New Books in American Studies

Looking closely at New York City's political development since the 1970s, three "political orders"--conservativism, neoliberalism, and egalitarianism--emerged. In Inequality, Crime, and Resistance in New York City, Timothy Weaver argues that the intercurrent impact of these orders has created a constant battle for power.Weaver brings these clashes to the fore by showing how New York City politics has been shaped by these conflicting orders. He examines the transformation of the city's political economy in the aftermath of the 1975 fiscal crisis through neoliberal real estate development and privatization, the conservative rise of law-and-order politics in the 1970s to 1990s, and the efforts of the city's egalitarians to respond to each of these shifts through social movements such as Occupy and Black Lives Matter.Inequality, Crime, and Resistance in New York City (Temple UP, 2025) belies glib assumptions about the city's liberal character. Weaver reveals the metropolis not as a homogenous political whole, but as a site in which the victories and defeats of rival political forces change the terms of local citizenship for the millions of residents who call the city home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

From deer and beavers to “free range” pigs and goats in and around Seneca Village, what we now know as Central Park has long been home to an abundance of animals. In 1858, the city adopted the Greensward Plan and began the long process of reshaping the 843 acres of land into a park where everything—from the trees to the trails to the inhabitants—would be meticulously planned to benefit New Yorkers and to promote the city as a global metropolis among the likes of London and Paris. But this vision of Central Park embodied white elite European values, and disagreements about which creatures belonged in the park’s waters and green spaces have often perpetuated systems of oppression.Illuminating the multispecies story of Central Park from the 1850s to the 1970s in Animating Central Park: A Multispecies History (University of Washington Press, 2024), Dr. Dawn Day Biehler examines the vibrant and intimately connected lives of humans and nonhuman animals in the park. She reveals stories of grazing sheep, teeming fish, nesting swans, migrating warblers, and escaped bison as well as human New Yorkers’ attempts to reconfigure their relationships to the land and claim spaces for recreation and leisure. Ultimately, Dr. Biehler shows how Central Park has always been a place where animals and humans alike have vied for power and belonging.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Our book is: Big Box USA: The Environmental Impact of America’s Biggest Retail Stores (UP of Colorado, 2024) which presents a new look at how the big box retail store has dramatically reshaped the US economy and its ecosystems in the last half century. From the rural South to the frigid North, from inside stores to ecologies far beyond, this book examines the relationships that make up one of the most visible features of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century American life. The rise of big box retail since the 1960s has transformed environments on both local and global scales. Almost everyone has explored the aisles of big box stores. The allure of “everyday low prices” and brightly colored products of every kind connect shoppers with a global marketplace. Contributors join a growing conversation between business and environmental history, addressing the ways American retail institutions have affected physical and cultural ecologies around the world. Essays on Walmart, Target, Cabela’s, REI, and Bass Pro Shops assess the “bigness” of these superstores from “smokestacks to coat racks” and contend that their ecological impacts are not limited to the footprints of parking lots and manufacturing but also play a didactic role in educating consumers about their relationships with the environment. A model for historians seeking to bring business and environmental histories together in their analyses of merchant capital’s role in the landscapes of everyday life and how it has remade human relationships with nature, Big Box USA is a must-read for students and scholars of the environment, business, sustainability, retail professionals, and a general audience.Our guest is: Dr. Rachel Gross, who is assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado Denver, where she teaches US environmental, business, and public history. She works with university and community partners to bring history into the public realm. She is the author of Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America, and the co-editor of Big Box USA: The Environmental Impact of America’s Biggest Retail Stores.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. She uses her PhD in history to explore what stories we tell, and what happens to those we never tell.Listeners may enjoy this playlist: Disabled Ecologies The Killer Whale Journals Stylish Academic Writing A Conversation with the editor of University of Wyoming Press The Peer Review At Every Depth Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 240+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Chinatown neighborhoods in the United States are about more than restaurants, shops, and architecture, argues San Jose State urban studies associate professor Laureen Hom in The Power of Chinatown: Searching for Spatial Justice in Los Angeles (California UP, 2024). They're also communities where people live, organize, and argue over politics. Chinatowns are vital political actors, places where culture, history, and community come together to form bulwarks of power as places that have historically had considerable agency in shaping their own destiny. In this close study of Los Angeles' Chinatown neighborhood in the early twenty first century, Hom argues that the neighborhood is a complex places, where urban trends such as gentrification and displacement have been at once both pushed against and, at times, encouraged, both from within and without. The Power of Chinatown puts people at the center of the story, arguing that for all its tourist appeal, it is those who live in this place who care about it the most, and thus are willing to fight the hardest to protect what makes this neighborhood truly a community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Most Americans today would not think of their local church as a site for arbitration and would probably be hesitant to bring their property disputes, moral failings, or personal squabbles to their kin and neighbors for judgment. But from the Revolutionary Era through the mid-nineteenth century, many Protestants imbued local churches with immense authority. Through their ritual practice of discipline, churches insisted that brethren refrain from suing each other before "infidels" at local courts and claimed jurisdiction over a range of disputes: not only moral issues such as swearing, drunkenness, and adultery but also matters more typically considered to be under the purview of common law and courts of equity, including disputes over trespass, land, probate, slave warranty, and theft.In Law in American Meetinghouses: Church Discipline and Civil Authority in Kentucky, 1780–1845 (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022), Jeffrey Thomas Perry explores the ways that ordinary Americans--Black and white, enslaved and free--understood and created law in their local communities, uncovering a vibrant marketplace of authority in which church meetinghouses played a central role in maintaining their neighborhoods' social peace. Churches were once prominent sites for the creation of local law and in this period were a primary arena in which civil and religious authority collided and shaped one another. When church discipline failed, the wronged parties often pushed back, and their responses highlight the various forces that ultimately hindered that venue's ability to effectively arbitrate disputes between members. Relying primarily on a deep reading of church records and civil case files, Perry examines how legal transformations, an expanding market economy, and religious controversy led churchgoers to reimagine their congregations' authority. By the 1830s, unable to resolve doctrinal quibbles within the fellowship, church factions turned to state courts to secure control over their meetinghouses, often demanding that judges wade into messy ecclesiastical disputes.Tracking changes in disciplinary rigor in Kentucky Baptist churches from that state's frontier period through 1845, and looking beyond statutes and court decrees, Law in American Meetinghouses is a fresh take on church-state relations. Ultimately, it highlights an oft-forgotten way that Americans subtly repositioned religious institutions alongside state authority. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

The evolution of basketball, and much of the social and cultural change in America, can be traced through one powerful act on the court: the slam dunk. The dunk's history is the story of a sport and a country changed by the most dominant act in basketball, and it makes Magic in the Air: The Myth, the Mystery, and the Soul of the Slam Dunk (St. Martin's Press, 2025) a rollicking and insightful piece of narrative history and a surefire classic of sports literature.When basketball was the province of white men, the dunk acted as a revolutionary agent, a tool for players like Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell to transform the sport into a Black man’s game. The dunk has since been an expression of Black culture amid the righteous upheaval of the civil-rights movement, of the threat that Black people were considered to be to the establishment. It was banned from college basketball for nearly a decade―an attempt to squash the individual expression and athleticism that characterized the sport in America’s cities and on its playgrounds. The dunk nevertheless bubbled up to basketball’s highest levels. From Julius Erving to Michael Jordan to the high flyers of the 21st century, the dunk has been a key mechanism for growing the NBA into a global goliath.Drawing on deep reporting and dozens of interviews with players, coaches, and other hoops experts, Magic in the Air brings to life the tale of the dunk while balancing sharp socio-racial history and commentary with a romp through American sports and culture. There's never been a basketball book quite like it.Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, will be published in 2025. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Nearly fifty years after the end of the war in Vietnam, American children of Vietnamese refugees continue to process the meanings of the war and its consequences through creative work. Displacing Kinship: The Intimacies of Intergenerational Trauma in Vietnamese American Cultural Production (Temple UP, 2024) examines how Vietnamese American cultural productions register lived experiences of racism in their depictions of family life and marginalization.Second-generation texts illustrate how the children of refugees from Vietnam are haunted by trauma and a violent, ever-present, but mostly unarticulated past. Linh Thủy Nguyễn’s analysis reveals that present experiences of economic insecurity and racism also shape these narratives of familial loss.Developing a theory of intergenerational trauma, Nguyễn rethinks how U.S. imperialism, the discourse of communism, and assimilation impacted families across generations. Through ethnic studies and feminist and queer-of-color critique, Displacing Kinship offers a critical approach for reading family tensions and interpersonal conflict as affective investments informed by the material, structural conditions of white supremacy and racial capitalism.She was recently featured in an interview regarding her monograph with Toward Inclusive Excellence (TIE) of Choice, apublishing unit of the Association of College and Research Libraries. The complete interview is available at www.choice360.org/tie-post/tie-talks-with-linh-thuy-nguyen/.Linh Thủy Nguyễn, PhD, is associate professor of American ethnic studies; adjunct associate professor of gender, women’s, and sexuality studies; and faculty associate in the Center for Southeast Asia and its Diasporas and the Harry Bridges Labor Center at the University of Washington. Her research explores the interpersonal and structural relationships between history, memory, race, war, migration, nation, and family. You can find more at linhthuynguyen.com.Camellia (Linh) Pham is a PhD student in Comparative Literature at Harvard. Her research explores modern Vietnamese literature, literary translation across French, Vietnamese, English, and Chinese, and the literary history of French Indochina. She can be reached at cpham@g.harvard.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In this conversation, we sit down with John D. Wilsey, Professor of Church History and Philosophy at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Senior Fellow at the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy, to tackle the urgent and often contentious topic of religious freedom in America. Drawing from his forthcoming book, Religious Freedom: A Conservative Primer (William B. Eerdmans, 2025), Wilsey examines how conservatives have historically understood religious freedom, how those views have evolved, and why the gap between past and present perspectives matters in today’s culture, and how it is the bedrock of American Government.Wilsey addresses issues at the heart of this debate: How has the conservative understanding of religious freedom shifted, and what are the consequences of that shift?Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Shortly after Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 47th American president, he issued 37 executive orders and, subsequently, the Trump administration has – through formal processes and also through extra-governmental extraordinary practices – triggered what many are calling a governmental and/or constitutional crisis. Dr. Christina Pagel has published two important Substack articles in which she groups the activities of the Trump administration into authoritarian and proto-authoritarian actions – and maps the opposition. Her unbelievable Venn diagram reveals which actions are being met with organized resistance – and which are being left unchallenged. She is a data hound – and her data not only clarifies what is happening in the United States but provides tools for those who wish to effectively oppose it in the U.S. and abroad.Dr. Christina Pagel is Professor of Operational Research in Health Care, University College London. Operational Research is a pragmatic branch of mathematics to help people solve real-life problems. She is a member of Independent SAGE providing accessible updates on the national and international Covid-19 situation since May 2020. She has published in public-facing venues such as The Conversation and her free Substack, Diving into Data & Decision making. You can follow her on social media.Mentioned in the podcast:Christina’s 2/13/25 Substack, "So this is how liberty dies… " Making sense of Trump's first three weeks (categorizing 76 Trump administration actions and demonstrating how they align with authoritarianism).Christina’s 2/17/25 Substack, How to fight back: charting opposition to the actions of the Trump administration (showing how Blue states, labor organizations, and civil rights groups are doing the most – and what can be learned from them).The Just Security’s Litigation Tracker based at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law.Vox’s 2/12/25 Unexplainable podcast, “Is Science in Danger?” (20 minutes) Noam Hassenfeld interviewing Derek Dowe (chemist/science writer) Transcript or podcast.Susan’s interview with Corey Brettschneider on his new Norton book The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Aure Schrock, an interdisciplinary technology scholar and writing coach and editor at Indelible Voice, about their book, Politics Recoded: The Infrastructural Organizing of Code for America (MIT Press, 2024)Politics Recoded examines the history and culture of Code for America, an organization that, as one of its leaders put it, aimed “to promote ‘civic hacking,’ and to bring 21st century technology to government.” The book describes how the organization has changed over time from a “tech-forward” vision rooted in techno-libertarianism to an organization that provides something like digital consulting services to governments. The pair also talk about Aure’s writing and editing company, the Indelible Voice, and what it’s like helping scholars refine their vision and voice in academic writing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies