Compiled by Ellen Hostetter, Ph.D., Book Review Editor for Material Culture
Contact: ehostetter@uca.edu or call 501-205-6301.
Vernacular Architecture, Housing, and the Built Environment
Berenson, Edward.Perfect Communities: Levitt, Levittown, and the Dream of White Suburbia. Yale University Press, 2025.
Boyington, Amy.The Country House Dining Room: A History of Georgian Feasting. Yale University Press, 2026.
Carey, Dwight.The Island of Bound Masters: Slavery and Construction Labor in Mauritius. University of Virginia Press, forthcoming.
DeFerrari, John.Palaces of the Public: A Cultural History of Washington, DC’s Hotels. Georgetown University Press, 2026.
Diestelkamp, Rebekka.Making Rural Futures: Model Villages Between Aesthetics, Development, and Utopia. Transcript (distributed by Columbia University Press), 2026.
Evans, Martha Bradley.Constructing Space: Six Communal Religious Groups and Their Spatial Worlds. University of Utah Press, 2026.
Gibson, William B., and Abraham H. Gibson.The Vanishing Schools of Franklin County: A History of Public Education in Rural Virginia. University of Virginia Press, forthcoming.
Hoare, Anna.View from the Traveller Site: Architecture that Begins where the House Ends. Routledge, 2026.
Knox, Paul.Lost London: From Crystal Palace to Heston Airport, a History in 25 Missing Buildings. Yale University Press, 2026.
Lau, Prudence Leung Kwok, and Vanessa Winghei Yeung.Hong Kong Art Deco Architecture: Unveiling the Hidden Heritage. Distributed by Columbia University Press, 2026.
Lewis, Judith S.The Country House at War. Yale University Press, 2026.
Maudlin, Daniel.A Night at the Inn: Space, Place, and the Elite Experience of Empire, 1650–1850. Oxford University Press, 2026.
Morrison, Amani C.A Kitchenette to Fit Your Needs: Housing Chicago’s Great Migration. NYU Press, 2026.
Serlin, David.Window Shopping with Helen Keller: Architecture and Disability in Modern Culture. University of Chicago Press, 2025.
Sewell, Jessica Ellen.Exploring Gender in Vernacular Architecture. University of Tennessee Press, 2025.
Simon, Bryant.For Customers Only: Public Bathrooms and the Making of American Inequality. University of Chicago Press, 2026.
Tannenbaum, Seth S.Bleacher Seats and Luxury Suites: Democracy and Division at the Twentieth-Century Ballpark. University of Illinois Press, 2026.
Architecture and Modernism
Hunting, Mary Anne, and Kevin D. Murphy.Women Architects at Work: Making American Modernism. Princeton University Press, 2025.
Meister, Maureen.Arts and Crafts Architecture across America. Yale University Press, 2025.
Stern, Jewel, and Christopher Long.The Vanguard: Central European Émigrés and American Modern Design, 1910–1940. Yale University Press, 2025.
Welter, Volker M.Exiled in L.A.: The Untold Story of Leopold Fischer’s Domestic Architecture. Getty Publications, 2025
Sense of Place, Design, and Planning
Crawford, Katya, and Kathleen Kambic.The Design Competition in Landscape Architecture: Pedagogy and Practice. University of New Mexico Press, 2025.
Fine, Lisa M.Downriver Detroit: The Working Class, the Environment, and the Bonds of Place. University of Illinois Press, 2026.
Hopman, David DuMez.Creative Regionalism: Renewing the Aesthetic Experience of Landscape in Environmental Design and Planning. University of Virginia Press, 2026.
Kansas, Gene.Civil Sights: Sweet Auburn, a Journey through Atlanta’s National Treasure. University of Georgia Press, 2025.
Nugent, Patrick.The Greenlining of Staten Island: Environmental Preservation and Racial Segregation, 1945–1995. University of Chicago Press, 2026.
Rodini, Elizabeth.On the Street of the Hidden Shops: One City Block, Two Thousand Years, and a Walk Through the Layered Lives of Rome. University of Chicago Press, 2026.
Schmidt, Jeffrey B.Here Today: Oklahoma’s Ghost Towns, Vanishing Towns, and Towns Persisting against the Odds. University of Oklahoma Press, 2025.
Steiner, Frederick, and Ignacio Bunster-Ossa, eds.Penn’s Sylvania: The Campus as Landscape. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2026.
Yablon, Nick.From the Skyscraper to the Wildflower: C. G. Hine’s 1905 Photographic Survey of Broadway. Columbia University Press, 2026.
Yildiz, Sevin.Neither Land nor Water: Planning Through Fringe Ecologies in the Meadowlands (1896–2020). University of Chicago Press, 2026.
Infrastructure and Engineering: Roads, Water, Land
Alanen, Arnold R.The Scenic Route: Building Minnesota’s North Shore. University of Minnesota Press, 2025.
Arcadi, Teal.Concrete Leviathan: The Interstate Highway System and State Building in Modern America. University of Chicago Press, 2026.
Black, Jeremy.A History of Roads in 100 Maps. University of Chicago Press, 2026.
Crinson, Mark.Aviationland: Heathrow and the Making of an Airport Landscape. Yale University Press, 2026.
Davis, John.Reconstructors: Land, Work, and Engineering After the Civil War. University of Chicago Press, 2026.
Elias, Ann.The Underharbor: Submerged Histories of Sydney. University of Chicago Press, 2026.
Fleck, John, and Robert P. Berrens.Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of Modern Albuquerque. University of New Mexico Press, 2026.
Ismail, Shehab.Pipe Economics: Engineering the Waters of Modern Cairo. Stanford University Press, 2026.
Lawlor Feller, Lisa.Bahamian Islanders on the Maritime Highway: Wrecking to Make a Reckoning. University Press of Mississippi, 2026.
Lieb, Emily.Road to Nowhere: How a Highway Map Wrecked Baltimore. University of Chicago Press, 2025.
McFarlane, Scot.The River That Made Texas: A Forgotten History of the Trinity. University of North Carolina Press, 2026.
Williams, David B., and Jennifer Ott.Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal: A History and Guide. University of Washington Press, 2026.
Agriculture, Foodways, and Working Landscapes
Brown, Willa Hammitt.Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth, and the American Lumberjack. University of Minnesota Press, 2025.
Davis, David A., ed.Bale After Bale: How Cotton Defined the Twentieth-Century South. University of Virginia Press, 2026.
Erickson, Donna L.Rooted at the Edge: Ranching Where the Old West and New West Collide. University of Nebraska Press, 2025.
Giesen, James C.The Land of Cotton: Culture, Landscape, and the Fabric of Southern History. University of Georgia Press, 2026.
Hornsby, Stephen J.Cod Coasts: Cultural Landscapes of the Cod Fishery from Cape Cod to Labrador. University of Maine Press, 2025.
Jordan, Jennifer A.Beer Ghosts: In Search of Lost Hops and the Women Who Grew Them. University of Chicago Press, 2026.
McDonald, Michelle Craig.Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025.
Rubel, Nora L.Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of The Settlement Cook Book. Columbia University Press, 2026.
Siegel, Nancy.Political Appetites: The Power of Food in Revolutionary America. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026.
Heritage, Preservation, Memory, and Archaeology
Babić, Maja, and Tino Mager, eds.Contentious Spaces: Uncovering the Hidden Narratives of State-Socialist Built Heritage. Leuven University Press, 2026.
Ehrenreich, Robert M., Jane E. Klinger, Gabriel H. Pizzorno, and Caroline Sturdy Colls, eds.Objects of Atrocity: Material Culture and the Challenges of Difficult Histories. Purdue University Press, 2026.
Elliott, Brent, and Roger Bowdler.The British Cemetery: Architecture, Landscape, Sculpture. Historic England, 2026.
Farber, Paul M., and Sue Mobley, eds.Monument Lab: Re:Generation. Temple University Press, 2026.
Goff, Lisa.Stories in the Soil: Recovering Black and White Histories at James Madison’s Montpelier. University of Virginia Press, forthcoming.
Holleran, Samuel, and Max Holleran.Scattered Steel: The Afterlife of the World Trade Center. Cornell University Press, 2026.
Howey, Meghan C. L.The Shock of Colonialism in New England: Fragments from a Frontier. The University of Alabama Press, 2025.
Jameson, John H., et al., eds.Monuments and Memory: Archaeological Perspectives on Commemoration. University Press of Florida, 2025.
Madsen, John H.The Early Years of Old Main, 1885–1915: Archaeology and History at a University of Arizona Landmark. University of Arizona Press, 2026.
Miller, Peter N.On Conservation as a Human Science. Princeton University Press, 2026.
Reason, Akela.Politics and Memory: Civil War Monuments in Gilded Age New York. Yale University Press, 2025.
Ridgway, Katherine, Christina Keyser Vida, and Elizabeth Moore, eds.The Buried Cause: Unearthing Hidden History in the Lee Monument Cornerstone. University of Virginia Press, 2026.
Romik, Natalia.Architecture of Memory: Exploring (Post-) Jewish Spaces in Eastern Europe. Distributed by University of Chicago Press, 2026.
Wells, Jeremy C.Managing the Magic of Old Places: Crafting Public Policies for People-Centered Historic Preservation. University of Tennessee Press, 2025.
Wintle, Claire.Museums in the Wake of Empire: Global Collections in Post-war Britain. Yale University Press, 2026.
Objects, Technology, and Everyday Life
Arbuthnot, Mollie, Christianna Bonin, and Gabriella Ferrari, eds.Soviet Materialities: Socialist Things, Environments and Affects. Manchester University Press, 2026.
Asbury, Susan R.Family Game Night: Board Games from the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties. University Press of Kentucky, 2026.
Duggins, Molly, Georgina Cole, and Mark De Vitis, eds.The Australian Object. Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2026.
Eager, Elizabeth Bacon.The Technology of Drawing: Image and Industry in the Early United States. University of Chicago Press, 2026.
Gentry, James Duncan.The Bodhisattva’s Body in a Pill: The Material and Spiritual History of a Buddhist Relic Tradition. University of Virginia Press, 2026.
Hansen, Maria Fabricius, Anne H. Christensen, Jesper Svenningsen, and Lisbet Tarp, eds.Celebrations at Court: Ephemeral Objects, Materials, and Machinery in the Early Modern Period. Distributed by Yale University Press, 2026.
Junqua, Amélie.Too Good to Waste: Recycling Paper in the Eighteenth Century. Bodleian Library, 2026.
Living with Machines Team.Living with Machines: Computational Histories of the Age of Industry. Distributed by University of Chicago Press, 2026.
Naoi, Nozomi.The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life. MIT Press, 2026.
Pfaffenberger, Bryan.Machining the Vote: The Forgotten Story of the Mechanical Voting Machine, and Why It Matters. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026.
Quam, Will.Fire and Clay: How Bricks Reveal the Hidden History of Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 2026.
Rahbek, Jess Uhre.This Is Why You Love LEGO. The MIT Press, 2026.
Saelens, Wout.Fossil Consumerism: Energy, Ecology and Everyday Life in the Early Modern Low Countries. Leuven University Press (distributed by Cornell), 2026.
Shortland, Andrew, Victoria Kemp, Lasse Hermansen Bjørnland, and Patrick Degryse, eds.Of Goblins and Gods: 3,500 Years of Cobalt and Its Pigments. Leuven University Press, 2026.
Unwin, Christina.Design and Archaeology. Bloomsbury Academic, 2026.
Van Slyck, Abigail A.Playhouses and Privilege: The Architecture of Elite Childhood. University of Minnesota Press, 2025.
Welke, Barbara.Writing with Fire: The Cowboy Suit Tragedy and the Course of a Life. University of Chicago Press, 2026.
Dress, Textiles, and Craft
Bean, Susan S.Clay Works. Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2026.
Chapin, Chloe.Suitable: The Sartorial Revolution and the Fashioning of Modern Men. Oxford University Press, 2026.
Littlefield, Melissa M.Reinventing Wool: How a Natural Fiber Survived the Synthetic Revolution. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026.
ten Hoopen, Peter.Ikat Textiles of Timor: Regional Variation and Hidden Asymmetry. Distributed by University of Chicago Press, 2026.
Todd, Leslie E.Sculpting Quito: Religious Art across Domestic Spaces. University of Texas Press, 2026.
Vogelsang-Eastwood, Gillian.The Atlas of World Embroidery: A Global Exploration of Heritage and Styles. Princeton University Press, 2026.
Art, Image, and Visual Culture
Christophe, Alice, ed.Hawai‘i: A Kingdom Crossing Oceans. University of Hawai‘i Press, 2026.
Conrad, Sebastian.Nefertiti: The Making of a Global Icon. University of Chicago Press, 2026.
Corn, Wanda M.The Couple with the Pitchfork: American Gothic from Easel to Icon. Princeton University Press, 2026.
Dickerson III, C. D., and Andrew Sears, eds.Broken: The Power of the Fragment in Sculpture. University of Chicago Press, 2026.
Salseda, Rose.Unrest: Art in the Aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. University of Chicago Press, 2026.