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Behind the Book

Behind the Book

By: New Books Network
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 Interviews with University of Nebraska Press authors.New Books Network Art Literary History & Criticism World
Episodes
  • Scott D. Seligman, "The Chief Rabbi's Funeral" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)

    Scott D. Seligman, "The Chief Rabbi's Funeral" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)
    Oct 8 2025
    On July 30, 1902, tens of thousands of mourners lined the streets of New York’s Lower East Side to bid farewell to the city’s chief rabbi, the eminent Talmudist Jacob Joseph. All went well until the procession crossed Sheriff Street, where the six-story R. Hoe and Company printing press factory towered over the intersection. Without warning, scraps of steel, iron bolts, and scalding water rained down and injured hundreds of mourners, courtesy of antisemitic factory workers. The police compounded the attack when they arrived on the scene; under orders from the inspector in charge, who made no effort to distinguish aggressors from victims, officers began beating up Jews, injuring dozens.To the Yiddish-language daily Forverts (Forward), the bloody attack on Jews was not unlike those that many Russian Jews remembered bitterly from the old country. But this was America, not Russia, and the Jewish community wasn’t going to stand for such treatment. Fed up with being persecuted, New York’s Jews, whose numbers and political influence had been growing, set a pattern for the future by deftly pursuing justice for the victims. They forced trials and disciplinary hearings, accelerated retirements and transfers within the corrupt police department, and engineered the resignation of the police commissioner. Scott D. Seligman’s The Chief Rabbi's Funeral (U Nebraska Press, 2024) is the first book-length account of this event and its aftermath. Scott D. Seligman is a national award-winning historian and biographer with a special interest in the history of hyphenated Americans. He holds an undergraduate degree in American history from Princeton University and a master’s degree from Harvard University. Geraldine Gudefin is a modern Jewish historian researching Jewish migrations, family life, and legal pluralism. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939. Mentioned in the podcast: Leonard Bloom, “A Successful Jewish Boycott of the New York City Public Schools –Christmas 1906,” American Jewish History 70 (December 1980): 180-188. Mary Cummings, Saving Sin City: William Travers Jerome, Stanford White, And The Original Crime Of The Century (Pegasus Books, 2019). Paula E. Hyman, “Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest: The New York City Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902,” American Jewish History 70, no. 1 (1980): 91–105. Pamela S. Nadell, Antisemitism, an American Tradition (W.W. Norton & Company, 2025). Scott D. Seligman, The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902: Immigrant Housewives and the Riots That Shook New York City (Potomac Books, 2020). Scott D. Seligman, The Great Christmas Boycott of 1906: Antisemitism and the Battle over Christianity in the Public Schools (Potomac Books, 2025). Matthew M. Silver, Louis Marshall and the Rise of Jewish Ethnicity in America: A Biography (Syracuse University Press, 2013). Historical Jewish Press American Newspapers Collection (Chronicling America)
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    56 mins
  • Liza Black, "Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941-1960" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)

    Liza Black, "Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941-1960" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)
    Aug 8 2025
    Behind the braided wigs, buckskins, and excess bronzer that typified the mid-century "filmic Indian" lies a far richer, deeper history of Indigenous labor, survival, and agency. This history takes center stage in historian Liza Black's new book, Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941-1960 (University of Nebraska Press, 2020), which looks at Indigenous peoples' experiences in the American film industry that so often relied upon and reproduced racialized stereotypes of "authentic Indians" to produce profit. Black shows how non-Native film producers, in producing monolithic and historically static Native caricatures for profit, reinforced settler colonial narratives on screen while simultaneously denying Indigenous actors, extras, and staff of their modernity. Thorough in detail and innovative in analysis, Black incorporates film studies, Native and Indigenous studies, and history, shedding new light on the mid-century film industry and Native peoples' roles in it. Black chronicles the contours of American settler colonialism and its cultural and economic manifestations both on- and off-screen, giving the "authentic Indian" so familiar to non-Native audiences a much-needed dose of historical context. The result is an engaging story of Indigenous talent, labor, and livelihood that transcends critical moments in Native and U.S. histories alike. Listeners can now purchase Picturing Indians using code 6AF20 for a 40% discount on the University of Nebraska Press' site. Annabel LaBrecque is a PhD student in the Department of History at UC Berkeley. You can find her on Twitter @labrcq.
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    39 mins
  • César Brioso, "Last Seasons in Havana: The Castro Revolution and the End of Professional Baseball In Cuba" (U Nebraska Press, 2019)

    César Brioso, "Last Seasons in Havana: The Castro Revolution and the End of Professional Baseball In Cuba" (U Nebraska Press, 2019)
    Aug 4 2025
    Today we are joined by César Brioso, author of the book Last Seasons in Havana: The Castro Revolution and the End of Professional Baseball In Cuba (University of Nebraska Press, 2019). Blending the love for baseball fans in Cuba had during the 1950s with the political upheaval that led to Fidel Castro’s rise to power in 1959, Brioso weaves a fascinating tale. Brioso focuses on the last two seasons of the Havana Sugar Kings of the International League (1958-1959) and the last three seasons of the Cuban League (1958-1961). In the 1950s, Havana was a city teeming with rabid baseball fans, swanky hotels, luxurious casinos, and warm, tropical weather. Influential baseball men in Cuba like Bobby Maduro believed Havana was on the short list to earn a major league franchise when baseball expanded. But what happened politically signaled the death knell for those dreams. Castro may have been a big sports fan, but political events in Cuba would take “a sinister turn” as he and the Communists in his regime tightened their grip on the Caribbean island. Brioso’s extensive research, plus more than 20 interviews with former players, Maduro’s son, and even a man who spent a year as the batboy for the transplanted Sugar Kings in Jersey City, New Jersey, gives the reader a unique perspective about Cuba. Former major leaguers interviewed included Orlando Peña, Pedro Ramos, Cookie Rojas and Luis Tiant. Bob D’Angelo was a sports journalist and sports copy editor for more than three decades and is currently a digital national content editor for Cox Media Group. He received his master’s degree in history from Southern New Hampshire University in May 2018. He is the author of Never Fear: The Life & Times of Forest K. Ferguson Jr. (2015), reviews books on his blog, Bob D’Angelo’s Books & Blogs, and has reviewed books for Sport In American History. Can be reached at bdangelo57@gmail.com.
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    43 mins
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