New Books in American Studies

Interviews with Scholars of America about their New Books

Society & Culture
History
6701
Charles Clotfelter, “Big-Time College Sports in...
Corruption in big-time college sports recently claimed another victim: Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel. Once regarded as a paragon of integrity, Tressel is now seen as one more example of a coach who recruited star players and built a successful ...
70 min
6702
Elizabeth Abel, “Signs of the Times: The Visual...
I think this is really interesting. Among the thousands of iconic and easily recognizable photographs of segregated water fountains in the American South, you will almost never find one that features a black woman,
55 min
6703
Carrie Pitzulo, “Bachelors and Bunnies: The Sex...
Playboy is having (another) moment. Since its fiftieth birthday in 2003, the brand’s relevance has risen after a period of decline. The Girls Next Door, a reality television show about the goings-on at Hugh Hefner’s Los Angeles mansion,
70 min
6704
William Damon, “Failing Liberty 101: How We Are...
In his new book, Failing Liberty 101: How We Are Leaving Young Americans Unprepared for Citizenship in a Free Society, (Hoover Institution Press, 2011) William Damon, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution,
45 min
6705
Bradley Shreve, “Red Power Rising: The National...
For most non-native Americans, the Red Power Movement of the 1960s and 70s appeared out of nowhere. Convinced of triumphalist myths of the disappearing (or disappeared) Indian, white America relegated native communities to the margins of society.
50 min
6706
Gavin Mortimer, “The Great Swim” (Walker Books,...
I have the habit of reacting audibly when reading good works of non-fiction. Members of my household and strangers on airplanes have been startled by my hmms and huhs of surprise, my ews and ughs of disgust, and my wows of disbelief.
58 min
6707
Alan Nadel, “August Wilson: Completing the Twen...
Many scholars consider August Wilson to be the premier American playwright of the 20th Century. Alan Nadel is surely one of their number. In the early 1990s, he focused our attention on Wilson’s plays in the outstanding collection of essays May All You...
50 min
6708
Garrett Graff, “The Threat Matrix: The FBI at W...
How has the FBI evolved since the days of chasing gangsters and bootleggers, and is it equipped to face the challenges of a global war on terror? According to Garrett Graff’s The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War in the Age of Global Terror (Little Brown,
43 min
6709
Elizabeth Cohen, “Semi-Citizenship in Democrati...
Practically everyone thinks they understand what citizenship means. Yet, there is a great deal of conceptual ambiguity about the term and scholars studying citizenship often disagree about what citizenship actually entails, how it developed,
42 min
6710
Joe Carducci, “Enter Naomi: SST, L.A. and All T...
SST Records was a seminal label in Los Angeles’s independent music scene of the 1980’s. Founded in 1978 by Greg Ginn, SST released records by a slew of influential bands such as Black Flag, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Saint Vitus, Husker Du,
63 min
6711
Kurt Kemper, “College Football and American Cul...
When we think of sports and the Cold War, what typically comes to mind are steroid-fueled East German swimmers, or the Soviets’ controversial basketball win at the Munich games, or Mike Eruzione’s game-winning goal in 1980 (or Paul Henderson’s goal in ...
63 min
6712
Blair Ruble, “Washington’s U Street: A Biograph...
I used to live in Washington DC, not far from a place I learned to call the “U Street Corridor.” I really had no idea why it was a “corridor” (most places in DC are just “streets”) or why a lot of folks seemed to make a big deal out...
50 min
6713
Chad L. Williams, “Torchbearers of Democracy: A...
One of the great “grey” areas of World War I historiography concerns the African-American experience. Even as the war was ending, white historians, participants, and politicians strove to limit the record of the African-American soldiers’ participation...
47 min
6714
Andrew Breitbart, “Righteous Indignation: Excus...
Is there a liberal media elite in our country? If there is, do the New Media have the potential to displace it? According to Andrew Breitbart‘s Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World! (Grand Central Publishing,
45 min
6715
Michael Auslin, "Pacific Cosmopolitans: A Cultu...
An interview with Michael Auslin
52 min
6716
Jonathan Metzl, “The Protest Psychosis: How Sch...
Schizophrenia is a real, frightening, debilitating disease. But what are we to make of the fact that several studies show that African Americans are two to three times more likely than white Americans to be diagnosed with this malady,
44 min
6717
Walter Olson, “Schools for Misrule: Legal Acade...
What kind of education are students at top American law schools getting? And how does that education influence their activities upon graduation? In Walter Olson‘s Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America (Encounter Books, 2011),
41 min
6718
Francesco Duina, “Winning: Reflections on an Am...
“Winning is everything” is such a common phrase that we rarely question where it comes from and why we apply it to everyday experiences.  One can win a little league game, an election, the lottery, a friendly competition at work or an unfriendly one.
54 min
6719
Megan Marshall, “The Peabody Sisters: Three Wom...
This interview is re-posted with permission from Jenny Attiyeh’s ThoughtCast.] Author Megan Marshall has recently written a well-received biography of Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody: The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticis...
28 min
6720
Carol Bundy, “The Nature of Sacrifice: A Biogra...
[This interview is re-posted with permission from Jenny Attiyeh’s ThoughtCast] At a time when the country’s attention is focused on the ever-expanding list of American war dead, Carol Bundy‘s biography of a Union officer who sacrifices his life in the ...
28 min
6721
Daniel Sidorick, “Condensed Capitalism: Campbel...
When I was in college I had a summer job once working in an aircraft factory. My task was to count screws. Nope, I’m not kidding. I put together parts-kits that were then taken to another station “down the line” for assembly. It wasn’t much fun,
63 min
6722
Thomas Bruscino, “A Nation Forged in War: How W...
Prior to 1945, the United States was still largely a collection of different ethnic and racial communities, living alongside each other in neighborhoods, villages, and towns. There was only a faint “American identity.
74 min
6723
Brandon L. Garrett, “Convicting the Innocent: W...
Wrongful conviction is, both morally and practically, the worst mistake that society can inflict on an individual. From Franz Kafka to Errol Morris, from Arthur Koestler to Harper Lee, Western culture is deeply shaken at the prospect of the innocent pe...
73 min
6724
Teresa Gowan, “Hobos, Hustlers and Backsliders-...
Why do people become homeless? Is it because some people have made bad decisions in their lives or can’t hold onto a stable job? Or is homelessness the result of a depilating mental illness or chemical addiction? From a different perspective,
66 min
6725
Beth Bailey, “America’s Army: Making the All-Vo...
The United States Army is a product of our society and its values (for better and for worse), but it also makes claims to shape our society – and of course to defend it. What is the relationship between military service and citizenship?
65 min