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Native America - A close-up

If a potential reader were to pick up my book, I like to believe that were they to turn to a random page, they would immediately be intrigued and drawn...

Kenneth L. Feder

The Angel in the Marketplace - In a nutshell

The Angel in the Marketplace is a biography of Jean Wade Rindlaub, a mid-century adwoman widely recognized on Madison Avenue for her success in marketing household products to American housewives,...

Ellen Wayland-Smith

Quarks to Culture - In a nutshell

Quarks to Culture involves a new, big picture perspective of the universe. Now, by universe I do not mean the astronomical cosmos that the word usually refers to. I mean...

Tyler Volk

Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination - In a nutshell

“Awake!” takes the British poet and painter, William Blake, at his word. He is well known for some of his sayings, such as <blockquote id="">“To see a World in a...

Mark Vernon

Work - In a nutshell

In contrast to earlier, more inclusive ideas about work, the Western conception of work was, by the end of the nineteenth century, reduced to gainful employment. Labor studies from liberal,...

Andrea Komlosy

Nashville - A close-up

The close-upThe cover of the book is truly beautiful. I was very happy with the press, and I had some creative input on the work that their wonderful designer did....

Heather Hendershot

Listed - A close-up

In Listed, I examined a few high-profile species where there appeared to be a clear conflict between conservation and economics: the red-cockaded woodpecker that knocked down a city, a pair...

Joe Roman

The Frankfurt School in Exile - The wide angle

Picturing American Modernity is concerned with understanding how new (and old) forms of mass entertainment such as moving pictures, world’s fairs and expositions, electric light displays, live reenactments such as...

Thomas Wheatland

The Story of Silver - In a nutshell

This book tells the story of the greatest commodities market manipulation of the 20th century – one that was perpetrated by the larger than life Nelson Bunker Hunt, who, at...

William L. Silber

Immaterial - The wide angle

During an early professional experience writing about artworks for a large public art museum, I had access to files containing fascinating correspondence between artists and the museum. I found diagrams, instructions...

Sherri Irvin

The Urban Spectator - In a nutshell

In The Urban Spectator, I look at how practices of media spectatorship, from the handheld camera to radio and television and the digital computer, have influenced the way Americans have...

Eric Gordon

Helen of Troy - A close-up

No one can write about Helen of Troy without thinking about the meaning of beauty.Consider the following statements about Helen’s beauty. Here is Guido delle Colonne writing in the thirteenth...

Laurie Maguire

States of War - The wide angle

Although I was trained as a historian I have always been interested in thinking about how contemporary problems animate historical work, and how historical understanding might address our own world.This...

David W. Bates

In Praise of Copying - The wide angle

The book is intended to be a primer on copying: each chapter examines some aspect of copying, from the core philosophical issue as to what a copy is, the history...

Marcus Boon

Dress, Dreams, and Desire - A close-up

The appearance of a book is very important to me. I was playing with different images, but none of them were quite right. I wanted a fashion image, but I also wanted it to say psychoanalysis. We hired a graphic designer to do things for the museum exhibitions, and we have a very good one who works under the name Sarko (Steven Sarkowski). He came up with this wild graphic lettering, which really...

Valerie Steele

A Prehistory of Ordinary People - In a nutshell

Multitasking isn’t something new to the twenty-first century: our species was designed for it! On the cognitive, linguistic, and social level, humans are highly adapted to doing and thinking about...

Monica L. Smith

Animal Ethos - The wide angle

I’ve long been interested in the moral underpinnings of human life on collective (shared) and personal (private) levels of experience. Indeed, the “ethics” of everyday life—or what Gregory Bateson referenced...

Lesley A. Sharp

Conservatism and Racism and Why in America They Are the Same - A close-up

A section of Chapter 8 on the ascendancy of Reagan to the presidency is titled “It’s the Ideology, Stupid.” President Reagan is a central character in the book, because he...

Robert C. Smith

Africa’s Struggle for Its Art - In a nutshell

From the 1960s onwards, European museum directors managed to hold off restitution claims from African countries for cultural property looted during the colonial era by strategically closing ranks and relying...

Bénédicte Savoy

Just Like Us - In a nutshell

Foreignness: how have Americans thought about it? Who are we, who are they, and how are we related to each other? These questions have underpinned all of American history, as...

Thomas Borstelmann

The Third City - In a nutshell

The Third City is an unconventional interpretation and explanation of contemporary Chicago.By exploring this iconic American city, I comment on broader trends in American urbanism. And what I mean by...

Larry Bennett

Essaying Shakespeare - A close-up

I guess I’d direct a browsing reader to my last essay: any writer is always most interested in his or her current work.A colleague, Margaret Ferguson, observed over twenty years...

Karen Newman

The World in Play - In a nutshell

The most compelling and unsettling moment for me in all of Victorian literature comes when Alice tumbles down the rabbit hole: that epistemological abyss at the heart of nineteenth-century modernity....

Matthew Kaiser

Autopsy of a Crime Lab - The wide angle

Forensic analysis is perhaps best known through its fictional portrayals in crime novels and television courtroom dramas: A crime occurs, law enforcement gathers evidence from the scene, and a team...

Garrett L. Brandon

States of War - In a nutshell

States of War examines an age-old conflict within constitutional legal states—to what extent can political authorities violate the law in times of crisis, emergency, or war?This question has haunted modern...

David W. Bates

Unending Capitalism - A close-up

My book invites readers to contemplate the larger significance of easily overlooked mass produced things. If they were to skim the book, they would encounter dozens of photos and illustrations...

Karl Gerth

Planetary Eating - In a nutshell

Planetary Eating is a very rigorous examination of the mechanisms of human–planet interactions, agriculture and food production, and consumption set in motion. While other books address the environmental problems associated...

Gidon Eshel

No Right Turn - The wide angle

When American historical writing entered its Humpty Dumpty phase, sometime around 1970, political and social history flew off in separate directions. In No Right Turn I bring them back together....

David T. Courtwright

Frantic Panoramas - The wide angle

My book joins an ongoing debate about how we should think about reason.In recent decades, literary scholars have been somewhat skeptical about the high value nineteenth-century intellectuals placed on different...

Nancy Bentley

A Synthesizing Mind - A close-up

As has become the practice these days, the book’s preface summarizes the book’s aims and content, as I have just done. No need to repeat those 1000 words here. But...

Howard Gardner

2073 Micro Interviews