Results by title

In the late 1980s, the introduction of crack cocaine and easy access to guns led to the emergence of the street gang culture and an explosion of gun violence in Boston. Black and Latino youth were both perpetrators and victims of firearm violence as the city grappled with a staggering number of shootings and homicides. Officers within the Boston Police Department struggled to find new and creative ways to combat the growing violence and neutralize gang influence. Paul Joyce was one of those officers.

Throughout his extensive career with the Boston Police, Joyce was at the forefront of the Department’s anti-gang and youth violence initiatives, including during the height of gang and gun violence in the late 1980s through early 1990s. Later in his career, after thirty-one years in policing, Joyce transitioned to academia as a criminologist, seeking to better understand the lives of the gang members he had encountered during his time as an officer. He interviewed thirty Black and Latino men who witnessed and led the emergence of the street gang phenomenon in Boston. Joyce’s strong relationship with community leaders led to the recruitment of the men, who ultimately entrusted him with their life stories and their inner worlds. Using the men’s own words to describe the tragedies they endured, the crimes they committed, and the penalties they paid, Joyce now shares their stories of life before, during, and after gang membership.

Joyce examines the influences that motivated the men toward joining gangs, their gang experiences, and the turning points that shaped their paths later in life, whether leading to desistance from or continued persistence in criminal behavior. Joyce explores their lives from childhood into adulthood, providing a deep analysis of the factors that influenced the entire trajectory of gang members’ lives. By utilizing this life-course approach, Joyce adds to the discourse regarding what influences a gang member’s ability or inability to transition out of criminality and the gang life.

This uniquely candid look at gang membership, humanized by the perspectives of the men who experienced it, provides invaluable insight into the complex interplay of the social, cultural, and personal factors that shape individuals’ life courses. This, in turn, has important implications regarding the types of outside interventions that would be the most effective in making a positive difference in the lives of current and former gang members.

The recent flashpoint of Colin Kaepernick taking a knee renews a long tradition of athlete-activists speaking out against racism, injustice, and oppression. Like Kaepernick, Jackie Robinson, Paul Robeson, Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, Tommie Smith, and John Carlos—among many others, of all races, male and female, pro and amateur—all made the choice to take a side to command public awareness and attention rather than “shut up and play,” as O. J. Simpson, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods did. Using their celebrity to demand change, these activists inspired fans but faced great personal and professional risks in doing so. It Was Always a Choice traces the history and impact of these decisive moments throughout the history of U.S. sports.

David Steele identifies the resonances and antecedents throughout the twentieth century of the choices faced by athletes in the post-Kaepernick era, including the advance of athletes’ political organizing in the era of activism following the death of George Floyd. He shows which athletes chose silence instead of action—“dropping the baton,” as it were—in the movement to end racial inequities and violence against Black Americans. The examples of courageous athletes multiply as LeBron James, Megan Rapinoe and the activist-athletes of the NBA, WNBA, and NFL remain committed to fighting daily and vibrantly for social change.

One union, many voices—Alabama coal miners and the century-long fight for justice.

Much of Alabama's labor history is written in its coal fields. This book records the critical contribution that District 20 of the United Mine Workers of America played in the state's labor movement through its strong stands on such issues as child labor, public education, and inter-racial unions. 

Standing at the cutting edge of social and political history, these essays cover five periods over a century of union activity: the emergence of a militant labor force during mining's formative years; the World War I era, when mine operators tried to divide black and white labor; the increasing role of the state in labor relations during the interwar years; rapid changes in the union between 1942 and 1975; and the 1977-79 strike, the largest in the United Mine Workers' history. 

Through historic photographs and depictions of living and working conditions, contributors Edwin L. Brown, Colin J. Davis, Daniel Letwin, Brian M. Kelly, Peter Alexander, Glenn Feldman, and Robert H. Woodrum portray the world that miners, both black and white, made. In a state where racial segregation was the norm,even the earliest District 20 contract proposals demanded equal pay for equal work regardless of color. It Is Union and Liberty shows that the UMW in Alabama stands apart from perceptions of southern trade unionism as exclusionary and racially fragmented. It sheds light on an important segment of the state's labor history and is a testament to District 20 on its centennial celebration.
 

2025 John G. Cawelti Award for the Best Textbook/Primer, Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA)
2025 Longlist, Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award

How changing depictions of pregnancy in comedy from the start of the twentieth century to the present show an evolution in attitudes toward women’s reproductive roles and rights.

Some of the most groundbreaking moments in American film and TV comedy have centered on pregnancy, from Lucille Ball’s real-life pregnancy on I Love Lucy, to the abortion plot on Maude; Murphy Brown’s controversial single motherhood; Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pregnancy in Junior; or the third-trimester stand-up special Ali Wong: Baby Cobra.

In the first book-length study of pregnancy in popular comedy, Victoria Sturtevant examines the slow evolution of pregnancy tropes during the years of the Production Code; the sexual revolution and changing norms around nonmarital pregnancy in the 1960s and ‘70s; and the emphasis on biological clocks, infertility, adoption, and abortion from the 1980s to now.

Across this history, popular media have offered polite evasions and sentimentality instead of real candor about the physical and social complexities of pregnancy. But comedy has often led the way in puncturing these clichés, pointing an irreverent and satiric lens at the messy and sometimes absurd work of gestation. Ultimately, Sturtevant argues that comedy can reveal the distortions and lies that treat pregnancy as simple and natural “women’s work,” misrepresentations that rest at the heart of contemporary attacks on reproductive rights in the US.

An incantation of strength and solace for persisting in twenty-first-century America

“History doesn’t repeat, it rhymes.” In his sweeping third collection, Charleston brings a poet’s ear for echo and rhythm to bear on American history and life after 2016. For Charleston, these rhymes cut two ways: the long tradition of American racism and fascism, and the steady pulse of Black persistence. The collection’s titular invocation frames each poem, at times an oratory to rally a crowd, in other moments a private prayer whispered as the speaker gathers himself to face another day. Charleston insists that should we cede memory of our national biography—whether to repression or indifference—we will witness the country’s dissolution into something unrecognizable to many, yet all too familiar to its most marginalized people. But with each reiteration and riff, he also invokes a tenuous hope—that if we summon an American history of Black resistance, we might still make a more perfect union.

In order to be confirmed to a lifetime appointment on the federal bench, all district and circuit court nominees must appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a confirmation hearing. Despite their relatively low profile, these lower court judges make up 99 percent of permanent federal judgeships and decide cases that relate to a wide variety of policy areas. To uncover why senators hold confirmation hearings for lower federal court nominees and the value of these proceedings more generally, the authors analyzed transcripts for all district and circuit court confirmation hearings between 1993 and 2012, the largest systematic analysis of lower court confirmation hearings to date. The book finds that the time-consuming practice of confirmation hearings for district and circuit court nominees provides an important venue for senators to advocate on behalf of their policy preferences and bolster their chances of being re-elected. The wide variation in lower court nominees’ experiences before the Judiciary Committee exists because senators pursue these goals in different ways, depending on the level of controversy surrounding a nominee. Ultimately, the findings inform a (re)assessment of the role hearings play in ensuring quality judges, providing advice and consent, and advancing the democratic values of transparency and accountability.

I'll Tell You a Tale is a garland of some of Frank Dobie's best writing, put together by Isabel Gaddis, one of his former students at the University of Texas. The tales included are those the author himself liked best, and he even rewrote some of them especially for this anthology. Ben Carlton Mead has contributed 32 original line drawings to illustrate the stories.

These tales spring from the soil and folklore of our land; but more than this, they make the readers contemporary with the times, filling us with the wonder of something past and yet still with us. They are arranged topically into sections whose titles speak for them: "The Longhorn Breed," "Mustangs and Mustangers," "The Saga of the Saddle," "Characters and Happenings of Long Ago," "Animals of the Wild," "In Realms of Gold," and "Ironies."