book talk

In a nation whose Constitution purports to speak for “We the People,” too many of the stories that powerful Americans tell about law and society include only "We the Men". A long line of judges, politicians, and other influential scene setters have ignored women's struggles for equality or distorted them beyond recognition by wildly exaggerating […]

In the Nation's Capital, music and sports have played a central role in the lives of African Americans, often serving as a barometer of social conflict and social progress--for sports clubs and ball games, jam sessions and concerts, offered entertainment, enlightenment, and encouragement. At times, they have also offered a means of escape from the […]

The rise of China and its great power competition with the U.S. will be one of the defining issues of our generation. But to understand modern China, one has to understand the people who live there - and the way the Chinese state is trying to control them along lines of identity and free expression. […]

The Martin Luther King Jr. of popular memory vanquished Jim Crow in the South. But in this myth-shattering book, award-winning and New York Times bestselling historian Jeanne Theoharis argues that King's time in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago--outside Dixie--was at the heart of his campaign for racial justice. King of the North follows King as […]

During the Cold War, the Smolensk Archive held the only collection of Communist Party documents available to Western scholars, becoming the foundation for generations of scholarship on Soviet history. Crucibles of Power returns to the Smolensk Region with fresh eyes and fresh sources. Prizewinning historian Michael David-Fox traces the experiences of Smolensk residents between the interwar years […]

Prophecies that the dollar will lose its status as the world's dominant currency have echoed for decades--and are increasing in volume. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts claim that Bitcoin or other blockchain-based monetary units will replace the dollar. Foreign policy hawks warn that China's renminbi poses a lethal threat to the greenback. And sound money zealots predict that […]

The United States Congress has always been messy and far-from-august, but as Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater show here, in scorching, shocking detail, it has reached some kind of chaotic bottom. The anarchy that reigned over Congress's lower chamber in the wake of the January 6th attack on the Capitol Building--the election of serial liar […]

The American government was faced with an unprecedented challenge: where to house the nearly 400,000 German prisoners of war plucked from the battlefield and shipped across the Atlantic. On orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Department of War hastily built hundreds of POW camps in the United States. Today, traces of those camps--which once […]

The film Oppenheimer has awakened interest in this vital period of American history. Now, for the first time in a generation, Red Scare presents a narrative history of the anti-Communist witch hunt that gripped America in the decade following World War II. The cultural phenomenon, most often referred to as McCarthyism, was an outgrowth of the conflict between social […]