Driving to Virginia tomorrow, so it’s #ScholarSunday on a Saturday! Here’s my 237th thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the last week. Add more below, share widely, & enjoy, all!
Starting with a few favorites from the week as usual, including Chinese immigrant Penn Shao’s observations for the USIH blog on the American journey from Puritan orthodoxy to liberal religion:
For his Next Pittsburgh column, David Rotenstein traced the evolution & disappearance of the city’s riverfront Franklin Street Bathing Beach:
https://nextpittsburgh.com/city-design/what-happened-to-pittsburghs-riverfront-beach/
Cira Pallí-Asperó wrote for Clio & the Contemporary on the coloniality of method in post-colonial historical commissions:
https://clioandthecontemporary.com/2025/08/04/making-new-history/
For the AHA’s Perspectives blog, Kate Masur & Gregory P. Downs shared their experiences collaborating with the National Park Service on Reconstruction commemorations:
https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/collaborating-with-the-park-service/
Also check out part two of Cecilia Slane’s Perspectives series, this one on gardening as a strategy for getting through graduate school:
https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/weeding-and-writing-history/
Maisie Jepson wrote for The History Workshop on motherhood & banner-making at the 1980s Greenham Women’s Peace Camp:
https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/material-culture/motherhood-and-banners/
For JSTOR Daily, Danny Robb traced the fascinating history of 1920s Soviet propaganda designed to help convince peasants to fly:
https://daily.jstor.org/convincing-peasants-to-fly-in-the-soviet-union/
For his Medium column, Matthew Teutsch wrote about how education becomes indoctrination in Anna Segher’s 1940s short story “A Man Becomes a Nazi”:
While over at his Lincoln Conspirators site, Dave Taylor told the fascinating story of the recruitment of John Wilkes Booth at Boston’s Parker House Hotel:
https://lincolnconspirators.com/2025/08/07/john-wilkes-booth-at-the-parker-house-hotel/
Speaking of fascinating stories, check out Tiffanie Turnbull for the BBC on the finally-solved mystery of Winston Churchill’s dead platypus:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cglzl1ez283o
Vital essay from Luke Kemp in Aeon on why we need to challenge the myth of collapsing empires as necessarily a bad thing:
https://aeon.co/essays/the-great-myth-of-empire-collapse
& for an important new historical resource, the Hoover Institution Library & Archives has processed the papers of Nancy Reagan’s White House astrologer:
Tons of great columns from Saturday Evening Post colleagues this week, including Selina Alipour Tabrizi on the quandary of posthumous publishing:
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2025/08/words-left-behind-the-quandary-of-posthumous-publishing/
Will Mari wrote for the Post on the challenge of selling the first personal computers:
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2025/08/the-challenge-of-selling-the-first-personal-computers/
Here’s Jackie Mansky for the Post on the late 19th-century athletic fad of pedestrianism, competitive walking:
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2025/08/walk-of-life/
For her Post travel column, Teresa Bitler traced the diverse Revolutionary-era sites & voices in Virginia’s Historic Triangle:
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2025/08/revolutionary-roots-in-virginias-historic-triangle/
& for part 2 of her Women’s Work column series on suffrage histories, here’s Tanya Roth on battles beyond the 19th Amendment:
Finally, for my latest Saturday Evening Post Considering History column I highlighted how the U.S.S. Indianapolis & Jaws help us remember the human horrors of war:
& speaking of the Indianapolis, important piece from George Dillard for his Looking Through the Past newsletter on what happened in Hiroshima after the bomb:
Turning to current events, Julia Lurie wrote for Mother Jones on the Nigerian American who escaped Boko Haram, built an award-winning restaurant, & now faces deportation:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/08/suya-joint-boston-paul-dama-ice-detainee-deport/
Crucial New Republic column from Perry Bacon on why so many key institutions have folded to Trump’s authoritarian demands in his second term:
https://newrepublic.com/article/198787/media-universities-businesses-trump-pressure-institutions
Also for The New Republic, check out David W. Blight & colleagues on the many ways Trump is changing our sense of who we are:
https://newrepublic.com/series/67/trump-history-authoritarianism
For an inspiring alternative to those trends, check out Ella Fassler for Truthout on Black-led, progressive homeschool networks:
Similarly inspiring is Carmen Rios’s Ms. magazine interview with Dolores Huerta about the ongoing fight for a feminist future:
https://msmagazine.com/2025/08/04/dolores-huerta-podcast/
Fascinating essay from Marianne Dhenin for Noēma magazine on the Gulf world that air conditioning has created:
https://www.noemamag.com/the-gulf-world-that-air-conditioning-wrought/
While for Fast Company, Max Ufberg highlighted the 30th anniversary of the frustrating closing of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment:
Tons of great new podcast episodes to share this week, including Episode 17 of Jim Ambuske’s Worlds Turning Upside Down featuring Benjamin Carp, James Fichter, & Mary Beth Norton:
https://www.r2studios.org/show/worlds-turned-upside-down/episode-17-the-tyranny/
For episode 15 of the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Historians & Their Histories podcast, Adam Laats joined to talk the history of the American public school system:
https://www.masshist.org/podcast/hath-episode-15-Laats
While episode 9 of the Civil War Monitor’s Civil War Curious podcast featured Kevin M. Levin on the myths & realities of Black Confederates:
https://www.civilwarmonitor.com/podcast/episode-9-black-confederates/
For a complementary conversation, check out Karen Cox on Reckoning with Jason Herbert talking the history of Confederate monuments:
The latest episode of the Civics & Coffee podcast tells the complex story of the WCTU & the fight for temperance:
https://www.civicsandcoffee.com/axes-activism-and-abstinence-the-wctu-and-the-fight-for-temperance/
While the latest episode of the Working Class History podcast is part 1 of a two-part series on women in the 1984-85 great miners’ strike:
https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e108-women-in-the-miners-strike/
The new episode of the American Prestige podcast features Michael Albertus talking about his book Land Power:
While over at WUNC’s Due South podcast, Karen Benjamin joined to talk about her book Good Parents, Better Homes, & Great Schools:
& check out this Garden Café & Reform Dallas author conversation with Michael Phillips & Betsy Friauf on their book The Purifying Knife:
While for the latest episode of his America: A History podcast, Liam Heffernan was joined by Iwan Morgan to talk about the anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation:
Turning to the current administration, for Crooked Media’s Strict Scrutiny Mark Joseph Stern & Leah Litman talked Trump’s judicial nominees, & then Jessica Calarco joined to talk about her book Holding It Together:
https://www.crooked.com/podcast/stacking-the-bench-with-creeps-kooks/
For the latest episode of their Oath & the Office podcast, John Fugelsang & Corey Brettschneider discussed attacks on labor numbers & voting rights:
& for the This Old Democracy podcast, Micah Sifry interviewed Bill Kristol on the state of American democracy:
Gonna end this section with three fascinating panel discussions, including the latest episode of Matt Seybold’s The American Vandal, on Fredric Jameson & featuring Caleb Smith, Anna Kornbluh, & more:
For the National Women’s Studies Association’s Feminist Frequencies series, Aria S. Halliday, Dominique C. Hill, & Kaila Adia Story joined host Heidi R. Lewis to talk about Black women’s writing:
& for the Pauli Murray Center, Erika W. Wilson, Serena Sebring, & Stormie Daie joined host Antonia Randolph to talk about Murray’s radical progressive legacy:
Four great posts for Time’s Made By History blog this week, including Gary Scales on the history of how car seats overcame controversy to make kids safer:
https://time.com/7306364/history-car-seat-made-kids-safer/
Michael L. Rosino wrote for Made By History on what history can teach modern activists about coalition building:
https://time.com/7307042/history-coalition-building/
Here’s Kelsy Burke for Made By History on how religious opposition to trans healthcare is a relatively new phenomenon:
https://time.com/7303210/religious-opposition-trans-healthcare-new/
& finally for Made By History, Michael E. Neagle highlighted the history of demonizing words used against immigrant Americans:
https://time.com/7303350/demonizing-words-used-against-immigrants/
Lots of important book publications this week, including Daniel B. Thorp’s Seeking Justice: The Extraordinary Freedom Suits of an Enslaved Virginia Family for UVA Press:
https://upress.virginia.edu/title/10101/
Out this week from LSU Press is J. Mark Souther’s Sandhill Cities: Metropolitan Ambitions in Augusta, Columbus, & Macon, Georgia:
https://lsupress.org/9780807184899/sandhill-cities/
Also out this week is Ann Beebe’s Anne Bradstreet in Context: The Life & Work of a Colonial American Poet from McFarland:
Now available from Cambridge University Press is Emily Vine’s Birth, Death, & Domestic Religion in Early Modern London:
Two new releases from UWP Books to share this week, including Aaron X. Smith’s Afrocentricity: Generations of Theory in Practice:
https://uwpbooks.com/product/afrocentricity-generations-of-theory-in-practice/
Also out now from UWP is Sherice Janaye Nelson’s Visibly Invisible: The Black Women on the Congressional Black Caucus:
https://uwpbooks.com/product/visibly-invisible-the-black-women-of-the-congressional-black-caucus/
& speaking of UWP Books, check out founder Ayo Sekai on why established Black scholars should name the discipline’s new voices:
https://uwpbooks.com/black-voices/black-emerging-scholars/
One more new release to share this week, the latest from the prolific Brandy Schillace, The Dead Come to Stay: A Jo Jones Mystery, Book 2:
https://drusbookmusing.com/jo-jones/
Forthcoming & now available for pre-order from Princeton University Press is Julia R. Azari’s Backlash Presidents: From Transformative to Reactionary Leaders in American History:
I really enjoyed Paul Henry Rosenberg’s Liberal Currents interview with Julia Gaffield about her new book I Have Avenged America: Jean-Jacques Dessalines & Haiti’s Fight for Freedom:
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/desallines-a-maligned-hero-gets-his-due/
For the latest USIH book review, Nikita Shepard wrote about Josh L. Davis’s A Little Queer Natural History:
& check out Christian Warren’s H-Net Reviews piece on Deborah Kuhn McGregor & Robert Kuhn McGregor’s Rickets, Race, & Reproduction: Contracted Pelvis & the American Way of Birth:
Gonna end with lots of great new blog posts & newsletters as usual, including Kevin M. Kruse’s latest Work in Progress newsletter, on the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act:
https://campaign-trails.ghost.io/work-in-progress-the-voting-rights-act/
Speaking of voting rights, bracing & crucial work as always from Sherrilyn Ifill, this time on the Supreme Court & our redistricting mess:
For the Public Notice newsletter, Noah Berlatsky wrote about the July jobs report & the looming Trumpcession:
For her The American Pamphleteer newsletter, Lady Libertie wrote about why the Cold Civil War is here--& how we win it:
On that last point, for his The Long View newsletter Julian Zelizer made the case for how Democrats should & shouldn’t respond to the Texas redistricting fight:
Similarly, for his blog Philip Bump wrote about 2025 as a historical inflection point & how we respond to it:
https://www.pbump.net/o/blurred-world/?s
The Ideas Roadshow newsletter featured the final two posts in its America’s Descent series, including this one on progressive headgear:
& the series concluded with a critically optimistic post on where we go from here:
Speaking of where we go from here, important piece from Paul Musgrave for his Systematic Hatreds newsletter on the end of summer & the start of the Fall semester:
& for one place I very much don’t want to go, check out Sarah Kendzior for her newsletter on AI-created podcasts:
Lots of great work from Kevin M. Levin for his Civil War Memory newsletter this week, including this piece on how Confederate monuments came down in the Summer of 2020 & why it matters:
I really enjoyed Brendan Davey for his Half-Baked History newsletter on Minneapolis’ Riverside Plaza & the battle over the city’s history:
For his History Can’t Hide newsletter, Kahlil Greene shared the story of how Black Americans sought to fight Mussolini’s fascism in Ethiopia:
While for his Doomsday Scenario site, Garret Graff wrote about why its no coincidence that the US is sliding into fascism 80 years after the end of WWII:
https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/what-we-lost-when-we-lost-the-greatest-generation-ef639d4f8848ed02
For his Matt’s Historical Ephemera newsletter, Matt Eaton wrote about Canadian vs. British organized troop entertainment during WWII:
Over at her History in the Margins blog, Pamela D. Toler explored the history & evolution of the word “muckrakers”:
https://www.historyinthemargins.com/2025/08/05/word-with-a-past-muckrackers/
I really enjoyed this Urban History Association Metropole blog walking interview with Guillermo Guajardo on railway infrastructure & memory erasure in Mexico City:
Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American is always a must-read, but never more so than on occasions like the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act:
Speaking of Richardson, check out Liza Donnelly’s newsletter on her experience seeing Richardson, Yo-Yo Ma, & Emanuel Ax at Tanglewood:
Two great new posts from Etienne Toussaint this week, including for his Freedom Papers newsletter on Toni Morrison & writing without apology:
& over at his The Tenure Track newsletter, Toussaint offered a guide for non-traditional scholars who want to break into legal academia:
Gonna end with a bunch of great cultural studies posts, including Benjamin Dreyer for his A Word About… newsletter on Billie Burke, Glinda the Good Witch, & “yassification”:
Fascinating piece from Talia Levin for her The Sword & the Sandwich newsletter on queer historical yearning:
https://buttondown.com/theswordandthesandwich/archive/a-queer-shoulder-to-the-wheel/
Important guest post from Jason Scott for the Internet Archive’s Vanishing Culture series on why we should preserve Flash:
https://blog.archive.org/2025/08/06/vanishing-culture-why-preserve-flash/
Danai Christopoulou wrote for Khoreo magazine on the upcoming Odyssey film, the Elgin marbles, & the classical in the 21st century:
https://www.khoreomag.com/non-fiction/these-marbles-were-never-white/
Fascinating Vanity Fair excerpt from Nicholas Boggs’ Baldwin: A Love Story on James Baldwin’s fraught Hollywood journey with Malcolm X’s autobiography:
For The New Yorker, Inkoo Kang wrote about Hollywood’s conservative pivot as complicated context for the revival of King of the Hill:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/08/18/king-of-the-hill-tv-review-hulu
While over at her Review Roulette newsletter, Vaughn Joy continued her Naked Gun reviews with a fascinating genre analysis of the second film’s surprisingly pointed politics:
& speaking of Joy, her must-read upcoming book Selling Out Santa: Hollywood Christmas Films in the Age of McCarthy is now available for pre-order:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/selling-out-santa-vaughn-joy/1147556052
If you need more public scholarly goodness, Dion Georgiou has given us not one but two installments of his Stop, Look, & Listen newsletter, the 47th:
& the 48th:
& for some inside baseball on these #ScholarSunday threads, my evolving public scholarly career, & much much more, check out my conversation with the great Walter D. Greason for his The Long View podcast:
PS. No thread next weekend as I’ll be celebrating my birthday in Virginia, so make sure to keep sharing all the writing, podcasts, books, & more, & I’ll see you back here in two weeks from tomorrow!
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.