As the global battle against COVID-19 stretches from weeks into months, many people are bound to their couches to binge-watch another show. The staff here at UPK is no different. As an opportunity to turn off the tube, may we suggest some analog matches for your digital favorites.
If you enjoyed Ozark’s story of the mob in Kansas City, you might like Wide-Open Town: Kansas City in the Pendergast Era. Edited by Diane Mutti Burke, Jason Roe, and John Herron, the book dives deep into the interwar period when political boss Tom Pendergast reigned and Kansas City was said to be “wide open” because of the vices available.
Did you get caught up in the Tiger King drama (Carol did it, right?)? You might also enjoy Dan Flores’s American Serengeti: The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains, which tells the history of when large cats and other big game naturally ruled the middle of the map.
If you can’t wait for Sunday evenings so you can watch two more episodes of ESPN’s brilliant The Last Dance, you might enjoy spending Monday throughSaturday reading Andrew Malan Milward’s Jayhawker: On History, Home, and Basketball. In this book that begins with one fan’s passion for a game, Milward takes a deep dive into sports culture, team loyalty, and a shared sense of belonging—and what these have to do with character, home, and history.
Speaking of basketball, if you enjoyed the beautiful story of a Navajo high school team in Basketball or Nothing, you might also (definitely, actually) enjoy Native Hoops: The Rise of American Indian Basketball, 1895–1970. The Native American passion for basketball extends far beyond the Navajo, whether on reservations or in cities, among the young and the old. Why basketball—a relatively new sport—should hold such a place in Native culture is the question Wade Davies takes up in Native Hoops.
Now that you’ve mastered every single recipe featured on The Great British Baking Show, you may also enjoy cooking something a bit closer to home. The New Kansas Cookbook: Rural Roots, Modern Table offers modern makeovers of Midwestern mainstays like sloppy joes and sweet custards to dishes influenced by a wide variety of world cuisines. These recipes bring Kansas tradition into the twenty-first century with a new burst of flavor and sense of fun.
As the natural world works itself back to normal, binge-watching Our Planet can be inspirational. The End of Sustainability: Resilience and the Future of Environmental Governance in the Anthropocene might be a good fit. The book examines how the continued invocation of sustainability in policy discussions ignores the emerging reality of the Anthropocene, which is creating a world characterized by extreme complexity, radical uncertainty, and unprecedented change.
If watching historical reenactments of religious compounds, as shown in Waco, is fun, you may also enjoy Rebecca Barrett-Fox’s stunning God Hates: Westboro Baptist Church, American Nationalism, and the Religious Right. The first full ethnography of this infamous presence on America’s Religious Right, her book situates the church’s story in the context of American religious history—and reveals as much about the uneasy state of Christian practice in our day as it does about the workings of the Westboro Church and Fred Phelps, its founder.
Are you binging old episodes of Veep? Maybe get some proper background of how the vice presidency has evolved with Joel Goldstein’s The White House Vice Presidency: The Path to Significance, Mondale to Biden. The book presents a comprehensive account of the vice presidency as the office has developed from Mondale to Biden. Or check out our upcoming book Do Running Mates Matter? The Influence of Vice Presidential Candidates in Presidential Elections. In the first book to put this question to a rigorous test, Christopher J. Devine and Kyle C. Kopko draw upon an unprecedented range of empirical data to reveal how, and how much, running mates influence voting in presidential elections.
Maybe you’ve been watching the president’s daily press conference and are interested in an explanation of how the executive branch got to this point. Check out The Lost Soul of the American Presidency: The Decline into Demagoguery and the Prospects for Renewal by Stephen F. Knott. Taking on an issue as timely as Donald Trump’s latest tweet and as old as the American republic, the distinguished presidential scholar documents the devolution of the American presidency from the neutral, unifying office envisioned by the framers of the Constitution into the demagogic, partisan entity of our day.
