Kathryn Livingston, “Lilly: Palm Beach, Tropical Glamour, and the Birth of a Fashion Legend” (Wiley, 2012)
It’s rare that a person’s name comes to represent an object, but such is the case with Lilly Pulitzer. Just say ‘Lilly’ and it conjures images of simple sheath dresses in vivid colors. But what of Lil...
2 Jun 201354min
Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, “Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston” (UNC Press, 2011)
How were black women manumitted in the Old South, and how did they live their lives in freedom before the Civil War? Historian, Amrita Chakrabarti Myers (Associate Professor in the Department of Histo...
31 Mai 201355min
Laina Dawes, “What are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal” (Bazillion Points, 2012)
Extreme metal, punk, and hardcore. Slayer. Sick of it All. Cro-Mags. Decapitated. Behemoth. Musically aggressive rock bands with growling vocals and lyrics about annihilation, death, and dismemberment...
25 Apr 20131h 4min
Barbara Engel, “Breaking the Ties that Bound: The Politics of Marital Strife in Late Imperial Russia” (Cornell UP, 2011)
Divorce was virtually impossible in Imperial Russia. The Russian Orthodox Church monopolized matrimony, and it rarely granted divorce except in extraordinary cases of adultery, abandonment, sexual imp...
10 Apr 20131h
Lisa Chaney, “Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life”
As a reader, biography offers not simply an opportunity to read about the life of another, but also an invitation to ponder the choices that are available in life, the choices that comprise a life. To...
1 Apr 201353min
Melissa R. Klapper, “Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women’s Activism, 1890-1940” (NYU Press, 2013)
Many people have probably heard of Betty Friedan, Bela Abzug, Gloria Steinem, and Andrea Dworkin, all stars of Second Wave Feminism. They were also all Jewish (by heritage if not faith). As Melissa R....
18 Mar 201357min
Peter Benjaminson, “Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Life of Motown’s First Superstar” (Chicago Review Press, 2012)
Who is Motown’s first real star? The answer, of course, is Mary Wells, singer of such classics as “My Guy,” “Bye Bye Baby,” “The One Who Really Loves You,” “You Beat Me to the Punch,” and “Two Lovers,...
9 Mar 20131h 5min
Reiland Rabaka, “Hip Hop’s Amnesia: From Blues and the Black Women’s Club Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Movement” (Lexington Books, 2012)
In Hip Hop’s Amnesia: From Blues and the Black Women’s Club Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Movement (Lexington Books, 2012), the second installment of his hip hop trilogy, Reiland Rabaka again discus...
19 Feb 20131h 7min
