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.
Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com
Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/
Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork
6226
Matthew Gavin Frank, “The Mad Feast: An Ecstati...
Let’s say you had a curiosity about, maybe even a hankering for, Indiana’s signature dessert, sugar cream pie. You might search for it and, on a typical foodie website, find this description, written in typical foodie prose: “As Indiana’s state pie,
46 min
6227
Robert Stoker, et al., “Urban Neighborhoods in ...
Robert Stoker is the co-author (with Clarence Stone, John Betancur, Susan Clarke, Marilyn Dantico, Martin Horak, Karen Mossberger, Juliet Musso, Jeffrey Sellers, Ellen Shiau, Harold Wolman, and Donn Worgs) of Urban Neighborhoods in a New Era: Revitaliz...
16 min
6228
Marjorie Feld, “Nations Divided: American Jews ...
In Nations Divided: American Jews and the Struggle over Apartheid (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Marjorie Feld, associate professor of history at Babson College, explores the tension between the particularist and universalist commitments many American Jew...
30 min
6229
Dan Bouk, “How Our Days Became Numbered: Risk a...
Who made life risky? In his dynamic new book, How Our Days Became Numbered: Risk and the Rise of the Statistical Individual (University of Chicago Press, 2015), historian Dan Bouk argues that starting in the late nineteenth century,
42 min
6230
Charles Fountain, “The Betrayal: The 1919 World...
Gambling and sports have been in the news lately in the US. Authorities in Nevada and New York have shut down the fantasy sports operatorsDraftKings and FanDuel in their states, judging that their daily fantasy games constitute illegal gambling.
47 min
6231
Marc J. Hetherington and Thomas J. Rudolph, “Wh...
Marc J. Hetherington and Thomas J. Rudolph have written the alliteratively titled Why Washington Won’t Work: Polarization, Political Trust, and the Governing Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2015) is professor of political science at Vanderbilt Uni...
22 min
6232
David E. Hoffman’s “The Billion Dollar Spy: A ...
David E. Hoffman‘s The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal (Doubleday, 2015) was first brought to my attention in a superb interview conducted with the author at The International Spy Museum.
53 min
6233
Anderson Blanton, “Hittin’ the Prayer Bones: Ma...
Anderson Blanton‘s Hittin’ the Prayer Bones: Materiality of Spirit in the Pentecostal South (University of North Carolina Press, 2015), illuminates how prayer, faith, and healing are intertwined with technologies of sound reproduction and material cult...
58 min
6234
Garret Keizer, “Getting Schooled: The Reeducati...
Whatever its current prestige in our society, teaching is undoubtedly complex work. Like physicians and therapists, teachers work with people, rather than things. They try to help their students to improve over time, and while they have influence,
64 min
6235
Mario T. Garcia, “The Chicano Generation: Testi...
As multifaceted as it was multinucleated, the Chicana/o Movement of the late-1960s and 1970s was “the largest and most widespread civil rights and empowerment struggle by Mexican Americans in U.S. history.” Since the early 2000s,
60 min
6236
Michael L. Oberg, “Peacemakers: The Iroquois, t...
On November 11, 2015, leaders and citizens of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy–Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk and Tuscarora–will gather in the small lakeside city of Canandaigua, New York to commemorate the 221st anniversary o...
71 min
6237
Grace Wang, “Soundtracks of Asian America: Navi...
Many people assume that music, especially classical music, is a universal language that transcends racial and class boundaries. At the same time, many musicians, fans, and scholars praise music’s ability to protest injustice,
44 min
6238
Peter A. Shulman, “Coal and Empire: The Birth o...
Peter A. Shulman‘s new book is a fascinating history of the emergence of a connection between energy (in the form of coal), national interests, and security in nineteenth century America. Coal and Empire: The Birth of Energy Security in Industrial Amer...
70 min
6239
Richard H. King, “Arendt and America” (U of Chi...
Richard H. King is Emeritus Professor of American and Canadian Studies at The University of Nottingham. His book Arendt and America (University of Chicago, 2015) is an intellectual biography and transnational synthesis of ideas and explores how the Ger...
2 min
6240
Katie Ellis, “Disability and Popular Culture: F...
Popular culture has been transformed in its attitudes towards disability, as representations across media forms continues to respond to the contemporary politics of disability. In Disability and Popular Culture: Focusing Passion,
35 min
6241
Megan Marshall, “Margaret Fuller: A New America...
Megan Marshall is the Charles Wesley Emerson College Professor in writing, literature and publishing. Her book Margaret Fuller: A New American Life (Mariner Books, 2013) won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in biography.
63 min
6242
Sam Mitrani, “The Rise of the Chicago Police De...
How to best increase police effectiveness in controlling crime rates is perennially controversial. Still, law enforcement has been in the news a lot lately. From criticism surrounding police use of force against unarmed African Americans to controversy...
52 min
6243
Eitan Hersh, “Hacking the Electorate: How Campa...
Eitan Hersh is the author of Hacking the Electorate: How Campaigns Perceive Voters (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Hersh is an assistant professor of political science at Yale University. We’ve come to think of political campaigns as highly sophist...
19 min
6244
Natale Zappia, “Traders and Raiders: The Indige...
In Traders and Raiders: The Indigenous World of the Colorado Basin, 1540-1859 (UNC Press, 2014) Assistant Professor of History at Whittier College Natale Zappia provides an in-depth look into the “interior world” of the Lower Colorado River.
73 min
6245
Clare Croft, “Dancers as Diplomats: American Ch...
What’s missing from our understanding of the role of dancers in the context of American Cultural Diplomacy? Clare Croft‘s first book, Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange (Oxford University Press,
45 min
6246
Daniel Schlozman, “When Movements Anchor Partie...
Daniel Schlozman is the author of When Movements Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American History (Princeton University Press, 2015). Schlozman is assistant professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University.
18 min
6247
Daniel Geary, “Beyond Civil Rights: The Moyniha...
Daniel Geary is the Mark Pigott Associate Professor in U.S. History at Trinity College Dublin. His book Beyond Civil Rights: The Moynihan Report and Its Legacy (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) is a detail and illuminating analysis of the recept...
9 min
6248
Kerry Eleveld, “Don’t Tell Me to Wait: How the ...
Kerry Eleveld is the author of Don’t Tell Me to Wait: How the Fight for Gay Rights Changed America and Transformed Obama’s Presidency (Basic Books, 2015). Eleveld is a writer for DailyKos and a former reporter for The Advocate.
29 min
6249
Jeffery S. Gurock, “The Holocaust Averted: An A...
In The Holocaust Averted: An Alternate History of American Jewry, 1938-1967 (Rutgers University Press, 2015), Jeffrey S. Gurock, the Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University, imagines an alternate history of American Jewry h...
56 min
6250
Edmund Hamann, et al., “Revisiting Education in...
Dr. Edmund Hamann, Dr. Stanton Wortham, Dr. Enrique G. Murillo (Eds.) have provided a fascinating and expansive volume on Latino education in the US that features an array of scholars from around the world,
32 min