New Books in American Studies

Interviews with Scholars of America about their New Books

Society & Culture
History
6026
Hasia Diner, “Roads Taken: The Great Jewish Mig...
The period from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries witnessed a mass migration which carried millions of Jews from central and eastern Europe, north Africa, and the Ottoman Empire to new lands. Hasia Diner’s new book,
49 min
6027
Justin Martin, “Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and A...
Biography is, both etymologically and in its conventional forms, the writing of a life. But what is the role of place within that? And how do the stories of lives- some of them well known, others less so- realign when we see them through the lens of a ...
40 min
6028
Udi Greenberg, “The Weimar Century: German Emig...
American policymakers and scholars alike have looked to the rapid transformation of Germany, specifically West Germany, from a defeated Nazi state into a thriving democracy as one of the most successful postwar reconstructions of the twentieth century....
47 min
6029
Akwugo Emejulu, “Community Development as Micro...
Akwugo Emejulu has written Community Development as Micropolitics: Comparing Theories, Policies, and Politics in America and Britain (Policy Press, 2015). Emejulu is a lecturer at the Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh,
21 min
6030
Margaret D. Jacobs, “A Generation Removed: The ...
In 2012, a young Cherokee girl named Veronica became famous. The widespread and often coercive adoption and fostering of Indigenous children by non-Native families has long been known, discussed, and challenged in Indian Country. Now,
61 min
6031
Tim Lacy, “The Dream of a Democratic Culture: M...
Tim Lacy is an assistant professor and academic advisor at Loyola University Chicago. His specialties are intellectual history, cultural history, and the history of education. He is co-founder of both the U.S.
65 min
6032
Diana Hess and Paula McAvoy, “The Political Cla...
Contemporary American political culture is arguably more divisive than ever before. Blue states are bluer, red states are redder, and purple states are becoming harder and harder to find. Because of this divisiveness,
43 min
6033
Kimberly A. Hamlin, “From Eve to Evolution: Dar...
Kimberly A. Hamlin is an associate professor in American Studies and history at Miami University in Oxford Ohio. Her book from Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science and Women’s Rights in Gilded Age in America (University of Chicago Press, 2014),
64 min
6034
David Bullock, “Coal Wars” (Washington State Un...
David Bullock is the author of Coal Wars: Unions, Strikes, and Violence in Depression-Era Central Washington (Washington State University Press, 2014). Bullock is professor and is the chair of the Communications and Languages Department at Walla Walla ...
17 min
6035
Kathleen A. Feeley and Jennifer Frost, “When P...
Across a series of twelve essays, When Private Talk Goes Public: Gossip in American History (Palgrave McMillan, 2014)examines the important and understudied role gossip has played in American history.Whether fashioned as “rumor, hearsay,
46 min
6036
J. Douglas Smith, “On Democracy’s Doorstep” (Hi...
This year we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, a legal revolution with far-reaching cultural, political, and economic import. But as J. Douglas Smith argues in On Democracy’s Doorstep: The Inside Story of How the Supreme Cour...
67 min
6037
Donald Deardorff, “Bruce Springsteen: American ...
Bruce Springsteen is an American icon, known to his fans as “Bruce” and the “Boss.” Springsteen burst onto the American music scene in 1975 with the release of his classic album, Born To Run. His concerts are legendary,
50 min
6038
Joseph M. Gabriel, “Medical Monopoly: Intellect...
Commercial interests are often understood as impinging upon the ethical norms of medicine. In his new book, Medical Monopoly: Intellectual Property Rights and the Origins of the Modern Pharmaceutical Industry (University of Chicago Press, 2013),
52 min
6039
Steven Awalt, “Steven Spielberg and Duel: The M...
Steven Spielberg’s long career as a filmmaker began with television. In addition to episodes of popular TV series, he also directed one of the most popular made for television movies of all time, Duel. In Steven Spielberg and Duel: The Making of a Film...
62 min
6040
Deana A. Rohlinger, “Abortion Politics, Mass Me...
Deana A. Rohlinger has just written Abortion Politics, Mass Media, and Social Movements in America (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Rohlinger is associate professor of sociology at Florida State University. In the last several weeks,
15 min
6041
Don H. Doyle, “The Cause of All Nations: An Int...
Many Americans know about the military side of the Civil War, and the private, official diplomacy of the Civil War is also well documented. The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War (Basic Books, 2015), though,
65 min
6042
David Krugler, “1919, The Year of Racial Violen...
In 1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back (Cambridge University Press, 2014), David Krugler chronicles the origins and development of ten major race riots that took place in the United States during that year.
61 min
6043
Lisa Tetrault, “The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memor...
Lisa Tetrault received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is an associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University. Tetrault’s book The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement,
59 min
6044
Erskine Clarke, “By the Rivers of Water: A Nine...
Jane Bayard Wilson and John Leighton Wilson were unlikely African missionaries, coming as they did from privileged slaveholding families in Georgia and South Carolina, respectively. Yet in 1834 they embarked on a nearly twenty-year adventure as Christi...
65 min
6045
Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch, “The Making of Glob...
Two Canadian socialist thinkers have published a new book on the successes and failures, the crises, contradictions and conflicts in present-day capitalism. In The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire (Verso, 2013),
65 min
6046
Daniel DiSalvo, “Government against Itself: Pub...
Daniel DiSalvo is the author ofGovernment against Itself: Public Union Power and Its Consequences (Oxford University Press, 2015). DiSalvo is associate professor of political science at the City College of New York, CUNY,
22 min
6047
Stephanie Coontz, “A Strange Stirring: The Femi...
Stephanie Coontz is an award-winning social historian, the director of Research and Public Education at the Council for Contemporary Families and teaches history and family studies at The Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington.
63 min
6048
Emma Anderson, “The Death and Afterlife of the ...
Martyrdom, writes Emma Anderson, is anything but random. In beautiful prose and spectacular historical detail, The Death and Afterlife of the North American Martyrs (Harvard University Press, 2013), takes readers on a journey of more than 300 years,
63 min
6049
Elena Conis, “Vaccine Nation: America’s Changin...
The 1960s marked a “new era of vaccination,” when Americans eagerly exposed their arms and hind ends for shots that would prevent a range of everyday illnesses–not only prevent the lurking killers, like polio.
44 min
6050
Thomas F. Schaller, “The Stronghold: How Republ...
Thomas F. Schaller is the author of The Stronghold: How Republicans Captured Congress but Surrendered the White House (Yale University Press, 2015). Schaller is professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
21 min