Historically, Venezuela is known as one of the most stable Latin American nations of the twentieth century. The subsequent discovery of oil transformed Venezuela into a petrostate. Yet wealth inequality dramatically increased.

Charis Thompson‘s Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research (MIT Press, 2013) is an important book. Good Science explores the “ethical choreography” of the consolidation of human embryonic stem cell research in the first decade of th...

In Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship that Shaped the Sixties (W.W. Norton, 2015), Kevin M. Schultz has given us a lively and colorful narrative history that captures the character of two complex men and the times in which they lived.

Michael Gould-Wartofsky is the author of The Occupiers: The Making of the 99 Percent Movement (Oxford University Press, 2015). He is a PhD candidate in Sociology at New York University. There has been a lot written about the Occupy Wall Street movement...

Cesar Chavez founded a labor union. Launched a movement. And inspired a generation. Two Decades after his death, Chavez remains the most significant Latino figure in U.S. history.” So reads the inside flap ofMiriam Pawel’s new biography The Crusades of...

Why would Bert Williams, famous African-American vaudeville performer of the early twentieth century, feel it necessary to apply burnt cork blackface make-up to his already dark skin, in order to emphasize “blackness”?

Disputes over the definitions or legality of ‘rights’ and ‘rationing’ in their various guises have animated much of the debate around the United States Affordable Care Act. Many legislators and vocal members of their constituency have strong conviction...

In recent decades, as Democrats and Republicans have grown more and more polarized ideologically, and gridlock has becoming increasingly standard in Congress, there has been a noticeable pining for the good old days when bipartisanship was common,

Lawrence Jacobs is the author (with James Druckman) of Who Governs? Presidents, Public Opinion, and Manipulation (University of Chicago Press, 2015). Jacobs is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies at the Humphrey School of Public ...

Mariana Candido‘s book An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World. Benguela and its Hinterland (Cambridge University Press, 2013) is a powerful and moving exploration of the history and development of the port of Benguela.

In this podcast I talk to Kirt von Daacke about his 2012 work, Freedom Has a Face:Race, Identity, and Community in Jefferson’s Virginia (University of Virginia Press, 2012). Professor von Daacke is Associate Professor of History and Assistant Dean in t...

The “peculiar institution” upon which the US nation was founded is still rich for examination.Perhaps this is why it is a subject to which 21st century authors continue to return. In this exploration of slavery, Paula T. Connolly,

Geographer Carolyn Finney wrote Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors (University of North Carolina Press, 2014), out of a frustration with the dominant environmental discourse that,

Doug McAdam and Karina Kloos are the authors of Deeply Divided: Racial Politics and Social Movements in Postwar America (Oxford University Press, 2014). McAdam is The Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology at Stanford University and the former Directo...

In the annals of cold war history Italy is rarely seen as a crucial locale.  In his stimulating new book, The United States, Italy, and the Origins of Cold War: Waging Political Warfare (Cambridge University Press, 2014),

In 1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back (Cambridge University Press, 2014), David Krugler chronicles the origins and development of ten major race riots that took place in the United States during that year.

A kind of biography of the town of Annamaboe, a major slave trading port on Africa’s Gold Coast, Randy J. Sparks‘s book Where the Negroes Are Masters: An African Port in the Era of the Slave Trade (Harvard University Press,

Sarah Mayorga-Gallo is the author of Behind the White Picket Fence: Power and Privilege in a Multiethnic Neighborhood (UNC Press 2014). She is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Cincinnati. We are joined by a guest podcaster,

Jeff Smith is the author of Ferguson in Black and White (Kindle Single, 2014). Smith is assistant professor of political science at The New School’s Milano Graduate School. Smith writes this book from a position of academic and personal expertise.

Many books on film discuss the artistic aspects of movies, often as they relate to social and political events that affected the filmmakers. In his book The Birth of a Nation: How a Legendary Filmmaker and a Crusading Editor Reignited America’s Civil W...

When it came to race relations, the post-World War Two North was different — better — than the South. Or so white people in the northeast told themselves. While Jason Sokol argues that there was a real basis for what he calls the “northern mystique,

Cathy L. Schneider is the author of Police Power and Race Riots: Urban Unrest in Paris and New York (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). She is associate professor in the School of International Service at American University.

Scholars interested in the history of the civil rights movement in the North will definitely be interested in Brian Purnell‘s new book, Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings:The Congress of Racial Equality in Brooklyn (University Press of Kentucky,

Candis Watts Smith is the author of Black Mosaic: The Politics of Black Pan-Ethnic Diversity (NYU Press, 2014). Watts Smith is assistant professor of political science at Williams College. How do Black immigrants in the US view their racial and ethnic ...

Often when we think of missions to Native Americans or people of African descent, we think of white missionaries. In his book Native Apostles: Black and Indian Missionaries in the British Atlantic World (Harvard University Press, 2013), Dr. Edward E.