Book Breaks in April Confronts Complicated Histories

Book Breaks is a weekly interview series with historians held every Sunday at 2 pm ET (11 am PT) on Zoom. The program and its archive are free for K–12 teachers and students in the Affiliate School Program, college students, and college faculty. Visit the Book Breaks page to learn more. The general public can purchase a one-year $25 subscription for full access to the program here.

In April, Book Breaks features historians discussing their books on the history of African Americans during the Korean War, the US Army's response to the racial crisis during the Vietnam War, the creation of the American West, Black workers in Boston during the Civil War, and the complicated history behind the song "My Old Kentucky Home."

April 2 – David P. Cline (San Diego State University) on Twice Forgotten: African Americans and the Korean War, An Oral History

Journalists began to call the Korean War "the Forgotten War" even before it ended. Without a doubt, the most neglected story of this already neglected war is that of African Americans who served just two years after Harry S. Truman ordered the desegregation of the military. Twice Forgotten draws on oral histories of Black Korean War veterans to recover the story of their contributions to the fight.

April 9 – Beth Bailey (University of Kansas) on An Army Afire: How the US Army Confronted Its Racial Crisis in the Vietnam Era

By the late 1960s, what had been heralded as the best-trained army in US history was descending into crisis. As Black and White soldiers fought in barracks and bars, military leaders grew convinced that the growing racial calamity undermined the army’s ability to defend the nation. In An Army Afire, military historian Beth Bailey shows how the US Army confronted this racial upheaval.

April 16 – Elliott West (University of Arkansas) on Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion

The creation of the West and the emergence of modern America were intimately related. Neither can be understood without the other. With masterful prose and a critical eye, West presents a fresh approach to the dawn of the American West, one of the most pivotal periods of American history.

April 23 Jacqueline Jones (University of Texas at Austin) on No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era

Historian Jacqueline Jones reveals how Boston was the United States writ small: a place where the soaring rhetoric of egalitarianism was easy, but justice in the workplace was elusive. Before, during, and after the Civil War, White abolitionists and Republicans refused to secure equal employment opportunities for Black Bostonians, condemning most of them to poverty. Still, Jones finds, some Black entrepreneurs ingeniously created their own jobs and forged their own career paths.

April 30 – Emily Bingham on My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song

Historian Emily Bingham explores the long, complicated history behind the song “My Old Kentucky Home” from its decades of performances across the continent, entering into the bloodstream of American life, through its twenty-first-century reassessment.