New Books in American Studies

The influence of partisan news is presumed to be powerful, but evidence for its effects on political elites is limited, often based more on anecdotes than science. Using a rigorous quasi-experimental research design, observational data, and open science practices, The House that Fox News Built?: Representation, Political Accountability, and the Rise of Partisan News (Cambridge UP, 2024) carefully demonstrates how the re-emergence and rise of partisan cable news in the US affected the behavior of political elites during the rise and proliferation of Fox News across media markets between 1996 and 2010. Despite widespread concerns over the ills of partisan news, evidence provides a nuanced, albeit cautionary tale. On one hand, findings suggest that the rise of Fox indeed changed elite political behavior in recent decades. At the same time, the limited conditions under which Fox News' influence occurred suggests that concerns about the network's power may be overstated. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

A massive oil spill in the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara, California, in 1969 quickly became a landmark in the history of American environmentalism, helping to inspire the creation of both the Environmental Protection Agency and Earth Day. But what role did the history of Santa Barbara itself play in this? In Natural Attachments: The Domestication of American Environmentalism, 1920–1970 (U Chicago Press, 2025), Pollyanna Rhee shows, the city’s past and demographics were essential to the portrayal of the oil spill as momentous. Moreover, well-off and influential Santa Barbarans were positioned to “domesticate” the larger environmental movement by embodying the argument that individual homes and families—not society as a whole—needed protection from environmental abuses. This soon would put environmental rhetoric and power to fundamentally conservative—not radical—ends. Pollyanna Rhee is assistant professor of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and affiliate faculty in history, sustainable design, and theory and interpretive criticism. Twitter.  Brian Hamilton is chair of the Department of History and Social Science at Deerfield Academy. Twitter. Website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

At the 100 day mark of Donald Trump’s second term as president, the political scientists at Bright Line Watch released their 25th report on the state of American democracy entitled “Threats to democracy and academic freedom after Trump’s second first 100 days.” Based on polling both experts (760 political scientists) and the public (representative sample of 2000 Americans), the Bright Line Watch researchers find that the Trump administration has challenged constitutional and democratic norms on a wide range of issues, including the scope of executive power and the authority of courts to check it, individual freedom of expression, due process and habeas corpus, immigration, and academic freedom. In this episode of POSTSCRIPT: Conversations on Politics and Political Science, two of Bright Line Watch’s co-directors analyze the latest report – and what it means for American democracy. Topics include democratic performance, threats to democracy and academic freedom and self-censorship. Dr. John Carey (he/him) is the Wentworth Professor in the Social Sciences at Dartmouth College. He is the author of 6 books and dozens of articles on democratic institutions, representation, and political beliefs. Dr. Gretchen Helmke is the Thomas H. Jackson Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Political Science and faculty director of the Democracy Center at the University of Rochester. Her research focuses on democracy and the rule of law in Latin America and the United States. Her new co-authored article definition and measuring democratic norms is forthcoming in the Annual Review of Political Science. She has been named a Guggenheim Fellow for 2025. Mentioned: Bright Line Watch’s April 2025 report, Threats to Democracy and Academic Freedom after Trump's Second First 100 Days (based on parallel surveys of 760 political scientists and a representative sample of 2,000 Americans fielded in April). Bright Line Watch homepage with data and past reports John Carey on NPR’s All Things Considered, 4/22 discussing the latest report. Adam Przeworski’s Substack Diary (free to subscribe and read) Democratic Erosion Project (with dataset that Gretchen mentioned) Susan’s New Books Network conversation with Dr. Sue Stokes on the importance of integrating comparative politics and American politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

One small town, two "thousand-year floods" in the span of two years: how does a community become resilient in the face of the ever-increasing risks of climate change?Small towns across America and around the world face mounting challenges with flood risk, a result of not only climate change but also poorly adapted landscapes, sprawl, overdevelopment and poor planning. After the Floods: The Search for Resilience in Ellicott City (Oxford UP, 2024) is about Ellicott City, a small town in central Maryland that experienced two devastating flash floods just 22 months apart. Despite the town's many advantages—wealth, access to expertise, a mobilized community, and a stout identity steeped in 250 years of history—Ellicott City found itself mired in a deeply divisive argument over what to do in the aftermath. As a resident, Ken Conca bore firsthand witness to the conflict that took root when the flood waters receded.While this book is about one residential suburb, the dilemmas that it faces over how to adapt to climate change are coming soon to a small town near you. On one level a story about re-engineering a landscape, After the Floods ultimately grapples with uncertainty over local history, justice, democracy, and identity. What can we know about future risks to our communities? What is the meaning of place and history when preservation goals come into conflict with flood protection? What should we protect? Who gets to speak for the community? In Ellicott City's search for answers, we can find important lessons for other small communities that must begin preparing for future climate risks. This interview was conducted by Dr. Hannah Pool whose research focuses on human mobilities. She is a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Studies of Societies. 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 episode of Madison’s Notes, Michael McConnell examines the gap between the Founders’ vision of a limited presidency and today’s expansive executive power. Drawing on his book The President Who Would Not Be King (Princeton University Press, 2022), we discuss how the Constitution’s safeguards against monarchical authority have eroded over the past century—and what steps might restore balance to our system of government. From war powers to administrative overreach, the conversation tackles the urgent question: How did we get here, and what can be done? Michael McConnell is a renowned constitutional scholar, Stanford Law professor, and former federal judge on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. A leading voice on originalism and separation of powers, his work bridges historical intent and modern legal debates, making him the perfect guide for this critical discussion. 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

How are David Lynch's films as much in dialogue with literary and musical traditions as they are cinematic ones? By interrogating this question, David Lynch’s American Dreamscape: Music, Literature, Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2025) broadens the interpretive horizons of Lynch's filmography, calling for a new approach to Lynch's films that goes beyond cinema and visual art to explore how Lynch's work engages with literary and musical works that have shaped the American imagination. As much as Lynch stands as a singular artistic voice, his work arises from and taps into the cultural zeitgeist in a way that illuminates not only his approach to creativity but also the way works interact with each other in an age of mass media. From children's literature to teen tragedy ballads, Nathanael West and Cormac McCarthy to folk music and mixtapes, David Lynch's American Dreamscape investigates the cultural frequencies Lynch's films tune into and positions Lynch's work as a conduit for American popular culture, a medium or channel through which the subconscious of American life finds its way into full view. The book expands upon this approach by discussing how artists such as David Foster Wallace and Lana Del Rey graft Lynch's affiliative, cinematic sensibility onto their own projects. Reading their work as intertextual engagements with Lynch's films further illustrates the versatile interactions among creators and audiences to generate more works, readers, and readings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

What would a rodeo open to anyone and everyone look like? In their new book, Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo (U Washington, 2023), history professors Elyssa Ford (Northwest Missouri State) and Rebecca Scofield (University of Idaho) argue that the International Gay Rodeo Associaton (IGRA) provides a template. Founded in the 1970s as an alternative space that typically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, gay rodeo has evolved into its present day form: a campy, raucous, and accepting spectacle of gay masculinity and gender play in all its forms. It's not a perfect space - there are still boundaries, binaries, and traditional barriers which constrain some aspects of gay rodeo as an open form of competition - but as the oral histories and deep archival research in this book show, it is an institution that has proven capable of weathering the storms of pandemics, politics, and internal debates. Slapping Leather tracks the development, growth, and dynamic present of this uniquely Western, and uniquely queer, artform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Join me for a fascinating conversation with one of today’s leading voices in environmental studies, Daniel Macfarlane, as we explore his new book The Lives of Lake Ontario: An Environmental History (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2024). Please see the description of the book below, then tune in to hear Dr. Macfarlane share the insights, research, and stories that shaped this important work. Lake Ontario has profoundly influenced the historical evolution of North America. For centuries it has enabled and enriched the societies that crowded its edges, from fertile agricultural landscapes to energy production systems to sprawling cities. In The Lives of Lake Ontario Daniel Macfarlane details the lake’s relationship with the Indigenous nations, settler cultures, and modern countries that have occupied its shores. He examines the myriad ways Canada and the United States have used and abused this resource: through dams and canals, drinking water and sewage, trash and pollution, fish and foreign species, industry and manufacturing, urbanization and infrastructure, population growth and biodiversity loss. Serving as both bridge and buffer between the two countries, Lake Ontario came to host Canada’s largest megalopolis. Yet its transborder exploitation exacted a tremendous ecological cost, leading people to abandon the lake. Innovative regulations in the later twentieth century, such as the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreements, have partially improved Lake Ontario’s health. Despite signs that communities are reengaging with Lake Ontario, it remains the most degraded of the Great Lakes, with new and old problems alike exacerbated by climate change. The Lives of Lake Ontario demonstrates that this lake is both remarkably resilient and uniquely vulnerable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America (Princeton University Press, 2025), Ruth Braunstein maps the contested moral landscape in which Americans experience and make sense of the tax system. Braunstein tells the stories of Americans who view taxpaying as more than a mundane chore: antigovernment tax defiers who challenge the legitimacy of the tax system, antiwar activists who resist the use of their taxes to fund war, antiabortion activists against “taxpayer funded abortions,” and a diverse group of people who promote taxpaying as a moral good. Though taxpaying is often portrayed as dull and technical, exposure to collective rituals, civic education, propaganda, and protest transforms the practice for many Americans into either a sacred rite of citizenship or a profane threat to what they hold dear. These sacred and profane meanings can apply to the act of taxpaying itself or to the specific uses of tax dollars. Despite intense disagreement about these meanings, politically diverse Americans engaged in both taxpaying and tax resistance valorize the individual taxpayer and “my tax dollars.”Braunstein explores the profound implications of this meaning making for tax consent, the legitimacy of the tax system, and citizens’ broader understandings of their political relationships. Going beyond the usual focus on tax policy, Braunstein’s innovative view of taxation through the lens of cultural sociology shows how citizens in value-diverse societies coalesce around shared visions of the sacred and fears of the profane. Interviewee: Ruth Braunstein is Associate Professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut. Host: Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In their fourth edition of Watching TV: American Television Season by Season (Syracuse University Press, 2025), Harry Castleman and Walter Podrazik present a season-by-season narrative that encompasses the eras of American television from the beginning in broadcast, through cable, and now streaming. They deftly navigate the dizzying array of contemporary choices so that no matter where you start on the media timeline, Watching TV provides the context and background to this multi-billion-dollar enterprise.  Drawing on decades of research, the authors weave together personalities, popular shows, corporate strategies, historical events, and changing technologies, enhancing the main commentary with additional elements that include fall prime time schedule grids for every season, date box timelines, highlighted key text, and selected photos. Full of facts, firsts, insights, and exploits from now back to the earliest days, Watching TV is the standard chronology of American television, and reading it is akin to channel surfing through history. The fourth edition updates the story into the 2020s and looks ahead to the next waves of change. This new edition is the first to also be available in a digital format. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies