New Books in American Studies

Interviews with Scholars of America about their New Books

Society & Culture
History
4826
Adrienne Brown, "The Black Skyscraper: Architec...
In this bold and deeply interdisciplinary work, Brown demonstrates the centrality of race to modern architectural design...
74 min
4827
B. I. Page, J. Seawright, and M. J. Lacombe, "B...
With at least one new billionaire in the 2020 presidential race, the politics of the one percent are with us again...
23 min
4828
Matthew C. Godfrey, ed., "The Joseph Smith Pape...
Joseph Smith, the nineteenth-century American prophet who founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, can, at times, be considered an elusive historical figure...
78 min
4829
Kendall Phillips, "A Place of Darkness: The Rhe...
Phillips explores the emergence of the horror film genre before it was horror and a post-Civil War national American identity...
53 min
4830
Adriaan C. Neele, "Before Jonathan Edwards: Sou...
Jonathan Edwards is by now widely recognised as America’s most important early philosopher and theologian...
35 min
4831
Janne Lahti, "The American West and the World: ...
One of the enduring questions in American historiography is: just where exactly is the West?
52 min
4832
Joy Lisi Rankin, "A People’s History of Computi...
Rankin makes a compelling case for a social history of computing...
37 min
4833
Duncan Williams, “American Sutra: A Story of Fa...
American Sutra is also an inspiring account of how Japanese-Americans embodied faith, ingenuity and sacrifice in the face of great adversity...
87 min
4834
David Ray Papke, "Containment and Contagion: La...
The law does things, writes David Ray Papke, and it says things...
28 min
4835
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, "State Capture: How...
In State Capture, Hertel-Fernandez focuses on the development and political power of  three inter-locking interest groups...
21 min
4836
Bianca Williams, “The Pursuit of Happiness: Bla...
Bianca Williams offers her readers a different starting point by asking: What about Black women’s experiences of happiness, pleasure, leisure, desire...
40 min
4837
Nick Soulsby, "Sacrifice and Transcendence: The...
Soulsby talks to key players in the band’s history and traces their evolution from noise rock provocateurs in New York’s 1980s underground music scene...
40 min
4838
Justine Howe, “Suburban Islam” (Oxford UP, 2018)
Howe examines the social and spiritual contexts of Muslims living outside of Chicago...
65 min
4839
Margaret Peacock, "Innocent Weapons: The Soviet...
Margaret Peacock analyzes the various ways in which images of children were put to use, in Soviet and American Cold War propaganda...
61 min
4840
W. K. Stratton, "The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah,...
On June 18, 1969, "The Wild Bunch" premiered to critical success...
54 min
4841
Debra Thompson, "The Schematic State: Race, Tra...
This book, which unpacks the census itself, leads the reader to consider how this mundane tool actually translates the abstraction of the state into a concrete entity...
50 min
4842
Nathan Holmes, "Welcome to Fear City: Crime Fil...
The so-called Urban Crisis of the 1970s continues to loom large in narratives of US urban politics and history...
22 min
4843
Micah McCrary, "Island in the City" (U Nebraska...
As a black and queer-identifying man, McCrary examines these identities through keen exploration of gender, sexuality, race, class, geography, and more...
43 min
4844
Jon Ward, "Camelot’s End: Kennedy vs. Carter an...
Ward tracks the political origins of the southern moderate outsider and the northern liberal insider, and paints two complex and nuanced portraits...
50 min
4845
Peter Hotez, "Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s A...
The alleged link between vaccines and autism has long been disproven, but it is still a belief held onto by the anti-vaccine movement...
39 min
4846
Elliott J. Gorn, "Let the People See: The Story...
The murder of Emmett Till and subsequent trial was a national and international news story, but the exact meaning of events in Mississippi were contested...
45 min
4847
Leigh Goodmark, "Decriminalizing Domestic Viole...
Leigh Goodmark asks us to evaluate the effects of criminalizing domestic violence...
26 min
4848
Steven Attewell, "People Must Live by Work: Dir...
There’s lot of talk these days, at least in some circles on the left, of a Universal Basic Income...
46 min
4849
Peter Hopsicker and Mark Dyreson, "A Half Centu...
The Super Bowl is a singular spectacle in American culture. More than just a championship football game...
36 min
4850
David J. Puglia, "Tradition, Urban Identity, an...
In Baltimore, the word "hon" has a particular salience and is often associated a certain type of blue-collar woman who sports a beehive hairdo and cat-eye glasses...
58 min