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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6576
Jose Angel Hernandez, “Mexican American Coloniz...
Americans talk a lot about the flow of Mexican immigrants across their southern border. To some that flow is seen as patently illegal and dangerous. To others it’s seen as unstoppable and essential for the functioning of the U.S. economy.
59 min
6577
Will Swift, “Pat and Dick: The Nixons, an Intim...
In America, biographies of Presidents and First Ladies are a staple of the genre, but the relationship that exists between the two receives surprisingly less exploration, as though the biographies needed to be kept as separate as the offices in the Eas...
43 min
6578
Daniel Lewis, “Direct Democracy and Minority Ri...
Daniel Lewis is the author of Direct Democracy and Minority Rights: A Critical Assessment of the Tyranny of the Majority in the American States (Routledge, 2013). Lewis is an assistant professor of Political Science at Siena College.
19 min
6579
Marcia Alesan Dawkins, “Eminem: The Real Slim S...
Who is Eminem? Is he a violent misogynist, another “white” performer imitating African American musical styles, or is he something else entirely? In her provocative bookEminem: The Real Slim Shady(Praeger, 2013),
49 min
6580
John Hibbing et al., “Predisposed: Liberals, Co...
John Hibbing, Kevin Smith, and John Alford are the authors of Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences (Routledge, 2013). Hibbing is professor of political science and psychology at the University of Nebraska,
19 min
6581
Emma Teng, “Eurasian: Mixed Identities in the U...
Emma Teng‘s new book explores the discourses about Eurasian identity, and the lived experiences of Eurasian people, in China, Hong Kong, and the US between the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 and the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943...
63 min
6582
Jennifer L. Anderson, “Mahogany: The Cost of Lu...
The cultural and material history of what is fashionable or “trendy” can be particularly revealing about the time period under study. The most recent work that underscores this point is Jennifer Anderson‘s Mahogany: The Cost of Luxury in Early America ...
51 min
6583
Thomas H. Guthrie, “Recognizing Heritage: The P...
New Mexico is a cultural borderland, marked by the interaction of Indian, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American peoples over the past four hundred years. The question of how to commemorate this history and promote the traditions that arose from it is th...
52 min
6584
Michael Pettit, “The Science of Deception: Psyc...
Parapsychology. You may have heard of it. You know, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis. Spoon-bending and that sort of thing. If you have heard of it, you probably think of it as a pseudoscience. And indeed it is.
54 min
6585
Kevin Quashie, “The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyon...
Musician James Brown is famous for his civil rights slogan, “Say it loud; I’m Black and I’m proud,” illustrating the argument that Kevin Quashie makes in his new book The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture (Rutgers University Pres...
49 min
6586
Ellen D. Wu, “The Color of Success: Asian Ameri...
Ellen D. Wu‘s The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority (Princeton University Press, 2014) charts the complex emergence of the model minority myth in fashioning Asian American stereotypes throughout the twentieth centu...
56 min
6587
Matthew Cecil, “Hoover’s FBI and the Fourth Est...
Matthew Cecil brought many questions into his latest historical work, Hoover’s FBI and the Fourth Estate: The Campaign to Control the Press and the Bureau’s Image (University Press of Kansas, 2014). Questions included,
50 min
6588
Robert Neer, “Napalm: An American Biography” (H...
Just as there is no one way to write a biography, nor should there be, so there is no rule dictating that biography must be about the life of a person. In recent years, the jettisoning of this tradition has led to a number of compelling explorations of...
45 min
6589
Aram Goudsouzian, “Down to the Crossroads: Civi...
When I was a kid in the 1970s, I really didn’t know anything about the “Civil Rights Movement.” I knew who Martin Luther King was, and that he had been assassinated by white racists (I knew quite a few of those). But to me all that was old history. The...
51 min
6590
Elaine Kamarck, “How Change Happens–or Doesn’t:...
Elaine Kamarck is the author of How Change Happens–or Doesn’t: The Politics of US Public Policy (Lynne Rienner, 2013). Kamarck is a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard University Kennedy School after serving in the Clinton administration.
18 min
6591
John L. Modern, “Secularism in Antebellum Ameri...
The notion of secularism is something that has a ubiquitous presence in contemporary society. And while there is a general everyday use of this term, meaning ‘not religious,’ the understanding of this term has shifted throughout time.
67 min
6592
John Sides and Lynn Vavreck, “The Gamble: Choic...
One of 2013’s most important new books in political science was The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election (Princeton UP 2013). I had the chance to interview one of the co-authors, John Sides (Associate Professor of Political Scien...
19 min
6593
Michael O’Brien, ed., “The Letters of C. Vann W...
Few historians have influenced their field the way that C. Vann Woodward (1908-99) changed the writing of southern history. First at Johns Hopkins and then at Yale, Woodward’s books, reviews, and mentoring turned southern history into one of the most d...
56 min
6594
Sam Miller and Jason Wojciechowski, “Baseball P...
This week’s episode features Sam Miller and Jason Wojciechowski, editors of the Baseball Prospectus’ 2014 (Wiley, 2014), a yearbook that both previews the upcoming baseball season and provides readers a look into the state of the art in baseball analys...
43 min
6595
Adam Henig, “Alex Haley’s Roots: An Author’s Od...
Alex Haley’s 1976 book Roots: The Saga of an American Family still stands as a memorable epic journey into the history of African Americans during the enslavement period and after. The 1977 televised miniseries was a must-watch event of the day,
42 min
6596
H. Glenn Penny, “Kindred by Choice: Germans and...
If you have spent a bit of time in Germany or with German friends, you may have noticed the deep interest and affinity many Germans have for American Indians. What are the origins of this striking and enduring fascination? In many ways,
48 min
6597
Ravi K. Perry, “Black Mayors, White Majorities:...
Do black mayors face a different governing challenge than other mayors? Ravi K. Perry explores this question in his Black Mayors, White Majorities: The Balancing Act of Racial Politics (University of Nebraska Press, 2014).
23 min
6598
Lauren Coodley, “Upton Sinclair: California Soc...
Everybody knows the author of The Jungle was Upton Sinclair (or, if they’re a little confused, they might say Sinclair Lewis). As Lauren Coodley shows in her new biography Upton Sinclair: California Socialist,
55 min
6599
Thuy Linh Tu, “The Beautiful Generation: Asian ...
Thuy Linh Tu‘s The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion (Duke University Press, 2010) considers the recent rise of Asian Americans working in New York’s fashion industry,
52 min
6600
John Matthew Smith, “The Sons of Westwood: John...
48 min