Award Winning Books: American Studies

AFSCME's Philadelphia Story

Municipal Workers and Urban Power in the Twentieth Century

Francis Ryan

A history of the largest union in the AFL-CIO and its growth in a major American city

320 pages | 6 x 9 | 2 figures, 30 halftones

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All Talk

The Talkshow in Media Culture

Wayne Munson

The postmodern phenomenon of the talkshow and its place in American culture

288 pages | 6 x 9

Arsenio Rodríguez and the Transnational Flows of Latin Popular Music

David F. García

The life and times of one of Cuba's most important musicians

224 pages | 6 x 9 | 5 tables, 18 figures, 12 halftones

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Beyond Preservation

Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities

Andrew Hurley

A framework for stabilizing and strengthening inner-city neighborhoods through the public interpretation of historic landscapes

248 pages | 6 x 9 | 3 maps 14 halftones

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Body Language

Sisters in Shape, Black Women's Fitness, and Feminist Identity Politics

Kimberly J. Lau

How Black women's engagement in improving health and fitness raises questions about feminism and the construction of black female identity

204 pages | 5.5 x 8.25

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Campaigns of Knowledge

U.S. Pedagogies of Colonialism and Occupation in the Philippines and Japan

Malini Johar Schueller

Making visible the afterlives of U.S. colonial and occupation tutelage in the Philippines and Japan

312 pages | 6 x 9 | 11 line drawings, 1 halftone

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Consuming Catastrophe

Mass Culture in America's Decade of Disaster

Timothy Recuber

Examines the media’s coverage of four American disasters, arguing that media attention directs our concern for the suffering of others toward efforts to soothe our own emotional turmoil

228 pages | 5.5 x 8.25 | 5 tables

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Dark Days in the Newsroom

McCarthyism Aimed at the Press

Edward Alwood

Shines a new light on a dark era in American journalism

216 pages | 5.5 x 8.25

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Death in the Dining Room and Other Tales of Victorian Culture

Kenneth L. Ames

A richly illustrated and provocative discussion of Victorian culture through an exploration of common household goods

280 pages | 8.5 x 11 | 192 halftones

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Desis in the House

Indian American Youth Culture in New York City

Sunaina Marr Maira

Making the desi scene in New York

256 pages | 6 x 9 | 16 halftones

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Dilemmas of the American Self

John P. Hewitt

A theory about what it means to be an individual within contemporary American society

304 pages | 6 x 9

Disruptive Situations

Fractal Orientalism and Queer Strategies in Beirut

Ghassan Moussawi

The first comprehensive study to employ the lens of queer lives in the Arab World to understand everyday life disruptions, conflicts, and violence

210 pages | 6 x 9 | 1 table, 2 figures, 3 halftones

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The End of White World Supremacy

Black Internationalism and the Problem of the Color Line

Roderick D. Bush

How the marginalization of African Americans turned into a social phenomenon for the nation and world

264 pages | 6 x 9

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Financialization of Daily Life

Randy Martin

How investment banking and playing the market moved from Wall Street to Main Street

240 pages | 5.5 x 8.25

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Holy Leisure

Recreation and Religion in God's Square Mile

Troy Messenger

An accessible account of the first permanent religious meeting ground in the U.S.

192 pages | 6 x 9 | 26 halftones

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It Comes from the People

Community Development and Local Theology

Mary Ann Hinsdale, Helen M. Lewis and S. Maxine Waller

An Appalachian community develops a theology of liberation

400 pages | 6 x 9 | 3 figures, 25 halftones, 1 map

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It Was Always a Choice

Picking Up the Baton of Athlete Activism

David Steele

Examining American athletes' activism for racial and social justice, on and off the field

218 pages | 5.5 x 8.25

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Messiahs of 1933

How American Yiddish Theatre Survived Adversity through Satire

Joel Schechter

A lively examination of Yiddish theatre during the Great Depression

304 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 figures, 15 halftones

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Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory

Mike Wallace

A long-awaited dispatch from the history front in today's culture war

336 pages | 6 x 9 | 5 figures, 10 halftones

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Model City Blues

Urban Space and Organized Resistance in New Haven

Mandi Isaacs Jackson

A lively account of social protest and urban renewal in a struggling American city

296 pages | 6 x 9 | 1 table, 5 figures, 45 halftones

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Musicians from a Different Shore

Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music

Mari Yoshihara

Why do so many Asians devote their lives to playing Western classical music?

288 pages | 6 x 9 | 18 halftones

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The New Left Revisited

Edited by John McMillian, and Paul Buhle

You didn't have to be there

280 pages | 7 x 10

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Organizing Asian American Labor

The Pacific Coast Canned-Salmon Industry, 1870-1942

Chris Friday

Asian and Asian American workers resist oppression and shape their own lives

296 pages | 6 x 9 | 6 tables, 6 halftones

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Pedagogies of Woundedness

Illness, Memoir, and the Ends of the Model Minority

James Kyung-Jin Lee

What happens when illness betrays Asian American fantasies of indefinite progress?

224 pages | 6 x 9

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Performing Asian America

Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage

Josephine Lee

A fascinating inquiry into the territory of race and ethnicity in American theater

256 pages | 6 x 9 | 21 halftones

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The Puerto Rican Diaspora

Historical Perspectives

Edited by Carmen Teresa Whalen and Víctor Vázquez-Hernández

Histories of the Puerto Rican experience

320 pages | 6 x 9 | 5 tables, 20 halftones

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The Rise and Fall of America's Concentration Camp Law

Civil Liberties Debates from the Internment to McCarthyism and the Radical 1960s

Masumi Izumi

Now in Paperback—Dissecting the complex relationship among race, national security, and civil liberties in “the age of American concentration camps”

268 pages | 6 x 9 | 3 halftones

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Savoring the Salt

The Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara

Edited by Linda Janet Holmes and Cheryl A. Wall

An anthology that celebrates the life and work of a major African American writer

320 pages | 6 x 9 | 16 halftones

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The Scrapbook in American Life

Edited by Susan Tucker, Katherine Ott, and Patricia Buckler

The first book about the history and practice of keeping scrapbooks

344 pages | 7 x 10 | 72 halftones

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The Smoke of the Gods

A Social History of Tobacco

Eric Burns

From the author of The Spirits of America, an energetic history of tobacco use

296 pages | 6 x 9

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The Spirits of America

A Social History of Alcohol

Eric Burns

A history of "the great American thirst"

344 pages | 6 x 9

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Still Philadelphia

A Photographic History, 1890-1940

Fredric M. Miller, Allen F. Davis, and Morris Vogel

Photographic memories of Philadelphia, volume 1

312 pages | 8 x 10 | 282 halftones

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Striking Steel

Solidarity Remembered

Jack Metzgar

A middle-class son remembers his father's union and the steel strike of 1959

320 pages | 6 x 9 | 2 tables, 1 figure, 16 halftones

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To Save China, To Save Ourselves

The Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance of New York

Renqiu Yu

Chinese laundry workers unite to fight racism and economic discrimination

253 pages | 6 x 9 | 8 figs.

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Under New Management

Universities, Administrative Labor, and the Professional Turn

Randy Martin

A balanced review of the changing nature of the corporate university

272 pages | 6 x 9 | 1 table

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The World Next Door

South Asian American Literature and the Idea of America

Rajini Srikanth

Literature that takes us beyond identity to empathy

304 pages | 6 x 9

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