RECENTLY PUBLISHED
INSTRUMENT OF WAR: MUSIC AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA’S SOLDIERS
(University of Chicago Press, 2024)
A first-of-its-kind history of music in the lives of American soldiers
Instrument of War opens our ears to the significance of music in American war-making. Historian David Suisman traces how the U.S. military used—and continues to use—music to train soldiers and regulate military life, and how soldiers themselves have turned to music to cope with the emotional and psychological traumas of war.
MORE BOOKS
SELLING SOUNDS: THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION IN AMERICAN MUSIC
(Harvard University Press, 2009)
From Tin Pan Alley to grand opera, player-pianos to phonograph records, Selling Sounds explores the rise of music as big business and the creation of a radically new musical culture in America. This award-winning work maps the growth of the music business across the social landscape—in homes, theaters, department stores, schools—and analyzes the effect of this development on everything from copyright law to the sensory environment.
CO-EDITED BOOKS
CAPITALISM AND THE SENSES
SOUND IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION
This pioneering collection shows how seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching have both shaped and been shaped by commercial interests from the turn of the twentieth century to our own time. Drawing on history, anthropology, geography, and other fields, these essays analyze not only where efforts to shape sensory experience have succeeded but also where the senses have defied the logic of markets. “[An] extremely impressive collection.” — Journal of American History
Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction investigates sound as part of the social construction of historical experience and as an element of the sensory relationship people have to the world, showing how hearing and listening can inform people's feelings, ideas, decisions, and actions. “This collection…is multicultural historical analysis at its best.” — Journal of American History
EVENTS, TALKS, ARTICLES (Upcoming and Recent)
Keynote address — Concordia University (Montreal) History Conference | April 4, 2025
Wide-ranging interview about Instrument of War with Mack Hagood for his indispensable sound studies podcast Phantom Power — listen HERE
A great conversation about Instrument of War with Ken Freedman on WFMU’s Techtonic show — listen HERE
Extensive interview about Instrument of War — on New Books Network — listen HERE
Book talk on Instrument of War — Centre for Geopolitics, University of Cambridge — watch HERE
“Demythologizing the Rock and Roll War: U.S. Armed Forces Radio in Vietnam” — American Historical Association, New York | January 2025
“‘The Men Discipline Themselves’: The Musicalization of Military Training Since World War II” — American Studies Association, Baltimore | November 2024
THEMES OF MY WORK
