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
Gloria Browne-Marshall, "A Protest History of the United States" (Beacon Press, 2026) Revisited
In December 2025, writer, civil rights attorney, playwright, speaker, and Professor of Constitutional Law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Gloria J…
- New Books in American Studies
Ashlyn Hand, "Prioritizing Faith: International Religious Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy" (NYU Press, 2025)
The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 formally established the promotion of religious freedom as a U.S. foreign policy and national security…
- New Books in American Studies
Isaac Butler, "The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
“When I set out to write this book, I decided to approach it like a biography. After all, the Method had parents, obscure beginnings, fumbling toward its…
- New Books in American Studies
Garrett Felber, "A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre" (AK Press, 2025)
The first biography of the revolutionary political prisoner who laid the foundation for contemporary abolitionist struggles and Black anarchism. A Continuous…
- New Books in American Studies
Nina Bandelj, "Overinvested: The Emotional Economy of Modern Parenting" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Parents are exhausted. When did raising children become such all-consuming, never-ending, incredibly expensive, and emotionally absorbing effort? In this…
- New Books in American Studies
Dafeng Xu, "Chinatown: San Francisco's 1906 Earthquake and the Paradox of American Immigration Policy" (JHU Press, 2026)
San Francisco's Chinatown is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese enclaves outside Asia. Spanning 30 city blocks and home to…
- New Books in American Studies
Dianna N. Watkins-Dickerson, "A Black Woman for President: Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, and Kamala Harris" (UP of Mississippi)
Throughout US history, only three Black women—Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, and Kamala Harris—have given successfully recognized bids for the office…
- New Books in American Studies
Jens Ludwig, "Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Disproving the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people, Ludwig shows how most shootings actually grow out of…
- New Books in American Studies
Luca Cottini, "The Rise of Americanism in Italy, 1888-1919" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked a pivotal time for the United States as the nation emerged as a political and industrial powerhouse…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael Casiano, "Let Us Alone: The Origins of Baltimore's Police State" (U Illinois Press, 2025)
The racist roots of modern policing in Baltimore By the early twentieth century, postbellum assaults on civil rights and the advent of Jim Crow expanded…
- New Books in American Studies
Rolando Pujol, "The Great American Retro Road Trip: A Celebration of Roadside Americana" (Artisan Publishers, 2025)
Rolando Pujol's The Great American Retro Road Trip: A Celebration of Roadside Americana (Artisan, 2025) celebrates the nostalgic pleasures of America's vintage…
- New Books in American Studies
Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine
Despite reform efforts that have grown in scope and intensity over the last two decades, the machine of American mass incarceration continues to flourish. In…
- New Books in American Studies
Stephen Bezruchka, "Born Sick in the USA: Improving the Health of a Nation" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
How healthy you are is dependent on where you live. Americans suffer more cancers, heart disease, mental illness, and other chronic diseases than those who…
- New Books in American Studies
LiLi Johnson, "Technologies of Kinship: Asian American Racialization and the Making of Family" (NYU Press, 2025)
Delving into the complex interplay of race, kinship, and technology, Technologies of Kinship: Asian American Racialization and the Making of Family (NYU Press…
- New Books in American Studies
Mark Anthony Neal, "New Black Man" (Routledge, 2015)
In honor of the twentieth anniversary of Mark Anthony Neal’s pivotal text New Black Man (Routledge, 2015), Mickell Carter interviews Neal about the book’s…
- New Books in American Studies
Betty Boyd Caroli, "A Slumless America: Mary K. Simkhovitch and the Dream of Affordable Housing" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Betty Boyd Caroli's biography of Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch is the first full-length work on a seminal figure in the settlement house movement, which…
- New Books in American Studies
Terry Williams, "Life Underground: Encounters with People Below the Streets of New York" (Columbia UP, 2024)
Aboveground, Manhattan’s Riverside Park provides open space for the densely populated Upper West Side. Beneath its surface run railroad tunnels, disused for…
- New Books in American Studies
George Fisher, "Beware Euphoria: The Moral Roots and Racial Myths of America's War on Drugs" (Oxford UP, 2024)
George Fisher, the Judge John Crown Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, just released his new book Beware Euphoria: The Moral Roots and Racial Myths of…
- New Books in American Studies
Karin Wulf, "Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America" (Oxford UP, 2025)
In eighteenth-century America, genealogy was more than a simple record of family ties—it was a powerful force that shaped society. Lineage: Genealogy and the…
- New Books in American Studies
Damon Scott, "The City Aroused: Queer Places and Urban Redevelopment in Postwar San Francisco" (U Texas Press, 2024)
The City Aroused: Queer Places and Urban Redevelopment in Postwar San Francisco (University of Texas Press, 2024) by Dr. Damon Scott is a lively history of…
- New Books in American Studies
Justin Owen Rawlins, "Imagining the Method: Reception, Identity, and American Screen Performance" (U Texas Press, 2024)
Only one performance style has dominated the lexicon of the casual moviegoer: “Method acting.” The first reception-based analysis of film acting, Imagining the…
- New Books in American Studies
Kong Pheng Pha, "Queering the Hmong Diaspora: Racial Subjectivity and the Myth of Hyperheterosexuality" (U Washington Press, 2025)
This episode features Dr. Kong Pheng Pha discussing his recently published book, Queering the Hmong Diaspora: Racial Subjectivity and the Myth of…
- 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
Kimberley Johnson, "Dark Concrete: Black Power Urbanism and the American Metropolis" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Dark Concrete: Black Power Urbanism and the American Metropolis (Cornell UP, 2025) by Dr. Kimberley Johnson is about how the Black Power movement reshaped…
- New Books in American Studies
Elizabeth Kelly Gray, "Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America, 1776-1914" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Habitual drug use in the United States is at least as old as the nation itself. Elizabeth Kelly Gray's book Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America, 1776-1914…
- New Books in American Studies
Andrew Burstein, "Being Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
The deepest dive yet into the heart and soul, secret affairs, unexplored alliances, and bitter feuds of a generally worshipped, intermittently reviled…
- New Books in American Studies
Ryan Donovan, "Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Broadway has body issues. What is a Broadway Body? Broadway has long preserved the ideology of the "Broadway Body": the hyper-fit, exceptionally able…
- New Books in American Studies
Emilie Connolly, "Vested Interests: Trusteeship and Native Dispossession in the United States" (Princeton UP, 2025)
From the earliest days of its founding, the United States set its sights on Native territory. Amid better-known “Indian wars,” the federal government quietly…
- New Books in American Studies
Oline Eaton, "Finding Jackie: The Second Act of America's First Lady" (Diversion Books, 2023)
In her new book, Finding Jackie: A Life Reinvented (Diversion Books, 2023), scholar and writer Oline Eaton examines the story of an era's biggest "star of…
- New Books in American Studies
Brian D. Behnken, "Brown and Blue: Mexican Americans, Law Enforcement, and Civil Rights in the Southwest, 1935-2025" (UNC Press, 2025)
How police abuse ignited the Chicano movement in the Southwest Brown and Blue: Mexican Americans, Law Enforcement, and Civil Rights in the Southwest, 1935-2025…
- New Books in American Studies
Kendra D. Boyd, "Freedom Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship and Racial Capitalism in Detroit" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
The Great Migration saw more than six million African Americans leave the US South between 1910 and 1970. Though the experiences of migrant laborers are…
- New Books in American Studies
Kellen Hoxworth, "Transoceanic Blackface: Empire, Race, Performance" (Northwestern UP, 2024)
In Transoceanic Blackface: Empire, Race, Performance (Northwestern UP, 2024) Dr. Kellen Hoxworth presents a sweeping history of racialized performance across…
- New Books in American Studies
O. Jennifer Dixon-McKnight, "We Paved the Way: Black Women and the Charleston Hospital Workers' Campaign" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)
In the spring of 1969, hundreds of workers, all Black and mostly female, went on strike at Medical College Hospital and Charleston County Hospital to protest…
- New Books in American Studies
Christopher Lynch, "Formulating Foster: Stephen C. Foster and the Creation of a National Musical Myth" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Stephen C. Foster (1826–1864) was a prolific song composer. A few of his minstrel tunes have become so enmeshed in American musical culture that they are often…
- New Books in American Studies
John Samuel Harpham, "Intellectual Origins of American Slavery: English Ideas in the Early Modern Atlantic World" (Harvard UP, 2025)
The period from 1550 to 1700 was critical in the development of slavery across the English Atlantic world. During this time, English discourse about slavery…
- New Books in American Studies
Mark Christian Thompson, "Phenomenal Blackness: Black Power, Philosophy, and Theory" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
Mark Christian Thompson's book, Phenomenal Blackness: Black Power, Philosophy, and Theory (University of Chicago Press, 2022) examines the changing…
- New Books in American Studies
Sonya Lea, "American Bloodlines: Reckoning with Lynch Culture" (UP of Kentucky, 2025)
Summer 1936: Rainey Bethea, a young Black man, is tried for the rape and murder of an elderly white woman. The all-white, all-male jury takes just four and a…
- New Books in American Studies
Zeke Hernandez, "The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers" (St. Martin's Press, 2024)
Immigration is one of the most controversial topics in the United States―and everywhere else. Pundits, politicians, and the public usually depict immigrants…
- New Books in American Studies
A. Mechele Dickerson, "The Middle-Class New Deal: Restoring Upward Mobility and the American Dream" (U California Press, 2026)
An expansive policy blueprint for meaningfully expanding the middle class for the first time in a century The US middle class was a product of state and…
- New Books in American Studies
Keidrick Roy, "American Dark Age: Racial Feudalism and the Rise of Black Liberalism" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Though the United States has been heralded as a beacon of democracy, many nineteenth-century Americans viewed their nation through the prism of the Old World…
- New Books in American Studies
Lottie Whalen, "Radicals & Rogues: The Women Who Made New York Modern" (Reaktion, 2023)
Radicals & Rogues: The Women Who Made New York Modern (Reaktion, 2023) is the story of a group of women whose experiments in art and life set the tone for the…
- New Books in American Studies
Emily Walton, "Homesick: Race and Exclusion in Rural New England" (Stanford UP, 2025)
A racial demographic transition has come to rural northern New England. White population losses sit alongside racial and ethnic minority population gains in…
- New Books in American Studies
Jose Eos Trinidad, "Subtle Webs: How Local Organizations Shape US Education" (Oxford UP, 2025)
In Subtle Webs: How Local Organizations Shape US Education (Oxford UP, 2025), Jose Eos Trinidad reveals how organizations outside schools have created an…
- New Books in American Studies
T. R. Johnson, "New Orleans: A Writer's City" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
New Orleans is an indispensable element of America's national identity. As one of the most fabled cities in the world, it figures in countless novels, short…
- New Books in American Studies
Lukas Foss: A "New American Music Series" Gallatin Lecture, April 15, 1982
In today’s episode from the Vault, we revisit a 1982 lecture by the composer Lukas Foss, a leader of the American musical avant garde of the 1960s and 70s. In…
- New Books in American Studies
Mary E. Stuckey, "Remembering Jefferson: Who He Was, Who We Are" (UP of Kansas, 2025)
Mary E. Stuckey, the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences at Pennsylvania State University, has a brilliant new book that dives into…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael J. Illuzzi, "Mending the Nation: Reclaiming We The People in a Populist Age" (UP of Kansas, 2025)
Political Scientist Michael Illuzzi has a fascinating new book on peoplehood in the United States, focusing on different political actors at different crucial…
- New Books in American Studies
Theodore J. Karamanski, "Great Lake: An Unnatural History of Lake Michigan" (U Michigan Press, 2026)
Theodore Karamanski joins fellow Lake Michigan enthusiast Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Great Lake: An Unnatural History of Lake Michigan. Looking…
- New Books in American Studies
Fernando Luiz Lara, "Spatial Theories for the Americas: Counterweights to Five Centuries of Eurocentrism" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2024)
To study the built environment of the Americas is to wrestle with an inherent contradiction. While the disciplines of architecture, urban design, landscape…
- New Books in American Studies
Robert D. Bland, "Requiem for Reconstruction: Black Countermemory and the Legacy of the Lowcountry's Lost Political Generation" (UNC Press, 2026)
The promise of Reconstruction sparked a transformative era in American history as free and newly emancipated Black Americans sought to redefine their place in…
- New Books in American Studies
Steven J. Brady, "Less Than Victory: American Catholics and the Vietnam War" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The first book of its kind, Less Than Victory: American Catholics and the Vietnam War (Cambridge UP, 2025) by Dr. Steven J. Brady explores both the impact the…
- New Books in American Studies
Adam S. Ferziger. "Agents of Change: American Jews and the Transformation of Israeli Judaism" (NYU Press, 2025)
In this episode Drora Arussy speaks with historian Adam S. Ferziger about his latest book, Agents of Change: American Jews and the Transformation of Israeli…
- New Books in American Studies
Brian Martin, "From Underground Railroad to Rebel Refuge: Canada and the Civil War" (ECW Press, 2022)
Despite all we know about the Civil War, its causes, battles, characters, issues, impacts, and legacy, few books have explored Canada’s role in the bloody…
- New Books in American Studies
Brooke Kroeger, "Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism" (Knopf, 2023)
Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism (Knopf, 2023) is a representative history of the American women who surmounted every impediment put in their…
- New Books in American Studies
Chris Boucher, "Harry "Bucky" Lew: A Biography of the First Black Professional Basketball Player" (McFarland, 2026)
Harry "Bucky" Lew leapt over pro basketball's color wall in 1902 and continued to integrate every single role in the game over the next 25 years. He was the…
- New Books in American Studies
Book Talk 69: American Medium, with Eyal Peretz
What is “America” not only as a political entity but in our imagination? How can we properly envision America, without repeating clichés that frame America as…
- New Books in American Studies
Jason Isralowitz, "Nothing to Fear: Alfred Hitchcock and the Wrong Men" (Fayetteville Mafia Press, 2023)
In 1956, Alfred Hitchcock focused his lens on an issue that cuts to the heart of our criminal justice system: the risk of wrongful conviction. The result was…
- New Books in American Studies
Paul J. Gutacker, "The Old Faith in a New Nation: American Protestants and the Christian Past" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Conventional wisdom holds that tradition and history meant little to nineteenth-century American Protestants, who relied on common sense and "the Bible alone."…
- New Books in American Studies
Mary M. Burke, "Race, Politics, and Irish America: A Gothic History" (Oxford UP, 2023)
In this interview, she discusses her book, Race, Politics, and Irish America: A Gothic History (Oxford UP, 2023), which inserts successive Irish-American…
- New Books in American Studies
W. Ralph Eubanks, "When It's Darkness on the Delta: How America's Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land" (Beacon Press, 2026)
Once the powerhouse of a fledgling country’s economy, the Mississippi Delta has been consigned to a narrative of destitution. It is often faulted for the sins…