September 26, 2025: Forthcoming Scholarly Reads: Selling Out Santa

[It’s been a while since I shared a series on scholarly books I’ve had the pleasure of checking out recently, and for this latest iteration I wanted to highlight recent reads that have offered inspiration in these very tough times!]

I really enjoyed and was glad to be able to share each of the books I’ve highlighted in this week’s series, but I can’t lie, there’s no competition with how excited I am to share the forthcoming book with which I’m ending the series: my wife Vaughn Joy’s Selling Out Santa: Hollywood Christmas Films in the Age of McCarthy (2025). Due out in just under two months (November 17th, if you want to mark your calendars as you damn well should) and available for pre-order at that hyperlink and wherever you buy your books (if you can't wait until November, as you damn well shouldn't), Vaughn’s readable and rigorous, historical and timely, vital work offers equally compelling and crucial lenses on an easily dismissed cultural genre, mid-20^th century American culture and society and politics, and some of the most fraught trends and debates in our own 21^st century moment. It’s also an incredibly well-written and engaging book, one that is as fun to read as the ending of It’s a Wonderful Life is to watch—but also as bracing and thought-provoking as, y’know, much of the rest of Capra’s film. I hope you’ll get your own copy and that you’ll share your responses here and everywhere else when you do—and you know you’ll be hearing a lot more about it, and all of Vaughn’s exceptional work, in this space!

September Recap this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Recent reads you’d share?

PPS. Also an important announcement that I'll keep sharing in this space: Vaughn and I have just debuted our new public scholarly website, Black and White and Read All Over. It'll be a home for this blog, my #ScholarSunday threads, Vaughn's wonderful Review Roulette newsletter, and a lot more. & we hope y'all will contribute your own Announcements for that part of the site too. Check it out, watch this space and that space for more, and enjoy!