New Books in American Studies

Interviews with Scholars of America about their New Books

Society & Culture
History
3876
Robert Vitalis, "Oilcraft: The Myths of Scarcit...
Robert Vitalis returns to disenchant us once again—this time from "oilcraft," a line of magical thinking closer to witchcraft than statecraft....
62 min
3877
Julia S. Charles, "That Middle World: Race, Per...
Charles highlights how mixed-race subjects invent cultural spaces for themselves—a place she terms that middle world...
47 min
3878
Christine Hong, "A Violent Peace: Race, U.S. Mi...
Christine Hong attempts to debunk the idea of good war and warfare-welfare state that allowed women and racial minorities to participate in national politics by showing how the US government was able to launch total war that blurred the boundaries of home and abroad through the “principle of indistinction.”
56 min
3879
Billy Coleman, "Harnessing Harmony: Music, Powe...
Billy Coleman reveals an influential strand of conservative music-making that exerted influence on public life from the beginning of Washington’s government until the Civil War.
66 min
3880
Chas Smith, "Cocaine and Surfing: A Sordid Hist...
Irreverent, cynical, and surprisingly erudite, Chas Smith tells us time and time again that he hates being a surf journalist and despise the surfing industry....
63 min
3881
John Garrison Marks, "Black Freedom in the Age ...
Prior to the abolition of slavery, thousands of African-descended people in the Americas lived in freedom...
69 min
3882
Tera W. Hunter, "Bound In Wedlock: Slave and Fr...
Hunter offers the first comprehensive history of African American marriage in the nineteenth century....
65 min
3883
Eric Rutkow, "The Longest Line on the Map The U...
Rutkow retraces the fascinating, decades-long history of the attempt to build the world’s longest highway...
49 min
3884
Walker Robins, "Between Dixie and Zion: Souther...
Walker Robins explores how Southern Baptists engaged what was called the “Palestine question”: whether Jews or Arabs would, or should, control the Holy Land after World War I....
53 min
3885
Agnès Delahaye, "Settling the Good Land: Govern...
Delahaye tells the story of John Winthrop’s tenure as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630’s...
53 min
3886
Jennifer S. Light, "States of Childhood: From t...
A number of curious communities sprang up across the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: simulated cities, states, and nations in which children played the roles of legislators, police officers, bankers, journalists, shopkeepers, and other adults...
60 min
3887
Connor Towne O’Neill, "Down Along with That Dev...
O’Neill takes a deep dive into American history, exposing the still-raging battles over monuments dedicated to one of the most notorious Confederate generals, Nathan Bedford Forrest...
59 min
3888
David S. Nasca, "The Emergence of American Amph...
Nasca offers a novel examination of the relationship between amphibious warfare, American strategic interests, and the United States’s rise to prominence in the first half of the twentieth century...
62 min
3889
Kathryn A. Mariner, "Contingent Kinship: The Fl...
Mariner offers an ethnography of adoption processes in the United States through the inner workings of a private adoption agency in Chicago, IL...
34 min
3890
J. A. Delton, "The Industrialists: How the Nati...
Delton focuses on the conservative policy goals of the organization but also its surprisingly progressive tactics...
54 min
3891
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, "Hate in the Homeland: T...
A startling look at the unexpected places where violent hate groups recruit young people.
71 min
3892
Ian Buruma, "The Churchill Complex" (Penguin Pr...
Buruma offers a brilliant, witty journey through the "Special Relationship" between Britain and America that has done so much to shape the world, from World War II to Brexit...
54 min
3893
Emily J. Lordi, "The Meaning of Soul: Black Mus...
Lordi takes on the challenge of explaining “soul,” through a book that zooms in and out between sweeping ideas about suffering and resilience in Black culture and fine-grained, close readings of individual performances by soul musicians...
51 min
3894
Robert Fieseler, "Tinderbox: The Untold Story o...
Fieseler mesmerizingly reconstructs the 1973 fire that devastated New Orleans’ subterranean gay community...
55 min
3895
F. H. Buckley, "American Secession: The Looming...
If small is beautiful, and smaller nations tend to be happier, why shouldn't a state like California secede and put its savings from national defence into a scheme for national health?
28 min
3896
Eddie Cole, "The Campus Color Line: College Pre...
Cole sheds light on the important place of college presidents in the struggle for racial parity.,,
26 min
3897
Thomas Abt, "Bleeding Out: The Devastating Cons...
How do we promote peace in the streets?
32 min
3898
Michael Stamm, "Dead Tree Media: Manufacturing ...
Stamm begins with the simple but thought-provoking premise that, not too long ago, newspapers were almost exclusively physical objects made out of paper...
64 min
3899
Robert Zoellick, "America in the World: A Histo...
Both a sweeping work of history and an insightful guide to U.S. diplomacy past and present, America in the World serves as an informative companion and practical adviser to readers seeking to understand the strategic and immediate challenges of U.S. foreign policy during an era of transformation and change...
58 min
3900
Warren Hoffman, "The Great White Way: Race and ...
Hoffman explores the ways that race and racism have shaped the American musical from Show Boat to Hamilton....
53 min