New Books in American Studies

For fans of Dilla Time and The Chronicles of DOOM, a culturally connected celebration of the groundbreaking hip-hop group De La Soul, and how they changed the look, sound, and feel of Black America. Music artists and trends come and go, but every once in a while, a moment arrives that genuinely changes everything. In 1988, De La Soul, three young men from Amityville, Long Island, did exactly that. Their always innovative work pulled inspiration from artists of the past and popularized cutting-edge music sampling techniques to blend jazz, R&B, and rap as they created a sound unlike any the world had heard before. But the De La Soul experience didn’t end there. These weren’t just musicians—they were game-changers in so many ways. From the way they dressed, to the words they spoke, to the day-glo colors of their breakout 3 Feet and Rising, De La Soul rejected convention, refused to be talked back into the box, and left the door open for everyone behind them. Now, in Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age: The Music, Culture, and World De La Soul Made (Atria/One Signal, 2026), West Virginia University history professor Austin McCoy explores how De La Soul not only defined a new era of hip-hop, but also American and Black culture at the same time. Through his eyes, ears, and well-studied recall of ‘80s, ‘90s, and 2000s America, McCoy takes us on a journey through the world this innovative musical act made. One of the few hip-hop groups of their era to stay together long term, De La Soul lived astonishing highs and lows, from forming the Native Tongues collective to influential fights with their publishers to assert the artist’s right to control their creations. And after a lifetime left out of music’s digital revolution, in 2023 they finally hit streaming services just as it lost founding member David Jolicoeur too soon to see his work reach a brand-new generation of fans. Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age will connect with DLS fans, ‘80s babies, and students of the rap game alike, in a beautifully rendered and deeply researched tome that places this group atop the pedestal it deserves. Guest: Austin McCoy is an assistant professor of history at West Virginia University, specializing in African American History, labor history, social movements, and hip-hop culture. His work has appeared in numerous outlets including CNN, The Baffler, The Washington Post, Black Perspectives, and Truthout. He lives in West Virginia. Host: Michael Stauch (he/him) is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Dr. George Frazier is currently an assistant professor of Computer Information Sciences at Washburn University, where his research focuses on such topics as artificial intelligence and environmental informatics. But George is so much more then a computer scientists. As a well known environmental author, Riverine Dreams: Away to the Glorious and Forgotten Grassland Rivers of America (University of Chicago Press, 2025) provides a compendium of engaging stories at the deep intersections of nature, history, and place. His previous book, The Last Wild Places of Kansas: Journeys into Hidden Landscapes, was widely praised, winning the Ferguson Book Award, Midwest Book Award, Hamlin Garland Prize and designated a Kansas Notable Book. George now lives in Lawrence, Kansas with his wife and daughter. Professor Michael Simpson has been the Director of the Resource Management and Administration graduate program at Antioch University New England, in Keene, NH. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

An insightful exploration that unveils the lesser-known dimensions of this legendary writer and her legacy, revealing the cultural icon's profound impact as a visionary editor who helped define an important period in American publishing and literature. A multifaceted genius, Toni Morrison transcended her role as an author, helping to shape an important period in American publishing and literature as an editor at one of the nation's most prestigious publishing houses. While Toni Morrison's literary achievements are widely celebrated, her editorial work is little known. Drawing on extensive research and firsthand accounts, this comprehensive study discusses Morrison's remarkable journey from her early days at Random House to her emergence as one of its most important editors. During her tenure in editorial, Morrison refashioned the literary landscape, working with important authors, including Toni Cade Bambara, Leon Forrest, and Lucille Clifton, and empowering cultural icons such as Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali to tell their stories on their own terms. Toni Morrison herself requested that Dana Williams be the one to tell this story, even giving her the book's title. From the manuscripts she molded, the authors she nurtured, and the readers she inspired, Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship (Amistad, 2025) demonstrates how Toni Morrison has influenced American culture beyond the individual titles or authors she published. Morrison's contribution as an editor transformed the broader literary landscape and deepened the cultural conversation. With unparalleled insight and sensitivity, Toni at Random charts this editorial odyssey. Dr. N'Kosi Oates is a curator. He earned his Ph.D. in Africana Studies from Brown University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

A provocative new history of modern black liberalism Black Excellence: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Black Liberalism (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) offers a provocative new history of modern black liberalism by situating the seemingly conservative tendencies of black elected officials in the post–civil rights era within neoliberal American politics and an enduring black liberal tradition. In the 1970s and ’80s, cities across the country elected black mayors for the first time. Just as these officials gained political power, however, their cities felt the full brunt of white flight and deindustrialization. Tasked with governing cities in crisis, black political leaders responded in seemingly conservative ways to the social problems that austerity worsened. Nowhere was this response more evident than in Atlanta. In the nation’s preeminent black urban regime, black leaders such as mayors Maynard Jackson and Andrew Young employed the power of policing and the private sector to discipline black Atlantans, hoping they would equip vulnerable communities with the tools to manage the volatility of the era. Danielle Wiggins shows that these punitive responses to the problems of crime, family instability, and unemployment were informed by black liberalism’s disciplinary impulse: an enduring tendency to reform behaviors believed to threaten black survival in a white supremacist nation. Forged in response to the violence of Jim Crow, the disciplinary impulse relied upon notions of pathology and its inverse, black excellence. Wiggins identifies several black liberal efforts to cultivate excellent black communities, families, and workers in the post–civil rights era, including community policing, corporate-sponsored family initiatives, and black entrepreneurship. In embracing disciplinary strategies, however, black liberals often focused on behavior at the expense of addressing structural inequality. Consequently, their approaches dovetailed with those of the “New” Democrats, whose post–Great Society social policies were informed by urban black liberals. Black Excellence reveals thus how urban black liberals not only reshaped black politics but, as Democrats, also helped build the neoliberal Democratic Party. Guest: Danielle Wiggins is an assistant professor of history at Georgetown University, where she teaches courses on U.S. and African American history since the 1960s. She is currently researching race and the politics of energy since the 1960s. Focusing on the 1970s energy crisis, her project will explore how black Americans thought about energy, consumption, growth, and sustainability in ways that alternately challenged, intersected with, and radically rethought mainstream energy discourses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

The Tourist’s Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City (SUNY Press, 2025) offers a new look at over a century of Yiddish culture in New York City. Author Henry H. Sapoznik focuses on theater, music, architecture, crime, Black-Jewish cultural interactions, restaurants, real estate, and journalism to tell the history of New York’s Yiddish popular culture from 1880 to the present. Culled from over five thousand Yiddish and English newspaper articles of the period, and thanks to new research from previously inaccessible materials, the book reveals fresh insights into the influence of Yiddish culture on New York City and showcases the culture’s persistent Join YIVO for a discussion with Sapoznik about this new book, led by Eddy Portnoy. This discussion originally took place on October 23, 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Spaces of Immigration: American Ports, Railways, and Settlements (U Pittsburgh Press, 2025) follows the travel routes of immigrants during a foundational period of American infrastructure—from ports of arrival to train cars and depots to settlements—showing how the built environment of the railways fostered segregation through physical isolation and reinforced hierarchies according to race, ethnicity, and class. Catherine Boland Erkkila highlights the magnitude of this forced separation: how spatial design and the experiences within it reflected prejudices of contemporary middle-class Americans who viewed immigrants as poor, diseased, and dangerous. Spaces of Immigration draws attention to the control wielded by railroad companies and government officials, who dispatched European immigrants to ethnic enclaves across the Midwest, some of which still exist. This book ultimately offers a greater understanding of the immigrant experience in America through the lens of spatial history, revealing deeply embedded conflicts still pervasive in our society today. This interview was conducted by Matthew Wells, Senior Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester. His research explores nineteenth-century European architecture, focusing on artistic techniques, technology, and political economy. Wells is the author of Modelling the Metropolis: The Architectural Model in Victorian London (2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Standardizing Empire: The US Military, Korea, and the Origins of Military-Industrial Capitalism (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026) by Dr. Patrick Chung traces the origins of today’s United States-led capitalist world economy. The nation’s foreign policy during the Cold War saw two unprecedented developments: the continuous global deployment of US soldiers and the creation of a permanent worldwide military base network. In the process, the US military came to control the flow of billions of dollars, large-scale construction projects at home and abroad, the purchase of countless goods and services, and the employment of millions of soldiers and workers. In other words, the Cold War US military became the world’s leading economic actor.To illuminate the political and economic consequences of the US military’s globalization, Dr. Chung focuses on its activities in South Korea between the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Chung shows how the Korean War and the subsequent militarization of South Korea became an important site for the spread of a new economic system, which he calls military-industrial capitalism. Sustained by providing the infrastructure and materials for the US military’s globalization, military-industrial capitalism influenced the development of governments, corporations, and workers throughout the US-led “free world.” As military-industrial capitalism expanded, more of the world depended on the physical and administrative standards used by the US military. Ironically, the creation of a globalized economy facilitated both South Korea’s “economic miracle” and the decline of US industrial might.To clarify how these broader developments transformed everyday life in South Korea and around the world, Standardizing Empire explores three of South Korea’s leading multinational corporations today: shipping company Hanjin, steelmaker POSCO, and car manufacturer Hyundai. These case studies not only trace the companies’ early ties to the US military but also explain how they came to produce, sell, and employ workers worldwide, including in the United States. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In Roll and Flow: The Cultural Politics of Skateboarding and Surfing (San Diego State UP, 2024),  Michael James Roberts, Kristin Lawler, and David P. Cline take the widespread participation of skateboarders and surfers in the Black Lives Matter movement as a catalyst to reconsider the significance of the cultural politics of surfing and skateboarding. It is the first academic volume to bring together leading scholars in the areas of both surfing and skateboarding studies. This episode also invites Jarret Rose to discuss his contribution to this anthology. Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Sociology at William Penn University, where he specializes in the cultural and interpretive study of space, behavior, and identity. His scholarship examines how designed environments shape social interaction, connectedness, and moral life across diverse settings. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His current research projects include the study of escape rooms as emotion-structured environments, temporal urban environments in rural historical towns, student experiences of hanging out and being at home while at college and university, and a more recent study on the making of rodeo. To learn more about his work, visit his personal website, Google Scholar profile, or connect with him on Bluesky (@professorjohnst.bsky.social) or Twitter/X (@ProfessorJohnst). He can also be reached directly by email. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Many of us take diapers for granted. Yet diaper insecurity is a common, often hidden consequence of poverty in the US, where nearly half of American families with young children struggle to get enough diapers. Drawing on interviews with mothers dealing with this overlooked issue, in Living Diaper to Diaper: The Hidden Crisis of Poverty and Motherhood (U California Press, 2026) Dr. Jennifer Randles shows how diapers have unique practical and symbolic significance for the well-being of families. Tracing the social history of diapering, Randles unravels a complex story of caregiving inequalities, the environmental impacts of child-rearing, and responsibility for meeting children’s basic needs. Yet it is also a hopeful story: the book chronicles the work of people who manage diaper banks as well as the growing diaper distribution movement. A hard-nosed yet nuanced tale of parenting, Living Diaper to Diaper is an eye-opening examination of inequality and poverty in America. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Our guest today is Elizabeth Suhay, the author of Debating the American Dream: How Explanations for Inequality Polarize Politics. Faith in the American Dream—the idea that anyone who works hard can achieve success—has waned in the 21st century. Decreases in economic mobility, increases in the wealth gap, and other economic shifts have undoubtedly influenced this decline. Dr. Suhay investigates how politics and political identity are intertwined with beliefs about the American Dream and the causes of inequality. Drawing on public opinion surveys spanning more than four decades, Suhay finds that Americans’ belief in the American Dream is strongly related to their political party affiliation. While it is true that Americans have become more skeptical of the American Dream overall, Suhay finds this skepticism is concentrated among Democratic members of the public. Despite the increasingly working-class make-up of the Republican coalition, most Republican members of the public continue to believe the American Dream is reality. Elizabeth (Liz) Suhay is an associate professor of government in the School of Public Affairs, American University, Washington, D.C. She specializes in the study of U.S. public opinion and political psychology and is a Sine Civic Life Faculty Fellow and Vice Director of the Science & Policy certificate program. She has also co-edited three volumes including The Politics of Truth in Polarized America, with David Barker, The Oxford Handbook of Electoral Persuasion, with Bernard Grofman and Alex Trechsel, and "The Politics of Science" with James Druckman. She currently serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Political Psychology and Editor of the Cambridge University Press Elements in Political Psychology series. This is episode is co-produced by Nora Kalaj, a student in the Master of Arts in Communication at Oakland University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies