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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5926
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
5927
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
5928
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
5929
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
5930
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
5931
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
5932
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
5933
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
5934
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
5935
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
5936
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
5937
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
5938
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
5939
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
5940
Gabriel Mendes, “Under the Strain of Color: Har...
In his 1948 essay, “Harlem is Nowhere,” Ralph Ellison decried the psychological disparity between formal equality and discrimination faced by Blacks after the Great Migration as leaving “even the most balanced Negro open to anxiety.
101 min
5941
Edlie Wong, “Racial Reconstruction: Black Inclu...
The dialectical configuration of black inclusion/Chinese exclusion is at the center of Edlie Wong‘s book Racial Reconstruction: Black Inclusion, Chinese Exclusion, and the Fictions of Citizenship (New York University Press, 2015).
69 min
5942
John Brian King, “Nude Reagan” (Spurl Editions,...
Nude Reagan (Spurl Editions, 2016) is John Brian King’s second book of photography. His first book, LAX: Photographs of Los Angeles 1980-84, was published by Spurl Editions in 2015. For his most recent book,
46 min
5943
Steve Kemper, “A Splendid Savage: The Restless ...
In A Splendid Savage: The Restless Life of Frederick Russell Burnham (W. W. Norton, 2016), freelance journalist Steve Kemper details the adventurous, wandering life of the man who later inspired the creation of the Boy Scouts.
30 min
5944
Saskia Coenen Snyder, “Building a Public Judais...
In Building a Public Judaism: Synagogues and Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Harvard University Press, 2013), Saskia Coenen Snyder, Associate Professor of History at the University of South Carolina,
8 min
5945
Yago Colas, “Ball Don’t Lie! Myth, Genealogy an...
Leading up to this year’s NBA Finals, sports media outlets offered their take on the most important storylines of the series between the Cavaliers and Warriors. Who will claim his place as the game’s greatest current player,
54 min
5946
Karl Jacoby, “The Strange Career of William Ell...
To his contemporaries in Gilded Age Manhattan, Guillermo Eliseo was a fantastically wealthy Mexican, the proud owner of a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, a busy Wall Street office, and scores of mines and haciendas in Mexico.
63 min
5947
Meredith Conroy, “Masculinity, Media, and the A...
Meredith Conroy is the author of Masculinity, Media, and the American Presidency (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015). Conroy is assistant professor of Political Science at California State University, San Bernardino. Joining the conversation is Lilly Goren,
30 min
5948
Eid Mohamed, “Arab Occidentalism: Images of Ame...
Edward Said’s 1978 book, Orientalism, dramatically shifted how people think about the production of knowledge and representations of the Other. His ideas have been championed and critiqued with dozens of books expanding his work on the construction of ...
53 min
5949
Roger Daniels, “Franklin D. Roosevelt: Road to ...
For all that has been written about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, many misconceptions about the man and his achievements continue to persist. Roger Daniels seeks to correct these in a new two-volume biography of the 32nd president, Franklin D.
56 min
5950
Laurent Dubois, “The Banjo: America’s African I...
Most scholars of popular music use songs, artists, and clubs as the key texts and sites in their exploration of the social, cultural, political, and economic effects of music. Laurent Dubois‘ new book looks at the history of an instrument, the banjo,
42 min