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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6851
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
6852
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
6853
Mark Bradley, “Vietnam at War” (Oxford UP, 2009)
My uncle fought in Vietnam. He flew F-105 Thundercheifs, or “Thuds.” He bombed the heck out of an area north of Hanoi called “Thud Ridge.” He’d come home on leave and tell us that it was okay “over there” and not to worry.
84 min
6854
Mark Bradley and Marilyn Young, “Making Sense o...
What to think about the Vietnam War? A righteous struggle against global Communist tyranny? An episode in American imperialism? A civil war into which the United States blindly stumbled? And what of the Vietnamese perspective?
70 min
6855
Charles Lane, “The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax...
Why did Reconstruction fail? Why didn’t the post-war Federal government protect the civil rights of the newly freed slaves? And why did it take Washington almost a century to intercede on the behalf of beleaguered,
67 min
6856
Louis Hyman, “Debtor Nation: The History of Ame...
I remember clearly the day I was offered my first credit card. It was in Berkeley, CA in 1985. I was walking on Sproul Plaza and I saw a booth manned by two students. They were giving out all kinds of swag, so I walked over to see what was...
50 min
6857
Noah Feldman, “Scorpions: The Battles and Trium...
Franklin D. Roosevelt promised the country “bold, persistent experimentation” to address the Great Depression – but for quite a while his ideas were a little too bold for the justices of the Supreme Court, who struck down many New Deal laws as unconsti...
59 min
6858
Gregory J. W. Urwin, “Victory in Defeat: The Wa...
Gregory J. W. Urwin’s Victory in Defeat: The Wake Island Defenders in Captivity (Naval Institute Press, 2010) tells the story of the Americans captured on Wake Island in December 1945. The Wake Island garrison’s defeat of the initial Japanese landing a...
60 min
6859
Virginia Scharff, “The Women Jefferson Loved” (...
Most Americans could tell you who George Washington’s wife was. (Martha, right?) Most Americans probably couldn’t tell you who Thomas Jefferson’s wife was. (It was also Martha, but a different one of course). They might be able to tell you, however,
68 min
6860
Nell Irvin Painter, “The History of White Peopl...
We in the West tend to classify people by the color of their skin, or what we casually call “race.” But, as Nell Irvin Painter shows in her fascinating new book The History of White People (Norton, 2010), it wasn’t always so. The Greeks didn’t do it,
64 min
6861
Ann Fabian, “The Skull Collectors: Race, Scienc...
What should we study? The eighteenth-century luminary and poet Alexander Pope had this to say on the subject: “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man ” (An Essay on Man, 1733). He was not alone in this opinion.
59 min
6862
Kyra Hicks, “This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers’...
I’ll tell you something I’ve never really understood: the difference between “art” and “craft.” Yes, I get the sociological difference (“art” is made in New York and Paris; “craft” is made in Omaha and Wichita),
58 min
6863
David Farber, “The Rise and Fall of Modern Amer...
I think that many smart people, particularly on the Left, make a really ill-considered assumption, to wit, that “Republican” means “Conservative.” I don’t mean lower case “c” conservative, as in wanting to maintain the status quo.
65 min
6864
Abbott Gleason, “A Liberal Education” (TidePool...
I fear that most people think that “history” is “the past” and that the one and the other live in books. But it just ain’t so. History is a story we tell about the past, or rather some small portion of it. The past itself is gone and cannot, outside...
80 min
6865
Thomas Kessner, “The Flight of the Century: Cha...
Try to imagine having never seen an airplane. It’s hard. Aircraft are an ordinary part of our daily experience. Just look up and you’ll probably see one, or at least its vapor trails. Go to your local airport and you can fly in one pretty inexpensively...
63 min
6866
Kip Kosek, “Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonvi...
There’s a quip that goes “Christianity is probably a great religion. Someone should really try it.” The implication, of course, is that most people who call themselves Christians aren’t very Christian at all. And, in truth,
64 min
6867
Elaine Tyler May, “America and the Pill: A Hist...
Don’t you find it a bit curious that there are literally thousands of pills that we in the developed world take on a daily basis, but only one of them is called “the Pill?” Actually, you probably don’t find it curious,
55 min
6868
Todd Moye, “Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen...
In the 1940s, the United States military performed an “experiment,” the substance of which was the formation of an all-black aviation unit known to history as the “Tuskegee Airmen.” In light of the honorable service record of countless African American...
61 min
6869
Michael Kranish, “Flight from Monticello: Thoma...
The past is always with us, but it’s really always with politicians. Once you put yourself up for office, and particularly national office, everybody and his brother is going to start digging into your past to see what kind of “dirt” they can find.
56 min
6870
Joanna Levin, “Bohemia in America, 1858-1920” (...
You’ve probably heard of hipsters. Heck, you may even be a hipster. If you don’t know what a hipster is, you might spend some time on this sometimes entertaining website. Where do hipsters come from? Let’s work backwards. Before hipsters (1990s),
60 min
6871
Heather Cox Richardson, “Wounded Knee: Party Po...
Of all the events in American history, two are far and away the most troubling: slavery and the near-genocidal war against native Americans. In truth, we’ve dealt much better with the former than the latter. The slaves were emancipated.
70 min
6872
Greg Castillo, “Cold War on the Home Front: The...
If you grew up in the 1960s or 1970s in suburbia, you probably lived in a smallish ranch house that looked like this. That house probably had an “ultra modern” kitchen that probably looked like this. I grew up in such a house and it had such a kitchen....
66 min
6873
Amy Bass, “Those About Him Remained Silent: The...
I asked my wife if she knew who W. E. B. Du Bois was. She did, as would most Americans. I then asked her if she knew where Du Bois was born and raised. She did not, and most Americans wouldn’t either. The odd thing is that Du Bois, who...
61 min
6874
David Laskin, “The Long Way Home. An American J...
One night my wife and I were on the road, staying in a hotel in I-don’t-remember-where. I woke up in the middle of the night to find said wife missing. Happily, I saw a light under the bathroom door. There she is, I thought. I fell back asleep. I woke...
62 min
6875
Nicholas Thompson, “The Hawk and the Dove: Paul...
I met George Kennan twice, once in 1982 and again in about 1998. On both occasions, I found him tough to read. He was a very dignified man–I want to write “correct”–but also quite distant, even cerebral. Now that I’ve read Nicholas Thompson‘s very writ...
60 min