New Books Network

About Stephen Hausmann

Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

NBN Episodes hosted by Stephen:

Music October 26, 2020

To Live and Defy in LA

How Gangsta Rap Changed America

Felicia Angeja Viator

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In 1985, Greg Mack, a DJ working for Los Angeles radio station KDAY, played a song that sounded like nothing else on West Coast airwaves: Toddy Tee’s “The Batteram,” a hip hop track that reflected the experiences of a young man growing up in 1980s Compton. The song tells about the Los Angeles Police Department’s battering ram truck, an emblem of the city under Police Chief Daryl Gates, and which …
American Studies September 30, 2020

The Destruction of the Bison

An Environmental History, 1750-1920

Andrew C. Isenberg

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In 1800, tens of millions of bison roamed the North American Great Plains. By 1900, fewer than 1,000 remained. In The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920 (Cambridge …
American West September 11, 2020

A Bad Peace and A Good War

Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795-1799

Mark Santiago

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In August 1795, Apaches wiped out two Spanish patrols In the desert borderlands of the what is today the American Southwest and Mexican north. This attack ended what had bene …
American Studies August 19, 2020

Unfair Labor?

American Indians and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago

David R. B. Beck

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition was in many ways the crowning event of the nineteenth century United States. Held in Chicago, the metropolis of the West, and visited by tens …
American Studies August 5, 2020

Breakaway Americas

The Unmanifest Future of Jacksonian America

Thomas Richards Jr.

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In Breakaway Americas: The Unmanifest Future of Jacksonian America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020), Thomas Richards Jr., a history teacher at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, argues that the map of …
American Studies March 9, 2020

Color Coded

Party Politics in the American West, 1950–2016

Walter Nugent

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The political West is far from monochrome, writes Walter Nugent in Color Coded: Party Politics in the American West, 1950–2016 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). Over the last half century …
African American Studies December 19, 2019

Untangling a Red, White, and Black Heritage

A Personal History of the Allotment Era

Darnella Davis

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In Untangling a Red, White, and Black Heritage: A Personal History of the Allotment Era (U New Mexico Press, 2018), Darnella Davis combines the personal with the national in telling …
American Studies November 25, 2019

Outriders

Rodeo at the Fringes of the American West

Rebecca Scofield

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Rodeo is one of the indelible images of culture in the American West. The John Wayne-like cowboy tenaciously hanging on to the bucking bronc is a classic vision of what …
Music November 21, 2019

San Francisco Year Zero

Political Upheaval, Punk Rock and a Third-Place Baseball Team

Lincoln A. Mitchell

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
1978 was the year that changed San Francisco forever, writes Lincoln A. Mitchell in San Francisco Year Zero: Political Upheaval, Punk Rock and a Third-Place Baseball Team (Rutgers University Press …
American Studies August 23, 2019

America's West

A History, 1890-1950

David M. Wrobel

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In America's West: A History, 1890-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), David M. Wrobel describes a sixty year period of remarkable change for the vast region. By focusing on politics, demography …
American Studies July 29, 2019

The Injustice Never Leaves You

Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas

Monica Muñoz Martinez

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
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 …
African American Studies July 24, 2019

Seeds of Empire

Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850

Andrew Torget

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
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 …