New Books in American Studies

Interviews with Scholars of America about their New Books

Society & Culture
History
5651
Seth Masket, “The Inevitable Party: Why Attempt...
Seth Masket has written The Inevitable Party: Why Attempts to Kill the Party System Fail and How they Weaken Democracy (Oxford UP, 2016). Masket is associate professor and chair of the Department of Political Science, University of Denver.
20 min
5652
April R. Haynes, “Riotous Flesh: Women, Physiol...
April R. Haynes is an assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In Riotous Flesh: Women, Physiology, and the Solitary Vice in Nineteenth- Century America (University of Chicago Press,
55 min
5653
Cassandra A. Good, “Founding Friendships: Frien...
Cassandra A. Good is the Associate Editor of the Papers of James Monroe at the University of Mary Washington. Her book Founding Friendships: Friendships between Men and Women in the Early American Republic (Oxford University Press,
50 min
5654
James K. Libbey, “Alben Barkley: A Life in Poli...
Known as the Iron Man of politics, Alben Barkley enjoyed a career that took him from rural Kentucky to the vice-presidency of the United States of America. In his book Alben Barkley: A Life in Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2016), James K.
56 min
5655
William Blum, “America’s Deadliest Export: Demo...
Since World War II, the United States has repeatedly posited itself as a defender of democracy, using its military might to promote freedom abroad even as it ascended to the status of the world’s only superpower.
31 min
5656
Robert Boatright, ed. “The Deregulatory Moment?...
Robert Boatright, associate professor of political science at Clark University, is the editor of The Deregulatory Moment? A Comparative Perspective on Changing Campaign Finance Laws (University of Michigan Press, 2015).
18 min
5657
Kevin Bubriski, “Look into My Eyes: Nuevomexica...
Kevin Bubriski, a New Englander and internationally acclaimed photographer, was a freelance photojournalist when he first arrived in New Mexico in 1981 to study filmmaking in Santa Fe. Bubriski recalls, “Although I was working as a news photographer on...
39 min
5658
Adam Mendelsohn, “The Rag Race” (NYU Press, 2015)
In The Rag Race: How Jews Sewed Their Way to Success in America and the British Empire (New York University Press, 2015), Adam Mendelsohn, Associate Professor of History at the University of Cape Town, embarks on a comparative exploration of Jews in th...
28 min
5659
William Resh, “Rethinking the Administrative Pr...
William Resh is the author of Rethinking the Administrative Presidency: Trust, Intellectual Capital, and Appointee-Careerist Relations in the George W. Bush Administration (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016).
22 min
5660
Brent Walker, “The Hidden South–Come Home” (Bea...
The Hidden South–Come Home (Beaver’s Pond Press, 2016) is the result of an ongoing project that documents intimate stories of people who are often overlooked in society. Photographer and author Brent Walker traveled around the southern United States me...
47 min
5661
Lance deHaven-Smith, “Conspiracy Theory in Amer...
Lance deHaven-Smith‘s Conspiracy Theory in America (University of Texas Press, 2014) investigates how the Founders’ hard-nosed realism about the likelihood of elite political misconduct articulated in the Declaration of Independence has been replaced b...
94 min
5662
Norman L. Macht, “The Grand Old Man of Baseball...
At the start of The Grand Old Man of Baseball: Connie Mack in His Final Years, 1932-1956, the third volume of Norman L. Macht’s biography of baseball legend Connie Mack, the Philadelphia A’s which he owned and managed had just lost the 1931 World Serie...
53 min
5663
Sarah Wald, “The Nature of California: Race, Ci...
The California farmlands have long served as a popular symbol of America’s natural abundance and endless opportunity. Yet, from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart to Helena Maria Viramontes’s Under the Fee...
57 min
5664
Eric Tang, “Unsettled: Cambodian Refugees in th...
Eric Tang’s book, Unsettled: Cambodian Refugees in the NYC Hyperghetto (Temple University Press, 2015), is an intimate ethnography of a single person, Ra Pronh, a fifty year old survivor of the Cambodian genocide,
57 min
5665
Josh King, “Off Script: An Advance Man’s Guide ...
Who plans the hundreds of political rallies and events each year? Josh King’s new book, Off Script: An Advance Mans Guide to White House Stagecraft, Campaign Spectacle, and Political Suicide (St. Martins Press, 2016) offers an answer.
24 min
5666
Michael Barnett, “The Star and the Stripes” (Pr...
In The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews (Princeton University Press, 2016), Michael Barnett, University Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at the George Washington University,
31 min
5667
John Alba Cutler, “Ends of Assimilation: The Fo...
In Ends of Assimilation: The Formation of Chicano Literature (Oxford University Press, 2015), John Alba Cutler provides a literary history of Chicano/a literature that tracks the fields formation and evolution from the 1960s forward.
63 min
5668
Marlene Trestman, “Fair Labor Lawyer: The Remar...
As a trailblazing attorney, Bessie Margolin lived a life of exceptional achievement. At a time when the legal profession consisted almost entirely of men, she earned the esteem of her colleagues and rose to become one of the most successful Supreme Cou...
81 min
5669
Anthea Kraut, “Choreographing Copyright: Race, ...
Is it possible to lay claim to ownership of a dance? Is choreography intellectual property? How have shifting conceptions of race and gender shaped the way we think of dance, property and ownership? In Choreographing Copyright: Race,
36 min
5670
Gregory F. Domber, “Empowering Revolution: Amer...
As the most populous country in Eastern Europe as well as the birthplace of the largest anticommunist dissident movement, Poland is crucial in understanding the end of the Cold War. During the 1980s, both the United States and the Soviet Union vied for...
85 min
5671
Bert Ashe, “Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles” (...
What’s missing from contemporary discussions of aesthetics and representation within the natural hair movement? Bert Ashe generously offers a response in Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles, an unprecedented account of black male identity as seen through ...
41 min
5672
Scott Meinke, “Leadership Organizations in the ...
Scott Meinke has just published Leadership Organizations in the House of Representatives: Party Participation and Partisan Politics (University of Michigan Press, 2016). He is associate professor of political science at Bucknell University.
20 min
5673
Thomas Knock, “Rise of a Prairie Statesman: The...
George McGovern is largely remembered today for his dramatic loss to Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential campaign, yet he enjoyed a long career characterized by many remarkable achievements. In Rise of a Prairie Statesman: The Life and Times of Geor...
75 min
5674
Kenyon Zimmer, “Immigrants Against the State” (...
In Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America (University of Illinois, 2015), Kenyon Zimmer, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas, Arlington, examines the anarchist movements and ideas of immigrants to t...
39 min
5675
Sandow Birk, “American Qur’an” (Liveright, 2015)
Could the Qur’an–understood, according to Muslims, as the verbatim word of God in Arabic–acquire a nationality? Specifically, could it be American? And written in English? Contemporary visual artist Sandow Birk’s American Qur’an (Liveright,
52 min