In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Emily Wallace, author and illustrator of the new book Road Sides: An Illustrated Companion to Dining and Driving in the American South (University of Texas Press, 2019).
Road Sides pays homage to popular travel guides with its short chapters, one for each letter of the alphabet containing a brief contextualizi ... Show More
Yesterday
163* The Drama of Celebrity with Sharon Marcus (JP)
As Oscar Season rolls around, Recall This Book looks back to John's 2019 discussion with Columbia University professor Sharon Marcus about The Drama of Celebrity, her tour-de-force account of how stars are born, publicized, and in time devoutly scrapbooked by adoring fans. They t ... Show More
32m 10s
Yesterday
Justin L. Mann, "Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation" (Duke UP, 2026)
Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation (Duke UP, 2026) takes Black speculative fiction as a central archive for understanding global security culture from the Reagan administration to the present. Drawing on black feminist, critical race, and queer o ... Show More
1h 45m
Yesterday
Rolando Pujol, "The Great American Retro Road Trip: A Celebration of Roadside Americana" (Artisan Publishers, 2025)
Rolando Pujol's The Great American Retro Road Trip: A Celebration of Roadside Americana (Artisan, 2025) celebrates the nostalgic pleasures of America's vintage signs, quirky roadside attractions, and offbeat fast food relics in this irresistible retro road trip across the country ... Show More
58m 48s
Jan 2025
Jennie Lightweis-Goff, "Captive City: Meditations on Slavery in the Urban South" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
Cities are fraught sites in the national imagination, turned into identity markers when “urban” and “rural” indicate tastes rather than places. Cities bring chaos, draining the lifeblood of the nation like a tick draws blood from its host, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson’s anti-ur ... Show More
56m 51s
Jan 2019
Farina King, "The Earth Memory Compass: Diné Landscapes and Education in the Twentieth Century" (UP of Kansas, 2018)
When the young Diné boy Hopi-Hopi ran away from the Santa Fe Indian Boarding School in the early years of the twentieth century, he carried with him no paper map to guide his way home. Rather, he used knowledge of the region, of the stars, and of the Southwest’s ecology instilled ... Show More
1h 4m
Dec 2018
Kellie Jones, "South of Pico: African American Artists in the 1960s and 1970s" (Duke UP, 2017)
New York City might have been the epicenter of the twentieth century American art scene, but Los Angeles was no slouch either, writes Kellie Jones in South of Pico: African American Artists in the 1960s and 1970s(Duke University Press, 2017). Dr. Jones, Professor of Art History a ... Show More
49m 8s
Feb 2024
William L. Bird, "In the Arms of Saguaros: Iconography of the Giant Cactus" (U Arizona Press, 2023)
An essential—and monumental—member of the Sonoran Desert ecosystem, the saguaro cactus has become the quintessential icon of the American West.
In the Arms of Saguaros: Iconography of the Giant Cactus (U Arizona Press, 2023) shows how, from the botanical explorers of the nineteen ... Show More
48m 7s
Mar 2023
Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd, "Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South" (U Georgia Press, 2022)
Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd's book Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South (U Georgia Press, 2022) explains a curiosity: why a feminine ideal rooted in the nineteenth century continues to enjoy currency well into the twenty-first. Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd examines ... Show More
1h 3m
Aug 2023
Tamara J. Walker, "Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad" (Crown, 2023)
Part historical exploration, part travel memoir, Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad (Crown, 2023) reveals poignant histories of a diverse group of African Americans who have left the United States over the course of the past century. Together, the interwoven ... Show More
1h 18m