Today
Brook Flagg, "I Go There with You: The U2 Sites of Southern California, from Significant to Sacred" (Nine Criteria, 2025)
U2 is a band from the north side of Dublin that became a global phenomenon-and while its four members have traveled the world over for almost fifty years, some of the most critical points on their journey have been in Southern California. The Joshua Tree is the best-known example ... Show More
55m 40s
Yesterday
Jes Battis, "It's Only Forever: Labyrinth" (ECW Press, 2026)
Jes Battis' new book, It's Only Forever. Labyrinth (ECW Press, 2026) is a wild, intimate, and political deep dive into Jim Henson’s 1986 classic starring David Bowie and its cast of lovable, gender-defying goblins. In the 40 years since Labyrinth’s release, Jim Henson’s cult clas ... Show More
46m 8s
Yesterday
Constance Bailey et al. "Get It While It's Hot: Gas Station, Roadside, and Convenience Cuisine in the U.S. South" (LSU Press, 2026)
Get It While It’s Hot (LSU Press, 2026) is an innovative collection that examines an increasingly commonplace belief across the U.S. South—that some of the best, most enjoyable food comes from places you would not expect: a gas station, the back of a pickup truck, or a ramshackle ... Show More
54m 17s
May 2025
Miami Explodes Into Violence (1980)
<p>It's May 14th. This day in 1980, Miami is seeing the biggest racial uprising of the 70s or 80s, as riots and violence erupt with the acquittal of police officers accused of killing a man by the name of Arthur McDuffie.</p><p>Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss why the violence brok ... Show More
22m 44s
Jan 2024
Emily Brooks, "Gotham’s War Within a War: Policing and the Birth of Law-and-Order Liberalism in World War II-Era New York City" (UNC Press, 2023)
Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, members of the NYPD had worked to enforce partisan political power rather than focus on crime. That changed when La Guardia took office in 1934 and shifted the city's priorities toward liberal reform. La Guardia's appr ... Show More
1h 8m
Oct 2023
Chrissy Yee Lau, "New Women of Empire: Gendered Politics and Racial Uplift in Interwar Japanese America" (U Washington Press, 2022)
This episode, which is co-hosted with Mika Thornburg, features a conversation with Dr. Chrissy Yee Lau, the author of the newly published New Women of Empire: Gendered Politics and Racial Uplift in Interwar Japanese America (U Washington Press, 2022). The book centers the compell ... Show More
56m 21s
Nov 2020
Eithne Quinn, "A Piece of the Action: Race and Labor in Post–Civil Rights Hollywood" (Columbia UP, 2019)
What is the history of equal rights in Hollywood? In A Piece of the Action: Race and Labor in Post–Civil Rights Hollywood (Columbia UP, 2019), Eithne Quinn, a senior lecturer in American Studies at the University of Manchester, explores the transitional years following the civil ... Show More
48m 41s
Jan 2024
Emily Brooks, "Gotham’s War Within a War: Policing and the Birth of Law-and-Order Liberalism in World War II-Era New York City" (UNC Press, 2023)
Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, members of the NYPD had worked to enforce partisan political power rather than focus on crime. That changed when La Guardia took office in 1934 and shifted the city's priorities toward liberal reform. La Guardia's appr ... Show More
1h 8m
Dec 2020
Kyle Riismandel, "Neighborhood of Fear: The Suburban Crisis in American Culture, 1975–2001" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
One of the lures that drew Americans to the suburbs in the years after World War II was the promise of a secure life. By the mid-1970s, however, it seemed that this security was under threat from a variety of sources. In Neighborhood of Fear: The Suburban Crisis in American Cultu ... Show More
42m 37s
On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric and Communication at the State University of New York at Geneseo--interviews Kristen Hoerl (she/hers) on her impressive new book The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements (University Press of Mississippi, 2018).
The ... Show More
<p><em>Come to our first ever live show! In Boston, on Friday, September 13th. Tickets</em><a href="https://www.wbur.org/events/953434/this-day-in-esoteric-political-history-live"><strong><em> are available now</em></strong></a><em>!</em></p><p>It's August 11th. This day in 1965, ... Show More
