New Books Network
American South
Political Science July 26, 2021

Congress and the First Civil Rights Era, 1861-1918

Jeffery A. Jenkins and Justin Peck

Hosted by Susan Liebell
Jeffrey Jenkins and Justin Peck’s new book Congress and the First Civil Rights Era, 1861-1918 (U Chicago Press, 2021) explores how Congressional Republicans enacted laws aimed at establishing an inclusive, multiracial …

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American West July 21, 2021

West of Slavery

The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire

Kevin Waite

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The geography of American slavery was continental, argues Dr. Kevin Waite, an assistant professor at Durham University, in West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire (UNC Press, 2021). Rather …
Journalism July 16, 2021

First to Fall

Elijah Lovejoy and the Fight for a Free Press in the Age of Slavery

Ken Ellingwood

Hosted by Jenna Spinelle
In First to Fall: Elijah Lovejoy and the Fight for a Free Press in the Age of Slavery (Pegasus Books, 2021), Ken Ellingwood takes readers back to the first true test of the …
Political Science July 15, 2021

With Ballots and Bullets

Partisanship and Violence in the American Civil War

Nathan Kalmoe

Hosted by Lilly Goren
Political Scientist Nathan Kalmoe has written a fascinating historical and political exploration of the connections between violence and partisanship before, during, and after the American Civil War. This book brings …
Music July 13, 2021

Unbinding Gentility

Women Making Music in the Nineteenth-Century South

Candace Bailey

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Southern women of all classes, races, and walks of life practiced music during and after the Civil War. Dr. Candace Bailey examines the history of southern women through the lens …
Sociology July 12, 2021

Black Resettlement and the American Civil War

Sebastian N. Page

Hosted by Deidre Tyler
Based on sweeping research in six languages, Sebastian N. Page's Black Resettlement and the American Civil War (Cambridge UP, 2021) offers the first comprehensive, comparative account of nineteenth-century America's greatest …
American West July 9, 2021

Flood on the Tracks

Living, Dying, and the Nature of Disaster in the Elkhorn River Basin

Todd M. Kerstetter

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
If floods are inevitable, why do humans insist on building alongside riverbanks? Todd Kerstetter, professor of history at Texas Christian University, tries to answer that question in Flood on the Tracks: Living …
Medicine July 7, 2021

Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions

Martin Summers

Hosted by Claire Clark
From the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries, Saint Elizabeths Hospital was one of the United States' most important institutions for the care and treatment of the mentally ill. Founded …
Folklore July 6, 2021

Yo' Mama, Mary Mack, and Boudreaux and Thibodeaux

Louisiana Children's Folklore and Play

Jeanne Pitre Soileau

Hosted by Nancy Yan
Children’s folklore is simultaneously a conservator of tradition and a site for creativity and innovation. For over five decades, Dr. Jeanne Pitre Soileau documented and collected the jokes, chants, rhymes …
Caribbean Studies July 5, 2021

The Digital Black Atlantic

Roopika Risam and Kelly Baker Josephs

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
How can scholars use digital tools to better understand the African diaspora across time, space, and disciplines? And how can African diaspora studies inform the practices of digital humanities? These …
General History June 28, 2021

East Texas Troubles

The Allred Rangers' Cleanup of San Augustine

Jody Edward Ginn

Hosted by Deidre Tyler
When the gun smoke cleared, four men were found dead at the hardware store in a rural East Texas town. But this December 1934 shootout was no anomaly. San Augustine …
Biography June 24, 2021

Unsung Hero of Gettysburg

The Story of Union General David McMurtrie Gregg

Edward G. Longacre

Hosted by Dan Hill
Today I talked to Edward G. Longacre about his new book Unsung Hero of Gettysburg: The Story of Union General David McMurtrie Gregg (University of Nebraska Press, 2021). On the 3rd …
Cover Story June 22, 2021

No Choice: Why Is It So Hard to Get an Abortion in the South?

A Discussion with Journalist Becca Andrews

Becca Andrews

Hosted by Agata Popeda
Today we are talking with Becca Andrews, a journalist at Mother Jones, where she writes about reproductive rights and gender. The story we discuss is “When Choice is 221 Miles …
African American Studies June 22, 2021

Sailing to Freedom

Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad

Timothy D. Walker

Hosted by N'Kosi Oates
More than 70 percent of the 103 pre-Emancipation slave narratives acknowledged using waterways as their method for escaping enslavement. However, much of the scholarship on the Underground Railroad has centered …
Anthropology June 16, 2021

Kincraft

The Making of Black Evangelical Sociality

Todne Thomas

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
Kincraft: The Making of Black Evangelical Sociality (Duke University Press, 2021) by Todne Thomas takes a deep dive into the social and religious lives of two black evangelical churches in …
General History May 20, 2021

The Ledger and the Chain

How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America

Joshua D. Rothman

Hosted by Derek Litvak
Joshua Rothman’s The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America was published by Basic Books in 2021, and tells a sprawling history of slave traders in America …
General History May 19, 2021

Unfree Markets

The Slaves' Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina

Justene Hill Edwards

Hosted by Derek Litvak
Justene Hill Edwards is the author of Unfree Markets: The Slaves’ Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina (Columbia University Press, 2021). Unfree Markets focuses in on an …
African American Studies May 19, 2021

Armed in the Great Swamp

Fear, Maroon Insurrection, and the Insurgent Ecology of the Great Dismal Swamp

Kathryn Benjamin Golden

Hosted by Adam McNeil
In 2021, we are inundated with daily images of racial terror, state violence, and technologies of punishment showing pictures of broken down, beleaguered, and deceased Black people’s bodies, especially …
Medicine May 5, 2021

Examining Tuskegee

The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy

Susan M. Reverby

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
Some books are new, others are newly relevant – and so worth looking at from a new, contemporary perspective. Such is the case with Susan Reverby’s book Examining Tuskegee: The …
General History April 30, 2021

The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

A Photographic History

Karlos K. Hill

Hosted by Mark Klobas
On the evening of May 31, 1921, thousands of white Oklahomans assaulted the Greenwood District of the city of Tulsa. In what would come to be known as the Tulsa …