New Books in American Studies

A hard-hitting exposé of how methadone clinics fail people in recovery—and an urgent, unapologetic case for their abolition.  Methadone is a life-saving medication. But the current system for obtaining it—the opioid treatment program, commonly known as the methadone clinic—is punitive, unjust, and often humiliating. In this eye-opening book Liquid Handcuffs: Policing and Punishment in Methadone Clinics and the Future of Opioid Addiction Treatment (North Atlantic Books, 2026), social worker and journalist Helen Redmond takes readers inside the hidden world of methadone clinics, exposing the “culture of cruelty” that polices, punishes, and profits from those they’re meant to serve. Through patient stories and extensive interviews with methadone users and clinic workers, Redmond weaves a compelling argument against the current clinic system. She provides a detailed history of how methadone was first developed and why the current system for dispensing methadone arose in the U.S., tracing its entanglement with the carceral system and the “War on Drugs” as well as private equity firms and tech companies. She details the numerous barriers to enter and remain and treatment, as well as standard practices that shame and discriminate against patients, such as restrictions on take-home doses; daily attendance requirements; regular urine testing; and threats of cutting off medication for any infraction of clinic rules. She also explores the nuances of resistance to methadone clinics within communities of color, unpacking the political, racial, and cultural circumstances behind the opposition to methadone. Redmond persuasively makes the case for removing police agencies like the DEA from clinic administration, and shows how a transition to provider-prescribed pharmacy pickup, along with other tools of harm reduction such as safe-supply and peer-support services, would restore dignity to patients struggling with addiction—and save thousands of lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Celebrated as a democratic space for all Americans, the major league ballpark in fact privileged the middle- and upper-class white male fan while tacitly marginalizing poor urban residents and people of color. Seth S. Tannenbaum examines how the game’s economically and socially stratified system reflected changing understandings of urban space, inclusion, and the body politic. Major League Baseball owners and executives masked exclusion and division by touting the game’s accessibility and instituting few overtly discriminatory policies. Affluent white males enjoyed a comfortable, safe space that reinforced their status as the prototypical American citizen. At the same time, ballparks relocated in response to how these favored fans felt about cities. Tannenbaum traces this journey from the urban locales of the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium through the suburban-oriented Dodger Stadium and Houston Astrodome to the cloistered fantasy of city life offered by Camden Yards. As he shows, owners’ pursuit of greater profits incorporated existing barriers that helped shape the structure of modern parks. A revealing social history, Bleacher Seats and Luxury Suites: Democracy and Division at the Twentieth-Century Ballpark (U Illinois Press, 2026) revises the persistent myth of the ballpark as an egalitarian melting pot. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. 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/american-studies

This episode features Yashica Dutt, journalist and author of Coming Out as Dalit. We began with a discussion of her choice to write a memoir, the significance of the memoir as a genre of Dalit writing, the politics around passing as upper caste, and what her mother’s role in the life taught her about Dalit feminism as a counter to Brahminical patriarchy. We then moved on to what her work as a journalist in India and the U.S. has revealed about the differences in the operations of caste in the two contexts. Finally, we ended with her coverage of the Zohran Mamdani campaign, both its promises and its failure to address the caste question head-on. Guest: Yashica Dutt is a journalist and author whose writings can be found on her Substack, Featuring Dalits and in New Lines magazine. Mentioned in the episode: Yashica Dutt, Coming Out as Dalit Rohith Vemula: an Indian PhD scholar at the University of Hyderabad whose suicide drew attention to widespread institutional casteism. Kumari Mayawati: first Dalit woman chief minister in India who served in the state of Uttar Pradesh as the leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party. BSP: Bahujan Samaj Party founded in 1984 and focused on representing the interests of Dalits, Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and religious minorities. Origin: 2023 film written and directed by Ava DuVernay based on the life and work of Isabel Wilkerson. ST/SC Act: Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 is a landmark Indian law designed to protect marginalized communities from atrocities, hate crimes, and discrimination. Cargenie Institute study: 2024 Indian American Attitudes Survey conducted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. DRUM Beats: organization that mobilizes working-class South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities. Yashica Dutt, “I reported on the Zohran Mamdani Campaign for six months and documented South Asians' rise to power in New York City” Yashica Dutt, “What Zohran Mamdani’s Campaign Says About the Quiet Erasure of Caste in US Politics” Yashica Dutt, “If South Asians are prominent in the New York Mayoral Election, then where is caste?” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Francisco de Saavedra’s American Revolutionary War: The Spanish Contribution to the Battle of Yorktown (James Giesler, 2025) by James Giesler is the story of how the decisive victory in the American Revolutionary War, at the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781, was the result of French and Spanish cooperation in the Caribbean. This cooperation started with Francisco de Saavedra’s arrival in Havana in early 1781. Although Spain had joined the war against Britain in 1779 little had been done by the Havana War Council, or Junta de Generales, to achieve Spain’s war aims. Saavedra united the Junta and established a close liaison with a French naval squadron which was present in Havana. This resulted in the fall of British held Pensacola in West Florida, in May 1781, to forces led by Bernardo de Gálvez. Saavedra would go on to meet Lt. General de Grasse in St. Domingue (Haiti) who was arriving from France with a large fleet. Together they agreed a plan of action for French and Spanish forces for the next nine months known as the de Grasse-Saavedra convention. As a result, de Grasse was able to sail promptly to Chesapeake Bay with a large fleet, troops, artillery and desperately needed Spanish silver dollars to fund the Yorktown campaign. De Grasse’s forces united with those of generals Washington and Rochambeau and trapped the British army at Yorktown in September 1781. Together they would deliver the coup de grace that led the British to abandon the war in North America. Saavedra would go on to play a significant role in the war as an adviser to the French and Spanish courts. 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

Black Women's Bodily Autonomy, Sexual Freedom, and Pleasure: Explorations of the Hot Girl Movement (Routledge, 2025) explores scholarship, practice, and advocacy for Black women’s pursuit of bodily autonomy, sexual freedom, and pleasure. Inspired by Megan Thee Stallion’s song "Hot Girl Summer" and pleasure activism, Dr. Clarissa E. Francis ("The Real Hot Girl Doc") examines the cultural and social impacts of "hot girl" music and its transformative effects on Black women’s sexual liberation journeys. Francis introduces readers to the Hot Girl Movement, addressing intergenerational trauma, denial of bodily autonomy, and pleasure politics. This book offers a historical review and current documentation of Black women’s role in the evolving movement for sexual liberation in the United States, with a particular focus on Atlanta, Georgia. Chapters delve into the history of systemic oppression, presenting research on Black women’s experiences with gendered racism while demonstrating the socio-cultural influences shaping Black women’s sexual liberation. The book centers Black women’s narratives, featuring the work of sexologists, clinicians, somatic practitioners, and community organizers in guiding Black women to achieve sexual liberation. The final chapter outlines conclusions of the research on the Hot Girl Movement and provides recommendations for participating in and supporting this movement. This interdisciplinary text is essential reading for scholars, clinicians, healing practitioners, birthworkers, and activists, including those in fields of sexuality, sex therapy, sociology, gender studies, Black/Africana studies, public health, and social justice.  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 expanded edition to a groundbreaking work, now in paperback, Lincoln and the Jews: A History (NYU Press, 2025), Jonathan D. Sarna and Benjamin Shapell reveal how Abraham Lincoln's unprecedentedly inclusive relationship with American Jews broadened him as president, and, as a result, broadened America. A conversation with Professor Jonathan D. Sarna. Co-authored with collector and scholar Benjamin Shapell, the book began as a lush coffee-table volume built around Shapell’s remarkable Civil War–era collection: letters, photographs, and documents that reveal Lincoln’s Jewish connections in real time. It has since been reissued in paperback by NYU Press, making it far easier to teach, carry, and assign. The shift mirrors the project’s purpose: from a beautiful artifact to a working tool for rethinking Lincoln’s world. Sarna stresses that Lincoln didn’t “know Jews” in the abstract; he knew particular Jews who mattered. Abraham Jonas, an early ally, saw Lincoln as presidential material and encouraged the Republican Party to build a coalition of “outsiders,” explicitly including Jews. Lincoln also developed ties with German-speaking Jewish “48ers,” refugees of the failed 1848 revolutions who brought democratic ideals and anti-slavery commitments. Even in Illinois, Lincoln’s visits to Jewish clothing stores signaled a new kind of everyday encounter between Americans and Jewish merchants. The book opens with a table of concentric circles of relationships between Lincoln and the Jews. Equally important is Lincoln’s religious formation. Raised in a Protestant culture steeped in the Hebrew Bible and divine providence, he drew heavily on biblical language. His letters and speeches are studded with scriptural echoes, reflecting a worldview in which Jews remain central to God’s historical drama rather than a superseded people. This helps explain his “live and let live” stance toward religious difference at a time when some ministers were moving toward more exclusionary theologies. Our conversation touched on Lincoln’s reference to Haman from the Book of Esther in a letter to Joshua Speed. In an age of deep biblical literacy, Haman was a recognizable symbol of evil, later applied by some Jews to Grant after General Orders No. 11. Sarna also recounted the visit of a self-proclaimed prophet named Monk, who asked Lincoln to endorse a plan to “free the Jews” worldwide. Lincoln’s witty, biblically informed response (from the book of Joel) both acknowledged Jewish suffering abroad and rejected the idea of a special “Jewish problem” in the United States. We also explored how 19th-century debates over the Mortara affair in Italy—where a secretly baptized Jewish child was taken from his parents by papal authorities—intersected with American slavery. President Buchanan’s refusal to condemn Rome, Sarna noted, reflected fears that criticizing Church-sanctioned child removal could invite scrutiny of the United States’ own separation of enslaved families. Lincoln and the Jews ultimately invites us to place Jews back into the center of the American story. Lincoln’s friendships, his Hebrew Bible–shaped imagination, and his commitment to equality created a landscape in which Jews were not an abstract “question,” but neighbors and citizens. To understand Lincoln fully, Sarna suggests, we must see the Jews who walked beside him—and to understand American Jewish history, we must see how deeply it is entwined with Lincoln’s moral and political world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

The revelatory and urgent story of how an explosion of misogyny is driving a surge of mass and far-right violence throughout the West--from an internationally recognized extremism expert and media commentator What two things do most mass shooters, terrorists, or violent extremists have in common? Most of us know the first: they are almost always men or boys. But the second? They are almost always virulent misogynists, homophobes, or transphobes--even if they are also motivated by racism, antisemitism, or xenophobia. The antigovernment militiamen charged with plotting to kidnap and execute Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer used language saturated with misogyny, with one telling an FBI informant, "Just grab the bitch." The men who killed scores at Virginia Tech, the Pulse nightclub, and a Maryland newsroom all had prior reports of stalking, domestic violence, or harassment of women. And in dozens of other incidents--from North America to Norway to New Zealand--an increasing number of misogynist incel (involuntary celibate) and male supremacist attackers have explicitly targeted and killed women, blaming feminism or sexual frustration with women as motivation for their attacks. Yet, despite all evidence, the bright red thread of misogyny running through these attacks is barely acknowledged by the media or even experts--and this failing leaves us powerless to stop the violence. In Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism (Princeton UP, 2025), Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a leading expert on extremism, addresses this crucial oversight head-on, revealing how an epidemic of misogyny--both online and off--and a patriarchal backlash are driving an exponential rise in mass and far-right violence. She also offers essential strategies that all of us--including parents, teachers, and counselors--can use to fight the rising tide of violence, beginning with recognizing the misogyny that pervades our everyday lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

During the American Civil War, clothing became central to the ways people waged war and experienced its cost. Through the clothes they made, wore, mended, lost, and stole, Americans expressed their allegiances, showed their love, confronted their social and economic challenges, subverted expectations, and, ultimately, preserved their history. As the collections they left behind make clear, Civil War Americans believed clothing was not merely a reflection of one’s class, gender, race, military rank, political ideology, or taste. Instead, Northerners and Southerners alike understood that clothing—from the weave of a fabric to the style and make of a coat—had the power to affect people’s way of living through the war’s tumult.In A Nation Unraveled: Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era (UNC Press, 2026), Dr. Sarah Jones Weicksel reveals the meanings clothing had for Civil War Americans. Contributing to the growing body of scholarship on the material culture of the Civil War, Dr. Weicksel invites readers to understand how the war penetrated daily life by focusing on the intimate, visceral, material experiences that shaped how people moved through the world. 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 1919, the brother of one of the West’s most famous Indian traders was shot to death in a remote corner of the Navajo Nation.Part history, part true crime, The Sons of Gunshooter: A Navajo Resistance Story (U Arizona Press, 2026) reexamines the killing and subsequent murder trial, while simultaneously embedding the story in a much larger saga of colonization and resistance. The result is a book that’s sweeping in its scope and surgical in its approach. Rewinding the clock to 1868, the authors follow the intertwining paths of two families to offer a riveting, deeply personal account that has been hailed as “a new way of doing historiography.”One of the authors is a descendant of participants in the case; the other is an investigative journalist. By merging Diné oral traditions with archival evidence, they succeed in upending one false narrative after another. This interview was conducted by Mary Reynolds, publicity manager for the University of Arizona Press. Her book, The Quake That Drained the Desert (forthcoming in 2026) investigates the 1887 borderlands earthquake that changed surface water and groundwater in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, and guest host, Paula Bialski, Associate Professor of Digital Sociology at University of St. Gallen, talk to Fred Turner, Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University, about his classic 2006 book, _From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism_. They briefly explore the arc of Fred’s career and revisit the book in the spirit of asking what has changed in digital ideology since the book’s publication, including with the role of Silicon Valley elites in the second Trump Administration, Elon Musk’s role in DOGE, and the (perhaps only brief) turn of digital technology elites moving from California to Texas. Since this conversation was recorded in April 2025, Fred’s essay, “The Texan Ideology,” has been published in The Baffler: Link here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies