Wild, "Renewal: Liberal Protestants and the American City After World War II" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
In Renewal: Liberal Protestants and the American City after World War II (U Chicago Press, 2019), Mark Wild traces the achievements and losses of American…
- New Books in American Studies
Martha S. Jones, "Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All" (Basic Books, 2020)
The epic history of African American women's pursuit of political power-and how it transformed America In the standard story, the suffrage crusade began in…
- New Books in American Studies
Nick Haddad, "The Last Butterflies: A Scientist's Quest to Save a Rare and Vanishing Creature" (Princeton UP, 2019)
Butterflies have long captivated the imagination of humans, from naturalists to children to poets. Indeed it would be hard to imagine a world without…
- New Books in American Studies
Trevor Pearce, "Pragmatism's Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
In Pragmatism’s Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 2020), Trevor Pearce demonstrates that the…
- New Books in American Studies
Waleed F. Mahdi, "Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation" (Syracuse UP, 2020)
It comes as little surprise that Hollywood films have traditionally stereotyped Arab Americans, but how are Arab Americans portrayed in Arab films, and just as…
- New Books in American Studies
Brandon Mills, "The World Colonization Made: The Racial Geography of Early American Empire" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)
Brandon Mills is the author of The World Colonization Made: The Racial Geography of Early American Empire, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in…
- New Books in American Studies
Nazita Lajevardi, "Outsiders at Home: The Politics of American Islamophobia" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
What is the status of Muslim Americans in American democracy? Dr. Nazita Lajevardi’s superb new study concludes they are ‘outsiders at home.’ In Outsiders at…
- New Books in American Studies
Tony Bolden, "Groove Theory: The Blues Foundation of Funk" (UP of Mississippi, 2020)
Groove Theory: The Blues Foundation of Funk (University Press of Mississippi, 2020) by Tony Bolden, an Associate Professor of African and African American…
- New Books in American Studies
Erica Fretwell, "Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race, and the Aesthetics of Feeling" (Duke UP, 2020)
We so often take our senses as natural, but perhaps we should understand them as historically situated. Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race and the…
- New Books in American Studies
Justin Gifford, "Revolution Or Death: The Life of Eldridge Cleaver" (Lawrence Hill, 2020)
Revolution Or Death: The Life of Eldridge Cleaver (Lawrence Hill Books, 2020) is a remarkable biography that examines the notorious Black revolutionary…
- New Books in American Studies
Susan M. Reverby, "Co-Conspirator for Justice: The Revolutionary Life of Dr. Alan Berkman" (UNC Press, 2020)
Alan Berkman (1945–2009) was no campus radical in the mid-1960s; he was a promising Ivy League student, football player, Eagle Scout, and fraternity president…
- New Books in American Studies
Timothy Hampton, "Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work" (Zone Books, 2020)
Timothy Hampton's Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work (Zone Books, 2020) is a fascinating and meticulous study of Bob Dylan's songwriting craft. Hampton discusses…
- New Books in American Studies
Stacie Taranto and Leandra Zarnow, "Suffrage at 100: Women in American Politics since 1920" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
Suffrage at 100: Women in American Politics since 1920 (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020) is a wonderful and sweeping exploration of the way that women and their access…
- New Books in American Studies
Matthew Spady, "The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot: Audubon Park and the Families Who Shaped It" (Fordham UP, 2020)
In northern Manhattan in 1841, the naturalist John James Audubon bought 14 acres of farmland on the banks of the Hudson River and built his family a home far…
- New Books in American Studies
Timothy P. Storhoff, "Harmony and Normalization: US-Cuban Musical Diplomacy" (UP of Mississippi, 2020)
Harmony and Normalization: US-Cuban Musical Diplomacy (University Press of Mississippi, 2020) explores the channels of musical exchange between Cuba and the…
- New Books in American Studies
Ben Tarnoff and Moira Weigel, "Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do and How They Do It" (FSG Originals, 2020)
In Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do and How They Do It (FSG Originals, 2020), the celebrated writers and Logic cofounders Moira…
- New Books in American Studies
Carl R. Trueman, "The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution" (Crossway, 2020)
“My aim is to explain how and why a certain notion of the self has come to dominate the culture of the West, why this self finds its most obvious manifestation…
- New Books in American Studies
Caroline H. Yang, "The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery: The Chinese Worker and the Minstrel Form" (Stanford UP, 2020)
The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery: The Chinese Worker and the Minstrel Form (Stanford University Press, 2020) explores how antiblack racism lived on through…
- New Books in American Studies
E. Chemerinsky and H. Gillman, "The Religion Clauses: The Case for Separating Church and State" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Throughout American history, views on the proper relationship between the state and religion have been deeply divided. And, with recent changes in the…
- New Books in American Studies
D. T. Lawrence and E. J. Lawless, "When They Blew the Levee: Race, Politics, and Community in Pinhook, Missouri" (UP of Mississippi, 2018)
The town of Pinhook in Missouri was founded in the 1940s by southern Black farmers who were looking for land that they could purchase and own in the face of…
- New Books in American Studies
Mark Somos, "American States of Nature: The Origins of Independence, 1761-1775" (Oxford UP, 2019)
In Federalist no. 2, John Jay considered the ‘wide spreading country’ of the American republic. It was, he argued, as if the land itself was fashioned by the…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael Brenes, "For Might and Right: Cold War Defense Spending and the Remaking of American Democracy" (U Massachusetts Press, 2020)
Donald Trump campaigned on a great many things in 2016, but one of the issues he used to criticize Democrats was their role in supporting sequestration and…
- New Books in American Studies
Nancy D. Campbell, "OD: Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose" (MIT Press, 2020)
Reducing harm or shrinking the likelihood of accidental death are remarkably contentions projects—in areas from sex education, to pandemic management, to drug…
- New Books in American Studies
M. T. Mulder and G. Marti, "The Glass Church: Robert H. Schuller, the Crystal Cathedral, and the Strain of Megachurch Ministry" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
In The Glass Church: Robert H. Schuller, the Crystal Cathedral, and the Strain of Megachurch Ministry (Rutgers UP, 2020), Mark Mulder and Gerardo Marti offer a…
- New Books in American Studies
Anjali Vats, "The Color of Creatorship: Intellectual Property, Race, and the Making of Americans" (Stanford UP, 2020)
The Color of Creatorship: Intellectual Property, Race, and the Making of Americans (Stanford University Press, 2020) by Anjali Vats is an intricate and…
- 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
Claire Herbert, "A Detroit Story: Urban Decline and the Rise of Property Informality" (U California Press, 2021)
Bringing to the fore a wealth of original research, A Detroit Story: Urban Decline and the Rise of Property Informality (University of California Press, 2021)…
- New Books in American Studies
College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom: A Conversation with Eddie R. Cole
Some of America's most pressing civil rights issues--desegregation, equal educational and employment opportunities, housing discrimination, and free…
- New Books in American Studies
Clayborne Carson, "Malcolm X: The FBI File" (Skyhorse, 2012)
This is a Special Series on Malcolm X and Black Nationalism. We delve into the background of Malcolm X's action and thought in the context of Black…
- New Books in American Studies
David Adjmi, "Lot Six" (Harper, 2020)
Lot Six (Harper 2020) is a moving and hilarious memoir from playwright David Adjmi. The book traces Adjmi’s search for his identity, during which he becomes an…
- New Books in American Studies
Jill Watts, "The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt" (Grove Press, 2020)
When did Black Americans move from stalwart party of Lincoln Republicans to dedicated New Deal Democrats? How did a group of self-organized Black economists…
- New Books in American Studies
Jonathan Boyarin, "Yeshiva Days: Learning on the Lower East Side" (Princeton UP, 2020)
New York City's Lower East Side has witnessed a severe decline in its Jewish population in recent decades, yet every morning in the big room of the city's…
- New Books in American Studies
Matthew H. Rafalow, "Digital Divisions: How Schools Create Inequality in the Tech Era" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
In this episode, I speak with Matt Rafalow, about his book, Digital Divisions: How Schools Create Inequality in the Tech Era (University of Chicago Press…
- New Books in American Studies
D. G. Young, "Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States" (Oxford UP, 2019)
On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (s/t) Dr. Dannagal Goldthwaite Young (s/h) about why liberals love satire and conservative love…
- New Books in American Studies
Harvey Araton, "Our Last Season: A Writer, a Fan, a Friendship" (Penguin, 2020)
Harvey Araton’s new book Our Last Season: A Writer, a Fan, a Friendship (Penguin, 2020), reads like a mix between Tuesdays with Morrie and a sequel to his book…
- New Books in American Studies
Jennifer M. Randles, "Essential Dads: The Inequalities and Politics of Fathering" (U California Press, 2020)
In Essential Dads: The Inequalities and Politics of Fathering (University of California Press, 2020), sociologist Jennifer Randles shares the stories of more…
- New Books in American Studies
Jim Downs, "Stand by Me: The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation" (Basic Books, 2016)
Despite the tremendous gains of the LGBT movement in recent years, the history of gay life in this country remains poorly understood. According to conventional…
- New Books in American Studies
Tabassum Fahim Ruby, "Muslim Women's Rights: Contesting Liberal-Secular Sensibilities in Canada" (Routledge, 2019)
Muslim Women’s Rights: Contesting Liberal-Secular Sensibilities in Canada (Routledge 2019) By Tabassum Fahim Ruby follows the legal debates and public…
- New Books in American Studies
Travis Vogan, "ABC Sports: The Rise and Fall of Network Sports Television" (U California Press, 2018)
Today we are joined by Travis Vogan, Associate Professor of Journalism and American Studies at the University of Iowa, and the author of ABC Sports: The Rise…
- New Books in American Studies
Justin Gage, "We Do Not Want the Gates Closed Between Us: Native Networks and the Spread of the Ghost Dance" (U Oklahoma Press, 2020)
Writing to U.S. President Grover Cleveland in 1888, Oglala Lakota leaders Little Wound, Young Man Afraid of His Horses, and Red Cloud insisted upon a simple…
- New Books in American Studies
Ellen Lamont, "The Mating Game: How Gender Still Shapes How We Date" (U California Press, 2020)
Ellen Lamont's new book The Mating Game: How Gender Still Shapes How We Date (University of California Press, 2020) offers an in-depth analysis of how gender…
- New Books in American Studies
Liza Black, "Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941-1960" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)
Behind the braided wigs, buckskins, and excess bronzer that typified the mid-century "filmic Indian" lies a far richer, deeper history of Indigenous labor…
- New Books in American Studies
Nicholas Guyatt, "Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation" (Basic Books, 2016)
Why did the Founding Fathers fail to include blacks and Indians in their cherished proposition that “all men are created equal”? Racism is the usual answer…