Rosalind Rosenberg‘s book Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray (Oxford University Press, 2017) is a multi-layered and rich biography of Pauli Murray, an activist, lawyer and Episcopal priest whose life intersected with the most significant civil and hum...

The influential yet controversial psychiatrist, Harry Stack Sullivan was pioneering in his treatment of schizophrenia however the way he lived privately did not always correspond to the theoretical ideas he espoused publicly.

The New Americans? Immigration, Protest, and The Politics of Latino Identity (University Press of Kansas, 2017) by Heather Silber Mohamed weaves together a number of different strands within the discipline of Political Science in context of the diverse...

In our era of economic instability, rising inequality, and widespread immigration, complaints about fairness and life chances are coming from an interesting source: white people, specifically members of the working class.

America’s national experience and collective history have always been subject to transnational forces and affected by global events and conditions. In recognition of this reality, the textbook Global Americans: A History of the United States (Cengage,

Marsden Hartley’s Maine (Yale University Press, 2017), published to accompany a major exhibition of his work organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Colby College Museum of Art, traces the artist’s complex relationship to his native state.

Before the 1960s, doctors were generally in control of the treatment of drug addicts. And that made a certain sense, because drug addicts had something that looked a lot like a disease or mental illness. The trouble was that doctors had no effective wa...

Before Transgender actors entered popular culture, and before the “T” was included in LGBT, Transgender activism was a small and marginalized movement. However, though courage and perseverance, Transgender rights began to enter the public consciousness...

To remember Patrick Henry for his defiant declaration “Give me liberty or give me death!” is to overlook a long career spent as an advocate for the rights of Americans, first as colonists and then as citizens.

We are nearly a decade removed from the start of the Great Recession, and many indicators show that the economy is doing relatively well. But during this economic catastrophe, a significant number of people faced long-term unemployment,

In Devoured: How What We Eat Defines Who We Are (William Morrow Books, 2017), food writer and Culinary Institute of America program director Sophie Egan takes readers on an eye-opening journey through the American food psyche,

Nathan Kalmoe and Donald Kinder are the authors of Neither Liberal or Conservative: Ideological Innocence in the American Public (University of Chicago Press, 2017). Kalmoe is an assistant professor of political communication at Louisiana State Univers...

Leigh Fought is an assistant professor of history at Le Moyne College. Her book Women in the World of Frederick Douglass (Oxford University Press, 2017) offers a detailed and rich portrait of Frederick Douglass’ private and public life and his many rel...

In her new book, Playboy Laughs: The Comedy, Comedians, and Cartoons of Playboy (Beaufort Books, 2017), Patty Farmer examines the relationship between Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire and some of the most influential comedians and cartoonists of the past 5...

Blue Texas: The Making of a Multiracial Democratic Coalition in the Civil Rights Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2016) is about the “other” Texas, not the state known for its cowboy conservatism, but a mid-twentieth-century hotbed of community...

An interview with Thom Brooks

There are as many New Deals as there are books on the subject. Yet only recently have historians begun to dig into the international dimensions of the New Deal. Kiran Klaus Patel is one of those historians, and his book,

Though the U.S. Navy’s blockade of the Confederacy has not received the attention devoted to the bloody campaigns on land, it was an important contributor to the Union’s victory in the Civil War. In Lincoln’s Trident: The West Gulf Blockading Squadron ...

In May, a tunnel filled with radioactive waste collapsed at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, making international news. This incident highlighted the costs and challenges of cleaning up this deactivated nuclear facility,

William Davenport Mercer‘s Diminishing the Bill of Rights: Barron v. Baltimore and the Foundations of American Liberty (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017) argues that if we want to understand how Americans in the early Republic viewed the sources of t...

This week on the podcast we have a true political science legend. David R. Mayhew is the author of such political science greats as Congress: The Electoral Connection, Divided We Govern, and Partisan Balance.

What better way to explore the history of media regulation than to go on a journey with the former chief economist of the FCC? Prior to introduction of the Federal Radio Commission in 1927, the radio spectrum was in chaos.

In Latino City: Immigration and Urban Crisis in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1945-2000 (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) Dr. Llana Barber explores the transformation of Lawrence into New England’s first Latina/o-majority city during the second hal...

As president John F. Kennedy enjoyed a remarkable degree of popularity, and in the decades since his assassination his standing has only grown in the public imagination. In The Afterlife of John Fitzgerald Kennedy: A Biography (Cambridge University Pre...

Mitchell Stephens‘s new book, The Voice of America: Lowell Thomas and the Invention of 20th Century Journalism (St. Martins Press, 2017), could be described, in part, as an entertaining book of stories about a legendary American storyteller. Stephens,