July 26, 2021: AmericanStudiers to Highlight: Ed Simon

[This past weekend’s tribute to Daniel Immerwahr’s book reminded me that it’s been a while since I highlighted fellow AmericanStudiers. So this week I’ll share a handful of such voices and texts—I’d love to hear more scholars and works you’d add to the mix!]

I’ve been a fan of Ed Simon’s public scholarship, journalism, and writing since he and Wade Linebaughcreated the wonderful ‘Merica Magazine, and I reviewed his excellent first book America and Other Fictions: On Radical Faith and Post-Religion (2018) for the LA Review of Books. But over the last few months Ed has outdone himself, with two phenomenal new books (bringing his total to a very high number indeed): An Alternative History of Pittsburgh; and The God Beat: What Journalism Says about Faith and Why It Matters (a collection co-edited with Costica Bradatan). Quite simply, there are no folks doing public scholarly American Studies (and religious studies, and other subjects to boot) journalism and writing any better than Ed these days, and we should all be reading and responding to his consistently unique, provocative, important works.

Next highlight tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? AmericanStudies scholars or works you’d share?