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New Books in the American South

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetworkSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-south

Abe Walker, "Reassembling the UAW: Insurgency, Contention, and the Struggle for Unionism in the American South" (Temple UP, 2026)

61 hours 41 mins; March 17, 2026

Antwain K. Hunter, "A Precarious Balance: Firearms, Race, and Community in North Carolina, 1715-1865" (UNC Press, 2025)

49 mins; March 16, 2026

Danielle Wiggins, "Black Excellence: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Black Liberalism" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

62 hours 59 mins; March 08, 2026

Rebecca Sharpless, "People of the Wheat: Culture and Cultivation in North Texas" (U Texas Press, 2026)

70 hours 11 mins; March 07, 2026

Paul Gillingham, "Mexico: A 500-Year History" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2025)

75 hours 33 mins; March 07, 2026

Sarah Jones Weicksel, "A Nation Unraveled: Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era" (UNC Press, 2026)

55 mins; February 27, 2026

Fred Turner on Countercultures, Cybercultures, and Californian and Texan Ideologies

79 hours 2 mins; February 25, 2026

Cecilia Márquez, "Making the Latino South: A History of Racial Formation" (UNC Press, 2023)

48 mins; February 22, 2026

Danielle N. Boaz, "Voodoo: The History of a Racial Slur" (Oxford UP, 2023)

62 hours 27 mins; February 01, 2026

Blair Kelley, "Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class" (LIveright, 2023)

45 mins; January 31, 2026

Thomas Aiello, "Return of the King: The Rebirth of Muhammad Ali and the Rise of Atlanta" (U Nebraska Press, 2025)

49 mins; January 30, 2026

O. Jennifer Dixon-McKnight, "We Paved the Way: Black Women and the Charleston Hospital Workers' Campaign" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)

34 mins; January 20, 2026

Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, "Taco" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

36 mins; January 19, 2026

Caroline Peyton, "Radioactive Dixie: A Nuclear History of the American South" (U Georgia Press, 2025)

51 mins; January 17, 2026

Brian Martin, "From Underground Railroad to Rebel Refuge: Canada and the Civil War" (ECW Press, 2022)

38 mins; January 12, 2026

Sonya Lea, "American Bloodlines: Reckoning with Lynch Culture" (UP of Kentucky, 2025)

48 mins; January 09, 2026

W. Ralph Eubanks, "When It's Darkness on the Delta: How America's Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land" (Beacon Press, 2026)

64 hours 39 mins; January 07, 2026

T. R. Johnson, "New Orleans: A Writer's City" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

38 mins; January 06, 2026

Robert D. Bland, "Requiem for Reconstruction: Black Countermemory and the Legacy of the Lowcountry's Lost Political Generation" (UNC Press, 2026)

60 hours 23 mins; January 05, 2026

Jeff Roche, "The Conservative Frontier: Texas and the Origins of the New Right" (U Texas Press, 2025)

80 hours 52 mins; December 18, 2025

Sylvia D. Hoffert, "Wagging Tongues and Tittle Tattle: Gossip, Rumor, and Reputation in a Small Southern Town" (U Georgia Press, 2025)

46 mins; December 08, 2025

David Silkenat, "Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" (Oxford UP, 2022)

64 hours 47 mins; December 08, 2025

Gregory S. Wilson, "Poison Powder: The Kepone Disaster in Virginia and Its Legacy" (U Georgia Press, 2023)

69 hours 48 mins; December 07, 2025

Beau Cleland, "Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy" (U Georgia Press, 2025)

63 hours 38 mins; December 07, 2025

Gwyneth Mellinger, "Racializing Objectivity: How the White Southern Press Used Journalism Standards to Defend Jim Crow" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024)

24 mins; December 06, 2025

Erika Pani, "Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexico, 1848-1867" (UNC Press, 2025)

57 mins; November 26, 2025

Karen Auman, "The Good Forest: The Salzburgers, Success, and the Plan for Georgia" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

50 mins; November 20, 2025

Doug MacCash, "Mardi Gras Beads" (Louisiana UP, 2022)

38 mins; November 17, 2025

Clint Smith, "How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America" (Little, Brown and Company, 2021)

87 hours 27 mins; November 09, 2025

Diane T. Feldman, "Borrowed Land, Stolen Labor, and the Holy Spirit: The Struggle for Power and Equality in Holmes County, Mississippi" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)

65 hours 9 mins; November 06, 2025

Amanda Laury Kleintop, "Counting the Cost of Freedom: The Fight Over Compensated Emancipation After the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2025)

60 hours 0 mins; October 27, 2025

Michael W. Twitty, "Recipes from the American South" (Phaidon Press, 2025)

41 mins; October 21, 2025

Kalle Kananoja, "Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

65 hours 50 mins; October 19, 2025

Michael T. Bertrand, "Southern History Remixed: On Rock 'n' Roll and the Dilemma of Race" (UP Florida, 2024)

64 hours 12 mins; October 17, 2025

Aaron Sheehan-Dean, "Fighting with the Past: How Seventeenth-Century History Shaped the American Civil War" (UNC Press, 2025)

55 mins; October 12, 2025

Claire Whitlinger, "Between Remembrance and Repair: Commemorating Racial Violence in Philadelphia, Mississippi" (UNC Press, 2020)

35 mins; October 10, 2025

Constance Bailey, "Conversations with Kiese Laymon" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)

67 hours 26 mins; September 24, 2025

Philis Barragán-Goetz, "Reading, Writing, and Revolution: Escuelitas and the Emergence of a Mexican American Identity in Texas" (U Texas Press, 2020)

52 mins; August 28, 2025

Uzma Quraishi, "Redefining the Immigrant South: Indian and Pakistani Immigration to Houston During the Cold War" (UNC Press, 2020)

70 hours 4 mins; August 20, 2025

Marlee S. Bunch, "Unlearning the Hush: Oral Histories of Black Female Educators in Mississippi in the Civil Rights Era"

64 hours 21 mins; August 19, 2025

Christopher M. Reali, "Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals" (U Illinois Press, 2022)

39 mins; August 17, 2025

Harriet Jacobs, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" (Norton, 2025)

72 hours 40 mins; August 16, 2025

Matthew R. Sparks and Olivia Sizemore, "Haint Country: Dark Folktales from the Hills and Hollers" (UP of Kentucky, 2024)

42 mins; August 12, 2025

Stephanie McCurry, "Women's War: Fighting and Surviving the Civil War" (Harvard UP, 2019)

72 hours 50 mins; August 09, 2025

Meredith McCarroll, "Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film" (U Georgia Press, 2018)

62 hours 14 mins; August 09, 2025

Arianne Edmonds, "We Now Belong to Ourselves: J. L. Edmonds, the Black Press, and Black Citizenship in America" (Oxford UP, 2025)

49 mins; July 30, 2025

Michael Vorenberg, "Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War" (Random House, 2023)

94 hours 56 mins; July 29, 2025

Charlotte Bentley, "New Orleans and the Creation of Transatlantic Opera, 1819–1859" (U of Chicago Press, 2022)

47 mins; July 25, 2025

Ahmad Greene-Hayes, "Underworld Work: Black Atlantic Religion Making in Jim Crow New Orleans" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)

61 hours 38 mins; July 18, 2025

Jeremy Black, "The Civil War" (Saint Augustine's Press, 2025)

29 mins; July 14, 2025

Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth, "Finding the Singing Spruce: Musical Instrument Makers and Appalachia's Mountain Forests" (West Virginia UP, 2023)

68 hours 24 mins; July 09, 2025

Julia Brock, "Closed Seasons: The Transformation of Hunting in the Modern South" (UNC Press, 2025)

51 mins; July 06, 2025

John Bardes, "The Carceral City: Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803-1930" (UNC Press, 2024)

46 mins; July 05, 2025

Bryan D. Jones, The Southern Fault Line: How Race, Class, and Region Shaped One Family's History" (Oxford UP, 2025)

58 mins; June 27, 2025

Kathryn L. Beasley, "The Proof Is in the Dough: Rural Southern Women, Extension, and Making Money" (University of Georgia Press, 2025)

71 hours 22 mins; June 22, 2025

Victoria Bynum, "Deep Roots, Broken Branches: A History and Memoir" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)

53 mins; June 01, 2025

Frank X Walker, "Load in Nine Times: Poems" (Liveright, 2024)

81 hours 30 mins; May 23, 2025

Carrie Helms Tippen, "Unpalatable: Stories of Pain and Pleasure in Southern Cookbooks" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)

74 hours 9 mins; May 17, 2025

Jennifer Lynn Gross, "Sisterhood of the Lost Cause: Confederate Widows in the New South" (LSU Press, 2025)

57 mins; May 16, 2025

No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice

53 mins; April 29, 2025

Frederick Knight, "Black Elders: The Meaning of Age in American Slavery and Freedom" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

71 hours 3 mins; April 28, 2025

Lesley J. Gordon, "Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

39 mins; April 09, 2025

Megan Hunt, "Southern by the Grace of God: Religion, Race, and Civil Rights in Hollywood's American South" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

47 mins; April 02, 2025

Michael Vorenberg, "Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War" (Knopf, 2025)

69 hours 13 mins; March 24, 2025

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, "Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2023)

62 hours 57 mins; March 14, 2025

"Steadfast Democrats" Five Years Later: A Conversation with Chryl N. Laird

64 hours 26 mins; March 10, 2025

Andrew C. Isenberg, "The Age of the Borderlands: Indians, Slaves, and the Limits of Manifest Destiny, 1790-1850" (UNC Press, 2025)

64 hours 40 mins; March 09, 2025

Jeffrey Thomas Perry, "Law in American Meetinghouses: Church Discipline and Civil Authority in Kentucky, 1780–1845" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)

43 mins; February 27, 2025

Benjamin Heber Johnson, "Texas: An American History" (Yale UP, 2025)

67 hours 21 mins; February 23, 2025

The Soundworld of Harriet Tubman

45 mins; February 17, 2025

The Vice President's Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn

69 hours 17 mins; February 13, 2025

Hiroshi Motomura, "Borders and Belonging: Toward a Fair, Realistic, and Sustainable Immigration Policy" (Oxford UP, 2024)

65 hours 9 mins; February 08, 2025

Anthony E. Kaye, "Nat Turner, Black Prophet: A Visionary History" (FSG, 2024)

51 mins; February 06, 2025

Derek W. Black, "Dangerous Learning: The South's Long War on Black Literacy" (Yale UP, 2025)

39 mins; January 30, 2025

Leonne M. Hudson, "Black Americans in Mourning: Reactions to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln" (Southern Illinois UP, 2024)

72 hours 34 mins; January 24, 2025

Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor, "America Under the Hammer: Auctions and the Emergence of Market Values" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

42 mins; January 24, 2025

Greg Childs on Seditious Conspiracy (EF, JP)

33 mins; January 23, 2025

Andrew Gomez, "Constructing Cuban America: Race and Identity in Florida's Caribbean South, 1868–1945" (U Texas Press, 2024)

44 mins; January 13, 2025

Jennie Lightweis-Goff, "Captive City: Meditations on Slavery in the Urban South" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

56 mins; January 07, 2025

Joshua D. Rothman, "The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America" (Basic Book, 2021)

47 mins; January 04, 2025

Carl Rollyson, "The Life of William Faulkner: The Past Is Never Dead, 1897-1934" (UVA Press, 2020)

59 mins; January 02, 2025

Kent Michael Shaw, "Missiology Reimagined: The Missions Theology of the Nineteenth-Century African American Missionary" (Pickwick, 2024)

45 mins; January 01, 2025

Randy M. Browne, "The Driver’s Story: Labor and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

64 hours 25 mins; December 31, 2024

Crystal R. Sanders, "A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs" (UNC Press, 2024)

36 mins; December 30, 2024

Susanna Ashton, "A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin" (New Press, 2024)

86 hours 2 mins; December 29, 2024

Stephen Jackson, "The Patchwork of World History in Texas High Schools" (Routledge, 2022)

63 hours 57 mins; December 18, 2024

Dianne Ashton and Melissa R. Klapper, "The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai" (NYU Press, 2024)

56 mins; December 15, 2024

Ana Lucia Araujo, "Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

71 hours 23 mins; December 12, 2024

Holly M. Karibo, "Rehab on the Range: A History of Addiction and Incarceration in the American West" (U Texas Press, 2024)

44 mins; December 11, 2024

Deondra Rose, "The Power of Black Excellence: HBCUs and the Fight for American Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2024)

57 mins; December 07, 2024

Maria Angela Diaz, "A Continuous State of War: Empire Building and Race Making in the Civil War–Era Gulf South" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

49 mins; November 30, 2024

Mary Ellen Curtin, "She Changed the Nation: Barbara Jordan's Life and Legacy in Black Politics" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

69 hours 57 mins; November 28, 2024

Beverly Tomek and Matthew J. Hetrick, "New Directions in the Study of African American Recolonization" (UP of Florida, 2017)

51 mins; November 24, 2024

Benjamin Barson, "Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons" (Wesleyan UP, 2024)

64 hours 44 mins; November 19, 2024

D. Andrew Johnson, "Enslaved Native Americans and the Making of Colonial South Carolina" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

39 mins; November 18, 2024

We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance

53 mins; November 14, 2024

Texas Book Festival 2024: November 16-17

30 mins; November 08, 2024

Aran Robert Shetterly, "Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City's Soul" (Amistad, 2024)

55 mins; November 06, 2024

Justene Hill Edwards, "Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank" (Norton, 2024)

40 mins; November 03, 2024

Ashli Quesinberry Stokes and Wendy Atkins-Sayre, "Hungry Roots: How Food Communicates Appalachia's Search for Resilience" (U South Carolina Press, 2024)

57 mins; October 31, 2024

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