New Books in American Studies
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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5501
Victor Li, “Nixon in New York: How Wall Street ...
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,
62 min
5502
Gordon C. C. Douglas, “The Help-Yourself City: ...
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,
56 min
5503
Lon Kurashige, “Two Faces of Exclusion: The Unt...
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...
83 min
5504
Lily Geismer, “Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberal...
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,
53 min
5505
Thomas B. Reston, “Soul of a Democrat: The Seve...
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 ...
33 min
5506
Jacqueline Jones, “Goddess of Anarchy: The Life...
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...
52 min
5507
Eric Miller, “The Rhetoric of Religious Freedom...
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...
22 min
5508
Brian James Leech, “The City That Ate Itself: B...
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...
67 min
5509
Stephen Klasko, “Bless This Mess: A Picture Sto...
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,
41 min
5510
Andrew Needham, “Power Lines: Phoenix and the M...
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,
65 min
5511
William E. Ellis, “Irvin S. Cobb: The Rise and ...
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),
50 min
5512
Odd Arne Westad, “The Cold War: A World History...
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).
65 min
5513
Sandra Jean Graham, “Spirituals and the Birth o...
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...
56 min
5514
Melanie A. Kiechle, “Smell Detectives: An Olfac...
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.
55 min
5515
Yasemin Besen-Cassino, “The Cost of Being a Gir...
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.
28 min
5516
Are Citizens Polarized with Steven Kull
An interview with Steven Kull
27 min
5517
Charles Hughes, “Country Soul: Making Music and...
As America changed in the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, the Southern music industry was changing as well. The music studios of Nashville, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals–known as the “country-soul triangle”–began producing some of the most important mu...
47 min
5518
Andre Magnan, “When Wheat Was King: The Rise an...
In When Wheat Was King: The Rise and Fall of the Canada-UK Grain Trade (University of British Columbia Press, 2016), André Magnan connects the cultivation of wheat on the Canadian prairies to the consumption of bread in Britain.
59 min
5519
Lilliana Mason, “Uncivil Agreement: How Politic...
Recent debates about partisan polarization have focused primarily on ideology and policy views. In Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity (University of Chicago Press, 2018), social identity moves to the center of how to think about the di...
22 min
5520
David Neiwert, “Alt-America: The Rise of the Ra...
Investigative journalist and Northwest correspondent for the Southern Poverty Law Center, David Neiwert has been covering the radical right-wing for decades. In Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump (Verso, 2017),
37 min
5521
Barry Eidlin, “Labor and the Class Idea in the ...
How do unions and ideas around labor compare between the U.S. and Canada? And how did they come to be as they are today? In his new book, Labor and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada (Cambridge University Press, 2018),
86 min
5522
Halifu Osumare, “Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir...
Combining memoir with auto-ethnography, historical study and sociocultural analysis, Halifu Osumare draws on her decades of experience to explore the complexities of black dance in the United States. Starting in San Francisco during the rise of the Bla...
30 min
5523
Steven Hackel, “Junípero Serra: California’s Fo...
When Pope Francis visited the United States in 2015, he canonized the eighteenth-century Franciscan missionary Junípero Serra, rekindling the smoldering controversy that surrounds this historical figure—both a holy man with zeal for the Gospel and an i...
41 min
5524
Kyla Schuller, “The Biopolitics of Feeling: Rac...
Beginning with a discussion about Black Lives Matter may seem like an unlikely place to start a book about nineteenth century science and culture. However, by contrasting Black lives with White feelings, Kyla Schuller sets up the central conflict of he...
56 min
5525
Amy Sueyoshi, “Discriminating Sex: White Leisur...
In Discriminating Sex: White Leisure and the Making of the American ‘Oriental’ (University of Illinois Press, 2018), Amy Sueyoshi argues that Americans did not always regard Chinese and Japanese in the U.S.
66 min