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
Michael Rechtenwald, "Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom" (New English Review, 2019)
In his book about enormous sea changes brought about by digital technology, Michael Rectenwald begins and ends his Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and…
- New Books in American Studies
Diana Lemberg, "Barriers Down: How American Power and Free-Flow Policies Shaped Global Media" (Columbia UP, 2019)
Since the 1940s, America’s relations with the rest of the world have been guided by the idea of promoting the free flow of information. It’s an idea that seems…
- New Books in American Studies
Ellen Griffith Spears, "Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town" (UNC Press, 2016)
Professor Ellen Griffith Spears of the University of Alabama, author of Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town (University of…
- New Books in American Studies
Emily E. LB. Twarog, "Politics of the Pantry: Housewives, Food, and Consumer Protest in Twentieth-Century America" (Oxford UP, 2017)
The history of women's political involvement has focused heavily on electoral politics, but throughout the twentieth century women engaged in grassroots…
- New Books in American Studies
Graham R. G. Hodges, "Black New Jersey 1664 to the Present Day" (Rutgers UP, 2019)
Black New Jersey 1664 to the Present Day (Rutgers University Press, 2018) by Graham Russell Gao Hodges, George Langdon, Jr. Professor of History and Africana…
- New Books in American Studies
Kimberly Dark, "Fat, Pretty, and Soon to Be Old: A Makeover for Self and Society" (AK Press, 2019)
In her new book Fat, Pretty, and Soon to Be Old: A Makeover for Self and Society (AK Press 2019), sociologist and storyteller Kimberly Dark considers what it…
- New Books in American Studies
Great Books: Deborah Plant on Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God"
"It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding.” This line from Zora Neale Hurston’s masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God, captures what is at the…
- New Books in American Studies
Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020)
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong…
- New Books in American Studies
Daniel Skinner, "Medical Necessity: Health Care Access and the Politics of Decision Making" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)
The definition of medical necessity has morphed over the years, from a singular physician’s determination to a complex and dynamic political contest involving…
- New Books in American Studies
Orly Clergé, "The New Noir: Race, Identity and Diaspora in Black Suburbia" (U California Press, 2019)
How has the expansion of the Black American middle class and the increase in the number of Black immigrants among them since the Civil Rights period…
- New Books in American Studies
Phil Christman, "Midwest Futures" (Belt Publishing, 2020)
What does the future hold for the Midwest? A vast stretch of fertile farmland bordering one of the largest concentrations of fresh water in the world, the…
- New Books in American Studies
Amy Shira Teitel, "Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight Before NASA" (Bloomsbury, 2016)
Amy Shira Teitel talks about Apollo and the community of people who are deeply attached to space history. Teitel is a spaceflight historian and the creator of…
- New Books in American Studies
Bryant Simon, "The Hamlet Fire: A Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives" (The New Press, 2017)
Bryant Simon, Professor of History at Temple University, discusses his new book, The Hamlet Fire: A Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives (The…
- New Books in American Studies
L. Benjamin Rolsky, "The Rise and Fall of the Religious Left" (Columbia UP, 2019)
As someone who grew up watching All in the Family and Sanford and Son, I’ve long been familiar with Norman Lear and his work. What I didn’t know, as a young…
- New Books in American Studies
Steve Suitts, "Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement" (NewSouth Books, 2020)
School choice, widely touted as a system that would ensure underprivileged youth have an equal opportunity in education, has grown in popularity in the past…
- New Books in American Studies
Randal Schnoor, "Jewish Family: Identity and Self-Formation at Home" (Indiana UP, 2018)
In Jewish Family: Identity and Self-Formation at Home (Indiana University Press, 2018), Alex Pomson and Randal Schnoor examine the impact of the family on…
- New Books in American Studies
Ryan Weber, "Cosmopolitanism and Transatlantic Circles in Music and Literature" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018)
Musicologists have long tried to understand how cosmopolitanism and nationalism affected classical music. Ryan Weber takes on this task in his book…
- New Books in American Studies
Donald L. Miller, "Vicksburg: Grant’s Campaign that Broke the Confederacy" (Simon and Schuster, 2019)
In Vicksburg: Grant’s Campaign that Broke the Confederacy (Simon & Schuster, 2019), Donald L. Miller explains in great detail how Grant ultimately succeeded in…
- New Books in American Studies
Eddie Michel, "The White House and White Africa" (Routledge, 2018)
The Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence was one of the last crises of formal imperialism. British settlers in present-day Zimbabwe, then known as…
- New Books in American Studies
Kristen Millares Young, "Subduction" (Red Hen Press, 2020)
Kristen Millares Young’s debut novel, Subduction (Red Hen Press, 2020), provides a lyrical exploration of cultural encounters in the Pacific Northwest. After a…
- New Books in American Studies
Peter Cole, "Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area" (U Illinois Press, 2018)
Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area (University of Illinois Press, 2018) is a fascinating, densely researched account…
- New Books in American Studies
Eric Lomazoff, "Reconstructing the National Bank Controversy: Politics and Law in the Early American Republic" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
Eric Lomazoff has written a kind of detective novel about the national bank controversy during the early years of the new republic. Lomazoff poses, in the…
- New Books in American Studies
Great Books: Emily Bernard on Larsen's "Passing"
Nella Larsen's gripping 1929 novel Passing recounts the fateful encounter, first on a fancy Chicago hotel rooftop restaurant on a sweltering August afternoon…
- New Books in American Studies
Iyko Day, "Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2016)
In our efforts to comprehend the systematic dispossession of indigenous peoples in settler colonies such as the United States, Canada, Australia, or Israel…
- New Books in American Studies
Lee Drutman, "Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America" (Oxford UP, 2020)
There are quite a few authors writing about the problems facing American democracy and how best to solve those problems. Many of the problematic issues devolve…
- New Books in American Studies
Blain Roberts and Ethan J. Kytle, "Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy" (The New Press, 2018)
Blain Roberts and Ethan J. Kytle, Professors of History at California State University—Fresno, discuss their co-authored book, Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery…
- New Books in American Studies
Juliane Hammer, "Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts Against Domestic Violence" (Princeton UP, 2019)
How do Muslim Americans respond to domestic violence? What motivates Muslim individuals and organizations to work towards eradicating domestic violence in…
- New Books in American Studies
James K. Wellman, Jr., "High on God: How Megachurches Won the Heart of America" (Oxford UP, 2020)
In the United States, the number of megachurches increased from 350 in 1990 to over 1,600 in 2011 with that number continuing to grow exponentially in…
- New Books in American Studies
Rupert Lewis, "Marcus Garvey" (UP of West Indies, 2018)
Rupert Lewis has written a biography of Marcus Garvey published by the University Press of the West Indies in 2018. His book Marcus Garvey documents the…
- New Books in American Studies
A. K. Sandoval-Strausz, "Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City" (Basic Books, 2019)
In A. K. Sandoval-Strausz’s recent work, Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City (Basic Books, 2019), ties together a magnificent story…
- New Books in American Studies
Kimberly Meltzer, “From News to Talk: The Expansion of Opinion and Commentary in U.S. Journalism” (SUNY Press, 2019)
From talking heads on cable news to hot takes online, there seems to be more opinion than ever in journalism these days. There’s an entire body of research…
- New Books in American Studies
Great Books: Benjamin Reiss on Thoreau's "Walden"
America’s “environmental prophet,” Henry David Thoreau, set out for a simpler, more mindful, and more deeply lived life on Walden Pond on July 4th, 1845. How…
- New Books in American Studies
Jay Wexler, "Our Non-Christian Nation" (Redwood Press, 2019)
Less and less Christian demographically, America is now home to an ever-larger number of people who say they identify with no religion at all. These…
- New Books in American Studies
Mario T. García, "Father Luis Olivares, A Biography: Faith Politics and the Origins of the Sanctuary Movement in Los Angeles" (UNC Press, 2018)
As the leader of the Sanctuary Movement in Los Angeles during the 1980s, Father Luis Olivares brazenly defied local Catholic authorities and the federal…
- New Books in American Studies
Roger Gilles, "Women on the Move: The Forgotten Era of Women’s Bicycle Racing" (U Nebraska Press, 2018)
Today we are joined by Roger Gilles, Director of the Honors College and Professor of Writing at Grand Valley State University, and author of Women on the Move…
- New Books in American Studies
Megan Kate Nelson, "The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West" (Scribner, 2019)
What did the American Civil War look like from Diné Bikéyah and Apacheria? This is just one of the many questions that drives historian Megan Kate Nelson’s The…
- New Books in American Studies
Blain Roberts, "Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women: Race and Beauty in the Twentieth-Century South" (UNC Press, 2016)
Professor Blain Roberts of California State University, Fresno, talks about intersections of race, identity, and memory in the South in a wide-ranging…
- New Books in American Studies
Howard Jones, "My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness" (Oxford UP, 2017)
In his book My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness (Oxford UP, 2017), Dr. Howard Jones describes how on March 16th, 1968, several units of…
- New Books in American Studies
Jodie Adams Kirshner, "Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promise" (St. Martin's Press, 2019)
In her new book Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promise (St. Martin's Press, 2019), Jodie Adams Kirshner tells the story of the people of…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael F. Robinson, "The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2006)
Radio host Kevin Fox interviews Michael F. Robinson about the history of American Arctic exploration, the subject of his book, The Coldest Crucible: Arctic…
- New Books in American Studies
Saladin Ambar, "Reconsidering American Political Thought: A New Identity" (Routledge, 2019)
Saladin Ambar has written a masterful examination and analysis of American political thought in this new book which does, in fact, reconsider our thinking…
- New Books in American Studies
Brad Balukjian, "The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)
Today we are joined by Brad Balukjian, author of the book The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife (University of Nebraska, 2020). A…
- New Books in American Studies
Christian J. Koot, "A Biography of a Map in Motion: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake" (NYU Press, 2017)
Labels on a map: Surrey. Lower Norfolk. The Isle of Wight. Northumberland. Middlesex. Not a map England, but of the British colonies of Virginia and Maryland…
- New Books in American Studies
Kate Lockwood Harris, "Beyond the Rapist: Title IX and Sexual Violence on US Campuses" (Oxford UP, 2019)
On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric and Communication at the State University of New York at…
- New Books in American Studies
David S. Cohen and Carole Joffe, "Obstacle Course: The Everyday Struggle to Get an Abortion in America" (UC Press, 2020)
It seems unthinkable that citizens of one of the most powerful nations in the world must risk their lives and livelihoods in the search for access to necessary…
- New Books in American Studies
Matthew Goodman, "The City Game: Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team" (Ballantine Books, 2019)
The 1949-50 CCNY Beavers basketball team were one of the unlikeliest of champions in sports history. CCNY was a tuition-free in Harlem, New York, intended to…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael Bobelian, "Battle for the Marble Palace: Abe Fortas, Earl Warren, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and the Forging of the Modern Supreme Court" (Schaffner, 2019)
Michael Bobelian has written a history of the nomination of Abe Fortas to be Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968. In Battle for the Marble Palace…
- New Books in American Studies
R. Scott Huffard, Jr., "Redemption: Railroads and the Reconstruction of Capitalism in the New South" (UNC Press, 2019)
R. Scott Huffard Jr. is the author of Engines of Redemption: Railroads and the Reconstruction of Capitalism in the New South, published by the University of…
- New Books in American Studies
Great Books: Glenn Wallis on Gibran's "The Prophet"
Kahlil Gibran’s 1923 The Prophet is book that’s changed people’s lives. It is a deceptively simple book, but it contains a radical insight. “Of what can I…
- New Books in American Studies
Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, "Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean" (Princeton UP, 2019)
In the late nineteenth century, a small group of Cubans and Puerto Ricans of African descent settled in the segregated tenements of New York City. At an…
- New Books in American Studies
Catherine Newell, "Destined for the Stars: Faith, the Future, and America’s Final Frontier" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2017)
Catherine Newell talks about the religious roots of the final frontier, focusing on the collaboration of artist Chesley Bonestell, science writer Willy Ley…
- New Books in American Studies
Jacob Remes, "Disaster Citizenship: Survivors, Solidarity, and Power in the Progressive Era" (U Illinois Press, 2015)
Professor Jacob Remes of SUNY Empire State College discusses his book, Disaster Citizenship: Survivors, Solidarity, and Power in the Progressive Era…
- New Books in American Studies
SpearIt, “American Prisons: A Critical Primer on Culture and Conversion to Islam” (First Edition Design, 2017)
America has the largest incarcerated population in the world. This staggering and troubling fact has driven a great deal of scholarship. Much of this research…
- New Books in American Studies
Andrea Boyles, "You Can’t Stop the Revolution: Community Disorder and Social Ties in Post-Ferguson America" (U California Press, 2019)
“Black lives matter before death.” (p.132) In her powerful new book, You Can’t Stop the Revolution: Community Disorder and Social Ties in Post-Ferguson America…
- New Books in American Studies
Catherine A. Stewart, "Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers’ Project" (UNC Press, 2016)
Catherine A. Stewart is the author of Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers’ Project, published by the University of North Carolina Press…
- New Books in American Studies
K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020)
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if…
- New Books in American Studies
Christopher J. Phillips, "Scouting and Scoring: How We Know What We Know About Baseball" (Princeton UP, 2019)
The so-called Sabermetrics revolution in baseball that began in the 1970s, popularized by the book—and later Hollywood film—Moneyball, was supposed to…
- New Books in American Studies
Gregory P. Downs, "The Second American Revolution: The Civil War-Era Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic" (UNC Press, 2019)
Much of the confusion about a central event in United States history begins with the name the "Civil War." In reality, the Civil War was not merely…
- New Books in American Studies
Andrew R. M. Smith, "No Way But To Fight: George Foreman and the Business of Boxing" (U Texas Press, 2020)
Today we are joined by Andrew R. M. Smith, author of No Way But To Fight: George Foreman and the Business of Boxing (University of Texas Press, 2020). In our…
- New Books in American Studies
Leah Stokes, "Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Why do even successful clean energy policies fail to create momentum for more renewable energy? In her new book Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and…