Cathy L. Schneider is the author of Police Power and Race Riots: Urban Unrest in Paris and New York (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). She is associate professor in the School of International Service at American University.

When television began to grow in popularity, broadcasters had to come up with programming to fill the day. Growing from the Flash Gordon movie serials, science fiction shows geared towards young people filled the air in the 1950s,

The recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have raised important questions about the future direction of U.S. foreign policy and how Americans can best exercise power abroad in the coming years. Commentators have not shied away from offering advice.

The media system in the United States could have developed into something very different than what it is today. In fact, there was an era in which significant media reform was considered. This was a time when media consumers were tired of constant adve...

Scholars interested in the history of the civil rights movement in the North will definitely be interested in Brian Purnell‘s new book, Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings:The Congress of Racial Equality in Brooklyn (University Press of Kentucky,

One of the continuing issues of the entertainment industry is the treatment of women in movies and television. Even with a larger number of female writers, producers, and directors, roles often follow stereotypical and negative conventions.

Candis Watts Smith is the author of Black Mosaic: The Politics of Black Pan-Ethnic Diversity (NYU Press, 2014). Watts Smith is assistant professor of political science at Williams College. How do Black immigrants in the US view their racial and ethnic ...

When George Lucas first began to write “The Star Wars”, as it was originally known, he had no idea that it would become his main life’s work. Beginning as a modern Flash Gordon-style space adventure, the eventual series would become arguably the most s...

The last few decades has seen a turn toward traditional forms of American music; call it Americana, alternative country, or a new folk revival. In “I Hear America Singing”: Folk Music and National Identity (Temple University Press, 2014),

Americans have a paradoxical relationship with cities, Steven Conn argues in his new book,Americans Against the City: Anti-Urbanism in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2014). Nearly three-quarters of the population lives near an urban ce...

In the aftermath of 9/11, the American political landscape and its discourses took a peculiar turn. America’s national sovereignty-conceived as the expression of its indomitable masculinity-had been challenged.

Mike O’Connor is the author of A Commercial Republic: America’s Enduring Debate over Democratic Capitalism (University Press of Kansas 2014). He has also published articles in Contemporary Pragmatism and The Sixties.

When he died from AIDS in 1993, Arthur Ashe was universally hailed as a man of principle, grace, and wisdom–a world-class athlete who had transcended his game. But a closer look at Ashe’s life reveals a more complex picture. Certainly,

John Morrow and Jeffrey Sammons share their insights on the story of the fabled 369th Infantry Regiment in their book, Harlem’s Rattlers and the Great War: The Undaunted 369th Regiment and the African American Quest for Equality (University Press of Ka...

Denise Cruz‘s Transpacific Femininities: The Making of the Modern Filipina (Duke University Press, 2012) traces representations of Filipinas in literature and popular culture during periods of transitional power in the Philippines,

As campaign season ends, what can we make of all those ads? Brian Arbour is the author of Candidate-Centered Campaigns: Political Messages, Winning Personalities, and Personal Appeals (Palgrave-MacMillan 2014).

For most Americans, Tammany Hall is a symbol of all that was dishonest, corrupt, illiberal, and venal about urban government and the political machines that ran it in the past, a shorthand for larceny on a grand scale. Not so, says Terry Golway.

Seeking to fill the gap in scholarship focused on African American artisans in the American South, Catherine W. Bishir uses the very specific location of New Bern, North Carolina to “dig a deep hole” and produce a longitudinal study of black artisans t...

“Today, many New Yorkers take the FDR to get to La Guardia,” Mason B. Williams jokes in the opening line of his new book City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York (W.W. Norton, 2013) . And, depending on where they start,

Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall reported from Afghanistan and Pakistan for almost the entire duration of the American invasion and occupation, beginning shortly after 9/11. In her new book The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghan...

While the Cold War ended in 1991 with a whimper, not a bang, it still affects popular culture in many ways. In his book. Hollywood and the End of the Cold War: Signs of Cinematic Change (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014),

Few years in U.S. history call to mind such immediate stock images as 1776. Powdered wigs. Founding fathers. Red coats. And if asked to place this assembly of objects and people, a few cities stand out: Boston. Philadelphia. Williamsburg, perhaps.

In Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War (Vintage Books, 2004), Melvin Ely uses a trove of documents primarily found in the county court records of Prince Edward County,

So how many billionaires are there in the world? And what do they have to do with politics? Darrell  M. West has answered those questions in Billionaires: Reflection on the Upper Crust (Brookings 2014). West is vice president of Governance Studies and ...