Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory

Christian Martinez, "NYC Open Data Student Gallery" (Brooklyn College CUNY, 2026)

About NYC Open Data [https://martinezc1-nyc-open-data-student-gallery.share.connect.posit.cloud/] During the Fall 2025 semester, students in the M.S. program in Psychological Research at Brooklyn College completed the inaugural offering of Reproducible Psychological Research. Using the R programming language, students developed weekly R Markdown documents to solve simulated real-world analytical problems using authentic datasets, with an emphasis on transparency, documentation, and reproducibility. For their final projects, students were tasked with conducting independent, original research using open data related to New York City. Rather than working with pre-cleaned or artificial datasets, students engaged directly with messy, real-world data and were responsible for every step of the analytical workflow—from data acquisition and cleaning to analysis, visualization, and interpretation. A majority of projects utilized data from the NYC Open Data Portal [https://opendata.cityofnewyork.us/], though students were encouraged to explore any open NYC-based data source that aligned with their research questions. Each project in this volume represents a complete, reproducible research artifact. Students were required to meet the following criteria: 1. The data must be openly available 2. The data must meaningfully relate to New York City 3. The research question, analysis, and interpretation must be original Collectively, these projects demonstrate not only technical proficiency in R, but also the ability to ask meaningful questions about the city students live in, evaluate real-world data critically, and communicate findings in a clear, reproducible manner. This volume serves both as a showcase of student growth and as an example of how open data and open-source tools can be used to conduct rigorous, socially relevant research. Chapters are organized in alphabetical order of the student’s last names. This volume is designed for students, educators, and practitioners interested in applied data analysis, reproducible research, and open data. Each chapter represents an independent research project and can be read on its own. Readers are encouraged to explore the accompanying code, reproduce analyses, and adapt methods for their own work. 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/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory

In Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781469693521] (UNC Press, 2026), historian John Garrison Marks tells the story of Americans’ long, fraught struggle to come to terms with Washington’s legacy of slavery. He traces how politicians, abolitionists, educators, activists, Washington’s former slaves and their descendants, and others have remembered, forgotten, and manipulated slavery’s place in Washington’s story, and how they have wielded versions of that story in the political and cultural fights of their time. Dr. Marks shows how generational struggles over our collective memory of Washington and slavery have always been part of a bigger conversation about defining the United States and its people. As debates about the founders’ participation in the system of slavery continue to roil public discourse, Dr. Marks shows with new clarity that Americans have never collectively reconciled Washington’s conflicted legacy. By truly grappling with Washington’s role as enslaver and emancipator, we may come to better understand the nation and ourselves. This episode considers: the life and legacy of George Washington, the role of myth and memory in the New Republic, and how conflicted legacies continue. A Neuroscientist's Guide to a Healthier, Happier Life Guest: Dr. John Garrison Marks [https://www.johngmarks.com/] holds a Ph.D. in history from Rice University. He is a New Jersey native currently living outside Washington, DC. He is the author of Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory. Host: Dr. Christina Gessler [https://christinagessler.com/] holds a Ph.D. in history which she uses to explore the stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. She is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast, and writes the newsletter at christinagessler.substack.com. Playlist for listeners: * Never Caught [https://newbooksnetwork.com/reclaiming-lost-voices-and-recovering-history-a-discussion-with-erica-armstrong-dunbar] * Running From Bondage [https://newbooksnetwork.com/bell] * No Common Ground [https://newbooksnetwork.com/no-common-ground] * The Vice-President's Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn [https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-vice-presidents-black-wife-the-untold-life-of-julia-chinn] * Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom [https://newbooksnetwork.com/teaching-about-race-and-racism-in-the-college-classroom] * The Social Constructions of Race [https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-social-constructions-of-race-a-discussion-with-brigette-fielder] * What Might Be [https://newbooksnetwork.com/what-might-be] * The Untold Story of President Lincoln [https://newbooksnetwork.com/no-way-they-were-gay] Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! 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/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Anna Terwiel offers A Moment of No to the Prison-Industrial Complex (JP)

Punishment makes nobody safer, imprisonment only impoverishes us as a society. And yet, we lock up our own, more and more for worse and worse reasons. What might finally inspire us to run the equation another way, and come up with a different solution? Anna Terwiel  [https://internet3.trincoll.edu/facProfiles/Default.aspx?fid=1480364]joined John to discuss her remarkable new book, Prison Abolition for Realists [https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517920401/prison-abolition-for-realists/], which charts a path away from paranoid (as documented by Eve Sedgwick [https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/sss/pdfs/Critique/sedgwick-paranoid-reading.pdf]) and purity politics in favor of an abolitionism that fuses "abstract normative theorizing" with attainable worldly goals. One name for this is agonistic abolitionism; it offers, as Anna sees it a positive vision alongside its criticism of the status quo. Anna is a professor of political science at Trinity College in Hartford, where she co-directs their Prison Education Project [https://www.trincoll.edu/human-rights/trinity-prison-education-project/]. She beings by tracing the impact of Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish] (1975) and his activism with the Prisons Information Group [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-foucault-lexicon/prison-information-group-gip/8DD2C9B8C98CEEFBFC400FE820080C3C], and credits the influence, during her schooling, of the Prison and Neighborhood Arts/Education Project  [https://p-nap.org/]in Illinois at Statesville Prison. John (apropos of his earlier work [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2902894]) mentions the failed pursuit of purity among late 19th century Chartists [https://www.amazon.com/After-Chartism-Politics-1848-1874-Publications/dp/0521525985], while Anna makes the case not for perfect solutions but for remainders, a form of politics of the possible. They explore possibilities of "non-reformist reform [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-reformist_reform]"; Anna stresses the enduring importance of Angela Davis's Are Prisons Obsolete [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_Prisons_Obsolete%3F] and her contribution to revolutionary black Marxist thought; and she praises local gender-based-violence organizations like CARA in Seattle. [https://incite-national.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/9261_anti-prisonbrochure.pdf] They discuss Sharon Dolovich's recent work on conditions for correctional officers [https://today.marquette.edu/2025/11/no-walking-away/], and Anna explores the notion of a new "right to comfort" that might take into account the current inhumanity of treatment inside prisons as regards profound but basic factors like ventilation and heat. As well as the right to a loved one's hugs. Listen to and read  [https://recallthisbook.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/rtb-174-transcript-terwiel-abolitionist_transcript.pdf]the episode here. Also mentioned in the episode * Abolitionist work by Mariame Kaba [https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1664-we-do-this-til-we-free-us], * Ruth Wilson Gilmore [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Wilson_Gilmore] , e.g. Golden Gulag [https://archive.org/details/goldengulagpriso00gilm] Recallable Books * Nils Christie, "Conflicts as Property [https://www.jstor.org/stable/23636088]." * Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed] 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/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Jilanne Hoffmann, "HeartLand" (Little, Brown, 2026)

Picture book author, Jilanne Huffmann's first middle-grades novel, Heartland [https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jilanne-hoffmann/heartland/9780316580052/] (Little Brown Books, 2026). Out of the Dust meets Me and Marvin Gardens in this coming-of-age novel about a young misfit searching for the truth of her family's past, set against the backdrop of an environmental cover-up. Twelve-year-old Xyla is sick of two things: working on her family's sixth-generation Iowa farm and her mother's nagging words, "Pay attention!" But Xyla can't help getting lost in the thoughts that fill her head, sometimes leaving a wake of costly mistakes. If only her mother would tell her something, anything, about her father, who left when she was little. When Xyla finds her mother's hidden childhood diary, she's soon sucked into the story of a hardscrabble life on the family farm in the 1980s. Can she find the key to her past and her father in the pages? Xyla's life grows even more complicated as a new family begins renting a vacant house on the farm, and the daughter Alegría is focused and motivated--the kind of kid Xyla is sure her mother prefers. But when the girls stumble upon an environmental disaster right next door, Xyla must trust her new friend and her complicated mother to figure out how to stop it. Alternating timelines in prose and verse connect the quiet desperation of Iowa farmers in the late 1980s to the modern farming landscape in this layered and voice-driven middle grade debut. 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/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Rosa Campbell, "The Book That Taught the World to Orgasm and Then Disappeared: Shere Hite and the Hite Report" (Melville House, 2026)

Despite being one of the leading thinkers of the second wave feminist movement, today Shere Hite is little known, little written about, and, unsurprisingly, little read. Her groundbreaking book, The Hite Report, was the first feminist exploration of the link between sex and male power. It sold millions of copies when first published in 1976 and revolutionised the way people thought about marriage and the female orgasm. How, then, did it, and Hite, disappear from public consciousness? In  [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781685892319]The Book that Taught the World to Orgasm and then Disappeared: Shere Hite and The Hite Report [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781685892319] (Melville House and New South, 2026), Australian historian Dr. Rosa Campbell combines original research and sharp cultural analysis to explore the complicated life and literary legacy of Shere Hite. Expanding on her ideas about sex – namely, that sex is sexist – the book explores Hite’s fraught childhood, struggles working in the porn industry, and eventual cancellation by the far-right Evangelical movement. All the while, Dr. Campbell holds Hite and The Hite Report to account for their own failings and absence of intersectionality. In a post-#MeToo world, with the far-right on the march globally, Dr. Rosa Campbell’s examination of shifting ideological movements is essential to understanding the current feminist movement, as well as how conservative and reactionary efforts can silence even the most successful of women. 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/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]