New Books in American Studies
Interviews with Scholars of America about their New Books
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- Update frequency
- every day
- Average duration
- 55 minutes
- Episodes
- 5118
- Years Active
- 2018 - 2025
Rebecca Nagle, "By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land" (Harper, 2024)
In 2020, the US Supreme Court ruled, in a surprise decision, that treaties still on the books as US law meant that the Muscogee people of Oklahoma maintained legal jurisdiction over a large portion o…
00:39:18 |
Wed 17 Sep 2025
Michael Poznansky, "Great Power, Great Responsibility: How the Liberal International Order Shapes US Foreign Policy" (Oxford UP, 2025)
In the wake of World War II, the United States leveraged its hegemonic position in the international political system to gradually build a new global order centered around democracy, the expansion of…
00:32:20 |
Tue 16 Sep 2025
Jessica B. Harris, "Braided Heritage: Recipes and Stories on the Origin of American Cuisine" (Clarkson Potter, 2025)
Discover the sweeping story of how Indigenous, European, and African traditions intertwined to form an entirely new cuisine, with over 90 recipes for the modern home cook—from the James Beard Cookboo…
00:37:48 |
Tue 16 Sep 2025
Lucy Sante, "Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation and the Promise of Water for New York City (The Experiment, 2022)
From 1907 to 1967, a network of reservoirs and aqueducts was built across more than one million acres in upstate New York, including Greene, Delaware, Sullivan, and Ulster Counties. This feat of engi…
00:36:51 |
Sun 14 Sep 2025
Keisha N. Blain, "Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights" (W.W. Norton, 2025)
Even before they were recognized as citizens of the United States, Black women understood that the fights for civil and human rights were inseparable. Over the course of two hundred years, they were …
00:40:59 |
Sun 14 Sep 2025
Laura Hobson Faure, "Who Will Rescue Us?: The Story of the Jewish Children who Fled to France and America During the Holocaust" (Yale UP, 2025)
The first account of Jewish children’s flight from Nazi Germany to France—and their subsequent escape to America from the Vichy regime
At the eve of the Second World War, an estimated 1.6 million Je…
01:12:22 |
Fri 12 Sep 2025
Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl, "Crusading for Globalization: US Multinationals and Their Opponents Since 1945" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
Crusading for Globalization: US Multinationals and Their Opponents Since 1945 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) tells the story of an extraordinarily influential group of business executives a…
01:06:57 |
Thu 11 Sep 2025
Thomas Graham, "Getting Russia Right" (Polity Press, 2023)
“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia,” Winston Churchill once said. “It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” That saying sounds as true now as ever in the midst of Russia’s…
00:59:37 |
Wed 10 Sep 2025
Andrea Louise Campbell, "Taxation and Resentment: Race, Party, and Class in American Tax Attitudes" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Why Americans favor progressive taxation in principle but not in practice
Most Americans support progressive taxation in principle, and want the rich to pay more. But the specific tax policies that …
00:57:32 |
Wed 10 Sep 2025
Alfred L. Martin Jr. and Taylor Cole Miller eds., "The Golden Girls: Tales from the Lanai" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
The Golden Girls: Tales from the Lanai (Rutgers UP, 2025) is an accessible collection that explores the cultural, industrial, and historical impact of that beloved American sitcom. Edited by Taylor C…
01:12:09 |
Wed 10 Sep 2025
Jumping Through Hoops: Performing Gender in the 19th Century Circus
Jumping Through Hoops: Performing Gender in the 19th Century Circus, by Betsy Golden Kellem, reveals the hidden history of early female circus performers: boundary-breaking women like Lavinia Warren,…
00:34:42 |
Tue 09 Sep 2025
Is the U.S. helping speed up its own decline? with Damon Linker
We begin the new season of International Horizons by asking a crucial question: is the U.S. helping speed up its own decline? RBI Deputy Director, Eli Karetny talks with political writer and scholar …
01:07:49 |
Mon 08 Sep 2025
Breanne Pleggenkuhle and Joseph A. Schafer, "Crime, Corrections, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Responses and Adaptations in the US Criminal Justice System" (Southern Illinois UP, 2025)
While COVID-19 lockdowns affected nearly everyone worldwide, feelings of anxiety and fear were exacerbated for those already entangled in the criminal justice system. Scholars recognized the unique o…
00:24:20 |
Mon 08 Sep 2025
Kevin J. Hayes, "Understanding Hunter S. Thompson" (U South Carolina Press, 2025)
Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005) pushed the boundaries of storytelling. While the writer is most recognized for the genre-bending work Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972), in Understanding Hunter S. …
00:43:55 |
Sun 07 Sep 2025
Molly Worthen, "Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump" (Random House, 2025)
Everyone feels it. Cultural and political life in America has become unrecognizable and strange. Firebrands and would-be sages have taken the place of reasonable and responsible leaders. Nuanced deba…
01:05:57 |
Sat 06 Sep 2025
Katherine Fusco, "Hollywood's Others: Love and Limitation in the Star System" (Columbia UP, 2025)
We tend to think about movie stars as either glamorous or relatable. But in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Hollywood star system was taking shape, a number of unusual stars appeared on the silver scre…
00:43:30 |
Sat 06 Sep 2025
Daniel Horowitz, "Bear With Me: A Cultural History of Famous Bears in America" (Duke UP, 2025)
From teddy bears and Winnie-the-Pooh to Smokey Bear, Yogi Bear, and Cocaine Bear, American popular culture has been fascinated with real and fictional bears for more than two centuries. Bears are ubi…
00:48:37 |
Fri 05 Sep 2025
Brendan A. Shanahan, "Disparate Regimes: Nativist Politics, Alienage Law, and Citizenship Rights in the United States, 1865-1965" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Historians have well described how US immigration policy increasingly fell under the purview of federal law and national politics in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. It is far less understood that…
01:17:16 |
Wed 03 Sep 2025
Flannery Burke, "Back East: How Westerners Invented a Region" (U Washington Press, 2025)
Just as easterners imagined the American West, westerners imagined the American East, reshaping American culture. Back East: How Westerners Invented a Region (University of Washington Press, 2025) by…
00:36:18 |
Wed 03 Sep 2025
Wade Davies, "Native Hoops: The Rise of American Indian Basketball, 1895-1970" (UP of Kansas, 2020)
The game of basketball is perceived by most today as an “urban” game with a locale such as Rucker Park in Harlem as the game’s epicenter (as well as a pipeline to the NBA). While that is certainly a …
00:55:41 |
Tue 02 Sep 2025
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