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
Kelsey Klotz, "Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness" (Oxford UP, 2023)
How can we—jazz fans, musicians, writers, and historians—understand the legacy and impact of a musician like Dave Brubeck? It is undeniable that Brubeck…
- 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
Matthew Davis, "A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)
Mount Rushmore is something of an American Rorschach test. Some look at the monument and see American patriotic ideals carved into a mountainside. Others see…
- New Books in American Studies
Philip A. Wallach, "Why Congress" (Oxford UP, 2023)
To achieve legitimate self-government in America's extended Republic, the U.S. Constitution depends on Congress harmonizing the country's factions through a…
- New Books in American Studies
Scott A. Mitchell, "The Making of American Buddhism" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Scott A. Mitchell is the Dean of Students and Faculty Affairs and holds the Yoshitaka Tamai Professorial Chair at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in…
- New Books in American Studies
Jean Pfaelzer, "California, a Slave State" (Yale UP, 2023)
California owes its origins and sunny prosperity to slavery. Spanish invaders captured Indigenous people to build the chain of Catholic missions. Russian otter…
- 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
Kathryn Cornell Dolan, "Breakfast Cereal: A Global History" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
Breakfast Cereal: A Global History (Reaktion, 2023) by Dr. Kathryn Dolan presents the long, distinguished and surprising history of breakfast cereal. Simple…
- New Books in American Studies
Helle Strandgaard Jensen, "Sesame Street: A Transnational History" (Oxford UP, 2023)
In Sesame Street: A Transnational History (Oxford UP, 2023), author Helle Strandgaard Jensen tells the story of how the American television show became a…
- New Books in American Studies
Richard Bradford, "Tough Guy: The Life of Norman Mailer" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, firstly in 1969 for The Armies of the Night and again in 1980 for The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer's life comes as…
- New Books in American Studies
Andrew Porwancher, "American Maccabee: Theodore Roosevelt and the Jews" (Princeton UP, 2025)
A scion of the Protestant elite, Theodore Roosevelt was an unlikely ally of the waves of impoverished Jewish newcomers who crowded the docks at Ellis Island…
- New Books in American Studies
Jack Z. Bratich, "On Microfascism: Gender, War, and Death" (Common Notions, 2022)
In On Microfascism: Gender, War, and Death (Common Notions, 2022) Dr. Jack Z. Bratich explores the cultural elements in American society that support fascism…
- New Books in American Studies
Ruby Oram, "Home Work: Gender, Child Labor, and Education for Girls in Urban America, 1870-1930" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
In Home Work: Gender, Child Labor, and Education for Girls in Urban America, 1870-1930 (U Chicago Press, 2025) historian Ruby Oram tells the story of how…
- New Books in American Studies
Elizabeth Suhay, "Debating the American Dream: How Explanations for Inequality Polarize Politics" (Russell Sage Foundation, 2025)
Faith in the American Dream—the idea that anyone who works hard can achieve success—has waned in the 21st century. Decreases in economic mobility, increases in…
- New Books in American Studies
Joel S. Wit, "Fallout: The Inside Story of America's Failure to Disarm North Korea" (Yale UP, 2025)
After nearly four decades of negotiations, sanctions, summits, threats, and backdoor channels, the United States has failed to stop North Korea's nuclear…
- New Books in American Studies
Trymaine Lee, "A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America" (St. Martins, 2025)
A few years ago, Trymaine Lee, though fit and only 38, nearly died of a heart attack. When his then five-year-old daughter, Nola, asked her daddy why, he…
- New Books in American Studies
Colin Williamson, "Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
What do technical renderings of plant cells in trees have to do with Disney’s animated opus Fantasia? Quite a bit, as it turns out: such emergent scientific…
- New Books in American Studies
Sustainability, Identity, Artisans and Designers
Long before the fashion industry formally addressed questions of sustainability and advocated for “slow fashion,” a husband-and-wife design duo were working to…
- New Books in American Studies
Brittany Michelle Friedman, "Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons" (UNC Press, 2025)
It is impossible to deny the impact of lies and white supremacy on the institutional conditions in US prisons. There is a particular power dynamic of racist…
- New Books in American Studies
Liberation & the Literature of the Women’s Movement with Bess Wohl and Honor Moore
Wednesday, December 17—“The best play I’ve seen this season,” says New York Magazine’s Sara Holdren about Liberation, Bess Wohl’s moving exploration of the…
- New Books in American Studies
Christian Smith, "Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Is traditional American religion doomed? Traditional religion in the United States has suffered huge losses in recent decades. The number of Americans…
- New Books in American Studies
David Fleming, "A Big Mess in Texas: The Miraculous, Disastrous 1952 Dallas Texans and the Craziest Untold Story in NFL History" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)
Today we are joined by David Fleming, Peabody-nominated correspondent for Meadowlark Media, longtime ESPN senior writer, and author of A Big Mess in Texas: The…
- New Books in American Studies
Leo R. Chavez, "The Latino Threat: How Alarmist Rhetoric Misrepresents Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation" (Stanford UP, 2025)
News media and pundits too frequently perpetuate the notion that Latinos, both US-born and immigrants, are an invading force bent on destroying the American…
- New Books in American Studies
Terry Kirby, "The Newsmongers: A History of Tabloid Journalism" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
The Newsmongers unfolds the seedy history of tabloid journalism, from the first printed ‘Strange Newes’ sheets of the sixteenth century to the sensationalism…
- New Books in American Studies
Amy Erdman Farrell, "Intrepid Girls: The Complicated History of the Girl Scouts of the USA" (UNC Press, 2025)
When eight-year-old Amy Erdman Farrell moved with her family to Akron, Ohio, in 1972, she found herself adrift in a sea of taunting boys and mean girls. Shy by…
- New Books in American Studies
Jeff Roche, "The Conservative Frontier: Texas and the Origins of the New Right" (U Texas Press, 2025)
American conservatism as we know it today is a West Texas export, argues College of Wooster professor Jeff Roche in The Conservative Frontier: Texas and the…
- New Books in American Studies
Peter Mancina, "On the Side of ICE: Policing Immigrants in a Sanctuary State" (NYU Press, 2025)
In the United States, local law enforcement agencies are legally and organizationally independent entities from federal law enforcement agencies like the FBI…
- New Books in American Studies
David Nasaw, "The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II" (Penguin, 2025)
In its duration, geographical reach, and ferocity, World War II was unprecedented, and the effects on those who fought it and their loved ones at home…
- New Books in American Studies
Joseph L Graves, "Why Black People Die Sooner: What Medicine Gets Wrong about Race and How to Fix It" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Why Black People Die Sooner is a powerful and rigorous examination of the ways racism shapes health and disease. Joseph L. Graves Jr. demonstrates that the…
- New Books in American Studies
Mirya Holman, "The Hidden Face of Local Power: Appointed Boards and the Limits of Democracy" (Temple UP, 2025)
The Hidden Face of Local Power: Appointed Boards and the Limits of Democracy (Temple UP, 2025) by Dr. Mirya Holman explicates the purpose, role, and…
- New Books in American Studies
Julian Schmid, "Marvel, DC and US Security: The Superhero Genre and Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
Marvel, DC and US Security: The Superhero Genre and Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century (Edinburgh UP, 2025) by Dr. Julian Schmid considers how the…
- New Books in American Studies
Matt Sleat, "Post-Liberalism" (Polity, 2025)
Liberalism may feel as though it has been around forever - as the "dominant ideology of the modern west" - but not even its advocates and detractors can agree…
- New Books in American Studies
Caitlin Wiesner, "Between the Street and the State: Black Women’s Anti-Rape Activism Amid the War on Crime" (U Pennsylvania, 2025)
Beginning in the 1970s, a series of government agencies established to carry out the federal “war on crime” offered financial and ideological support to the…
- New Books in American Studies
René Esparza, "From Vice to Nice: Midwestern Politics and the Gentrification of AIDS" (UNC Press, 2025)
Shifting the focus of AIDS history away from the coasts to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, this impressive book uncovers how homonormative…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael D. Dwyer, "Tinsel and Rust: How Hollywood Manufactured the Rust Belt" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Tinsel and Rust: How Hollywood Manufactured the Rust Belt (Oxford UP, 2025) tells the story of Hollywood's role in the shaping of the Rust Belt in the United…
- New Books in American Studies
Benjamin Schneider, "The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution" (Island Press, 2025)
In The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution (Island Press, 2025), Benjamin Schneider argues that American city-building is a lost art…
- New Books in American Studies
James Sears, "Queering Rehoboth Beach: Beyond the Boardwalk" (Temple UP, 2024)
“Create A More Positive Rehoboth” was a decades-long goal for progress and inclusiveness in a charming beach town in southern Delaware. Rehoboth, which was…
- New Books in American Studies
David Silkenat, "Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" (Oxford UP, 2022)
They worked Virginia's tobacco fields, South Carolina's rice marshes, and the Black Belt's cotton plantations. Wherever they lived, enslaved people found their…
- New Books in American Studies
Gloria Browne-Marshall, "A Protest History of the United States" (Beacon Press, 2026)
Exploring 500 years of protest and resistance in US history—and how its force is foundational and can empower us to navigate our chaotic world In this timely…
- New Books in American Studies
Sylvia D. Hoffert, "Wagging Tongues and Tittle Tattle: Gossip, Rumor, and Reputation in a Small Southern Town" (U Georgia Press, 2025)
In Wagging Tongues and Tittle Tattle: Gossip, Rumor, and Reputation in a Small Southern Town (University of Georgia Press, 2025), Dr. Sylvia Hoffert calls on a…
- New Books in American Studies
José Blanco F. and Raúl J. Vázquez-López, "Dress, Fashion, and National Identity in Puerto Rico: Taínos to Beauty Queens" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Analyzing dress, costume, and fashion in Puerto Rico, Dress, Fashion, and National Identity in Puerto Rico: Taínos to Beauty Queens (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr…
- New Books in American Studies
Gwyneth Mellinger, "Racializing Objectivity: How the White Southern Press Used Journalism Standards to Defend Jim Crow" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024)
“When the civil rights movement began to challenge Jim Crow laws, the white southern press reframed the coverage of racism and segregation as a debate over…
- New Books in American Studies
Daniel Skinner et al., "The City and the Hospital: The Paradox of Medically Overserved Communities" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
The City and the Hospital (Chicago 2023) focuses on an urban paradox: American hospitals are imagined as sites of healing and care, and yet the people who live…
- New Books in American Studies
Jonathan S. Jones, "Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and America's First Opioid Crisis" (UNC Press, 2025)
During the Civil War, the utility and widespread availability of opium and morphine made opiates essential to wartime medicine. After the war ended, thousands…
- New Books in American Studies
Brooke Barbier, "King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father" (Harvard UP, 2023)
King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father (Harvard UP, 2023) is a rollicking portrait of the paradoxical patriot, whose measured…
- New Books in American Studies
Julia Wagner, "Hester Street" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Joan Micklin Silver's groundbreaking debut feature film, Hester Street (1975), vividly portrays the immigrant experience through the eyes of Gitl (Carol Kane)…
- New Books in American Studies
Benjamin Balthaser, "Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left" (Verso Books, 2025)
Since October 7, 2023, the world has witnessed a massive American Jewish uprising in support of Palestinian liberation. Through sit-ins in Congress or Grand…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael McCulloch, "Building a Social Contract: Modern Workers’ Houses in Early Twentieth-Century Detroit" (Temple UP, 2023)
The dream of the modern worker’s house emerged in early twentieth-century America as wage earners gained access to new, larger, and better-equipped dwellings…
- New Books in American Studies
Stefania Marghitu, "Teen TV" (Routledge, 2021)
Stefania Marghitu's Teen TV (Routledge, 2021)explores the history of television's relationship to teens as a desired, but elusive audience, and the ways in…
- New Books in American Studies
Chris Yogerst, "The Warner Brothers" (UP of Kentucky, 2023)
One of the oldest and most recognizable studios in Hollywood, Warner Bros. is considered a juggernaut of the entertainment industry. Since its formation in the…
- New Books in American Studies
Deborah Carr, "Aging in America" (U California Press, 2023)
The aging of America will reshape how we live and will transform nearly every aspect of contemporary society. Renowned life course sociologist Deborah Carr…
- New Books in American Studies
Jake Monaghan, "Just Policing" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Policing is a source of perennial conflict and philosophical disagreement. Current political developments in the United States have only increased the urgency…
- New Books in American Studies
Sabrina Mittermeier, "Fan Phenomena: Disney" (Intellect Books, 2023)
Sabrina Mittermeier's edited volume Fan Phenomena: Disney (Intellect Books, 2023) analyzes the fandom of Disney brands across a variety of media including…
- New Books in American Studies
Jonathan Eig, "King: A Life" (FSG, 2023)
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's King: A Life (FSG, 2023) is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin…
- New Books in American Studies
Philip Rocco, "Counting Like a State: How Intergovernmental Partnerships Shaped the 2020 US Census" (UP Kansas, 2025)
Marquette University Political Scientist Phil Rocco has a new book focusing on the 2020 U.S. Census and how the states, localities, and federal government all…
- New Books in American Studies
Christina Cecelia Davidson, "Dominican Crossroads: H.C.C. Astwood and the Moral Politics of Race-Making in the Age of Emancipation" (Duke UP, 2024)
H. C. C. Astwood: minister and missionary, diplomat and politician, enigma in the annals of US history. In Dominican Crossroads: H.C.C. Astwood and the Moral…
- New Books in American Studies
Eric King, "A Clean Hell: Anarchy and Abolition in America’s Most Notorious Dungeon" (PM Press, 2025)
A Clean Hell opens the doors of America’s most secretive prison and lets the reader step into the cell to experience all the horrors the Federal Bureau of…
- New Books in American Studies
Renata Keller, "The Fate of the Americas: The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Hemispheric Cold War" (UNC Press, 2025)
Despite twenty-first-century fears of nuclear conflagrations with North Korea, Russia, and Iran, the Cuban Missile Crisis is the closest the United States has…
- New Books in American Studies
Amy Hughes, "An Actor's Tale: Theater, Culture, and Everyday Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
Harry Watkins was no one special. During a career that spanned four decades, this nineteenth-century actor yearned for fame but merely skirted the edges of it…
- New Books in American Studies
Jim Cullen, "1980: America's Pivotal Year" (Rutgers UP, 2022)
1980 was a turning point in American history. When the year began, it was still very much the 1970s, with Jimmy Carter in the White House, a sluggish economy…