Fall 2025 University Press Recommendations

All past and future seasonal recommendation lists can be found here.

Fall 2025 Book Recommendations by . . .

General Interest
World Cultural Studies
American Studies
Ancient / Medieval / Early Modern
SF / Fantasy / Horror Studies

Some notes about my recommendations:

• The lists below are organized alphabetically by the author surname.

• These recommendations reflect my personal interests as well as my scholarly ones, and as such cannot wholly capture all the many hundreds of interesting, worthwhile, and significant books put out by university presses this season.

General Interest

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Baring, Vulgar Marxism: Revolutionary Politics and the Dilemmas of Worker Education, 1891–1931 (Chicago)

Bell, The Perilous Deep: A Supernatural History of the Atlantic (Reaktion)

Blair, Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World (Princeton)

Dunn, The Pink Scar: How Nazi Persecution Shaped the Struggle for LGBTQ+ Rights (Penn State)

Epstein, Climate Change, Social Inequality, and Doom (Johns Hopkins)

Feder, Native America: The Story of the First Peoples (Princeton)

Heggeness, Swiftynomics: How Women Mastermind and Redefine Our Economy (California)

MacDonald, The Art of Memes in Feminist Digital Culture (Ohio State)

Matheson, Post-Weird: Fragmentation, Community, and the Decline of the Mainstream (Rutgers)

Miller-Idress, Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism (Princeton)

Parson, Punk Anarchism: An Anti-Politics of Resistance (Bloomsbury)

Plaut, Unbroken Chains: A 5,000-Year History of African Enslavement (Hurst)

Pooley, Discovering the Okapi: Western Science, Indigenous Knowledge, and the Search for a Rainforest Enigma (Johns Hopkins)

Singerman, Unrefined: How Capitalism Reinvented Sugar (Chicago)

Sinykin and Winant, ed., Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton)

Sumner, Heroes of the Gael: A History of Fionn and the Fianna (Princeton)

Szetela, That Book Is Dangerous! How Moral Panic, Social Media, and the Culture Wars Are Remaking Publishing (MIT)

Wellington, Mixtapes and MTV: Triumphs and Tragedies in 1980s Music (Monash)

Zeitzoff, No Option But Sabotage: The Radical Environmental Movement and the Climate Crisis (Oxford)

World Cultural Studies

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Abbott, Unceded: Understanding British Columbia’s Colonial Past and Why It Matters Now (British Columbia)

Akhiate, The Amazigh Revival: A Memoir of Its Birth and Progression (Georgetown)

Chan, Postcolonial Global Justice (Princeton)

Chung, The Sensational Proletarian: Leftist Cultures in Colonial Korea (Stanford)

De Lorenzi, Feasting on History: Ethiopia and the Orientalists (Columbia)

Florea, Bukovina: The Life and Death of an East European Borderland (Princeton)

Jeppie, Writing Timbuktu: The Book in West African History (Princeton)

Kent, British Settler Colonialism since 1530: Indigenous Peoples in an Imperial World (Bloomsbury)

Kovacevic, KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union (Toronto)

Newitt, Cabo Verde and the Creole South Atlantic: A New History (Hurst)

Nikkel, Founding Folks: An Oral History of the Winnipeg Folk Festival (Manitoba)

O’Halloran, East of Empire: Egypt, India, and the World between the Wars (Stanford)

Roebuck, Japan Reborn: Race and Eugenics from Empire to Cold War (Columbia)

Rollwagen, The Scramble for the Teenage Dollar: Creating the Youth Market in Mid-Century Canada (British Columbia)

Sabastian, Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva (Harvard)

Smith, Atlas’s Bones: The African Foundations of Europe (Chicago)

Smits, The Ryukyu Islands: A New History from the Stone Age to the Present (Chicago)

Thum, Islamic China: An Asian History (Harvard)

Tremlett, El Generalisimo: A Biography of Francisco Franco (Oxford)

Udel, Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children’s Literature (Princeton)

Watkins, Indigenizing Japan: Ainu Past, Present, and Future (Arizona)

Wyett, Quixotic Authority: The Female Quixote and the Woman Writer, Lennox to Austen (Delaware)

American Studies

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Adamson, Projecting America: The Epic Western and National Mythmaking in 1920s Hollywood (Oklahoma)

Barefoot, The Drive-In: Outdoor Cinema in 1950s America and the Popular Imagination (Bloomsbury)

Boxer, Mormon Settler Colonialism: Inventing the Lamanite (Oklahoma)

Brown, The Novel and the Blank: A Literary History of the Book Trades in Eighteenth-Century British America (Johns Hopkins)

Cash, The Forgotten Debate: The Korean War and the Roots of America’s Ideological Divisions (Kansas)

Chad, Christmas in Yiddish Tradition: The Untold Story (NYU)

Davis, Keep Your Ear to the Ground: A History of Punk Fanzines in Washington, DC (Georgetown)

Earhart, Digital Literary Redlining: African American Anthologies, Digital Humanities, and the Canon (Stanford)

Echols, Black Power, White Heat: From Solidarity Politics to Radical Chic (Oxford)

Ezell, For a Spell: Sissie Collectivism and Radical Witchery in the Southeast (North Carolina)

Farrell, Intrepid Girls: The Complicated History of the Girl Scouts of the USA (North Carolina)

Flint, We Were Promised: How an Appalachian Grandmother Fought a Corporate Giant (Kentucky)

Gallagher, Black Wests: Reshaping Race and Place in Popular Culture (Oklahoma)

Gorup, The Counterrevolutionary Shadow: Race, Democracy, and the Making of the American People (Kansas)

Grace, The Intelligence Intellectuals: Social Scientists and the Making of the CIA (Georgetown)

Hattori, The Age of Youth: American Society and the Two World Wars (Cambridge)

Husock, The Projects: A New History of Public Housing (NYU)

Koeth, Crabgrass Catholicism: How Suburbanization Transformed Faith and Politics in Postwar America (Chicago)

Leng, Pleasure, Play, and Politics: A History of Humor in U.S. Feminism (Nebraska)

Leonard, Menace of Our Time: The Long War Against American Communism (Rutgers)

Lew-Williams, John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life under American Racial Law (Harvard)

Lewis, Un-Americanism: A History of the Battle to Control an Idea (Florida)

Ribak, Crude Creatures: Confronting Representations of Black People in Yiddish Culture (NYU)

Roche, The Conservative Frontier: Texas and the Origins of the New Right (Texas)

Shever, Making Our Beasts: Paleontology in the United States (California) [OA]

Winberg, Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics (North Carolina)

Ancient / Medieval / Early Modern

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Cline, Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed (Princeton)

Kaplan, The Ethiopians: Lost Civilizations (Reaktion)

Leonard, Revolution: Modern Uprisings in Ancient Time (Chicago)

Marcus, How the West Became Antisemitic: Jews and the Formation of Europe, 800–1500 (Princeton)

Meyer, To Rule All under Heaven: A History of Classical China, from Confucius to the First Emperor (Oxford)

Rapoport, Becoming Arab: The Formation of Arab Identity in the Medieval Middle East (Princeton)

Young, Silence of the Gods: The Untold History of Europe’s Last Pagan Peoples (Cambridge)

SF / Fantasy / Horror Studies

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Anderson, Afrofuturism and World Order (Ohio State)

Anjirbag, Appropriated Tales: Race and the Disney Fairy-Tale Mode (Wayne State)

Baetens and Frey, The Look of the 1960s: Barbarella and Pulp Pop Comics (Texas)

Byrd, Indigenomicon: American Indians, Video Games, and the Structures of Dispossession (Duke)

Cole, Fear the Future: Dystopia and Political Imagination in the Twentieth Century (Michigan)

Crawford, Killer Bodies: The Rise and Fall of “Bad Girl” Comics (Rutgers)

Díaz-Faes, Tales for Fairies: Tracing Queer Fairy-Tale Retellings (Wayne State)

Farnell, Science Fiction and Contemporary British Theatre (Bloomsbury)

Fee, Fantastic Spaces: Irish Cinema and the Supernatural (Syracuse)

Franck, The Ecogothic Werewolf in Literature: Wolves, Woods and Wilderness (Bloomsbury)

Freer, American Disaster Movies of the 1970s: Crisis, Spectacle and Modernity (Bloomsbury)

Garg, Decolonizing Media Fandom: Disability, Race, and Marvel Superhero Fans (Iowa)

Hall, Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes: Settler Colonialism in Horror (Regina)

Hoerl, The Impossible Woman: Television, Feminism, and the Future (Rutgers)

Horbinski, Manga’s First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905–1989 (California)

Horton, 21st-Century British Gothic: The Monstrous, Spectral, and Uncanny in Contemporary Fiction (Bloomsbury)

Kunzelman, Everything Is Permitted: On Assassin’s Creed (Minnesota)

Lavezzo, Bad Medievalism and the Modernity Problem (Fordham)

Lee, Parascientific Revolutions: The Science and Culture of the Paranormal (Minnesota)

Lorrimar, Science Fiction and Christian Theology (Cambridge)

Merriner, Illustrating The Lord of the Rings in the Soviet Bloc: Iconographies of Difference (Bloomsbury)

Oh, Reading Better States: Utopian Method and Environmental Harm in the Global South (Fordham)

Sanchez-Taylor, Dispelling Fantasies: Authors of Color Reimagine a Genre (Ohio State)

Waddell, South African Horror Cinema: From Apartheid to District 9 and Beyond (Bloomsbury)

Weinstock, ed., The Horror Theory Reader (Minnesota)