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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6726
Marcus Rediker “The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlan...
If the moniker of the slave ship Amistad brings to mind images of Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou, and Morgan Freeman you are likely not alone. The monumental success of Steven Spielberg’s cinematic depiction of this antebellum event swept the nation w...
45 min
6727
Don McLeese, “Dwight Yoakam: A Thousand Miles f...
Born in Kentucky, raised in Ohio, apprenticed in Los Angeles, Dwight Yoakam is not your typical mainstream country music star. Indeed, his honky-tonk style of country has always been a throwback to an earlier era, one in which Merle Haggard,
67 min
6728
David Niose, “Nonbeliever Nation: The Rise of S...
The perception of the United States as a Christian nation is one that is prevalent and persistent. It is difficult to conceive of a time when the term Christian America was not bandied about in the media, but as David Niose argues in his book Nonbeliev...
33 min
6729
Daniel Stedman Jones, “Masters of the Universe:...
Daniel Stedman Jones is the author of Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics (Princeton University Press, 2012). The book tells a portion of the intellectual history of neoliberalism through a focus on the period...
25 min
6730
Ron Kaplan, “501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read ...
WorldCat is the largest online catalog in the world, accessing the collections of more than 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories. Using the catalog, a subject search of particular sports turns up the following tally of book titles in the w...
43 min
6731
Ned Stuckey-French, “The American Essay in the ...
53 min
6732
Stevie Chick, “Spray Paint the Walls: The Black...
Scholars commonly trace the rise of the punk rock movement of the mid-1970s to two cities and two bands, New York’s Ramones and London’s The Sex Pistols. In Spray Paint the Walls: The Black Flag Story(Omnibus, 2010), however,
78 min
6733
Daniel W. Webster and Jon S. Vernick, “Reducing...
We’ve all heard the saying that when arguing we should ‘disagree without being disagreeable’ but, when it comes to guns, we often find ourselves disagreeing without actually disagreeing. Most Americans believe in some kinds of gun control.
49 min
6734
Henry Wiencek, “Master of the Mountain: Thomas ...
The Louisiana Purchase was a perfect illustration of the challenges, yet seemingly boundless opportunities that slavery presented statesmen like Thomas Jefferson. Napoleon Bonaparte had been dealt a significant military defeat at the hands of a slave r...
54 min
6735
Joseph November, “Biomedical Computing: Digitiz...
There are pigeons, cats, and Martians here. There are CT scanners, dentures, computers large enough to fill rooms, war games, and neural networks. In Biomedical Computing: Digitizing Life in the United States (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012),
60 min
6736
Christopher Tienken and Donald Orlich, “The Sch...
Christopher Tienken and Donald Orlich are authors of the provocative new book, The School Reform Landscape: Fraud, Myth, and Lies (Rowman and Littlefield 2013). Dr. Tienken is an assistant professor in the College of Education and Human Services at Set...
22 min
6737
Beth H. Piatote, “Domestic Subjects: Gender, Ci...
The suspension of the so-called “Indian Wars” did not signal colonialism’s end, only a different battlefield. “The calvary man was supplanted–or, rather, supplemented–by the field matron, the Hotchkiss by the transit, and the prison by the school,
56 min
6738
Steven Hill, “Europe’s Promise: Why the Europea...
What can the United States learn from Europe? One good answer, says Steven Hill, is social capitalism, a form of economic management that is responsive to markets and productive of broadly-shared prosperity.
49 min
6739
Kathleen J. Frydl, “The War on Drugs in America...
In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a “War on Drugs.” We are still fighting that war today. According to many people, we’ve lost but don’t know it. Rates of drug use in the US remain, by historical standards,
63 min
6740
Andre Williams, “Dividing Lines: Social Class A...
Andrei Williams‘ provocative new book on African American class divisions in Post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow America is sure to spark spirited debate among those interested in how the interplay of economic status and racial identity influence what has...
46 min
6741
Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber, “Becoming Jimi ...
After his incendiary performance at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival, Jimi Hendrix almost immediately went from obscure musician to pop superstar in America. But as Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber reveal in Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southe...
26 min
6742
Lance R. Blyth, “Chiricahua and Janos: Communit...
Most people today think of war–or really violence of any sort–as for the most part useless. It’s better, we say, just to talk things out or perhaps buy our enemies off. And that usually works. But what if you lived in a culture where fighting was an im...
57 min
6743
Paul Barrett, “Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun...
History is in many respects the story of humanity’s quest for transcendence: to control life and death, time and space, loss and memory. When inventors or companies effectively tap into these needs products emerge that help define their times.
51 min
6744
Steven J. Harper, “The Lawyer Bubble: A Profess...
A friend of mine who had just graduated from law school said “Law school is great. The trouble is that when you are done you’re a lawyer.” Steven J. Harper would, after a fashion, agree (though he would probably add that law schools are not that great)...
63 min
6745
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, “Mary and Lou and R...
Forty years after its debut, The Mary Tyler Moore Show remains one of the most beloved and successful television sitcoms of all time. But Jennifer Keishin Armstrong‘s Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: And all the Brilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler M...
51 min
6746
Laina Dawes, “What are You Doing Here?: A Black...
Extreme metal, punk, and hardcore. Slayer. Sick of it All. Cro-Mags. Decapitated. Behemoth. Musically aggressive rock bands with growling vocals and lyrics about annihilation, death, and dismemberment. A genre of music that,
62 min
6747
Yuval Taylor and Jake Austen, “Darkest America:...
The moral arguments in defense of slavery hinged on the claim that it was the best arrangement for all parties involved, especially the slaves. Thomas Jefferson, for example, argued that the differences between black slaves and white masters were ‘fixe...
52 min
6748
Andrew Koppelman, “The Tough Luck Constitution ...
Every hundred years or so, the Supreme Court decides a question with truly vast economic implications. In 2012 such a decision was handed down, in a case that had the potential to affect the economy in the near term more than any court case ever had.
56 min
6749
David Hochfelder, “The Telegraph in America, 18...
In The Telegraph in America, 1832-1920 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), David Hochfelder provides a taut and consistently intelligent history of the telegraph in American life. The book is notable for both its topical breadth—encompassing war,
42 min
6750
Cyril Ghosh, “The Politics of the American Drea...
Cyril Ghosh is Visiting Assistant Professor at Wagner College where he teaches courses in American government, political theory, and immigration. His new book, The Politics of the American Dream: Democratic Inclusion in Contemporary American Political ...
35 min