Tamara Metz, “Untying the Knot: Marriage, the State, and the Case for Their Divorce” (Princeton UP, 2010)
Marriage is at the center of some of our fiercest political debates. Here are some recent developments regarding marriage in the United States. Earlier this year, the Justice Department announced that...
4 Aug 20111h 4min
Houston A. Baker, “Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era” (Columbia UP, 2008)
In his new book Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era (Columbia University Press, 2008), Houston A. Baker makes the argument that many contemporary black ...
4 Aug 20111h 26min
Gregory Koger, “Filibustering: A Political History of Obstruction in the House and Senate” (University of Chicago Press, 2010)
In recent months, we’ve been hearing a lot of talk about filibustering in the Senate, about how Senate Democrats acquired a filibuster-proof majority in the 2008 elections only to lose it by the midte...
14 Juni 20111h 2min
David Farber, “The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism” (Princeton UP, 2010)
I think that many smart people, particularly on the Left, make a really ill-considered assumption, to wit, that “Republican” means “Conservative.” I don’t mean lower case “c” conservative, as in wanti...
5 Nov 20101h 7min
Tony Michels, “Fire in their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York” (Harvard UP, 2005)
I always assumed that the Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe to New York and created the massive Jewish American labor movement brought their leftist politics with them from the Old Country. But n...
10 Apr 20091h 4min
Matt Wasniewski, et al., “Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007” (U.S. House of Representatives, 2008)
In just a few days, the United States will inaugurate its first black president, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. And though it’s a momentous day for the cause of equality, Mr. Obama is hardly the fi...
15 Jan 20091h 10min
Laura Wittern-Keller, “The Miracle Case: Film Censorship and the Supreme Court” (University of Kansas Press, 2008)
Did you ever wonder how we got from a moment in which almost everything on film could be censored (the Progressive Era) to the moment in which nothing on film could be censored (today)? From the Nicke...
7 Nov 20081h 3min
Donald A. Ritchie, “Electing FDR: The New Deal Campaign of 1932” (University Press of Kansas, 2007)
This week on New Books in History we interviewed Donald Ritchie about his new book Electing FDR: The New Deal Campaign of 1932 (University Press of Kansas, 2007). Ritchie is an associate historian at ...
25 Apr 20081h 7min
