Trending This Month: July

Looking for your next read? See what’s trending at UNC Press with this list of the most viewed books on our website this month.


Cold War Country: How Nashville’s Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism by Joseph M. Thompson

“Joseph Thompson tells the fascinating and forgotten story of how the Pentagon and Music Row encouraged and reinforced each other. . . . [and] reveals why this happened.”—Boston Globe

“Thompson’s Cold War Country will not only transform scholarly discussions around country music, but it will make a crucial contribution to larger conversations about popular culture, the political history of the South, and the United States in the twentieth century. It is a model for the kind of scholarship that anyone who wants to work on music or pop culture can benefit from.”—Charles Hughes, author of Country Soul: Making Music and Race in the American South

The Life and Death of Ryan White: Aids and Inequality in America by Paul M. Renfro

Coming October 2024

“An illuminating addition to AIDS history. Renfro reveals how the personal charisma and resiliency Ryan White showed in his fight for life was used to create a false division between so-called innocent and guilty people with AIDS, and how this, in turn, furthered cliches about white working-class people and homophobia. Thoughtful and helpful in understanding how standing tropes of stigma were created and maintained.”—Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993

White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America, second edition by Anthea Butler

A 2021 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

“[Butler’s] ability to weave together history, personal experience, and contemporary reflection in such a cohesive and approachable manner makes White Evangelical Racism stand out.”—The Christian Century

White Evangelical Racism has dropped a bomb on the playground of many historians of evangelicalism who have been insufficiently attentive to their subjects’ history, specifically to their racism and nationalism from the nineteenth century to the present.”—American Religion

On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice by Ryan Emanuel

“Ryan Emanuel takes you on a fascinating journey through time on his Lumbee homelands, focusing on contemporary tribal environmental protections efforts. . . . Emanuel captures in beautiful detail how tribes use traditional values around caretaking the environment while asserting their sovereignty.”—Karen Diver, Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa

“This book is an extraordinary study of environmental and Indigenous history. Exhaustively researched and truly captivating.”—Steven Semken, Arizona State University

Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition,Revised and Updated Third Edition by Cedric J. Robinson With a new preface by Damien Sojoyner and Tiffany Willoughby-Herard and a new foreword by Robin D. G. Kelley

“A towering achievement. There is simply nothing like it in the history of black radical thought.”—Cornel West, Monthly Review

Black Marxism has become an unlikely handbook for a new generation of radicals and activists.”—London Review of Books

“This is a text that should be read and reread and then read again.”—Angela Y. Davis