When the state takes over, can local democracy survive? Over 100 school districts have been taken over by state governments since the late 1980s. In doing so, state officials relieve local officials, including those elected by local residents,

Tore T. Petersen, Professor of International and American Diplomatic History at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, studies the final wars on the prairie from the Native American perspective in The Military Conquest of the Prairie: Nati...

In the annals of abolitionist history, names like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, the Grimke sisters, and Harriet Tubman are well known. Dr. Marcus Rediker‘s new book, The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became The First Revolut...

In an expansive, engrossing, voluminously in depth analysis of the subject, Professor A. G. Hopkins, Professor Emeritus of Commonwealth History at the University of Cambridge, one of the foremost historians of the 19th- and 20th-century British Empire,...

Voting rights are always in the news in American politics, and recent court decisions and an upcoming election in 2018 make this especially true today. Most discussions come back to the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and whether it will continue to provide th...

Political commentator Matt K. Lewis warns his fellow conservatives that their movement is going off the rails in Too Dumb to Fail: How the GOP Went from the Party of Reagan to the Party of Trump (Hachette, 2016). Lewis chafes at the populist,

In U.S. Central Americans: Reconstructing Memories, Struggles, and Communities of Resistance (University of Arizona Press, 2017) editors Karina O. Alvarado, Alicia Ivonne Estrada, and Ester E. Hernandez have produced the first anthology to focus on the...

Since it was published in 2016, Arlie Russell Hochschild‘s Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (The New Press, 2016) has been many times heralded as necessary reading for our current political moment.

Although largely forgotten today, elocution was a popular form of domestic and professional entertainment from the late nineteenth century until around World War II. Elocution is the dramatic reading of poetry, adapted plays,

We all know that most runaway African-American slaves fled north in pursuit of freedom. Most, but not all. Some also fled to Pensacola, a city located in (of all places) the Deep South. In his excellent book Aiming for Pensacola: Fugitive Slaves on the...

True crime is as popular as ever in our present moment. Both television and podcast series have gained critical praise and large audiences by exploring largely unknown individual crimes in depth and using them to consider broader questions surrounding ...

Richard Candida Smith’s new book Improvised Continent: Pan-American and Cultural Exchange (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), offers a richly detailed cultural history of pan-Americanism and how it was propagated among elites and popular audience...

Medicaid provides health care for around 1 in 5 Americans. Despite the large number served, the programs administration by state and local governments means very different things in different places. The geography of federalism matters a lot for Medica...

Environmental historian Peter A. Kopp‘s book Hoptopia: A World of Agriculture and Beer in Oregon’s Willamette Valley (University of California Press, 2016) examines the fascinating history of a very special plant: the hop.

There is an alarming tendency to paint some topics with a broad brush, allowing for easy understanding, but losing the proper nuance that avoids stereotype. In her book, What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia (Belt Publishing, 2018),

When folklorist Jean Freedman first met Peggy Seeger in 1979, Freedman was an undergraduate on her junior year abroad in London, while her American compatriot had been living in the UK for two decades. Their encounter took place in the Singers’ Club,

My students don’t remember Vietnam. That’s hard to believe, for someone born in 1968. But it’s true, nonetheless. High school history courses rarely make it past World War Two. The Cold War and the Berlin Wall are mysteries. And Vietnam,

Aidan Smith has written a timely and important analysis of the way that we understand images, masculinity, and femininity, especially through the lens of presidential campaigns and political advertising. Smith’s book, Gender, Heteronormativity,

When first enacted at the start of the twentieth century, primaries were to decrease the power of party bosses to dominate the choice of who ran for office. Primaries were a feature of the progressive agenda to limit political corruption and democratiz...

Land is central in the construction of identity for many communities. For Ute Native Americans the meaning of a twelve million acre homeland in western Colorado is intricately linked to the various ways they understand their heritage and future.

Eddie Cantor was once among the most popular performers in the United States. He was influential and innovative on stage, radio, and film from the early twentieth century though the early 1960s. He is not widely known today, however,

I first really got to know Andrew Friedman after the death of our mutual friend, the great food writer Josh Ozersky. Andrew is a widely respected food writer who has collaborated on numerous landmark cookbooks and chef memoirs. Now his labor of love,

In his book Reality TV (Routledge, 2017), author Jon Kraszewski explores reality television’s relationship to the American cityscape. Starting with show such as Candid Camera and An American Family, Kraszewski positions reality television in cities whe...

What is the history of a “history book”? In How to Read a History Book: The Hidden History Of History (Zero Books, 2018), Marshall Poe, founder and Editor-In-Chief of the New Books Network, tells the story of why and how we have the “history books” we ...

American Cicero: Mario Cuomo and the Defense of American Liberalism (Oxford University Press, 2017) is a compelling exploration of the political life of Governor Mario Cuomo as well as the concepts of American liberalism, presidential politics,