Deservedly or not, the members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) are often portrayed as one of history’s Good Guys. The Society was the first organized religious group to condemn slavery on moral and religious grounds.

In Authentic: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture (NYU Press, 2013), Sarah Banet-Weiser scrutinizes the spread of brand culture into other spheres of social life that the market–at least in our imaginations–had left untouched: politics,

Vanessa Williamson is coauthor (with Theda Skocpol) of The Tea Party: Remaking of Republican Conservatism (Oxford University Press, 2012), a New Yorker magazine “Ten Best Political Books of 2012”). Williamson is a Ph.D.

In the “Great Recession,” millions lost their jobs, retirement savings, and even their houses. The entire middle class was shaken. Yet almost no one has been brought to justice. Quite the opposite: the big banks and investment houses–the places where t...

Like it or not, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) has an enormous influence in deciding what qualifies as a mental health disorder in the United States and beyond.

In popular perception, a certain image arises when we imagine eastern religions. Perhaps, we envision a wise old Asian man in traditional clothing sitting in a meditative state (maybe not). But why does this image emerge? Jane Iwamura,

Pauline Turner Strong‘s new book American Indians and the American Imaginary: Cultural Representation Across the Centuries (Paradigm Publishers, 2012) traces the representations of Native Americans across various public spheres of the American imaginar...

Joseph Nye‘s latest book is Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era (Princeton University Press, 2013). Professor Nye is University Distinguished Professor and former dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Why does it seem like everyone in the atheist movement is white and male? Are African-American women less interested in secularism? In her book, Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels (Infidel Books, 2013), Dr.

Gregory Heller is the author of Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, and the Building of Modern Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). Heller is Senior Advisor at Econsult Solutions, Inc. in Philadelphia.

What is a celebrity? And how has the definition of celebrity changed over the course of American history? Those questions are central to Charlene M. Boyer Lewis‘s book Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte: An American Aristocrat in the Early Republic (Univers...

One of the basic rules of human behavior is that people generally want to do what their peers do. If your friends like jazz, you’ll probably like jazz. If your friends want to go to the movies, you’ll probably want to go to the movies.

Whiteness studies has confirmed that race is a social construction, even for whites, and that the identity we understand as white is also a social invention. Those who benefit from this invention accrue privileges that others either must pay dearly to ...

After spending millions to steal superstar Brooklyn-based rappers the Beastie Boys away from Def Jam Records in 1988, Capitol Records had high hopes for the act’s follow up effort. And why not? License to Ill (1986) had sold over five million copies wh...

Why is it that the United States continues to enforce the death penalty when the rest of the Western world abolished its use a little over three decades ago? That question, along with many other equally important questions, is at the heart of Dr.

Ron Schmidt is the co-author (with Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh, Andrew L. Aoki, and Rodney Hero) of Newcomers, Outsiders, and Insiders: Immigrants and the American Racial Politics in the Early 21st Century (University of Michigan Press, 2013).

William G. Howell (with David Brent) is the author of the new book Thinking about the Presidency: The Primacy of Power (Princeton UP, 2013). Howell is the Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics at the University of Chicago,

Is there an institution in the United States that enjoys a better reputation than the American Red Cross? In her thorough, accessible new book The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal (Johns Hopkins UP, 2012),

Most people who listen to this podcast will know that places like Japan, Italy, and Germany are in the midst of a demographic crisis. The trouble is that people in those countries are not having enough children to replace those of any age who are dying...

Jesus has inspired millions of people to both strive for social justice and commit horrific acts of violence. In the United States, Jesus has remained central in the construction of American identities and debates about Jesus have frequently revolved a...

It’s Christmas Eve at the Houston City Auditorium, 1954, and Big Mama Thornton is belting out “Hound Dog,” her hit from the previous year. It’s the years just before Elvis, before rock and roll, when white and black musics were still segregated,

Barbara Palmer and Dennis Simon are authors of Women and Congressional Elections: A Century of Change (Lynne Rienner, 2012). Palmer is associate professor of political science at Baldwin Wallace University and Dixon is professor of political science at...

In the late 1960s, Nashville’s recording industry was a hit-making machine. A small clique of writers, producers, engineers and session musicians gave sonic shape to the pop-friendly “Nashville Sound” and generated hit after hit for artists like Jim Re...

You know you are not going to get the same old story about progressive literacies and education from Carmen Kynard, who ends the introduction to her book with a saying from her grandmother: “Whenever someone did something that seemed contradictory enou...

Andrew J. Taylor is the author of Congress: A Performance Appraisal (Westview Press, 2013). Taylor is professor of political science in the School of Public and International Affairs at North Carolina State University.