New Books in Popular Culture

Against a backdrop of ongoing resistance to racial desegregation and strident calls for Black Power, the NBA in the 1970s embodied the nation’s imagined descent into disorder. A new generation of Black players entered the league then, among them Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Spencer Haywood, and the press and public were quick to blame this cohort for the supposed decline of pro basketball, citing drugs, violence, and greed. Basketball became a symbol for post-civil rights America: the rules had changed, allowing more Black people onto the playing field, and now they were ruining everything.Enter Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation That Saved the Soul of the NBA (Bold Type Books, 2023)l, a gripping history and corrective in which scholar Theresa Runstedtler expertly rewrites basketball’s “Dark Ages.” Weaving together a deep knowledge of the game with incisive social analysis, Runstedtler argues that this much-maligned period was pivotal to the rise of the modern-day NBA. Black players introduced an improvisational style derived from the playground courts of their neighborhoods. They also challenged the team owners’ autocratic power, garnering higher salaries and increased agency. Their skills, style, and savvy laid the foundation for the global popularity and profitability of the league we know today.Paul Knepper covered the Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book, The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All was published in 2020. 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/popular-culture

In her latest book, Fearless Women: Feminist Patriots from Abigail Adams to Beyoncé (Harvard University Press, 2023), New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Cobbs shows us that the quest for women’s rights is deeply entwined with the founding story of the United States.When America became a nation, a woman had no legal existence beyond her husband. If he abused her, she couldn’t leave without abandoning her children. Abigail Adams tried to change this, reminding her husband John to “remember the ladies” when he wrote the Constitution. He simply laughed—and women have been fighting for their rights ever since.Fearless Women tells the story of women who dared to take destiny into their own hands. They were feminists and antifeminists, activists and homemakers, victims of abuse and pathbreaking professionals. Inspired by the nation’s ideals and fueled by an unshakeable sense of right and wrong, they wouldn’t take no for an answer. In time, they carried the country with them.The first right they won was the right to learn. Later, impassioned teachers like Angelina Grimké and Susan B. Anthony campaigned for the right to speak in public, lobby the government, and own property. Some were passionate abolitionists. Others fought just to protect their own children.Many of these women devoted their lives to the cause—some are famous—but most pressed their demands far from the spotlight, insisting on their right to vote, sit on a jury, control the timing of their pregnancies, enjoy equal partnerships, or earn a living. At every step, they faced fierce opposition. Elizabeth Cobbs gives voice to fearless women on both sides of the aisle, most of whom considered themselves patriots. Rich and poor, from all backgrounds and regions, they show that the women’s movement has never been an exclusive club.Rebekah Buchanan is a Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Today I talked to Michelle Chihara, Editor-in-Chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books and Annie Berke, the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. We talked about book reviewing in the age of the Internet and LA literary culture.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Explore the moral tensions and dilemmas that Shakespeare and George R.R. Martin force their audiences to confront, especially in the storylines of their most notable political leaders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Ben Dodds, of the University of Florida, talks with Jana Byars about his new book, Myths and Memories of the Black Death (Palgrave, 2022). This book explores modern representations of the Black Death, a medieval pandemic. The concept of cultural memory is used to examine the ways in which journalists, writers of fiction, scholars and others referred to, described and explained the Black Death from around 1800 onwards. The distant medieval past was often used to make sense of aspects of the present, from the cholera pandemics of the nineteenth-century to the climate crisis of the early twenty-first century. A series of overlapping myths related to the Black Death emerged based only in part on historical evidence. Cultural memory circulates in a variety of media from the scholarly article to the video game and online video clip, and the connections and differences between mediated representations of the Black Death are considered. The Black Death is one of the most well-known aspects of the medieval world, and this study of its associated memories and myths reveals the depth and complexity of interactions between the distant and recent past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

We’d rate today’s episode a ten out of ten, five star, certified fresh, two thumbs up. But we can’t speak for its IMdB score.This episode was produced by Andrew Middleton and Liya Rechtman.Measure for Measure is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

In Dixieball: Race and Professional Basketball in the Deep South, 1947-1979 (U Tennessee Press, 2019), Thomas Aiello considers the cultural function of professional basketball in the Deep South between 1947 and 1979. Making a strong case for the role of race in this process, Aiello ties the South’s initial animus toward basketball to the same complex that motivated the region to sacrifice its own economic interests to the cause of white supremacy. Fans of basketball, as compared to other team sports, were closer to the players, who showed more of their bodies; blackness, then, had more visibility in basketball than it had in other sports. By the time Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, African Americans made up 47.5 percent of professional basketball players, and despite integrating later than baseball and football, it was fast becoming known as a “black” sport. Over time, survival for southern teams grew more tenuous, fan support more fickle, and racial incidents between players and fans more hostile. Racism clashed with civic development in a fast-evolving region.To identify the sources of this clash, Dixieball (The University of Tennessee Press, 2019) locates the main points of intersection between professional basketball and the Deep South in the two decades prior to the region’s first major franchise. Aiello then takes readers to New Orleans, where the first major Deep South professional basketball team—the New Orleans Buccaneers—was born, and on to Atlanta, Birmingham, St. Louis, and others, leading up to 1979.Bennett Koerber is an instructor of history at Carnegie Mellon University. He can be reached at bkoerber@andrew.cmu.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Discover the real-life history that inspired Game of Thrones and Shakespeare’s history plays, and learn the distinctive ways in which Shakespeare and George R.R. Martin each transform history into art Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Amrita De talks about affective masculinities, aspirational linkages with dominant scripts of masculinities, socially organized. As she expands her work beyond her study of South Asian masculinities, she talks about how understanding and loosening these linkages entails crucial feminist work. She also talks about Shah Rukh Khan.Amrita De is a Postdoctoral fellow in the Center of Humanities and Information at Penn State University. Her research focuses on global south masculinity studies and affect theory. Her works have been published in NORMA, Boyhood Studies, Global Humanities and are forthcoming in other edited collections. She is also working her way through her first novel centered around contemporary Indian Masculinities.Image: © 2023 Saronik Bosu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

In Hit Girls: Women of Punk in the USA, 1975-1983 (Feral House, 2023), Jen B. Larson takes readers throughout the United States on a punk history lesson. Dividing the country into regions, Larson documents local and regional bands and scenes, many of which have stories that were in danger of being lost. Profiling over 80 bands and artists, Hit Girls shares women's experiences as pioneers of punk. Highlighting their successes and documenting the sexism and racism within the scene, Hit Girls includes over 100 images, a comprehensive playlist of all the artists, and interviews with many of the artists including Texacala Jones, Alice Bag, Nikki Corvette, and Penelope Houston. Hit Girls is an important text in the history of popular music and punk and adds to the work of centering women in music history. Rebekah Buchanan is a Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture