New Books in American Studies

Julia Bowes, "Every Man's Home a Castle: Parental Rights and the Makings of Modern Conservatism" (Princeton UP, 2026)

“Parental rights” is a rallying cry for today’s American conservatives, signaling opposition to mandatory vaccination and “woke” public school curricula. In  [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780691289267]Every Man's Home a Castle: Parental Rights and the Makings of Modern Conservatism [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780691289267] (Princeton UP, 2026), Dr. Julia Bowes traces the origins of the modern parental rights movement to the nineteenth century, when the introduction of compulsory schooling laws, child labor regulations, and vaccine requirements provoked a resistance rooted in the presumed right of white men to govern their homes. A wide-ranging coalition—including Irish Catholic immigrants in Illinois, Mormon enclaves in Utah, and Protestant clergy in Virginia—believed that the state had usurped the “natural rights” of parents and “invaded the home.” Dr. Bowes shows how, by the turn of the century, those disparate voices had coalesced into national conservative movements. Anti-vaccinationists, alternative medical practitioners, and parents who opposed compulsory school medical exams joined forces to form the National League for Medical Freedom. Deciding a case brought by conservative Catholic lawyers, the Supreme Court declared parental rights a “fundamental liberty” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. And the Sentinels of the Republic, a conservative citizen’s lobby, mobilized a campaign to defeat the proposed federal Child Labor Amendment, bringing together pro-family and free-market politics with far-reaching consequences. Exploring the emergence of parental rights as an antistatist ideology through legal cases, legislative debates, and political movements, Dr. Bowes argues that the expansion of state power over children provoked such fierce opposition because the paternal rights of white men—considered the “rights-bearing” individuals of American democracy—were widely viewed as the mark and measure of their independence. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book [https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/securing-peace-in-angola-and-mozambique-9781350407930/] focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher [https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/special-series/new-books-with-miranda-melcher], wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies]

Sharon Zukin, "Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change" (Rutgers UP, 2014)

Since its initial publication, Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780813570976] (Rutgers UP, 2014) has become the classic analysis of the emergence of artists as a force of gentrification and the related rise of "creative city" policies around the world. This 25th anniversary edition, with a new introduction, illustrates how loft living has spread around the world and that artists' districts--trailing the success of SoHo in New York--have become a global tourist attraction. Sharon Zukin reveals the economic shifts and cultural transformations that brought widespread attention to artists as lifestyle models and agents of urban change, and explains their role in attracting investors and developers to the derelict loft districts where they made their home. Prescient and dramatic, Loft Living shows how a declining downtown Manhattan became a popular "scene," how loft apartments became hot commodities for the middle class, and how investors, corporations, and rich elites profited from deindustrializing the city's factory districts and turning them into trendy venues for art galleries, artisanal restaurants, and bars. However, this edition points out that the artists who led the trend are now priced out of the loft market. Even in New York, where the loft living market was born, artists have no legal claim on loft districts, nor do they get any preferential treatment in the harsh real estate market. From the story of SoHo in Lower Manhattan to SoWa in Boston and SoMa in San Francisco, Zukin explains how once-edgy districts are transformed into high-price neighborhoods, and how no city can restrain the juggernaut of rising property values. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies]

Fighting for a Foothold: How Government and Markets Undermine Black Middle-Class Suburbia

Prince George’s County, Maryland, is a suburban jurisdiction in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and is home to the highest concentration of Black middle-class residents in the United States. As such, it is well positioned to overcome white domination and anti-Black racism and their social and economic consequences. Yet Prince George’s does not raise tax revenue sufficient to provide consistent high-quality public goods and services. In Fighting for a Foothold: How Government and Markets Undermine Black Middle-Class Suburbia [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780871548252] (Russell Sage Foundation, 2026) sociologist Angela Simms examines the factors contributing to Prince George’s financial troubles. Dr. Simms draws on two years of observations of Prince George’s County’s budget and policy development processes, interviews with nearly 60 Prince George’s leaders and residents, and budget and policy analysis for Prince George’s County and its two Whiter, wealthier neighbors, Montgomery County, Maryland, and Fairfax County, Virginia. She argues legacy and ongoing government policies and business practices—such as federal mortgage insurance policy prior to 1968, local government reliance on property taxes, and private investment patterns—have resulted in disparities in wealth accumulation between Black and white Americans, not only for individuals and families but local jurisdictions as well. Fighting for a Foothold is an in-depth analysis of the fiscal challenges experienced by Prince George’s County and by the suburban Black middle-class and majority-Black jurisdictions, more broadly. The book reveals how race, class, and local jurisdiction boundaries in metropolitan areas interact to create different material living conditions for Americans. Our guest is: Dr. Angela Simms, who is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of Fighting for a Foothold. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler [https://christinagessler.com/], who is a writing coach and developmental editor for academics. She is the creator and producer of the Academic Life podcast. Listeners may enjoy this playlist: * House of Diggs [https://newbooksnetwork.com/house-of-diggs-the-rise-and-fall-of-americas-most-consequential-black-congressman-charles-c-diggs-jr#entry:429183@1:url] * The Social Constructions of Race [https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-social-constructions-of-race-a-discussion-with-brigette-fielder#entry:71281@1:url] * The Fight To Save The Town [https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-fight-to-save-the-town#entry:167629@1:url] * Stuck: How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress [https://newbooksnetwork.com/stuck-how-money-media-and-violence-prevent-change-in-congress#entry:446275@1:url] * Of Bears and Ballots [https://newbooksnetwork.com/studying-the-pipeline-to-politics-for-women#entry:226734@1:url] * Remembering Lucille [https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-detective-work-of-research-a-conversation-with-polly-e-bugros-mclean#entry:49426@1:url] * The Names of All the Flowers [https://newbooksnetwork.com/getting-an-mfa-and-memoir-writing#entry:39424@1:url] * What Might Be [https://newbooksnetwork.com/what-might-be#entry:387428@1:url] * The End of White Politics [https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-end-of-white-politics-how-to-heal-our-liberal-divide#entry:347905@1:url] Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading or sharing episodes. Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. [https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/up-partners/academic-life] And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies]

Frontier Films for America250: On the Western Genre and Beyond with Matthew J. Franck

Here in Episode 7 of Season 5, I interview Dr. Matthew J. Franck [https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/author/mfranck/]. A senior contributing fellow at Public Discourse [https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/], a visiting lecturer in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, as well as a senior fellow at the Witherspoon Institute and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Radford University, he has written, edited, and contributed to many books, including Against the Imperial Judiciary [https://www.amazon.com/Against-Imperial-Judiciary-Supreme-Sovereignty/dp/0700607617] (1996). Drawing on his Public Discourse column, “The Bookshelf [https://www.amazon.com/Against-Imperial-Judiciary-Supreme-Sovereignty/dp/0700607617],” which often veers into film history and criticism, we discuss American frontier films broadly construed in light of our country’s 250th anniversary and the successful Artemis II rocket mission. Using Frederick Jackson Turner’s essay [https://www.historians.org/resource/the-significance-of-the-frontier-in-american-history/], “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893), we look at why the western is the most prolific genre in film history and how it offers viewers a vicarious lens into its pioneer heroic ethos, from literary works like those of James Fenimore Cooper and Mark Twain, to cinema, whether the westerns of John Ford or science and space exploration movies today. Although the western frontier may have closed, Americans still keep making new ones. Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison’s Notes [https://jmp.princeton.edu/podcast] is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions [https://jmp.princeton.edu/]. The transcript for this interview is available on our new Substack page [https://substack.com/@madisonsnotes], “Madison’s Footnotes.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies]

What Does the American Presidency Mean?

Coming in the thick of the second Trump term, What Does the American Presidency Mean? The Need for Interpretation in Presidency Studies [https://bookshop.org/p/books/what-does-the-american-presidency-mean-the-need-for-interpretation-in-presidency-studies-richard-holtzman/4b316ecc0b646c4a?ean=9781032769158&next=t] is a timely and provocative new title for the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods [https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Series-on-Interpretive-Methods/book-series/RSIM]. In it, Richard Holtzman [https://www.bryant.edu/academics/faculty/holtzman-richard] sets an agenda for interpretivist presidency research. Using Tulis’s The Rhetorical Presidency as a bridge between presidency studies and interpretive political science, the book succinctly outlines how by interpreting presidential words and symbols our understanding of the presidency is enriched, and causal-inferential studies of presidential behaviour, complemented. Though the book directly addresses researchers of the American presidency, as we discuss in this episode of New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science [https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/special-series/interpretive-political-and-social-science], it holds lessons for researchers of executive power everywhere.  Presidency studies your thing? Other episodes on the New Books Network that might interest you include Coe and Scacco [https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-ubiquitous-presidency] on The Ubiquitous Presidency, and Hennessey and Wittes [https://newbooksnetwork.com/benjamin-wittes-unmaking-the-presidency-donald-trumps-war-on-the-worlds-most-powerful-office-fsg-2020] talking about their Unmaking the Presidency. Looking for something to read? To start the day Rich suggests Thich Nhat Han’s Peace is Every Step [https://bookshop.org/p/books/peace-is-every-step-the-path-of-mindfulness-in-everyday-life-thich-nhat-hanh/84a74a5bfd287fe4?ean=9780553351392&next=t], and perhaps to conclude it, Player Piano [https://bookshop.org/p/books/player-piano-a-novel-kurt-vonnegut/892d4f4fa0d5d381] by Kurt Vonnegut.  This interview summary was not synthesised by a machine. Unlike the makers and owners of those machines, the author accepts responsibility for its contents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies]