New Books In American Studies

It is hard to overestimate the influence of John Rawls on political philosophy and theory over the last half-century. His books have sold millions of copies worldwide, and he is one of the few philosophers whose work is known in the corridors of power as well as in the halls of academe. Rawls is most famous for the development of his view of “justice as fairness,” articulated most forcefully in his best-known work, A Theory of Justice. In it he develops a liberalism focused on improving the fate of the least advantaged, and attempts to demonstrate that, despite our differences, agreement on basic political institutions is both possible and achievable. Critics have maintained that Rawls’s view is unrealistic and ultimately undemocratic. In John Rawls: The Path to a Theory of Justice(Harvard University Press, 2019), Andrius Gališanka, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Wake Forest University, argues that in misunderstanding the origins and development of Rawls’s central argument, previous intellectual

How the rise of the car, the symbol of American personal freedom, inadvertently led to ever more intrusive policing-with disastrous consequences for racial equality in our criminal justice system. When Americans think of freedom, they often picture the open road. Yet nowhere are we more likely to encounter the long arm of the law than in our cars. Sarah Seo reveals how the rise of the automobile led us to accept-and expect-pervasive police power. As Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom (Harvard University Press, 2019) makes clear, this radical transformation in the nature and meaning of American freedom has had far-reaching political and legal consequences. Before the twentieth century, most Americans rarely came into contact with police officers. But with more and more drivers behind the wheel, police departments rapidly expanded their forces and increased officers' authority to stop citizens who violated traffic laws. The Fourth Amendment-the constitutional protection against unreas

Academic discussions of ethnic food have tended to focus on the attitudes of consumers, rather than the creators and producers. In this ground-breaking new book, The Ethnic Restaurateur (Bloomsbury, 2016), Krishnendu Ray reverses this trend by exploring the culinary world from the perspective of the ethnic restaurateur. Focusing on New York City, he examines the lived experience, work, memories, and aspirations of immigrants working in the food industry. He shows how migrants become established in new places, creating a taste of home and playing a key role in influencing food cultures as a result of transactions between producers, consumers and commentators. Based on extensive interviews with immigrant restaurateurs and students, chefs and alumni at the Culinary Institute of America, ethnographic observation at immigrant eateries and haute institutional kitchens as well as historical sources such as the US census, newspaper coverage of restaurants, reviews, menus, recipes, and guidebooks, Ray reveals changing

On October 15, 1974, Johnny Carson welcomed his next guest on The Tonight Show with these words: “I imagine there are very few people who are not aware of Kathryn Kuhlman. She probably, along with Billy Graham, is one of the best-known ministers or preachers in the country.” But while many people today recognize Billy Graham, not many remember Kathryn Kuhlman (1907–1976), who preached faith and miracles to countless people over the fifty-five years of her ministry and became one of the most important figures in the rise of charismatic Christianity. In The Miracle Lady: Kathryn Kuhlman and the Transformation of Charismatic Christianity (Eerdmans, 2019),Amy Collier Artman tells the story of Kuhlman’s life and, in the process, relates the larger story of charismatic Christianity, particularly how it moved from the fringes of American society to the mainstream. Tracing her remarkable career as a media-savvy preacher and fleshing out her unconventional character, Artman also shows how Kuhlman skillfully navigated

Cynthia Nicoletti is the author of Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis, published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. Secession on Trial examines the post-Civil War United States as its people attempted to navigate a world where one question continued to loom overhead: Was secession constitutional? Nicoletti illustrates how the lead up to the treason trial for former Confederate President Jefferson Davis gripped the nation, as Americans debated law, war, and the Constitution. Nicoletti is the Class of 1966 Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Howard Philips Smith has been investigating and writing about the gay history of New Orleans for over two decades. Raised on a small farm in rural Southern Mississippi, he studied French literature and taught English in a French lycée in Bordeaux thanks to a Fulbright Scholarship before moving to New Orleans in the 1980s. After a decade in the Crescent City, Smith moved to Los Angeles and completed his novel The Cult of the Mask, based on the experiences of New Orleans’ gay community before the onslaught of AIDS. The research for this work resulted in two books: Unveiling the Muse and Southern Decadence. In this interview, we discuss Unveiling the Muse: The Lost History of Gay Carnival in New Orleans (University Press of Mississippi, 2017) a thorough investigation of the history of New Orleans’ Mardi Gras krewes. Gay Carnival krewes were first formed in New Orleans in the late 1950s, growing out of costume parties. Their balls were often held in clandestine locations to avoid harassment. Despite their rich hi

On January 28, 1918, just outside of town of Porvenir, Texas, US Army servicemen, Texas Rangers, and civilians murdered 15 unarmed Mexican men and boys. This massacre was not an aberration, writes Monica Muñoz Martinez, the Stanley J. Bernstein Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown University and former Andrew Carnegie Fellow. In The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas (Harvard University Press, 2018), Martinez argues that the rampant violence inflicted by Anglos against Mexican and Latinx people in Texas in the early twentieth century left a long legacy which reverberates into the twenty first century. The Injustice Never Leaves You is a book about the long term tragedy of racialized violence, and the efforts by victims and their ancestors to seek justice and to remember, often in the face of state-sponsored historical erasure. Winner of several prizes including the Lawrence Levine Award from the Organization of American Historians, The Injustice Never Lea

David Resnick combines two of his passions, movies and education, in his book, Representing Education In Film: How Hollywood Portrays Educational Thought, Settings and Issues (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Films are powerful messengers which both project and reflect particular values, ideas and social behavior. Using many examples of Hollywood movies, Resnick analyzes the way movies perform in a variety of formal and informal educational settings, including sports, arts and religion. In this lively and engaging interview David Resnick shares insights he gained through decades of experience in education and research. Renee Garfinkel is a Jerusalem-based psychologist, writer, and television & radio commentator.  Write her at r.garfinkel@yahoo.com or tweet @embracingwisdom Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Tiffany Jasmin González speaks with Dr. Gabriela González about her award-winning book, Redeeming La Raza: Transborder Modernity, Race, Respectability and Rights (Oxford University Press, 2018) to talk about the strategies transborder activists used to redeem la raza from body politic exclusion happening in the U.S. She finds that middle-class Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans modernized la raza by encouraging Mexican-origin people to take ethnic pride and unity seriously, and to find strategies to create community during a time when Mexico and U.S. pushed for modernization. Dr. González’s rich analysis of the Idar family, the Munguía family, Leonor Villegas de Magnón and the Mexican Revolution, Emma Tenayuca, and LULAC illustrates another story of activism in the early twentieth century. Turn your volume up and tune in to this episode to learn more. Tiffany Jasmin González is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at Texas A&M University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adc

Jessica Lowe is the author of Murder in the Shenandoah: Making Law Sovereign in Revolutionary Virginia published by Cambridge University Press in 2019. Murder in the Shenandoah follows the criminal case against John Crane, a member of a prominent Virginian family, for the murder of a harvest worker employed by a neighbor. Lowe’s book looks at the pressing debates of the time over what equality before the law meant. By telling the story through the eyes of those involved in the case, Lowe illustrates how revolutionary debates about law became a central issue in the early years of the United States. Dr. Lowe teaches at the University of Virginia School of Law, and specializes in 18th and 19th-century American legal history. Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In Polarization: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2019), Nolan McCarty synthesizes what scholars know and don't know about the origins, development, and implications of rising political conflicts in the United States. While the current political climate feels like extreme views are becoming more popular, McCarty also shows that, contrary to conventional belief, the 2016 election was a natural outgrowth of 40 years of polarized politics, rather than a significant break with the past. He concludes the book reflecting on the election and presidency of Donald Trump in the context of polarization. McCarty is Susan Dod Brown Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Does a person’s well-being go well beyond how much money they have in their bank account? In Social Poverty: Low-Income Parents and the Struggle for Family and Community Ties (NYU Press, 2019), Dr. Sarah Halpern-Meekin provides an in-depth picture of the social ties among low-income, unmarried parents, highlighting their often-ignored forms of hardship. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 31 couples who participated in a government-sponsored relationship education program called Family Expectations, Dr. Halpern-Meekin brings necessary attention to the relational and emotional dimensions of socioeconomic disadvantage. Halpern-Meekin takes an unconventional approach by focusing on social poverty as more than just a derivative of economic poverty, having its own condition, which also perpetuates poverty. In Social Poverty, Halpern-Meekin sheds light on the fundamental place of core socioemotional needs in the lives of humans. The author highlights a new direction for policy and poverty research that can enrich

How do women -- especially poor and low-income women with histories of childhood sexual trauma and drug addiction -- respond to and deal with an HIV/AIDS diagnosis? How do some manage to not merely rebuild their lives, but remake them entirely? Why do others fail? Join us to talk to Celeste Watkins-Hayes about her book Remaking a Life: How Women Living with HIV/AIDS Confront Inequality(University of California Press, 2019). You'll hear what she learned from a decade’s long immersion in the lives of these remarkable women, and what lessons that has to offer to politicians, policymakers, and service-providers. Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A People’s History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017)

In Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island(NYU Press, 2016; paperback, 2018), Christy Clark-Pujara, Associate Professor of History in the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tells the story of one state whose role was outsized: Rhode Island. Like their northern neighbors, Rhode Islanders bought and sold slaves and supplies that sustained plantations throughout the Americas; however, nowhere else was this business so important. During the colonial period trade with West Indian planters provided Rhode Islanders with molasses, the key ingredient for their number one export: rum. More than 60 percent of all the slave ships that left North America left from Rhode Island. During the antebellum period Rhode Islanders were the leading producers of “negro cloth,” a coarse wool-cotton material made especially for enslaved blacks in the American South. Clark-Pujara draws on the documents of the state, the business, organizational, and personal records of their enslavers

Mary McLeod Bethune was often called the "First Lady of Negro America," but she made significant contributions to the political climate of Florida as well. From the founding of the Daytona Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls in 1904, Bethune galvanized African American women for change. She created an environment in Daytona Beach that, despite racial tension throughout the state, allowed Jackie Robinson to begin his journey to integrating Major League Baseball less than two miles away from her school. Today, her legacy lives through a number of institutions, including Bethune-Cookman University and the Mary McLeod Bethune Foundation National Historic Landmark. In her new book Mary McLeod Bethune in Florida: Bringing Social Justice to the Sunshine State(The History Press, 2015), historian Ashley Robertson explores the life, leadership and amazing contributions of this dynamic activist. Adam McNeil is a PhD Student at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

Sam Erman is the author of Almost Citizens: Puerto Rico, the U.S. Constitution, and Empire, published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. Almost Citizens recounts the story of how Puerto Rico came to be part of the United States empire at the turn of the 20th Century. More specifically, Erman looks at how Puerto Ricans, U.S. legislators, presidents, judges, and a bevy of other people debated how Puerto Rico would be incorporated into the United States. The nexus for this debate centered on whether or not Puerto Ricans would be full citizens of the United States. Erman’s study illustrates the myriad of ways in which constitutional change occurs outside of the judiciary, showing how everyday people contributed to a radical shift in constitutional meanings of terms such as citizenship, alien, territory, and empire. The debates he shows within his book had a long lasting impact for the island and its people; an impact which is still felt today. Sam Erman is Professor of Law at the University of Southern Califo

The past decade has seen a tremendous production of scholarship on American missionary endeavors in the Middle East. In Faithful Encounters: Authorities and American Missionaries in the Ottoman Empire (McGill-Queens University Press, 2018), Emrah Şahin approaches this dynamic field of inquiry from a less-common perspective, that of the Ottoman Empire. Relying on largely untapped official imperial sources emanating from the Sublime Porte, Şahin recounts complaints from local authorities and fraught diplomatic considerations, which Ottoman sultans, ministers, and bureaucrats were forced to grapple with as they sought to maintain control of their Empire. Weaving together compelling stories from Ottoman records, the book describes the Sublime Porte’s efforts to regulate physical space, censor missionary publications, and monitor missionary activities. With engaging anecdotes, Faithful Encounters offers a more complex look at Muslim-Christian relations and America’s engagement with the Ottomans. Emrah Şahin is the

The carrier task force—the symbolic and physical manifestation of the United States’ ability to project naval and air power across the globe—came of age during the Second World War. Fighting the Imperial Japanese Navy, and closely supporting General MacArthur’s and Admiral Nimitz’s island-hopping campaign, the carrier and its air wing transitioned from being just one more tactical element within the fleet to the formidable strategic weapon we’ve come to know today. Instrumental in bringing about this change was Admiral John Sidney McCain—grandfather of the late Senator John McCain—and the subject of emeritus professor William F. Trimble’s most recent biography, Admiral John S. McCain and the Triumph of Naval Air Power (Naval Institute Press, 2019), published by Naval Institute Press. Taking a multidimensional approach, professor Trimble weaves together the narrative of McCain’s career with the history of a liminal moment in the Navy’s development as an institution, in the ascendency of naval aviation, and in

The dawn of the new millennium bore witness to an unprecedented transformation of the population in the Southeastern United States as evidenced by Dr. Jennifer A. Jones in her new book The Browning of the New South (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Jones, an Assistant Professor of Sociology as well as Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, examines the evolution of race relations in the face of rapid demographic change as Mexican immigrants move into the traditionally biracial American South. Employing a community-based ethnographic approach, Jones vividly illustrates shifting Southern race relations through the case study of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The Browning of the New South contributes to the scholarship on immigration and racial formation by revealing the mechanisms that spur collaboration (rather than division) between Latino immigrants and African Americans in a process that Jones calls “minority linked fate.” Counter to a generally national conception of

The secession of Texas from Mexico was a dry run for the slaveholder’s republic of the Confederate States of America, argues Andrew Torget in Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850(University of North Carolina Press, 2015). Torget, the University Distinguished Teaching Professor of history at the University of North Texas (and the Guinness World Record holder for longest history lesson), covers a pivotal swath of history in the American southwest. During the antebellum period, the Texas borderlands transitioned from Comanche, to Mexican, to Texan, to American territory. Slavery, Torget argues, was a crucial political and social institution each step of the way, and acted as a wedge which drove the United States apart and into Civil War. The region’s unique climate made plantation cotton cultivation profitable, and in turn shaped the history of an entire continent. Seeds of Empire won several awards in 2016, including the David J. Weber – Clements Center fo