New Books in American Studies

Interviews with Scholars of America about their New Books

Society & Culture
History
5776
Jefferson Cowie, “The Great Exception: The New ...
Jefferson Cowie is the James G. Stahlman professor of history at Vanderbilt University. His book The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics (Princeton University Press, 2016) interprets the New Deal as a massive but unstable ...
57 min
5777
Jason Mittell, “Complex TV: The Poetics of Cont...
We are said to be in a golden age of TV. The best stories today are told on television screens in serialized forms. The Wire, Lost, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos are a few of the shows that have elevated the cache of television,
65 min
5778
Wendell Potter and Nick Penniman, “Nation on th...
Wendell Potter and Nick Penniman are the authors of Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2016). Potter is a former health insurance executive, is the author of Deadly Spin, and is a regular contributor for the Huffingto...
17 min
5779
Sangay Mishra, “Desis Divided: The Political Li...
Sangay Mishra is the author of Desis Divided: The Political Lives of South Asian Americans (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). Mishra is an assistant professor of political science at Drew University. While the number of South Asian Americans living...
22 min
5780
Douglas Clark, “Gunboat Justice: British and Am...
Douglas Clark’s new Gunboat Justice: British and American Law Courts in China and Japan (1842-1943) (Earnshaw Books Limited, 2016) is a three-volume study of extraterritoriality and its transnational histories as it shaped modern China and Japan.
63 min
5781
Howard P. Chudacoff, “Changing the Playbook: Ho...
March Madness is big business. Each year the NCAA collects $700 million for television rights to the men’s college basketball tournament, under the terms of a 14-year, $10.8 billion contract with CBS and Turner Broadcasting. The two networks, in turn,
52 min
5782
Heather Boushey, “Finding Time: The Economies o...
Heather Boushey has written Finding Time: The Economies of Work-Life Conflict (Harvard University Press, 2016). Boushey is Executive Director and Chief Economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
19 min
5783
Kimberly Fain, “Black Hollywood: From Butlers t...
While black men have been portrayed in film for over a hundred years, they have often been stereotyped or portrayed very badly. In her book Black Hollywood: From Butlers to Superheroes, the Changing Role of African American Men in the Movies (Praeger,
64 min
5784
Daniel K. Williams, “Defenders of the Unborn: T...
Daniel K. Williams is an associate professor of history at the University of West Georgia. His book, Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement Before Roe v. Wade (Oxford University Press, 2016) offers the origins of the pro-life movement not as re...
62 min
5785
Heather Vacek, “Madness: American Protestant Re...
Should the member of a Christian congregation be injured in a car accident, that person will likely be the subject of public prayers and hospitality. But if that same person suffers a mental breakdown, reactions will likely be much more complex and awk...
60 min
5786
Mario Jimenez Sifuentez, “Of Forests and Fields...
In Of Forests and Fields: Mexican Labor in the Pacific Northwest (Rutgers University Press, 2016), Dr. Mario Jimenez Sifuentez combines U.S. labor, environmental, and Chicana/o history to tell the story of Mexican laborers in the states of Oregon and W...
71 min
5787
Alexander Wolff, “The Audacity of Hoop: Basketb...
Alexander Wolff is the author of The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama (Temple University Press, 2015). Wolff is a senior writer at Sports Illustrated. On the eve of the college basketball championship,
17 min
5788
Caroline E. Light, “That Pride of Race and Char...
In That Pride of Race and Character: The Roots of Jewish Benevolence in the Jim Crow South (NYU Press, 2014), Caroline E. Light, Lecturer on Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University, examines the American Jewish tradition of benevo...
27 min
5789
Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, “Citizen Sailors: Becomi...
Nathan Perl-Rosenthal‘s Citizen Sailors: Becoming American in the Age of Revolution (Harvard University Press, 2015), explores the fascinating history of identification and citizenship in the Atlantic world during the late eighteenth and early nineteen...
2 min
5790
Tahneer Oksman, “How Come Boys Get to Keep Thei...
In “How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?”: Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs (Columbia University Press, 2016), Tahneer Oksman explores the graphic memoirs of seven female cartoonists,
27 min
5791
Mariah Adin, “The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and...
Stereotypes should always be viewed with skepticism. That said, when we consider Jewish kids from Brooklyn we ordinarily think of well-behaved, studious types on their way to “good schools” and professions of one sort or another.
66 min
5792
Steve Phillips, “Brown is the New White: How th...
Steve Phillips is the author of Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority (The New Press, 2016). Phillips is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Several weeks ago,
17 min
5793
John D. Wilsey, “American Exceptionalism and Ci...
John D. Wilsey, assistant professor of history and Christian apologetics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. His book American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion: Reassessing the History of an Idea (IVP Academic,
59 min
5794
Fowler, Franz, and Ridout, “Political Advertisi...
Erika Franklin Fowler, Michael M. Franz, and Travis N. Ridout are the co-authors of Political Advertising in the United States (Westview Press 2016). Fowler is assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University,
22 min
5795
Dan J. Puckett, “In the Shadow of Hitler: Alaba...
In his book, In the Shadow of Hitler: Alabama’s Jews, the Second World War, and the Holocaust (University of Alabama Press, 2014), Dan J. Puckett, Associate Professor of History at Troy University, traces how Alabama’s Jews overcame community divisions...
32 min
5796
Lori Flores, “Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican Ame...
In Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants and the California Farmworker Movement (Yale University Press, 2015), Lori A. Flores illuminates a neglected part of Salinas Valley’s past “to show how this agricultural empire was continua...
62 min
5797
Samara Klar and Yanna Krupnikov, “Independent P...
Samara Klar and Yanna Krupnikov are the authors of Independent Politics: How American Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Klar is assistant professor of political science at the University of Arizona; Kru...
18 min
5798
Christian O. Christiansen, “Progressive Busines...
Christian Olaf Christiansen is an associate professor in the history of ideas at Aarhus University, Denmark. His book Progressive Business: An Intellectual History of the Role of Business in American Society (Oxford University Press,
61 min
5799
Matt Lewis, “Too Dumb Too Fail: How the GOP Bet...
Matt Lewis is the author of Too Dumb Too Fail: How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections (And How it Can Reclaim its Conservative Roots) (Hachette Books, 2016). Matt Lewis is a Senior Contributor at The Daily Caller,
22 min
5800
Theodore Sasson, “The New American Zionism” (NY...
In The New American Zionism (New York University Press, 2014; paperback 2015), Theodore Sasson, Professor of Jewish Studies at Middlebury College and Visiting Research Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University,
33 min