While most every live-action film takes place in a specific location, the role of these places has not often been studied. In his new book The Imaginary Geography of Hollywood Cinema 1960-2000 (Intellect, 2017), Christian B. Long examines American films in the late 20th century to get a better understanding of locales to filmmaking. From Burt Reynolds’ use of the southern United States to the role of cities and suburbs, he shows why location can often add to the understanding of a movie.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is alternative medicine quackery? In the book Do You Believe in Magic? Vitamins, Supplements, and All Things Natural: A Look Behind the Curtain (Harper, 2014) (Harper Paperbacks, 2014),Paul A. Offit explores the legitimacy of the alternative medicine industry. In this book exposes some of the most popular therapies and how ineffective, expensive, and even deadly they are.

Dr. Offit investigates why this industry is unregulated and why so many people buy into alternative therapies that have no concrete evidence of working. He also explains the placebo effect and how some non-traditional methods can provide some good for patients. In the book Dr. Offit advises “There is no such thing as alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t.”

Jeremy Corr is the co-host of the hit Fixing Healthcare podcast along with industry thought leader Dr. Robert Pearl. A University of Iowa history alumnus, Jeremy is curious and passionate about all things healthcare, which means he’s always up for a good discussion! Reach him at [email protected].

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s 1999, and Ann is a guitar-playing thirty-year-old preschool teacher who dreams of having children even though she was born without a uterus. As Laura Catherine Brown's novel Made by Mary (C and R Press, 2018) opens, Ann and her husband Joel have been rejected as adoptive parents, and their plan to host and pay medical expenses for a pregnant teen goes terribly wrong. Then Ann’s 49-year-old mother Mary, a jewelry-designing, goddess-worshipping, lesbian hippie, offers to carry her daughter’s baby.

Brown’s debut novel, Quickening, was published by Random House and featured in Barnes & Noble’s "Discover Great New Writers" series. Her short stories have appeared in several literary journals, including The Bellingham Review, Monkeybicycle, Paragraphiti and Tin House; and in anthologies with Seal Press and Overlook Press. She received her BA from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and supports her writing habit by working as a graphic designer. Her writing education came through many writing workshops including the Bread Loaf Conference and the Sewanee Writers' Workshop where she was a fiction fellow. She has also taught yoga since 2003 and has been a yoga practitioner for almost 30 years.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonathan Fulton and Li-Chen Sim’s edited volume, External Powers and the Gulf Monarchies(Routledge, 2018) is a timely contribution to understanding the increasingly diversified relations between the Gulf’s six oil-rich monarchies and external powers. Traditionally reliant on the United States for their security, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain have become far more assertive in the wake of the 2011 popular Arab revolts and mounting doubts about the reliability of the United States. The newly found assertiveness of the Gulf states, despite the fact that they remain largely dependent for their security on the United States, have forged closer ties with a host of external powers, including China, Russia, India, Turkey, Brazil, Japan and South Korea. Coupled with shifts in the oil market as the United States emerges as the world’s largest producer and exporter, Asian nations topping the Gulf’s oil clients, and OPEC’s need to coordinate with non-OPEC producers like Russia to manipulate prices and production levels, external powers have seen significant business opportunities in the Gulf states’ effort to wean themselves off oil and diversify their economies. In doing so, they have benefitted from the US defence umbrella in the region at no cost to themselves. This volume breaks ground by looking at the Gulf’s expanding relations from the perspective of the various major external powers rather than that of the Gulf states themselves. In doing so, it makes a significant contribution to an understanding not only of the Gulf but also of the nuts and bolts in the global rebalancing of power the potential emergence of a new world order.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How and why did public opinions about gay marriage shift? In his new book, The Gay Marriage Generation: How the LGBTQ Movement Transformed American Culture (New York University Press, 2018), Peter Hart-Brinson explores this question and more through public opinion data and interviews with two generations of Americans. By using these mixed methods of analysis, Hart-Brinson dissects generational change of attitudes toward gay marriage through interpretive, historical, and demographic analyses. This book contributes to the literature by building upon previous work and moving the discussion of generational change and attitudes forward. Concepts that are important for the book include differences between orientation and attraction, a difference in how the two generations Hart-Brinson interviewed speak about gay marriage. This book is accessible to a wide audience and will be of interest to family and public opinion scholars, as well as anyone interested in public attitudes or gay marriage specifically. This book would be a great addition to any graduate level course on families, as it gives a solid background of the history of the LGBTQ movement as well as attitudes shifts toward gay marriage.

Sarah E. Patterson is a postdoc at the University of Western Ontario. You can tweet her at @spattersearch.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the themes of the era of Donald Trump is whiteness and white identity. From his first steps into the public eye, Trump used race to frame his positions and relevance. His presidency has been no different.

White identity, though, has remained a confusing topic to understand and precisely measure. What does it mean to hold the identity of the dominant racial group? Does white identity even exist? And if it does, what does it mean? Ashley Jardina answers dozens of questions like these in her timely new book, White Identity Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Jardina is assistant professor of political science at Duke University.

Where past research on whites' racial attitudes emphasized out-group hostility, Jardina brings into focus the significance of in-group identity and favoritism. White Identity Politics shows that disaffected whites are not just found among the working class; they make up a broad proportion of the American public - with major implications for political behavior, policy preferences, and the future of racial conflict in America.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Audra J. Wolfe, is a Philadelphia-based writer, editor and historian. Her book Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018) examines the post-World War II origins of the relationship between science and politics. Science’s self-concept as politically neutral and dedicated to empirical observation free of bias has often been at odds with its collaboration with the purposes of the Cold War state.  Wolfe demonstrates how an understanding of the differences between Western and Marxist science obscured the hidden political objectives. Scientists holding an apolitical view of science became unwitting agents of the U.S. war against the spread of communism led by the Central Intelligence Agency. Multiple scientific and cultural institutions engage in formal and informal cultural diplomacy, espionage, ideological laden science education in underdeveloped nations, and became activists for the human rights of scientists across the globe. Thus, they expanded U.S. influence abroad. In the aftermath of the Cold War, the utopian belief of science as operating in the service of intellectual freedom and internationalism continues even as it depends heavily on government funding for its existence.

This episode of New Books in American Studies was produced in cooperation with the Society for U.S. Intellectual History.

Lilian Calles Barger, www.lilianbarger.com, is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her recent book is entitled The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology, (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his new book, City Life: The New Urban Australia (NewSouth Publishing, 2018), Seamus O’Hanlon, an Associate Professor at Monash University, explores the economic, social, cultural, and demographic changes in Australian cities over the last four decades.  Globalization, de-industrialization and mass immigration have changed the makeup of major cities like Sydney and Melbourne as well as smaller, regional cities, and in turn, how the nation sees itself.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the decades following the Second World War, the British government increasingly turned to covert operations as a means of achieving their foreign policy goals. In Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 2018), Rory Cormac describes the establishment of covert action as a tool of foreign policy and the various ways in which it was applied. As he explains, covert action was initially seen as a tool of warfare the use of which was inappropriate in times of peace. This view changed with the burgeoning Cold War, as covert actions ranging from propaganda campaigns to direct political and economic manipulations of other countries were often viewed as effective means of achieving British foreign policy goals in ways less expensive and overtly confrontational than more traditional methods. Though the British employed such efforts cautiously in Europe, they were far less restrained in doing the territories of their former empire, believing that such efforts were a useful means of maintaining their influence throughout the world.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, cross-posted from from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Yael Schonbrun takes a dive into evolutionary psychology with professor and author, Dr. Steve Stewart-Williams. Steve’s recent book, The Ape That Understood the Universe: How Mind and Culture Evolve (Cambridge University Press, 2018) offers an opportunity to step away from our held understanding of human nature by taking on the alien perspective. Steve’s vast knowledge and wonderful sense of humor will give you new perspectives on emotions and drives, and new ideas to guide values and behaviors. This interview explores such topics as:

How Knowledge Of Our “Human Design” Can Help Us To Make Better Choices In Our Everyday LivesHow And Why Men And Women Differ In Our Desire For Casual Sex, Our Preferences In Partners, And In Our Preferred Levels Of Parental InvestmentHow Knowing That We Are Not Blank Slates Can Empower Us To Be More Effective In Building Value-Driven LivesSteve Stewart-Williams is an associate professor of psychology at Nottingham University, Malaysia Campus. His research explores how evolutionary biology can offer insights into the human mind and human behavior and he focuses, in particular, on sex differences and altruism. Steve has written two books, most recently The Ape That Understood the Universe. Go to Steve’s university website or personal website to find out more about his work.

Dr. Yael Schonbrun is a clinical psychologist in private practice, an assistant professor at Brown University, and a co-host of the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices