Matthew T. Hora, “Beyond the Skills Gap: Prepar...
How can educators ensure that young people who attain a postsecondary credential are adequately prepared for the future? Matthew T. Hora and his co-authors, Ross Benbow and Amanda Oleson, explain that the answer is not simply that students need more sp...
41 min
4927
Bob Brody, “Playing Catch with Strangers: A Fam...
There comes a time in every man’s life when he’s got to grow up. Personally, I found growing up very hard. I went to college and fell in love with it. And what’s not to love? You meet really interesting people (some very attractive,
59 min
4928
Kristen Epps, “Slavery on the Periphery: The Ka...
The Kansas-Missouri border holds a place of infamy in the history of American slavery as the chief battleground of the Bleeding Kansas crisis of the mid-nineteenth century. Kristen Epps, an associate professor of history at the University of Central Ar...
4 min
4929
Ron Fein, “The Constitution Demands It: The Cas...
Is there a case for the impeachment of Donald Trump? Constitutional attorney Ron Fein says not only is there a case, but also that the case exists regardless of what happens with the special counsel investigation.
40 min
4930
Julie A. Cohn, “The Grid: Biography of an Ameri...
Though usually a background concern, the aging U.S. electric grid has lately been on the minds of both legislators and consumers. Congress wants to ensure the technological security of this important infrastructure.
20 min
4931
Gerald Gems, “Sport and the American Occupation...
Today we are joined by Gerald Gems, Professor of Kinesiology at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, and the author of several books on sports history including Sport in American History: From Colonization to Globalization (2017),
54 min
4932
Steven Alvarez, “Brokering Tareas: Mexican Immi...
In this episode, I speak with Steven Alvarez about his book, Brokering Tareas: Mexican Immigrant Families Translanguaging Homework Literacies (SUNY Press, 2017). This book highlights a grassroots literacy mentorship program that connects emerging bilin...
27 min
4933
Christina Gish Hill, “Webs of Kinship: Family i...
One summer evening discussion on a front porch sparked Webs of Kinship: Family in Northern Cheyenne Nationhood, Christina Gish Hill’s 2017 book from the University of Oklahoma Press. A friend on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana mentioned th...
59 min
4934
Timothy J. Lombardo, “Blue-Collar Conservatism:...
President Donald Trump is not sui generis. Populist impulses and political actors have been pulsating in the American soul since the nation’s founding. Timothy J. Lombardo’s excellent book, Blue-Collar Conservatism: Frank Rizzo’s Philadelphia and Popu...
58 min
4935
Suzanne Mettler, “The Government-Citizen Discon...
One of the paradoxes of US politics today is the widely dispersed benefits, but overall distrust, of government. Citizens enjoy many types of social policy, yet reject the process that provides for much aid to individual health, income, and education.
Naomi André’s innovative new book, Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement (University of Illinois Press, 2018) is an example of a concept she calls “engaged musicology.” Positioning herself within the book as a knowledgeable and ethical listener,
55 min
4937
Laura Kina and Jan Christian Bernabe, “Queering...
Queering Contemporary Asian American Art (University of Washington Press, 2017), Laura Kina and Jan Christian Bernabe gather artists and scholars whose work disrupts, challenges, and reimagines ways of being Asian and Asian American.
62 min
4938
Annie Lowrey, “Give People Money: How a Univers...
How can we end the scourge of poverty? How we can sustain ourselves once robots eliminate the need for many jobs? Annie Lowrey offers an answer in the title of her book, Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty,
35 min
4939
Heather Schoenfeld, “Building the Prison State:...
How did prisons become a tool of racial inequality? Using historical data, Heather Schoenfeld’s new book Building the Prison State: Race and the Politics of Mass Incarceration (University of Chicago Press, 2018) “answers how the United States became a...
59 min
4940
Molly Warsh, “American Baroque: Pearls and the ...
The early-modern Atlantic World was a chaotic place over which European empires frequently had little control. In her new book American Baroque: Pearls and the Nature of Empire, 1492-1700 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018),
50 min
4941
Michelle Pannor Silver, “Retirements and its Di...
How do different professionals experience retirement? Michelle Pannor Silver’s new book Retirements and its Discontents: Why We Won’t Stop Working, Even If We Can (Columbia University Press, 2018), explores this question and more through interview with...
61 min
4942
Robert N. Gross, “Public vs. Private: The Early...
There are numerous political debates about education policy today, but some of the most heated surround vouchers, charter schools, and other questions about public funding and oversight of private schools. Though many of these questions feel new,
62 min
4943
Allan Greer, “Property and Dispossession: Nativ...
In his Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern North America (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Allan Greer, Canada Research Chair in Colonial North America at McGill University in Montréal,
44 min
4944
Thomas Ogorzalek, “The Cities on the Hill: How ...
Urban politics scholars have long studied what makes cities interesting. Rarely, however, have these unique qualities of cities been studied in the national context. How do representatives of cities advocate for urban interests in Washington?
23 min
4945
Vanessa Valdés, “Diasporic Blackness: The Life ...
As every scholar of African Americans knows, Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is an essential resource for black history. But who was Schomburg? In Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (SUNY Press,
65 min
4946
Wendy Laybourn and Devon Goss, “Diversity in Bl...
Black Greek-Letter organizations (BGLOs) appeared as an initiative from black college students to provide support, opportunities and service, as well as a free space for the black community. Despite most BGLO members are black,
30 min
4947
John M. Curatola, “Bigger Bombs for a Brighter ...
Conventional wisdom has long held the position that between 1945 and 1949, not only did the United States enjoy a monopoly on atomic weapons, but that it was prepared to use them if necessary against an increasingly hostile Soviet Union.
50 min
4948
Jo Weldon, “Fierce: The History of Leopard Prin...
Leopard print has a long history, as Jo Weldon shares in her new book, Fierce: The History of Leopard Print (Harper Design, 2018). In her illustrated text, Weldon chronicles the history of leopard print, situating it throughout popular culture.
45 min
4949
Courtney Fullilove, “The Profit of the Earth: T...
The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture (University of Chicago Press, 2017) examines the social and political history of how agricultural knowledge was created in the 19th century. Over the course of the 19th century,
35 min
4950
J. Samuel Walker, “Most of 14th Street Is Gone:...
Fifty years ago, the United States, and many other societies, experienced one of the most turbulent years of the century. In 1968, Americans were deeply divided. The Vietnam War was at its height, an antiwar movement raged,