There are few living American classical composers for whom an academic biography has been published, but Libby Larsen deserves this type of study. At the opening of her book, Libby Larsen: Composing an American Life (University of Illinois Press,

Several years on from the death of Antonin Scalia, what is his legacy? What did he leave the Supreme Court and jurisprudence? In The Justice of Contradictions: Antonin Scalia and the Politics of Disruption (Yale University Press, 2018),

In this episode, I speak with Steven Alvarez about his book, Community Literacies en Confianza: Learning From Bilingual After-School Programs (National Council of Teachers of English, 2017). This book highlights effective bilingual after-school program...

Who benefits from mass incarceration in the U.S.? In her new book Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration (Columbia University Press, 2017), Lauren-Brooke Eisen explain how,

In American Maelstrom: The 1968 Election and the Politics of Division (Oxford University Press, 2016), Michael A. Cohen shows how the 1968 American presidential election proved to be an “inflection point” of history that shattered the long-standing “li...

In her new book, The Untold Journey: The Life of Diana Trilling (Columbia University Press, 2017), Natalie Robins examines the life of writer and socialite Diana Trilling (1905-1996). Trilling wrote for The Nation, Harpers,

The sit-in movement that swept the Southern states in 1960 was one of the iconic moments of the post-World War II civil rights movement. Yet the images of students patiently sitting at “whites-only” lunch counters conveys only one facet of a complex se...

More than just a civil war, the Mexican Revolution in 1910 triggered hostilities along the border between Mexico and the United States. In particular, the decade following the revolution saw a dramatic rise in the lynching of ethnic Mexicans in Texas.

Is modern capitalism too far advanced in the U.S. to create common property regimes? Are there models for what an Urban Commons might look like? Join us as we speak with Amanda Huron, author of Carving Out the Commons: Tenant Organizing and Housing Coo...

In 1962 Richard Nixon suffered a humiliating defeat in the California gubernatorial election, one that led him to declare an end to his career in politics. What followed was one of the most remarkable political comebacks in American history,

The built environment around us seems almost natural, as in beyond our control to alter or shape. Indeed, we have reached a point in history when cities—the largest and most complex of our settlements—are more scientifically planned, managed,

In Two Faces of Exclusion: The Untold History of Anti-Asian Racism in the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2016), Lon Kurashige emphasizes the contingencies that shaped the history of Asian restriction and exclusion in the United Stat...

Stories about the suburbs often focus on conservatism. But, as Lily Geismer shows in her fascinating book, called Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberalism and the Transformation of the Democratic Party (Princeton University Press,

Democrats need to stop their “monomania” over Donald Trump and reconnect with their party’s core ideals to reclaim political power, argues Thomas B. Reston in his book Soul of a Democrat: The Seven Core Ideals That Made Our Party and Our Country Great ...

The award-winning author Jacqueline Jones is the Ellen C. Temple Chair in Women’s History at the University of Texas. Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical (Basic Books, 2017) is a biography of the riveting life of Lu...

The recent Supreme Court Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling showed the on-going debate between religious conservatives and advocates of LGBTQ rights. Much of this debate has been about the definition of religious freedom and how to balance religious rights ag...

The plight of today’s coal miners has gained significant attention in recent U.S. politics. As coal mining practices and technologies change in the United States, coal miners face job reductions, but their futures are wrapped up in broader national que...

Our neighbors on other planets look with puzzlement at the United States, located on the beautiful planet Earth. Despite amazing knowledge, discovery, and skill, healthcare delivery in this country is expensive, episodic, not customer-friendly,

Researching and writing about infrastructure is a tall task. Infrastructure’s vastness, complexity, and, if it’s functioning, invisibility can defy narratives. Andrew Needham, however, succeeds beautifully. His book,

Today Irvin S. Cobb is remembered primarily as an author of humorous tales about life in Kentucky. Yet as William E. Ellis describes in his book Irvin S. Cobb: The Rise and Fall of an American Humorist (University Press of Kentucky, 2017),

There have been many histories and treatments of the Cold War, few however have the breath, range and definitiveness of Harvard Professor Odd Arne Westad’s new take on the subject: The Cold War: A World History (Basic Books, 2017).

What happened in popular entertainment when African Americans could access the stage after the Civil War? In Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry (University of Illinois Press, 2018), Sandra Graham tells the complex story of how f...

Melanie Kiechle‘s Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America (University of Washington Press, 2017) takes us into the cellars, rivers, gutters and similar smelly recesses of American cities in the 19th century.

With the rise of the #MeToo movement following dozens of high-profile cases of sexual harassment and assault by professional men against women colleagues, gender equality has become a popular topic of discussion and a policy goal.

An interview with Steven Kull