UNT Dallas Library News

America: Government, History, & Culture - eBooks

07/08/2025

Zachary Brown

History, Media Arts, Music, Women and Gender Studies

E-book titled Atomic Tunes: The Cold War in American and British Popular Music (2021) - synopsis: What is the soundtrack for a nuclear war? During the Cold War, over 500 songs were written about nuclear weapons, fear of the Soviet Union, civil defense, bomb shelters, McCarthyism, uranium mining, the space race, espionage, the Berlin Wall, and glasnost. This music uncovers aspects of these world-changing events that documentaries and history books cannot. In Atomic Tunes, Tim and Joanna Smolko explore everything from the serious to the comical, the morbid to the crude, showing the widespread concern among musicians coping with the effect of communism on American society and the threat of a nuclear conflict of global proportions.

E-book titled Sentiments of a British-American Woman: Esther Deberdt Reed and the American Revolution (2017) - synopsis: At the time of her death in 1780, British-born Esther DeBerdt Reed was one of the most politically important women in Revolutionary America. Her treatise “The Sentiments of an American Woman” articulated the aspirations of female patriots, and the Ladies Association of Philadelphia, which she founded, taught generations of women how to translate their political responsibilities into action. DeBerdt Reed’s life yields remarkable insight into the scope of women’s political influence in an age ruled by the strict social norms structured by religion and motherhood. The story of her courtship, marriage, and political career sheds light both on the private and political lives of women during the Revolution and on how society, religion, and gender interacted as a new nation struggled to build its own identity.

America: Government, History, & Culture - eBooks

07/06/2025

Zachary Brown

Communication Studies, Criminal Justice, History, Journalism, Women and Gender Studies

E-book titled Justice in Plain Sight: How a Small-Town Newspaper and Its Unlikely Lawyer Opened America's Courtrooms (2019) - synopsis: Justice in Plain Sight is the story of a hometown newspaper in Riverside, California, that set out to do its job: tell readers about shocking crimes in their own backyard. But when judges slammed the courtroom door on the public, including the press, it became impossible to tell the whole story. Pinning its hopes on business lawyer Jim Ward, the newspaper took two cases to the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1980s. The newspaper won both cases and established First Amendment rights that significantly broadened public access to the judicial system. Justice in Plain Sight is a unique story that, for the first time, details two improbable journeys to the Supreme Court in which the stakes were as high as they could possibly be (and still are): the public’s trust in its own government.

E-book titled Sympathy, Madness, and Crime: How Four Nineteenth-Century Journalists Made the Newspaper Women's Business (2016) - synopsis: Working against critics who would deny them access to the newsroom, Margaret Fuller, Fanny Fern, Nellie Bly, and Elizabeth Jordan subverted the charge that women were not emotionally equipped to work for mass-market newspapers. They transformed their supposed liabilities into professional assets, and Sympathy, Madness, and Crime explores how, in writing about insane asylums, the mentally ill, prisons, and criminals, each deployed a highly gendered sympathetic language to excavate a professional space within a male-dominated workplace. As the periodical market burgeoned, these pioneering, courageous women exemplified how narrative sympathy opened female space within the “hard news” city room of America’s largest newspapers.

Women's History Month - eBooks

03/11/2025

Zachary Brown

History, Medicine and Health, Rehabilitation & Health Services, Women and Gender Studies

E-book titled Beyond Rosie: A Documentary History of Women and World War II (2015) - synopsis: Within the Allied countries, women of all ages proved to be invaluable in the fight for victory. Rosie the Riveter became the most enduring image of women’s involvement in World War II. What Rosie represented, however, is only a small portion of a complex story. As wartime production workers, enlistees in auxiliary military units, members of voluntary organizations or resistance groups, wives and mothers on the home front, journalists, and USO performers, American women found ways to challenge traditional gender roles and stereotypes.

E-book titled Birth Justice: From Obstetric Violence to Abolitionist Care (2024) - synopsis: In this collection of essays, the cause of reproductive injustice is understood as the institutionalized isolation of (potentially) pregnant people, making them vulnerable for bio- and necropolitical disciplination and control. The central thesis of this book is that reproductive justice must be achieved through a radical reappropriation of relationality in reproductive care to safeguard the access to knowledge and care needed for safe bodily self-determination. Through empirical research as well as decolonial, feminist, midwifery, and Black theory, reproductive justice is reimagined as abolitionist care, grounded in the abolition of authoritative obstetric institutions, state control of reproduction, and restrictive abortion laws in favor of community practices that are truly relational.

Women's History Month - eBooks

03/09/2025

Zachary Brown

Art, Communication Studies, History, Women and Gender Studies

E-book titled Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism (2009) - synopsis: Zines created by girls and women over the past two decades make feminism’s third wave visible. These messy, photocopied, do-it-yourself documents cover every imaginable subject matter and are loaded with handwriting, collage art, stickers, and glitter. Though they all reflect the personal style of the creators, they are also sites for constructing narratives, identities, and communities. Girl Zines is the first book-length exploration of this exciting movement. Alison Piepmeier argues that these quirky, personalized booklets are tangible examples of the ways that girls and women do feminism today. The idiosyncratic, surprising, and savvy arguments and issues showcased in the forty-six images reproduced in the book provide a complex window into feminism’s future, where zinesters persistently and stubbornly carve out new spaces for what it means to be a revolutionary and a girl.

E-book titled Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction (2016) - synopsis: Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction offers readers a comprehensive selection of works by genre luminaries, including author C. L. Moore, artist Margaret Brundage, and others who were well known in their day, including poet Julia Boynton Green, science journalist L. Taylor Hansen, and editor Mary Gnaedinger. Providing insightful commentary and context, this anthology documents how women in the early twentieth century contributed to the pulp-magazine community and showcases the content they produced, including short stories, editorial work, illustrations, poetry, and science journalism.

Women's History Month - eBooks

03/07/2025

Zachary Brown

Art, History, Music, Women and Gender Studies, Biography

E-book titled Never Don't Pay Attention: The Life of Rodeo Photographer Louise L. Serpa (2015) - synopsis: Born in 1925 and growing up in New York society with a mother who was never satisfied with her rather lanky, unpolished daughter, teenager Louise eventually found happiness when she spent a summer on a Wyoming dude ranch scrubbing toilets, waiting tables, and wrangling cattle. Later in life, she settled in Tucson, Arizona, where her introduction to photographing rodeos came about after a friend invited her to watch his children participate in a junior rodeo competition. Using a cheap drug-store camera, Louise began photographing youngsters as they bounced and bucked on small sheep and calves, then sold the pictures to proud parents, beginning a career that would span fifty years and take her to the highest pinnacles of rodeo photography.

E-book titled Leaders of the Pack: Girl Groups of the 1960s and Their Influence on Popular Culture in Britain and America (2015) - synopsis: Musician and music historian Sean MacLeod surveys the hundreds of girl groups that appeared not only in the United States but also in Great Britain during the early 1960s. This study corrects the neglect of their critical contribution of popular music history by exploring the social and political climate from which the girl groups emerged and their effect, in turn, on local and national music and culture. This book looks at seven “sister” groups that serve as the basis for a broader look at the many girl groups of the period, offering a roadmap through the work of the many stakeholder—the singers, songwriters, producers, and record labels—that the girl group phenomenon made possible. MacLeod also reviews the significant influence girl groups had on the many male bands of the 1960s, as well as their influence on the post-’60s movements, from punk to new wave, ultimately serving as the template for the girl groups and all-girl bands that emerged in the 1980s.

Women's History Month - eBooks

03/05/2025

Zachary Brown

Criminal Justice, History, Sociology, Women and Gender Studies, World Languages, Literatures and Cultures

E-book titled Justice Blindfolded: The Historical Course of an Image (2018) - synopsis: Justice Blindfolded gives an overview of the history of “justice” and its iconography through the centuries. Justice has been portrayed as a woman with scales, or holding a sword, or, since the fifteenth century, with her eyes bandaged. This last symbol contains the idea that justice is both impartial and blind, reminding indirectly of the bandaged Christ on the cross, a central figure in the Christian idea of fairness and forgiveness. In this rich and imaginative journey through history and philosophy, Prosperi manages to convey a full account of the ways justice has been described, portrayed and imagined.

E-book titled Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America (2019) - synopsis: Because sports evoke such passion, they are fertile ground for understanding the formation of social classes, national and racial identities, sexuality, and gender roles. Futbolera tells the stories of women athletes and fans as they navigated the pressures and possibilities within organized sports. This book charts the rise of physical education programs for girls that laid the groundwork for women’s sports clubs, which began to thrive beyond the confines of school systems. Futbolera examines how women challenged both their exclusion from national pastimes and their lack of access to leisure, bodily integrity, and public space. This vibrant history also examines women’s sports through comparative case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, and others.

Women's History Month - eBooks

03/03/2025

Zachary Brown

Ethnic Studies, History, Women and Gender Studies, Biography

E-book titled Champions for Peace: Women Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize (2018) - synopsis: Only seventeen women (as of 2018) have won the Nobel Prize for Peace since it was first awarded in 1901. Hailing from all over the world, some of these women have held graduate degrees, while others barely had access to education. Some began their work young, some late in life. In this compelling book, Judith Stiehm narrates these women’s varied lives in fascinating detail.

E-book titled A Brick and a Bible: Black Women's Radical Activism in the Midwest during the Great Depression (2022) - synopsis: A Brick and a Bible examines how African American working-class women, many of whom had just migrated to “the promised land” only to find hunger, cold, and unemployment, forged a region of revolutionary potential. Midwestern Black radicalism that contests that interlocking systems of oppression directly relates the distinct racial, political, geographic, economic, and gendered characteristics that make up the American heartland. This volume illustrates how, at the risk of their careers, their reputations, and even their lives, African American working-class women in the Midwest used their position to shape a unique form of social activism.

Black History Month - eBooks

02/03/2025

Zachary Brown

Ethnic Studies, History, Women and Gender Studies

E-book titled Bricktop's Paris: African American Women in Paris between the Two World Wars (2015) - synopsis: During the Jazz Age, France became a place where an African American woman could realize personal freedom and creativity, in narrative or in performance, in clay or on canvas, in life and in love. Bricktop’s Paris introduces the reader to twenty-five of these women and the city they encountered. Following this nonfiction account, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting provides a fictionalized autobiography of Ada “Bricktop” Smith, which brings the players from the world of nonfiction into Paris.

E-book titled Black Hair in a White World (2023) - synopsis: The essays in this anthology discuss representations and responses to Black hair, including analysis of research findings about marketing messages and depictions of Black hair in popular culture, discussions of workplace discrimination, and stories about the origins of the natural hair movement and how many Black people have learned to embrace and celebrate their natural hair. Beginning with a close analysis of historical and contemporary books, media, and ads, Black Hair in a White World illustrates the various responses to Black hair.

Native American Heritage Month - eBooks

11/08/2024

Zachary Brown

Anthropology, Ethnic Studies, LGBT Studies, Women and Gender Studies, Biography

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Image one: E-book titled A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder (2016) - synopsis: A Two-Spirit Journey is Ma-Nee Chacaby’s extraordinary account of her life as an Ojibwa-Cree lesbian. From her early, often harrowing memories of life and abuse in a remote Ojibwa community riven by poverty and alcoholism, Chacaby’s story is one of enduring and ultimately overcoming the social, economic, and health legacies of colonialism. Over the following decades, she achieved sobriety; trained and worked as an alcoholism counselor; raised her children and fostered many others; learned to live with visual impairment; and came out as a lesbian. In 2013, Chacaby led the first gay pride parade in her adopted city, Thunder Bay, Ontario. Ma-Nee Chacaby has emerged from hardship grounded in faith, compassion, humor, and resilience. Her memoir provides unprecedented insights into the challenges still faced by many Indigenous people.

Image two: E-book titled Left Handed, Son of Old Man Hat: A Navajo Autobiography (2018) - synopsis: Left Handed (Navajo) (1868–?) was a Diné man who was born at Hweéldi (the Bosque Redondo prison camp), where the American military held Navajos from 1863 to 1868, and then returned to the Navajo homeland with his family. At the time of Walter Dyk’s interviews about his life, he was positioned as an elder who had lived well and prospered. With a simplicity as disarming as it is frank, Left Handed tells the story of his life as he learns the Navajo lifeway, which is founded on the principles of honesty, foresightedness, and self-discipline.

E-books for Halloween

10/22/2024

Zachary Brown

Communication Studies, History, Media Arts, Sociology, Women and Gender Studies

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Image one: E-book titled The Horrors of War: The Undead on the Battlefield (2015) - synopsis: Battlefields have traditionally been considered places where the spirits of the dead linger, and popular culture brings those thoughts to life. Supernatural tales of war told in print, on screen, and in other media depict angels, demons, and legions of the undead fighting against—or alongside—human soldiers. Ghostly war ships and phantom aircraft carry on their never-to-be-completed missions, and the spirits—sometimes corpses—of dead soldiers return to confront the enemies who killed them, comrades who betrayed them, or leaders who sacrificed them. In Horrors of War: The Undead on the Battlefield, Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper have assembled essays that explore the meaning and significance of these tales.

Image two: E-book titled The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (2015) - synopsis: An undying procession of sons of Dracula and daughters of darkness has animated the horror film genre from the beginning. Indeed, in this pioneering exploration of the cinema of fear, Barry Keith Grant and twenty other film critics posit that horror is always rooted in gender, particularly in anxieties about sexual difference and gender politics. The book opens with the influential theoretical works of Linda Williams, Carol J. Clover, and Barbara Creed. Writing across a full range of critical methods from classic psychoanalysis to feminism and postmodernism, they balance theoretical generalizations with close readings of films and discussions of figures associated with the genre.

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