<p>Lessons Learned from Popular Culture. By Tim Delaney and Tim Madigan. SUNY Press, 2016. 274 pp. It&#8217;s been 46 years since Ray Browne (1922-2009) founded the Popular Culture Association, and 49 since he launched the Journal of Popular Culture. Yet, as uncomfortable as it might make a lot of scholars, pop culture remains suspect in &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2016/11/28/book-review-lessons-learned-from-popular-culture/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span

<p>Your Band Sucks: What I Saw at Indie Rock’s Failed Revolution (But Can No Longer Hear). Jon Fine. New York: Viking, 2015. &nbsp; Jon Fine’s memoir Your Band Sucks: What I Saw at Indie Rock’s Failed Revolution (But Can No Longer Hear) chronicles the author’s career as a second tier rock star and reflects on &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2016/11/21/book-review-why-your-band-sucks/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Book Review: Why Yo

<p>The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong. By David Orr. Penguin Press (2015). 184 pp.   In his 1998 biography of Andrew Wyeth, Richard Meryman tells of a time when Robert Frost contacted the eminent painter. Frost wanted Wyeth to paint his portrait, because Frost thought &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2016/11/14/book-review-new-look-at-robert-frost-poem/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reade

<p>Lizzie Borden on Trial: Murder, Ethnicity and Gender. Joseph A. Conforti. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2015. &nbsp; Joseph A. Conforti’s Lizzie Borden on Trial examines the infamous case of Lizzie Borden, who was accused of murdering her stepmother and father with an axe in 1892. Conforti offers a new perspective on the case by &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2016/11/07/lizzie-borden-on-trial-book-review/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="scree

<p>Baseball &amp; American Society: How a Game Reflects the American Experience. By Charles DeMotte. Cognella, 199 pages, 2014. &nbsp; SUNY Cortland professor Charles DeMotte set a daunting task for himself: present an overview of American history, juxtapose it with the development and evolution of baseball from the late 18th century to the present, and wrap &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2016/07/22/baseball-american-society-ground-rule-double/" class="more-link">Contin

<p>I need a current member of NEPCA who has a background in management and sports to review a a new book titled Sports Business Unplugged. Here&#8217;s its URL: http://syracuseuniversitypress.syr.edu/fall-2016/sports-business-unplugged.html If interested, please contact me: <a href="mailto:Weir.r@comcast.net">Weir.r@comcast.net</a></p>

<p>The Music of Multicultural America: Performance, Identity, and Community in the United States, Kip Lornell and Anne K. Rasmussen, eds. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2016.  Ponder this: Folk performances were born in isolation, but fiber optics, Wi-Fi signals, cable, and satellite dishes connect us, even though the United States remains the world&#8217;s most diverse &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2016/07/13/music-and-multicultural-america-book-review/" cl

<p>Bigger Than Ben-Hur: The Book, Its Adaptations, and Their Audiences. Edited by Barbara Ryan and Milette Shamir. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2016. . For many fans, the best-known film version of Ben-Hur is the 1959 film version, with its memorable chariot race between Charlton Heston as Ben-Hur and Stephen Boyd as Messala. For fans &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2016/04/14/book-review-bigger-than-ben-hur/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="scree

<p>Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 Adam Hochschild Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 464 pages, 2016  Humankind is often blind to irony, but history is not. I was just pages from finishing Adam Hochschild&#8217;s searing look at the Spanish Civil War when I came upon his comment that there was but a &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2016/03/16/spain-in-our-hearts-adam-hochschilds-call-to-remember/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class=

<p>Rock ‘N’ Roll Soccer: The Short Times and Fast Life of the North American Soccer League. By Ian Plenderleith, London: Icon Books Ltd., 2014. &nbsp; In his new book, Ian Plenderleith, a veteran soccer journalist, chronicles the North American Soccer League’s (NASL) history. Plenderleith&#8217;s monograph begins with the NASL’s origins. During the 1966 World Cup, &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2016/01/04/new-book-chronicles-north-american-soccer-league/" class="more-li

<p>Gene Basset’s Vietnam Sketchbook: A Cartoonist’s Wartime Perspective. By Thom Rooke. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2015.  Among the regrets of the passing of the newspaper age is the decline of news illustration. There are some places where digital cameras and video recorders can’t go—inside courtrooms, for instance. Although major metropolitan newspapers still employ sketch artists, &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2015/12/12/gene-bassets-vietnam-sketchbook/" c

<p>Daisy Turner’s Kin: An African American Family Saga. By Jane Beck. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2015. According the U.S. census, 96% of all Vermonters are Caucasian and just .05% are African American. Officially it&#8217;s the second whitest state in the Union (after Maine). Jane Beck’s superb new book, Daisy Turner’s Kin, suggests a &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2015/12/05/daisy-turners-kin-merges-oral-history-griot-traditions-and-professional-history/

<p>Hear My Sad Story: The True Tales That Inspired Stagolee, John Henry, and Other Traditional American Folksongs. Richard Polenberg. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. 304 pp. 978-0-5017-0002-6.  In 1966 Phil Ochs remarked, “Before the days of television and mass media, the folksinger was a traveling newspaper spreading tales through music…. Every newspaper headline is &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2015/11/21/hear-my-sad-story-book-review/" class="more-link">

<p>9/11 and the Visual Culture of Disaster, by Thomas Stubblefield, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015.  Editor&#8217;s Note: This book won NEPCA&#8217;s 20014 Peter Rollins Prize for the best new work on popular/American culture. In his first book, Thomas Stubblefield, an art historian at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, explores the importance of visual representations &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2015/11/08/book-review-911-and-the-visual-cul

<p>The Journal of Sport History is seeking to expand its pool of scholars for book reviews. The Journal of Sport History, which is published three times a year, includes approximately 30 book reviews per issue. We invite interested reviewers to send a brief message to Book Review Editor Jerry Gems at grgems@noctrl.edu that includes a &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2015/11/05/journal-of-sport-history-seeks-book-reviewers/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="

<p>The News Sorority: Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour—and the (Ongoing, Imperfect, Complicated) Triumph of Women in TV News. By Sheila Weller. New York: Penguin Press, 2014. It should come as no surprise that people who seem warm, friendly, strong, confident, courageous, and even admirable on the television screen are—in their lives off the set—often &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2015/11/01/book-review-the-news-sorority/" class="more-link">Continue read

<p>he following reviews were posted to the H-Net web site between 14 Sep 2015 and 21 Sep 2015. Reviewed for H-War by Adam Rock Stagg, J. C. A..  _War of 1812: Conflict for a Continent, The_. Cambridge Essential Histories Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.  216 pp.  $24.99, ISBN 978-0-521-72686-3. <a href="http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.php?id=36774" rel="nofollow">http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.php?id=36774</a> Reviewed for H-CivWar by Sh

<p>Star Trek and History. Edited by Nancy R. Reagin. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2014.  Confession: I haven&#8217;t watched television since 2005, the year Star Trek Enterprise was canceled. I didn&#8217;t even like that show very much, but here&#8217;s my second confession: &#8220;My name is Rob and I&#8217;m a Trekker.&#8221; (That&#8217;s &#8220;Trekker,&#8221; a fanboy status that&#8217;s quite &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2015/08/26/star-trek-and-history-needs-sharper-fo

<p>Heather L. Dichter, Andrew L. Johns, eds. Diplomatic Games: Sport, Statecraft, and International Relations since 1945. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014. 496 pp. $40.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8131-4564-8. Reviewed by J. Simon Rofe (SOAS, University of London) Published on H-Diplo (July, 2015) Commissioned by Seth Offenbach “Sport has the power to change the world.” Nelson &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2015/07/14/diplomatic-games-review-from-h-sport/" class=

<p>(Re)Presenting Wilma Rudolph. By Rita Liberti and Maureen M. Smith. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2015. &nbsp; Few human endeavors so thoroughly blur reality, legend, and imposed meaning as sports. The sports hype machine constantly bombards the public with instant stars, but what do we know about them beyond the carefully crafted profiles with which &hellip; <a href="https://nepca.blog/2015/07/13/important-new-look-at-wilma-rudolph/" class="more-link">Continue