#ScholarSunday Thread 223

Shared on May 4, 2025

Back in Charlottesville this weekend for a solemn yet celebratory occasion, but y’all know the #ScholarSunday threads carry on, so here’s my 223^rd of great writing & work, podcast eps, new & forthcoming books from the last week. Add more below, share widely, & enjoy, all!

First, I have to re-share my recent @SatEvePost Considering History column on the amazing man whose life & passing we celebrated this weekend, my Dad Steve Railton:

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2025/03/considering-history-a-tribute-to-steve-railton-and-the-best-of-american-education/

Lots of great work from Post colleagues this week too, including Nancy Rubin Stuart on Civil War glass ceiling-buster Mary Edwards Walker:

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2025/04/civil-war-glass-ceiling-buster-mary-edwards-walker/

Nancy Mueller wrote for the Post on words from George Washington’s Rules for Civility that we could better live by in 2025:

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2025/04/spit-not-in-the-fire-words-to-live-by-from-the-father-of-our-country/

Fun Post piece from Will Mari on our nostalgia for lost computer sounds of the 1990s & 2000s:

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2025/04/the-nostalgia-for-lost-computer-sounds-of-the-1990s-and-2000s/

& some great Spring reading recommendations here from the Post’s editors:

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2025/04/what-were-reading-this-spring/

Turning to other great public scholarly writing from the week, here’s Gerald Early for LitHub on Black baseball in the Reconstruction era:

https://lithub.com/how-baseball-shaped-black-communities-in-reconstruction-era-america/

Matthew Novosad wrote for All Things Liberty on the story of a Connecticut military company at the Revolutionary War Battle of Saratoga:

https://allthingsliberty.com/2025/04/rebel-yankeys-anatomy-of-a-connecticut-militia-company-at-saratoga/

Fun stuff from David Johnson for Indiana Public Media’s Nighlights column on a forgotten gem for Duke Ellington’s Mercer Records label:

https://indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights/diy-by-ellington-duke-ellingtons-mercer-record-label.php

Lots of coverage this week of the 50^th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, including Michael G. Vann for Jacobin:

https://jacobin.com/2025/04/vietnam-war-defeat-50-years

Excellent piece for the New York Times from Damien Cave on how Vietnam War photography changed America (gift link below):

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/world/asia/vietnam-war-photography-impact.html?unlocked_article_code=1.EE8.Mb-3.hcTY7izSw2k9&smid=url-share

& for my AmericanStudies blog this week, I analyzed how cultural works have represented the end of the war, in its own era & ever since (more coverage of the 50^th anniversary later in this thread):

https://americanstudier.blogspot.com/2025/04/april-28-2025-ending-vietnam-war.html

Turning to current events, Rick Baldoz wrote for The Conversation on the evolution of politically motivated deportations in our history & present:

https://theconversation.com/from-the-chinese-exclusion-act-to-pro-palestinian-activists-the-evolution-of-politically-motivated-deportations-254683?utm_content=buffer2c901&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky&utm_campaign=buffer

Excellent roundtable conversation for Hammer and Hope magazine on the state of Black politics & antiracist activism in the age of Trump 2.0:

https://hammerandhope.org/forums/george-floyd-black-politics

Speaking of Trump 2.0, Clio & the Contemporary shared a series of four excellent pieces contextualizing our extreme new administration, including Sarah King on dissent & patriotism under Nixon & Trump (& featuring my book Of I Thee Sing):

https://clioandthecontemporary.com/2025/04/30/to-root-against-your-country-crisis-dissent-and-patriotism-under-nixon-and-trump/

Brett Olmsted wrote for the Clio series on how Trump has proposed version 3.0 of a bracero immigration program:

https://clioandthecontemporary.com/2025/04/30/trump-proposes-bracero-program-3-0/

Here’s Abby Whitaker for the Clio series on Trump’s showdown with PBS, NPR, & the idea of federally funded public media:

https://clioandthecontemporary.com/2025/05/01/dont-kill-big-bird-the-trump-administrations-showdown-with-pbs-and-npr/

& finally for the Clio series, here’s Dakoda Trithara on a foreign policy assessment of Trump 2.0’s first 100 days:

https://clioandthecontemporary.com/2025/04/30/first-100-days-trump-2-0-foreign-policy/

Really vital work from Marisa Kabas for The Handbasket, sharing the stories & voices of queer intelligence officers targeted by the administration’s top secret chat leak:

https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/queer-trans-intel-chat-leak-chris-rufo

& speaking of leaked chats, Ben Smith wrote for Semafor on the Trump admin group chats that changed America:

https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-that-changed-america

Finally, three important pieces for the AHA’s Perspectives blog this week, including Jonathan Coopersmith & Arthur Daemmrich on historians as policy professionals:

https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/the-road-not-yet-taken/

For the next in AHA President Ben Vinson’s Fabulous Moments series, he was in conversation with OUP VP & editor Nancy Toff:

https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/fabulous-moments/

& I really enjoyed this AHA report on how undergraduate History majors describe their experiences & goals:

https://www.historians.org/teaching-learning/undergraduate-education/in-their-own-words/

Lots of important new podcast episodes this week, including Kahlil Greene for his History Can’t Hide newsletter in conversation with Shantrelle P. Lewis on hoodoo, Black spirituality, Sinners, & more:

Hoodoo, Vodou, and more: The History of African Traditional Religions (VIDEO PODCAST)

Episode 17 of the Kickass Women of History podcast features Katherine Hobbs on the writer & reformer Caroline Norton:

https://www.kickasswomenofhistory.com/podcast/episode/213d7de2/17-caroline-norton-writer-and-reformer

Season 3 of the Mainely History podcast is underway with an episode featuring Jason Newton on industrial scale logging in Maine’s northern forests:

https://mainelyhistory.podbean.com/e/logging/

The latest episode of the Shipwrecks and Seadogs podcast features author & explorer Jennifer Sellitti on an 1850s maritime hit-and-run:

https://www.shipwrecksandseadogs.com/the-adriatic-affair-a-maritime-hit-and-run/

While the latest episode of the Civics & Coffee podcast features an interview with Robert B. O’Connor on his new WWII historical novel Jeep Show:

https://www.civicsandcoffee.com/jeep-show-with-robert-b-oconnor/

John Fugelsang & Corey Brettschneider’s The Oath & the Office podcast has two excellent recent episodes in this week’s thread, including a conversation with Dahlia Lithwick on saving democracy:

& also check out this Oath & the Office episode on Trump’s first 100 days:

For the Hammer Museum’s Hammer Forum 2025, Rick Hasen interviewed Elie Mystal about his new book Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America:

https://channel.hammer.ucla.edu/video/1945/author-elie-mystal-on-bad-law

While for her Freedom Over Fascism podcast, Stephanie G. Wilson interviewed Civics Center CEO Laura Brill on voter pre-registration for high schoolers:

& the awesome folks at the If Books Could Kill podcast featured a timely book this week, Mel Robbins’ The Let Them Theory:

Four great pieces for Time’s Made By History blog to share this week, including Christopher W. Calvo on the 19^th century thinker who touted tariffs:

https://time.com/7277976/henry-careytouted-tariffs/

Carla Cavasco wrote for Made By History on the history that reminds us why regulation of raw milk is necessary:

https://time.com/7280534/why-raw-milk-regulation-is-necessary/

& two Made By History pieces this week on the 50^th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, including Emilie Raymond on how we remember the war:

https://time.com/7279402/remember-vietnam-war-50-years-later/

While Andrew Bellisari wrote for Made By History on how we have oversimplified the war’s histories:

https://time.com/7281076/oversimplified-history-vietnam-war/

Over at the AAIHS’s Black Perspectives blog, Jemar Tisby & Keisha N. Blain have shared the excellent Sinners syllabus:

https://www.aaihs.org/the-sinners-movie-syllabus/

& speaking of the folks at AAIHS, they’re now accepting submissions for their 2026 Pauli Murray Book Prize:

https://www.aaihs.org/accepting-submissions-for-the-2026-pauli-murray-book-prize/

Speaking of excellent scholarly books, Carly Goodman’s Dreamland: America’s Immigration Lottery in an Age of Restriction celebrated its 2-year anniversary this week (h/t Tracy Slater):

https://uncpress.org/book/9781469673042/dreamland/

Out now is Andrew S. Berish’s Hating Jazz: A History of Its Disparagement, Mockery, & Other Forms of Abuse from the University of Chicago Press:

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo241107617.html

Forthcoming next week from Haymarket Books is Rebecca Solnit’s No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain:

https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2517-no-straight-road-takes-you-there

Also forthcoming & now available for pre-order from UNC Press is Anna Ioanes’ Painful Forms: Aesthetic Violence in American Literature & Art, 1945-2001:

https://uncpress.org/book/9781469688947/painful-forms/

& likewise available for pre-order from MIT Press is Eternal Current Events, early writings from Chris Marker (& translated by Jackson B. Smith):

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781965874004/eternal-current-events/

Four reviews to share this week as well, including Hooper Schultz for the USIH blog on Marie-Amélie George’s Family Matters: Queer Households & the Half-Century Struggle for Legal Recognition:

https://s-usih.org/2025/04/hoope-schultz-on-marie-amelie-georges-family-matters-queer-households-and-the-half-century-struggle-for-legal-recognition/

For the AAUP’s Academe journal, Kevin R. McClure reviewed Barrett J. Taylor’s Wrecked: Deinstitutionalization & Partial Defenses in State Higher Education Policy:

https://www.aaup.org/article/understanding-states-dismantling-higher-education

For LitHub, Alok A. Khorana reviewed William Dalrymple’s The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World:

https://lithub.com/a-deeply-globalized-ancient-world-on-william-dalrymples-the-golden-road/

& for History Today, Jay Roszman reviewed Padraic X. Scanlan’s Rot: A History of the Irish Famine:

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/rot-history-irish-famine-padraic-x-scanlan-review

Over at her History in the Margins blog, Pamela D. Toler talked with Rick Hutto about his latest book The Countess & the Nazis: An American Family’s Private War:

https://www.historyinthemargins.com/2025/04/29/the-countess-and-the-nazis-a-q-a-with-richard-jay-hutto/

On that note, gonna end with a bunch of great newsletters & blog posts as usual, including Steve Vladeck for his One First newsletter on why there’s no lawful way to “deport” US citizens:

146. Denaturalization and Expatriation

For the April 29^th installment of her Letters from an American newsletter, Heather Cox Richardson wrote about the concept of a president’s first 100 days:

April 29, 2025

While for his Campaign Trails newsletter, Kevin M. Kruse reviewed the first 100 days of this most extreme presidential administration ever:

https://campaign-trails.ghost.io/the-worst-hundred-days/

Important piece from Charlotte Clymer for her newsletter on why the question of what we owe young men never has a good answer:

What Exactly Do We Owe Young Men?

Over at his Freedom Papers newsletter, Etienne Toussaint has shared the second installment in his three-part series on his longform essay on the policing of Black America, The Sound of the Beast:

The Sound of the Beast

I really enjoyed Kevin M. Levin’s Civil War Memory newsletter piece on finding a place in the complexity & confusion of the past:

Finding a Place in the Complexity and Confusion of the Past

Continuing with newsletters beyond current events, check out the latest Pasts Imperfect, featuring an open-access article from & interview with ancient historian Seth Bernard on slavery, prosperity, & inequality in Roman Pompeii:

Pasts Imperfect (5.1.25)

For Chris Yogerst’s Adventures in the Archive newsletter, he wrote about why preserving Hollywood’s history is also good business:

Honoring Hollywood’s History

For Matt Eaton’s Matt’s History Ephemera newsletter, he analyzed how Germans & Germany have been portrayed in wartime entertainments:

Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans

I really enjoyed John Warner’s piece for the Engaged Education newsletter on the 50^th anniversary of Free to Be…You and Me:

Free to Be You and Me Turns 50

& Vaughn Joy concluded her phenomenal five-week Capra-corn series at her Review Roulette newsletter with a review of American Madness:

Part V of Corn: Helping the Whole Circle

Finally, I’m excited to share the latest issue of King’s College’s Zeal magazine, edited by Robin Field & featuring a piece of mine on takeaways from my 15 years as a public scholar:

https://zeal.kings.edu/zeal/article/view/92

PS. I’m sure I missed plenty as ever, especially with my divided time & focus this week, so please share more writing & work, podcasts, new & forthcoming books, especially your own, below. Thanks, happy reading, listening, & learning, & May it be a restful & rejuvenative month for us all!