New Books Network

Billy Fleming, "Building Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice, and Energy Transitions" (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2026)

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What would a postcarbon future look like? What would it take to build and maintain a more just, regenerative world? How would it feel to live—and to thrive—in that world? In Building Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice, and Energy Transitions (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2026), Billy Fleming and a wide set of contributors critically engage with the above questions and more.

Around the globe, people are transforming their social, ecological, and economic systems in response to the climate crisis. This book guides readers through 29 of these exemplary works, which span 43 nations and 6 continents. From Cuba to Kiribati, Iceland to the Andes, the prairies of North America to the expanding Gobi Desert, these case studies foreground the tactics and modes of practice being employed, often by marginalized peoples, to create more humane, hospitable places. With dispatches from more than a dozen leading scholars working on the front lines of the climate justice movement, Building Postcarbon Futures is both a celebration of action underway and a clarion call to the planners, designers, policymakers, and activists who are pushing this planet toward a future of collective flourishing.

Billy Fleming is a leading voice on the role of design in responding to the climate crisis in our cities, communities, and landscapes. He is founding codirector of the Climate and Community Institute, a progressive think tank focused on climate and political economy, and assistant professor of landscape architecture at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia.

This interview was conducted by Timi Koyejo. He is an urbanist and housing policy researcher at the Climate and Community Institute.

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John Charles Simon and Jennalee Donian, "Understanding Laughter and Humor: Why We Laugh, Why We Don’t, and Why It Matters" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2026)

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In John Charles Simon and Jennalee Donian’s Understanding Laughter and Humor: Why We Laugh, Why We Don’t, and Why It Matters (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), the authors put forward a comprehensive new theoretical approach to understanding laughter and the humour we use to inspire it. Applying an evolutionary and biological lens to these complex and universal human behaviours, the book distinguishes itself from classical and contemporary theories by focusing not simply on laughter’s causes and effects, but on what can be gleaned from considering its communicative meaning.

At the centre of the book is the Mutual Vulnerability Theory (MVT) of Laughter, which understands laughter as a vital form of nonverbal communication, one that seeks in various ways to “lift” or “lower” moments of physical, emotional, cognitive, or social vulnerability between people. From this perspective, laughter sheds light on the social dynamics that govern human interaction, both positive and negative. It reveals the importance of vulnerability and status in our conscious and subconscious lives, while also underscoring our desire to cooperate, our respect for those who compete fairly, and our disdain for those who do not.

Wide-ranging and highly accessible, Understanding Laughter and Humor will be of interest to general readers, humour scholars, psychologists, anthropologists, comedians, and anyone curious about a seemingly mundane but vital aspect of everyday life — one intrinsic not only to human sociality, but also deeply connected to our great ape relatives and evolutionary past.

Additional content mentioned in the episode:

Understanding Laughter and Humor: A Companion and Guide, Volume 1, the first in a companion-guide series applying MVT to examples of humour and laughter across different media and formats.

John’s Psychology Today blog, Laughter and Humor 101, which expands on and explores various aspects of the Mutual Vulnerability Theory.

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Isabela Seong Leong Quintana, "Urban Borderlands: Multiracial Histories and Gendered Borders in Los Angeles" (UNC Press, 2026)

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Los Angeles in the late nineteenth century was bustling with the rise of industrialization, but the growing labor force that propelled it, mostly consisting of Mexican and Chinese men, was met with exclusion policies and deportation campaigns. Nevertheless, Chinese and Mexican women, children, and men built vibrant residential and business districts—until they were all but eradicated in the 1930s. In her compelling and textured history, Urban Borderlands: Multiracial Histories and Gendered Borders in Los Angeles, Dr. Isabela Seong Leong Quintana unearths the entwined stories of Chinatown and Sonoratown through the everyday lives of their residents.

In this conversation, we talk about the significance of comparative Latinx and Asian American Studies, the importance of spatial analysis in urban history, and the methodological challenges of locating Mexican and Chinese women and children in the archives.

Dr. Quintana is an Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine, with affiliations in Culture & Theory and Chicané/Latiné Studies. Her work explores the interconnected histories of Asian Americans and Chicanés/Latinés, centering women and children within U.S. borderlands and recovering unarchived voices. Quintana also co-directs The Five Chinatowns Project at the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, a community-based research initiative documenting Chinese American Los Angeles through oral histories, archival creation, and youth mentorship. She is the author of Urban Borderlands: Multiracial Histories and Gendered Borders in Los Angeles (University of North Carolina Press, 2026).

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Debarati Sanyal, "Arts of the Border: Fugitive Bodies at Europe’s Edges" (Fordham, 2025)

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Arts of the Border: Fugitive Bodies at Europe’s Edges (Fordham, 2025) investigates the consequences of unfolding catastrophes across the world and the displacement they continue to produce. Through recent narratives and media representations of the refugee “crisis” at Europe’s edges, it tells a new story about those on the move, the technologies unleashed on them at borders, the racialized and colonial histories that inform these technologies, and the artistry with which migrants and allies bear witness to displacement. The book reorients us toward the creativity and movement of migrants themselves– their “arts of the border”—as well as toward the political force of the arts that represent them, whether in literature, documentary film, or art installations. Sanyal proposes kino-aesthetics as a framework for capture and fugitivity at borders. From kino—to set in motion—and aesthetics— relating to sensory perception—kino-aesthetics conveys the force of bodies in motion and the image in its circulation. The book examines the simultaneity of capture and escape at thresholds of illegalization, from airport detention zones to Calais’s “jungle” and the Euro-African border at Ceuta and Melilla. What emerges throughout these case studies is a portrayal of border violence in its racial and colonial forms as well as an archive of refusal, fugitivity, and un-bordered imagining.

Guest Debarati Sanyal is Professor of French, Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry, and currently holds the Zaffaroni Family Chair of Undergraduate Education. Affiliated with the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory, the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, the Center for Race and Gender, and the Institute of European Studies, her teaching and research interests span 19th -21st-century French and Francophone literature, memory studies, aesthetics and bio/necropolitics, critical human rights and refugee studies. She is a recipient of the UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award (2012) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2021-2022). She is currently co-PI on the Mellon-funded A Counter-Imaginary in Authoritarian Times (2024-2027). Besides Arts of the Border, Dr. Sanyal has authored Memory and Complicity: Migrations of Holocaust Remembrance (Fordham, 2015), translated into French as Mémoire et Complicité: Au Prisme de la Shoah (PUV, 2019); and The Violence of Modernity: Baudelaire, Irony and the Politics of Form (Johns Hopkins, 2006). She has guest-edited “Time and Politics in Contemporary Critique: Entanglements and Aftermaths” (Critical Times, 2018), ha also co-edited, with Éric Fassin, Demos Anxiety: Genealogies, Rhetorics, and Politics of Great Replacement (forthcoming in Patterns of Prejudice); with Damon Young and Mario Telò, Proximities: Reading with Judith Butler (Representations 2022), and, with Michael Rothberg and Max Silverman, Noeuds de mémoire: Multidirectional Memory in Postwar French and Francophone Culture (Yale French Studies 118-119).

Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean. Their monograph Posthumanist Ecology in Global French Surrealism is forthcoming in 2027 from Northwestern University Press.

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R. Joshua Scannell, "The Carceral Surround" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

As law enforcement agencies deploy increasingly advanced technologies to suppress dissent, hunt migrants, and target marginalized communities, The Carceral Surround (U Minnesota Press, 2026) offers a powerful new theory of police and prison power in the digital age. Making sense of the rapid expansion of digital carceral infrastructure in a nation that claims to value freedom and individual rights, R. Joshua Scannell moves beyond familiar debates over privacy to show that understanding digital policing requires confronting the political and racial logics that sustain police power. Drawing on digital media theory, science and technology studies, critical race and ethnic studies, and carceral theory, The Carceral Surround reveals how twenty-first-century policing is less about managing crime than about governing possibility. Carceral power now operates across every register of daily life through predictive analytics, risk modeling, and algorithmic systems that track, sort, and preempt. From social media archives and facial recognition software to satellite mapping and radiation sensors, Scannell charts how seemingly disparate media converge into an environment of control that links technocratic governance to the maintenance of racial hierarchy and capitalist order. Tracing today?s technoauthoritarian regime from the NYPD?s assault on Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020 to the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition?s campaign to end predictive policing contracts, The Carceral Surround is a rare hybrid of critique and refusal, illuminating the digital logic of US authoritarianism while imagining pathways for collective resistance beyond its grasp. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.

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Emeka Umejei, "China in African Media: Between Influence Operations and Decolonization" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

At its core, China in African Media: Between Influence Operations and Decolonization (Bloomsbury, 2026) is a book about power, journalism, geopolitical influence, and knowledge production in China–Africa relations. It examines how the People’s Republic of China has moved beyond simply establishing Chinese media organizations such as Xinhua and CGTN in Africa toward a much more dispersed system of engagement. Conceptualizing these engagements collectively as a multimodal or mixed-media ecology of influence, Umejei highlights China’s ability to reach African audiences directly through Chinese media, indirectly through African news organizations, institutionally through partnerships, professionally through the journalists it trains, and infrastructurally through technologies implemented by Chinese firms.

Underlying the book is a strong normative concern about the implications of this expansion of Chinese media engagement for Africa’s democracy, leadership, developmental aspirations, and decolonization. In this regard, Umejei addresses the question: Is the emerging South–South media relationship helping to decolonize African journalism by weakening Western dominance, or is China principally replacing Western influence with a new form of Chinese influence? The book draws on semi-structured interviews with journalists across fourteen African countries, content analysis, policy documents, and publicly available materials.

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Han Hsien Liew, "Preaching Pious Rulership in Medieval Islam: Ibn Al-Jawzi's Political Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Han Hsien Liew’s fascinating and insightful new book, Preaching Pious Rulership in Medieval Islam: Ibn al-Jawzi’s Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2026) offers a new way of understanding the political thought of one of medieval Islam’s most influential preachers, Ibn al-Jawzi. Although Ibn al-Jawzi is often remembered primarily as a preacher, moralist, and religious scholar, Han Hsien challenges conventional accounts of medieval Islamic political thought by showing how piety, preaching, and emotional formation shaped his vision of political authority. Rather than focusing simply on the ruler’s ability to maintain order, Ibn al-Jawzi placed extraordinary emphasis on the ruler’s moral character and on cultivating emotions such as fear, humility, remorse, and compassion. Han Hsien argues that this vision of pious rulership emerged from what he calls “homiletic piety,” revealing how the moral and emotional world of hortatory preaching shaped ideas about what it meant to rule well. By placing Ibn al-Jawzi’s writings in their historical and political context—including his relationship with the Abbasid caliphate and his controversial intervention in debates over the cursing of Yazid—Han Hsien challenges simplistic distinctions between political “quietism” and “activism” and reveals a thinker deeply invested in influencing those who wielded political power.

In our conversation, Han Hsien explains why he chose Ibn al-Jawzi as the subject of the book and what we can learn about medieval Islamic politics by taking preachers seriously as political thinkers. We discuss the concept of “homiletic piety” and Ibn al-Jawzi’s approach to exhorting rulers, including the rhetorical strategies he believed scholars could use to encourage rulers toward greater humility, kindness, and moral responsibility. We also explore Ibn al-Jawzi’s relationship with the Abbasid caliph al-Mustadi and what his writings reveal about the particular concerns of the ruler to whom they were addressed. Han Hsien discusses the complicated relationship between scholars and political power, including the historical debate over sharia and siyasa (or politics), and explains why Ibn al-Jawzi does not fit neatly into categories such as “quietist” or “activist.” We also talk about the significant role of emotions—including fear, remorse, humility, and compassion—in Ibn al-Jawzi’s understanding of political authority and consider whether he actually believed rulers could be transformed through preaching. Finally, we discuss Ibn al-Jawzi’s intervention in the debate over Yazid and what this reveals about his commitment to the idea of pious rulership.

This book will be of tremendous interest to scholars and students of Islamic studies, medieval Islamic history, Islamic political thought, and the history of preaching, as well as anyone interested in the relationship between religion, morality, and political power. It will also appeal to readers interested in a different way of thinking about politics, one that takes seriously the power of preaching, persuasion, and moral and emotional formation to shape those who govern.

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Joseph G. Rosenstein, "Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers): The Big Picture" (Academic Studies Press, 2026)

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What if Pirkei Avot has a bigger story to tell? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Joseph G. Rosenstein to discuss Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers): The Big Picture (Academic Studies Press, 2026), a fresh approach to one of Judaism’s most beloved collections of rabbinic wisdom.

The 123 teachings of Pirkei Avot often seem to jump from one subject to another: Torah study, ethics, the afterlife, relationships, leadership, and the responsibilities of living a meaningful Jewish life. Rosenstein argues that beneath this seemingly disconnected collection is a larger conceptual framework. Instead of following the mishnayot in their traditional order, he groups them by theme, revealing connections that can be easy to miss when each teaching is studied on its own.

The result is a new way of seeing Pirkei Avot—not as a collection of isolated aphorisms, but as a coherent work that reflects how Judaism was reshaped in the generations following the destruction of the Temple. Rosenstein also turns the book’s ethical teachings into 90 concrete principles for living, organized into 16 themes and accompanied by kavvanot, short meditations designed to help readers put those ideas into practice.

Together, Rosenstein and Katz explore what Pirkei Avot is really trying to teach, why its teachings were assembled the way they were, and what happens when ancient rabbinic wisdom is read not simply as something to study, but as a guide for how to live.

About the Guest

Joseph G. Rosenstein is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Rutgers University. In addition to his careers in mathematics and mathematics education, he has written extensively on Jewish prayer and thought. He is the author of Reflections on Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers): Not Just What My Rebbe Taught Me and has published the traditional-yet-unconventional prayer books Siddur Eit Ratzon and Machzor Eit Ratzon – Memorable Verses in the Torah. His website, joerosenstein.com, reflects his wide-ranging work in mathematics, education, and Jewish life.

About the Host

Rabbi Marc Katz is the rabbi of Temple Ner Tamid and the author of several books on Jewish thought and the Talmud including Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS).

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Marjolijn Bol, "The Varnish and the Glaze: Painting Splendor with Oil, 1100–1500" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Panel painters in both the middle ages and the fifteenth century created works that evoke the luster of precious stones, the sheen of polished gold and silver, and the colorful radiance of stained glass. Yet their approaches to rendering these materials were markedly different. In The Varnish and the Glaze: Painting Splendor with Oil, 1100–1500 (U Chicago Press, 2023), Dr. Marjolijn Bol explores some of the reasons behind this radical transformation by telling the history of the two oil painting techniques used to depict everything that glistens and glows—varnish and glaze.

For more than a century after his death, the fifteenth-century painter Jan van Eyck was widely credited with inventing varnish and oil paint, on account of his unique visual realism. Once this was revealed to be a myth, the verisimilitude of his work was attributed instead to a new translucent painting technique: the glaze. Today, most theories about how Van Eyck achieved this realism revolve around the idea that he was the first to discover or refine the glazing technique. Bol, however, argues that, rather than being a fifteenth-century refinement, varnishing and glazing began centuries before. Drawing from an extensive body of recipes, Dr. Bol pieces together how varnishes and glazes were first developed as part of the medieval art of material mimesis. Artisans embellished metalwork and wood with varnishes and glazes to imitate gold and gems; infused rock crystal with oil, resin, and colorants to imitate more precious minerals; and oiled parchment to transform it into the appearance of green glass. Likewise, medieval panel painters used varnishes and glazes to create the look of enamel, silk, and more.

The explorations of materials and their optical properties by these artists stimulated natural philosophers to come up with theories about transparent and translucent materials produced by the earth. Natural historians, influenced by medieval artists’ understanding of refraction and reflection, developed theories about gems, their creation, and their optical qualities.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Gavin Healy, "A Guide to Mao’s China: Showing the Nation to Foreign Guests" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A Guide to Mao’s China: Showing the Nation to Foreign Guests (Cornell UP, 2026) by Gavin Healy explores how tourism was reshaped during the Mao era. It follows the transformation of once-private travel agencies after 1949, the efforts of China's state tourism bureaucracy to reconcile welcoming foreign visitors with earning foreign currency, and the ways tourism workers reimagined service occupations such as tour guiding and waiting tables in the context of socialist ideology.

By drawing on government archives, service worker manuals, and other kinds of ephemera, the book does a wonderful job of focusing on the people on the front lines of the tourism industry, showcasing the ordinary rank-and-file workers who were told to be polite and eager — but not fawn over guests — and to be prompt and attentive — but not servile. By looking at these service workers, this book showcases the important ideological work that tourism can do, both for the tourists being shown a new part of the world and for those doing the showing.

A Guide to Mao’s China should appeal to readers interested in modern Chinese history, the history of tourism, Cold War international exchange, and the everyday workings of the socialist state.

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Stefan Al, "Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home" (Norton, 2026)

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home (Norton, 2026), the architect and urban planner Stefan Al asks–– where is a good place to live? His answer In this succinct and eminently readable survey––almost everywhere and nowhere. He begins by showing homo sapiens and their hominid predecessors on the move, spreading across the globe looking for something to eat and a place to sit down. But only in the past ten thousand years after they learned to domesticate animals, cultivate the soil and store grain, could human beings abandon their migratory ways and settle into what we call villages, towns and cities. The author celebrates the ingenuity which made such settlements possible–– the humble brick of mud and straw, sewer and water systems and in the end, electricity and the engines that allow us to live in towers, suburbia or the great beyond. And thanks to powerful heating and cooling systems we can live comfortably (if we have the money) just about anywhere. But Professor Al also points out that “permanent settlement,” ancient or modern, has often so degraded the necessary resources of field and forest and life-sustaining water and air, that even the comfortably settled sometimes have been forced to move to higher, better or safer ground. In truth, wherever you live, you are likely to some degree degrading the environment. But Professor Al, neither a scold nor doomsayer, concludes that if we attend to the useful lessons of past building practices and town planning while drawing on new technology, we should be able to muddle through–– constructing sustainable communities and places where we may live permanently–– more or less!

This episode is hosted by James Wunsch

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Stefan Al, "Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home" (Norton, 2026)

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This episode is hosted by James Wunsch

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Francesca Lessa and Sebastián Santana, "Operation Condor: The Pact That Terrorized a Continent" (Storia, 2025)

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Operation Condor: The Pact That Terrorized a Continent (Storia, 2025), Francesca Lessa uncovers the shadowy machinery behind one of the most chilling transnational terror campaigns of the twentieth century. What began as a secret pact among South America's military dictatorships quickly grew into a coordinated system of surveillance, kidnappings, torture, and disappearances that reached across borders and oceans. Through meticulous research and newly unearthed documents, Lessa reveals how those in power built a network designed to eliminate dissent wherever it dared to surface, turning exile into a false refuge and entire nations into hunting grounds.

This book is not simply a reconstruction of clandestine meetings and sealed orders, though it excels at that. It is a deeply human story that follows the lives interrupted and the families who refused to surrender to silence. Lessa brings to light parents who never stopped searching, survivors who fought to be heard, and investigators who chipped away at decades of denial. Their voices and struggles give this history its pulse, reminding us that truth is often preserved not by institutions but by ordinary people who refuse to forget.

Translated with clarity and grace by Alejandro Reyes, and enriched by Sebastián Santana Camargo's haunting illustrations, this authorized English edition of the acclaimed Plan Cóndor: Viejos secretos y nuevos hallazgos is both a work of history and an act of witness. It confronts a past many hoped would remain in the shadows and insists on remembering, not out of vengeance, but as a defense of democracy and dignity. The result is a gripping, sobering, and ultimately hopeful testament to the enduring power of memory and justice.

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Michael E. Neagle, "Chasing Bandits: America's Long War on Terror" (UNC Press, 2025)

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

While the war on terror has been America's largest and most publicized attempt to root out foreign enemies this century, the quest to identify and destroy real or imagined threats to national security has long been a part of US history. Drawing on six case studies, Professor Michael E. Neagle spotlights the commonalities of how the United States has leveraged popular understandings of "bandits" to justify incursions abroad as well as rally popular and political support at home.

Chasing Bandits: America's Long War on Terror (UNC Press, 2025) puts recent manhunts for such figures as Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi into deep historical context. For more than a century, Americans have designated some enemies as bandits, but chasing them has yielded mixed results.

Dr. Michael Neagle is director of history and political science at Nichols College, where he is also co-chair of the terrorism studies program.

Dr. Jacob Hagstrom is an army veteran and author of America's Favorite Warlord (Pen and Sword, 2026).

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Charles Lachman, "They Shall Not See the Dawn: The Manhunt for the Third Reich's Most Wanted" (Diversion Books, 2026)

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

May 1945. The Reich is in ruins. Hitler is dead. Yet for the US Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps, the real war has just begun.

They Shall Not See the Dawn: The Manhunt for the Third Reich's Most Wanted (Diversion Books, 2026) by Charles Lachman is the true historical thriller following a secret unit of American agents, drawn from every walk of life, hunting Hitler’s inner circle—the dangerous henchmen still at large and feared to be carrying their Führer’s final political testament, orders for a guerilla resistance, and plans for rocket and nuclear programs hidden in mountain strongholds. It was a race against time to capture World War II’s most notorious Nazis before they could vanish or rally a new resistance.

The CIC men leading the greatest manhunt in history were scholars, motivated college students, an actor, linguists, young draftees and refugees—men like Henry Kissinger—armed not just with guns, but with intellect, intuition, and sheer daring. Their quarry included Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the monstrous Gestapo chief; Julius Streicher, Hitler’s notorious “Jew-baiter”; Robert Ley, master of slave labor; and other high-ranking war criminals desperate to escape justice. Against all odds, the CIC brought them down, ensuring their places in the dock at Nuremberg.

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Christopher Freeburg, "Soul: A Brief History of Black Cultural Life" (Yale UP, 2026)

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Today’s guest, Christopher Freeburg, is the author of Soul: A Brief History of Black Cultural Life (Yale University Press, 2026). This book explores the US history of black cultural life as a history of soul – a spiritual lived practice rooted in communally fostered music, religion, and politics. It makes the case that soul is forged through black community connections and that it’s sustained by moral principles, or pillars, which define how it is lived. The book’s four chapters are organized around four of these pillars: resonance, revelation, resilience, and transcendence. A number of black individuals are foregrounded in these discussions: they include Phillis Wheatley, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nina Simone, Jewel Thais-Williams, Barack Obama, and others.

By telling their stories, and by honoring the weight of the trauma and violence that has long befallen the black community, Christopher Freeburg’s Soul invites its readers to commune with the soul power of people who brought about transformation in the face of seeming impossibility.

Jane Hwang Degenhardt is Professor English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford UP, 2022) and Islamic Conversion and Christian Resistance on the Early Modern Stage (Edinburgh UP, 2012). She is also a co-editor of the academic journal English Literary Renaissance.

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Patrick Griffin, "The Age of Atlantic Revolution: The Fall and Rise of a Connected World" (Yale UP, 2023)

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

David Gellman interviews Patrick Griffin on The Age of Atlantic Revolution: The Fall and Rise of a Connected World

The Age of Atlantic Revolution was a defining moment in western history. Our understanding of rights, of what makes the individual an individual, of how to define a citizen versus a subject, of what states should or should not do, of how labor, politics, and trade would be organized, of the relationship between the church and the state, and of our attachment to the nation all derive from this period (c. 1750–1850).
Historian Patrick Griffin shows that the Age of Atlantic Revolution was rooted in how people in an interconnected world struggled through violence, liberation, and war to reimagine themselves and sovereignty. Tying together the revolutions, crises, and conflicts that undid British North America, transformed France, created Haiti, overturned Latin America, challenged Britain and Europe, vexed Ireland, and marginalized West Africa, Griffin tells a transnational tale of how empires became nations and how our world came into being.

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Sanjay Joshi, "Brahmins of the Himalaya: Upper-Caste Ways of Belonging, 1850-1950" (SUNY Press, 2026)

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Uses the everyday histories of Brahmin clans, communities, and families in a prominent small town in the Indian Himalaya to challenge the assumption that only grand metanarratives such as colonialism and nationalism matter. This everyday history of clans, communities, and elite families in Almora, a prominent town in the Indian Himalaya, puts questions of belonging at the heart of an expansive examination of elite Hinduism. Studying a mountainous region sometimes considered marginal within Indian history, Sanjay Joshi explores critically important mainstream concerns via attention to the periphery in Brahmins of the Himalaya: Upper-Caste Ways of Belonging, 1850-1950 (SUNY Press, 2026). Revealing the connections between two meanings of "belonging"--one as a source of identity, the other indicating possession--he addresses large questions: What is the idea of belonging among upper-caste Hindus? How do their ideas of belonging and community change over time? And to what effect? Refusing to conflate the ordinary and everyday with the trivial, Joshi challenges the frequent assumption that only metanarratives such as colonialism and nationalism matter. His exploration of big issues incorporates a plea for attention to the local and the quotidian as equally essential for a proper historical understanding. In addition to state and institutional archives, Joshi draws on unconventional and previously untapped sources: novels, poetry, local-language newspapers, and over six hundred family papers, including rare examples of women's writing within family contexts.

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Unseen Existences (with Brian Zahnd): How to See the Divine Mystery Here and Now

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Brian Zahnd, a Christian leader and pastor of forty years and four-times pilgrim of the Camino de Santiago, completed this remarkable (and quite short) book, Unseen Existences: Of Heaven, Earth, and the Divine Mystery in All Things. You can read it in a long afternoon or a few sessions of a couple of hours each, sitting outside – perhaps under an oak or a fig tree – with a cup of tea. It’s conversational in tone; it’s clearly the fruit of decades of writing good sermons. Brian is talking to the skepticism—sometimes cynicism—of our times to show (empirically) that more is going on than we take for granted. He also discusses God’s great project for us here in this world, building on St. Augustine, Dallas Willard, and the Gospels. I really enjoyed this insightful book and our meandering conversation.

Pastor Brian’s website
Pastor Brian’s website.
The Reverend: A Fantasy by Pastor Brian, here in four parts, and here as the audio play, read by Boyd Barret.
“The Last Train out of Monkeytown,” a poem by Brian Zahnd.
Here is the book, Unseen Existences, from Intervarsity Press (IVP), and here it is on Amazon.
Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (1998).
Carlos Eire, They Flew (2023).
The story of the radio that turned on (told by Michael Shermer about the incident happened on the occasion of his marriage).

More conversations with Pastor Brian Zahnd on Almost Good Catholics:

Brian Zahnd on Almost Good Catholics, episode 122: The Tree of Life: “no one who loves the way of Grace ever comes to a bad end”
Brian Zahnd on Almost Good Catholics, episode 92: A Hidden Life: The Life and Martyrdom of Bl. Franz Jägerstätter (1907-1943)
Brian Zahnd on Almost Good Catholics, episode 82: The Wood between the Worlds: Why Death on the Cross?

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Charlie Walker, "On Thin Ice: An Explorer's Memoir of Siberia, Surveillance and Survival" (Duckworth, 2026)

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In February 2022, British explorer Charlie Walker flew to Siberia's Sakha Republic to walk a thousand miles up frozen rivers to the Arctic Ocean, through Earth's coldest inhabited region. Days later, Russia invaded Ukraine. Tamping down his concerns, he continued on his journey, meeting indigenous people and ice road truckers along the way.

Yet his trip ended in fear and confusion, with an arrest and a month in a Yakutsk jail, the story of his new book, On Thin Ice: An Explorer's Memoir of Siberia, Surveillance and Survival (Duckworth, 2026)

Charlie is an award-winning explorer, author and international keynote speaker. He has travelled over 60,000 miles by foot, horse, raft, bicycle, ski and dugout canoe, in places as varied as the Tibetan plateau, the Mongolian steppe, the Congolese jungle, the Arctic tundra, the highlands of New Guinea and the Sahara desert. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Scientific Exploration Society Explorer Award winner, and the author of Through Sand & Snow (Nielsen UK: 2021) and On Roads That Echo (Nielsen UK: 2021)

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of On Thin Ice. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Ian Brown, "70: A Diary of My Seventy-First Year" (Penguin Random House, 2026)

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with award-winning author and journalist Ian Brown about his memoir, 70: A Diary of My Seventy-First Year (Penguin Random House, 2026).

Ian Brown, award-winning author of The Boy in the Moon and the memoir Sixty, now recounts his daily reckoning with the milestone age of seventy. Fearlessly candid, often funny and relentlessly real, Brown asks the terrifying questions we all have about growing old, even when he doesn’t want to know the answers. An acclaimed journalist and chronicler of contemporary life, seventy-year-old Ian Brown is not going gently into his eighth decade. The outlook is more perilous than it was at age sixty, but Brown is determined (however hopelessly) not to let time get the better of him. During the course of his seventy-first year, Brown writes incessantly, travelling on assignment for the Globe and Mail across the United States in the months leading to the shocking 2024 election; holidays with family and friends, always aware he might not see them again; skis and rows and exercises like a madman while turning a wary eye on the live-forever movement; takes up pickleball and talks books; and in general tries (and frequently fails) to show some human courage in the face of the march of his dwindling years. Along the way he encounters the lists that have suddenly become essential to daily life (what to take when leaving the house, what to pack for a trip, what to pick up at the drugstore); the indignities of medical tests and the shock of financing a retirement; the terrors and pleasures of growing older with one’s spouse of four decades; the now-suspenseful drama of sex; the thrilling spectacle of watching adult children inhabit new roles of familial responsibility; and the shocking new lessons of life as an older person (accept compliments with grace, remember to smile, stand up straighter). As the percentage of the Canadian population over eighty-five will triple in the next twenty-five years, Brown contemplates his mortality and that of his contemporaries for readers of all ages. Growing old—anything after seventy—is a grave challenge, but also enormously liberating: if there is something you want to say or do, now is your chance to say it or do it. “I have to keep taking chances,” Brown reckons. “I don’t want to give in too soon.”

IAN BROWN is an author and a feature writer for the Globe and Mail whose work has won many National Magazine and National Newspaper Awards. His most recent book, Sixty: The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning?, was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Non-Fiction as well as a finalist for the RBC Taylor Prize. He is also the author of The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search for His Disabled Son, which was a national bestseller and a New York Times and Globe and Mail Best Book, as well as a New York Times top ten book of the year; it also won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction and the Trillium Book Award. His previous books include Freewheeling, which won the National Business Book Award, and the provocative examination of modern masculinity, Man Overboard. He lives in Toronto.

Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024 and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, was released with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Founder of River Street, and the co-chair of the League of Canadian Poets BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. She is also a member of The National Book Critics Circle, The Creative Nonfiction Collective, and The Writers Union of Canada. Hollay was also featured on the cover of issue 10 of The Ampersand Review. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.

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William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe, "Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Political Scientists William Howell and Terry Moe have a new book out that explores how the United States constitutional system has given way to the establishment of a kind of strongman presidency, disconnected in many ways from the constraints designed to keep the American president from becoming autocratic or dictatorial. Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency (Princeton UP, 2025) traces the expansion of the administrative state in the United States, which transpired during much of the 20th century, particularly earlier in the 20th century with the sizeable increase of the Executive branch and development of a more complex governmental bureaucracy. Howell and Moe were drawn to this project because of what they saw as the crisis of democracy in the United States, with the vast extension of presidential power and the rise of the “strongman” presidency. In noting that those who pursue the presidency are by nature power seekers, the argument in Trajectory of Power is not to deny the president’s power, particularly not the powers sketched out within the constitutional structure, but to focus on the ways in which certain presidents have grabbed at more power, and, in a variety of instances, have also broken laws along with having broken norms and traditions.

Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency traces the ways in which, over the course of the 20th century, there was a certain symmetry in the ways that both Democratic and Republican presidents operated as the head of the administrative state, facing the same constraints and incentives while in office. But this symmetry starts to diverge in the latter half of the 20th century and has substantially diverged in the 21st century. Part of the historical discussion focuses in on the ways in which the Republican Party became more radical, especially in its opposition to the growth and expansion of the administrative state that had come out of the New Deal and had continued to expand in pursuit and implementation of more progressive ends, like civil rights, environmental regulations, disability rights, and the like. As we discuss in the podcast, a variety of legal and structural theories and frameworks are developed by advocates within the conversative movement during this time, in the 1970s, to provide an avenue for shifts in the way that the president operates within the Executive branch, and the ways that conservative justices can approach court decisions. Thus, the Unitary Executive Theory and Originalism are constructed so as to provide both the Executive and the Court with more power. This concept of the Strongman Presidency evolves from this idea of the unitary executive, who need not be constrained by the legislature nor the courts, and can essentially function freely – or fully unconstrained – as the leader of the Executive branch, which is a vast and complex bureaucracy. This is at odds with the structure that the Framers established in 1787, which put limits on the president’s power. Howell and Moe note that the Republicans who were elected to the presidency needed a theory to promote their political objectives, which was to undermine and dismantle the broader administrative state in the United States.

The evolving results of this asymmetrical approach to the powers of the presidency and the Executive branch is that the United States is perilously close to losing its democracy. With ongoing attacks on the rule of law, the undermining of the electoral system, and an unfettered president, the United States is experiencing what is known as democratic backsliding.

Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency is a clearly written and important analysis of American democracy, the evolution of the presidency and the Executive Branch, the growth and development of the administrative state in the U.S., and the ways in which the two parties have approached the presidency over the past century.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social

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A Nation Wrestles With God: American Prophets, Philosophers, and Firebrands

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Spanning more than 400 years of spiritual transformation and imagination, A Nation Wrestles With God (Restless Books, 2026) collects diverse writers—poets, novelists, theologians, scientists, musicians, politicians, comedians, artists, mavericks, naturalists, futurists, and more—whose daring texts incited change and continue to influence a growing nation. In this anthology, you will find the stories, poems, letters, speeches, sermons, essays, song lyrics, comic strips, newspaper columns, and commentaries that have awoken new generations to free religious thought, from the precolonial to the present day.

A landmark collection of the philosophers and firebrands that sparked a country’s journey through divinity—praising, challenging, and redefining the sacred.

Guest: Ilan Stavans is the publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include On Borrowed Words, and A Critic’s Journey. He has edited The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, among dozens of other volumes. He is the recipient of numerous honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Chile’s Presidential Medal, the International Latino Book Award, and the Jewish Book Award. His work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted to the stage and screen. A cofounder of the Great Books Summer Program at Amherst, Stanford, Chicago, Oxford, and Dublin, he is the host of the NPR podcast “In Contrast.”

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler holds a Ph.D. in history, which she uses to explore which stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. She is the creator and producer of the Academic Life podcast and newsletter. She works as a writing coach and developmental editor for academics.

Listeners may also be interested in:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 325+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Robert A. Wilson, "Kin Matters: Relational Beings in the Fragile Sciences" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What is kinship? This central question in cultural anthropology is standardly answered in terms of culturally constructed relationships that are unconstrained by biological relationships. In Kin Matters: Relational Beings in the Fragile Sciences (Oxford UP, 2026), Robert Wilson proposes an alternative view that does not separate kin relations from biological facts about reproduction that are universally known, such as the fact that human females are pregnant before they give birth. On the Progenerative View, kinship is the cultural elaboration of reproductive relations, which act as constraints on kin relations. Wilson, who is professor of philosophy at the University of Western Australia, also analyzes incest avoidance from this perspective, and draws on clinical findings, primatology, and philosophy of mind and philosophy of biology to develop his biologically-based yet non-reductive and culturally variable view of kinship.

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Mubanga Kalimamukwento, "The Shipikisha Club" (Cassava Republic Press, 2026)

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Kabwe, Zambia: Sali, a working mother of three, stands trial for the murder of her husband, Kasunga. The prosecutor claims Sali shot him after a heated fight in their bedroom. There are no witnesses. Sali pleads not guilty.

But her story does not begin with a gun. It begins fourteen years earlier--with her rebellion against the pressure to find a husband, her affair with a wealthy married man called Doc, and her discovery that she's pregnant on the same day of Doc's unexpected death.To avoid the shame of being an unwed mother, Sali accepts Kasunga's proposal, and finds herself suddenly thrust into the shipikisha club: her society's expectations that it is a wife's duty to endure. Over the years, Sali navigates her husband's infidelities and alcohol-filled nights, their money troubles, and her postpartum depression in silence. Until the day she speaks her mind, and Kasunga puts a gun in her face.

The trial is a national scandal. Many are called to testify--the maid, Kasunga's mother, and Ntashé, Sali's fifteen-year-old daughter. Even after Sali's diary is dissected and laid bare for all to see, Sali calls no witnesses to her defense. With Kasunga gone, only Sali will ever know the truth. But is the truth enough?

Told through the rotating perspectives of Sali, Ntashé, and Sali's mother Peggy, The Shipikisha Club (Cassava Republic Press, 2026) is a riveting story of gender politics in Zambia and the world at large--a must-read for fans of Peace Adzo Medie, Abi Daré, and Tayari P. Jones.

Mubanga Kalimamukwento is a Zambian attorney and award-winning editor and writer, known for her novel The Mourning Bird and her collection of short stories titled Obligations to the Wounded. She holds a bachelor's and master's degree in law, as well as a master's in fine arts. She is currently pursuing a PhD in gender, women and sexuality studies at the University of Minnesota.

Jessie Cohen holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University in African History. She is the Editor-In-Chief of the New Books Network.

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Tom Lin, "Babylon, South Dakota" (Little Brown and Co, 2026)

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

When Saul Keng Hsiu and his wife, Mei Lee, move from China to the United States to take possession of a 160-acre homestead bequeathed to them by a distant relative, all they have are the possessions on their back, some hidden gold, and a pocketful of chrysanthemum seeds. After a rocky start and a long, harsh winter, the couple find themselves successfully raising chrysanthemums and livestock, and soon after, a daughter, Mara.

But when representatives from the US Army Corps of Engineers buy an acre of the Hsiu’s farmland and begin building a missile silo, the inexplicable starts to occur: Mara can commune with the animals on the farm, Mei develops a hidden talent for augury, and the chrysanthemums become impervious to everything. When the Hsius learn that the project on their farm is an effort to make America’s nuclear deterrent invulnerable, they see firsthand the long arm of power and empire.
In the years and generations that follow, increasingly impacted by the silo and its residue, the Hsius experience strange, wondrous, and tragic events on their farm. An ambitious epic and an ode to the beauty and glory of our connection to the natural world, Babylon, South Dakota upends the idea of “strangers in a strange land” to become a classic American story. It is a daring novel about how choices reverberate across generations and asks us what we owe to one another.

Tom Lin was born in China and immigrated to the United States when he was four. A graduate of Pomona College, he also holds a PhD from the University of California, Davis. His first novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. He teaches English and creative writing at the University of Iowa.

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Michelle Adams, "The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North " (FSG, 2025)

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Winner of the MAAH Stone Book Award Winner of the 2025 Avern Cohn Award A New York Times Notable Book of 2025, A New Yorker Best Book of 2025 selection A Christian Science Monitor 25 Best Books of 2025 The epic story of Detroit’s struggle to integrate schools in its suburbs—and the defeat of desegregation in the North. In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the justices brought a halt to school desegregation across the North, and to the civil rights movement’s struggle for a truly equal education for all. How did this come about, and why? In The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North (FSG, 2025), the esteemed legal scholar Michelle Adams tells the epic story of the struggle to integrate Detroit schools—and what happened when it collided with Nixon-appointed justices committed to a judicial counterrevolution. Adams chronicles the devoted activists who tried to uplift Detroit's students amid the upheavals of riots, Black power, and white flight—and how their efforts led to federal judge Stephen Roth’s landmark order to achieve racial balance by tearing down the walls separating the city and its suburbs. The “metropolitan remedy” could have remade the landscape of racial justice. Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that the suburbs could not be a part of the effort to integrate—and thus upheld the inequalities that remain in place today. Adams tells this story via compelling portraits of a city under stress and of key figures—including Detroit’s first Black mayor, Coleman Young, and Justices Marshall, Rehnquist, and Powell. The result is a legal and historical drama that exposes the roots of today’s backlash against affirmative action and other efforts to fulfill the country’s promise.

My guest today is Michelle Adams. Michelle Adams is the Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. The former codirector of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, she served on the Biden administration’s Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court and as an expert commentator on the Netflix series Amend: The Fight for America and the Showtime series Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court. Her writings have appeared in The New Yorker, The Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, and elsewhere. She was born and grew up in Detroit.

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Thomas Breimaier, "Tethered to the Cross: The Life and Preaching of Charles H. Spurgeon" (IVP Academic, 2020)

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

"Tethered to the cross" is how the renowned nineteenth-century English Baptist minister Charles H. Spurgeon (1834–1892) described the task of ministry and his approach to preaching. For nearly four decades, Spurgeon served as the pastor of the church at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. But what specifically guided the reading of Scripture by the man known as the "Prince of Preachers"? Tracing the development of Spurgeon's thought and his approach to biblical hermeneutics throughout his ministry in Tethered to the Cross: The Life and Preaching of Charles H. Spurgeon (IVP Academic, 2020), theologian and historian Thomas Breimaier argues that Spurgeon viewed the entire Bible through the lens of the cross of Christ. This method led Spurgeon to interpret texts in a consistent fashion, resulting in sermons, articles, and instruction that employed cross-centered language, which was aimed at the conversion of unbelievers. With Breimaier as our guide, better understanding of how Spurgeon approached the task of interpreting Scripture and preaching the gospel might enable us, too, to be tethered to the cross of Christ.
Author

Thomas Breimaier (PhD, University of Edinburgh) is the Director for Learning and Training at Hope City Church in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Host

Michael Shaw is a PhD student in Historical Theology at Union College, Belfast, and a Visiting Lecturer at the Irish Baptist College. His research focuses on the thought of the Independent Puritan theologian Jeremiah Burroughs (1599–1646). His primary academic interests lie in historical theology, particularly early modern Baptist and Congregationalist theology and ecclesiology. He also serves as the Associate Pastor at Strandtown Baptist Church, Belfast.

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Leonhard Emmerling, "The Idiots: The History of the Homo Nullus" (Seagull Books, 2026)

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In a world obsessed with expertise and control, the figure of the idiot illuminates deeper truths about society. In this interview, Morteza Hajizadeh interviews Leonhard Emmerling about his book The Idiots: The History of the Homo Nullus (Seagull Books, 2026)

Dostoevsky and Nietzsche wrote about him; Dadaists and punks idolized him; artists like Warhol and Beuys made him their icon. From holy fool to punk rebel, the idiot—a figure that traces its roots back to the Greek idiotes, a person who was alienated from public life—has always challenged society’s norms from the margins. Far from a simple madman, the idiot is a powerful subversive, a person who disregards norms and finds profound insight in a state of unmediated inspiration. Using a cross-disciplinary approach bridging literature, religion, art, and philosophy, this volume traces a rich journey up to the present, where the idiot reemerges in a dramatic twist: a public figure who inverts social norms, confounds the boundary between private and public, and declares a new, paradoxical view of the world.

Leonhard Emmerling has worked as an art historian in different capacities: as curator and director of art institutions in Germany and New Zealand; as teacher at art academies in Auckland, Düsseldorf, and Munich; and as advisor and director for the Goethe-Institut. His most recent publication is Aesthetics: What For?.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.

YouTube Channel: here

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Ashish Koul, "Reinventing Caste: Islam and Hierarchy in Late Colonial India" (Stanford UP, 2026)

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Reinventing Caste: Islam and Hierarchy in Late Colonial India (Stanford UP, 2026) reveals that caste, usually assumed to be a feature of Hindu society, was in fact a trans-religious phenomenon in colonial India, as it is today. Even in an Islamic religious milieu that was supposedly more egalitarian than hierarchical Hinduism, colonial Indian subjects thought and acted in terms of caste. Through a focus on one agrarian Muslim caste known as Arains, Ashish Koul shows how some Indian Muslims transmuted caste and emplaced it within their understanding of Islam. During this time, Arain Muslims were derogatively called mali— gardener—instead of what they wished to be seen as—respectable landholders. Seeking to refute such negative portrayals, a group of elite Arains came together to develop a new Islamic vocabulary for caste.

Using primary sources in English and Urdu, Koul analyzes the intricacies of caste, religion, and politics among Muslims in colonial India. By asserting that being Arain was a way of being a true Muslim, elite Arains were able to intervene in significant debates about Muslim identity, colonial law, and political representation. Reinventing Caste shows that in order to understand why caste persists among South Asians, we must examine how caste consciousness has been entrenched within multiple religious traditions.

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Ben Westhoff ed.,"Lives Interrupted: The Fentanyl Tragedy" (Arsenault Family Foundation, 2026)

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

An account of the North American fentanyl crisis told through stories and photographs of its victims

Lives Interrupted: The Fentanyl Tragedy (Arsenault Family Foundation, 2026), edited by Ben Westhoff, author of Fentanyl, Inc., is a different kind of drug book. Part biography, part coffee-table photo collection, it seeks to put a human face on a public health crisis too often discussed in statistics and numbers. Westhoff's book profiles 80 people, 76 victims of fentanyl overdose and 4 survivors, and shows the fullness of their personalities, as well as their legacy in the work their mourning families carry on. Its purpose is to move public officials and health departments to emphasize recovery and treatment for those battling with this drug.

Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). Her new book, Addiction, Inc.: Medication-Assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs, was released in 2026.

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Voices from North Korea: Refugees Tell Their Stories

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 21:28:00 -0000

n this podcast, North Korean refugees who visited the University of Bradford share their harrowing experiences of life in North Korea, escape, and the challenges of building new lives in freedom. They are supported by Freedom Speakers International (FSI), a Seoul-based non-profit that helps North Korean refugees rebuild their lives through personalised English education, mentoring and public-speaking opportunities. Crucially, FSI enables refugees to tell their own stories in their own voices.

Their testimony reveals the human cost of repression in North Korea while highlighting the importance of the humanitarian work undertaken by FSI: helping refugees develop the skills and confidence to pursue their ambitions, rebuild their independence and ensure that their experiences are heard internationally.

Freedom Speakers International (FSI) is a Seoul-based non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting North Korean refugees as they rebuild their lives after escape from North Korea. Founded in 2013 by Casey Lartigue Jr. and Eunkoo Lee, it began as Teach North Korean Refugees and has developed into an organisation focused on empowering refugees through education, mentoring and public speaking opportunities.

FSI provides North Korean refugees with tuition-free, individualised English and public-speaking mentorship. This is particularly important because many refugees arrive in South Korea having experienced severe disruption to their education and face significant disadvantages in employment and higher education, where English proficiency can be important. FSI works with refugees according to their own objectives, helping them improve their language skills, confidence and ability to participate fully in South Korean and international society.

An especially important part of FSI's work is enabling North Korean refugees who wish to do so to tell their own stories. Through its public-speaking programme, its “I Am From North Korea” English Speech Contest and its Keynote Speaker Network, FSI gives refugees opportunities to communicate their experiences directly to international audiences rather than having others speak on their behalf. Its speaker network now includes more than 30 speakers.

The humanitarian importance of this work extends well beyond language teaching. North Korean refugees have often endured repression, traumatic journeys of escape, separation from their families and the considerable difficulties of adapting to an unfamiliar society. Effective resettlement therefore requires more than providing physical safety. It also means helping people recover independence, confidence and the ability to determine their own futures. FSI's personalised model is particularly valuable because it treats refugees not simply as recipients of assistance but as individuals with their own ambitions, experiences and voices. Its work helps turn escape from persecution into the possibility of a genuinely independent life.

At the same time, by enabling refugees to speak about North Korea from personal experience, FSI performs a wider human-rights function. First-hand testimony preserves awareness of conditions inside North Korea and ensures that the experiences of those who have escaped remain part of international discussion. Supporting North Korean refugees in finding their own voices is therefore both an important humanitarian activity and a contribution to the broader defence of human dignity and freedom.

Christoph Bluth is Professor of International Relations and Security at the University of Bradford.

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Daniela Gerson, "The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II" (Grand Central Publishing, 2026)

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II (Grand Central Publishing, 2026), an immigration journalist and her wife trace their family’s intertwined past to unearth a history of how hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews survived Hitler’s Holocaust at the brutal hands of Stalin—a story that sheds light on the enduring power of hope and love.
Daniela Gerson and her wife, Talia Inlender, met at a picnic in Los Angeles, not knowing that 75 years earlier, their grandparents had left homes only blocks away from each other in a small Polish town, and fled east to Ukraine. The Gersons and the Inlenders would go on parallel odysseys of 5,000 miles to survive the Holocaust—journeys that would, after a deceitful loyalty test from Stalin, put them on cattle cars to a Soviet Gulag, trap them for years in limbo in Central Asia, and would end, after a decade on the run, with new lives built on secrets and lies.
For years, Daniela and Talia simply accepted this painful shared history as a sign that they were b’shert, meant to be. Their families’ refugee past fueled their work: Daniela as an immigration journalist; Talia an immigration attorney. But as Daniela uncovered more, she realized that their grandparents shared this escape path in the Soviet Union with most Polish Jews who survived; a group—sometimes collectively called “the Wanderers”—that is almost entirely absent from popular understanding of World War II. And unlike most Holocaust sagas that focus on the exceptionality of the Nazi genocide, theirs was also a universal story of refugees making impossible decisions when forced to seek safety, protect their children, and find new homes.

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Erin Maglaquel "Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body" (Astra House, 2026)

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Erin Maglaque's new book Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body (Astra House, 2026), is a work of early modern history and an account of what it is like to study the past as an embodied person. Having been trained as to disregard the physical self when writing history, Maglaque's worldview completely shifted following the birth of her child. What might it mean to instead, "find a way to write that flowed from the body?" Presence is her answer. The book draws from a vast array of archival and printed sources to illustrate the realities of women's physical experiences in early modern Europe, from eating, pregnancy, abortion, birth, nursing, sleeping, working, and dying. Maglaque intersperses her historical narrative with personal accounts, demonstrating the ways in which studying the past can impact our lives today. For anyone interested in women's history, the history of labor, early modern health and medicine, or simply the purpose and potential of historical study, Presence is the book to read.

Erin Maglaque is a historian of early modern Europe and gender. She teaches at Durham University and writes for publications including the London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times Book Review.

Elspeth Currie is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Boston College where she studies women’s intellectual history in early modern Europe. Learn more here

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Ellen Prentiss Campbell, "Vanishing Point" (Apprentice House Press, 2026)

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Beginning in the 1880s and spanning three generations through the 1980s, Vanishing Point (Apprentice House Press, 2026) explores the life and family of Pennsylvania artist George Hetzel and his large, complex family. We watch him and his wife, Mary Louise, mourn losses, celebrate triumphs, and struggle with the tension between their family life and Hetzel’s art. We learn about the lives of Hetzel’s children, especially focusing on his daughter Lila, also a painter, and his granddaughter, Dorothy, a writer. Weaving together stories of personal lives, insight into the ongoing struggle of women to rise in the creative arts, and pivotal artistic events in Pittsburgh, Scalp Level, and Somerset, Pennsylvania, Vanishing Point is a gorgeous historical novel.

Ellen Prentiss Campbell grew up in Pennsylvania and Rockville, Maryland. A graduate of Smith College, Simmons School of Social Work, and The Bennington Writing Seminars, she practiced psychotherapy for many years. Her historical novels The Bowl with Gold Seams and Frieda’s Song and her collections of short stories have garnered awards and recognition, and best of all – readers. Ellen blogs for The Washington Independent as Girl Writing and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. She lives with her husband in Washington, DC and Manns Choice, Pennsylvania. Ellen loves travel, reading, writing, and swimming everywhere she goes. Connect online here

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Lucas L. Johnson II, "Remembering Roots: How an American Classic Transformed the World" (Broadleaf Books, 2026)

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

As we approach the 50th anniversaries of Alex Haley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Roots (1976) and its landmark television adaptation (1977), journalist and storyteller Lucas L. Johnson II reflects on the enduring legacy of Haley’s work through the voices of those it continues to move, including scholars, artists, genealogists, students, and original cast members like LeVar Burton and Ben Vereen.

With vivid personal anecdotes, emotional tributes, and probing reflections, Remembering Roots: How an American Classic Transformed the World (Broadleaf Books, 2026)shows how Haley’s vision gave birth to a genealogy movement, inspired generations to reclaim their identities, and challenged America to confront its past. From a sixth-grader who became the first lawyer in her family, to a blind musician empowered by his father’s retelling of Roots’ most iconic scene, Johnson traces the ripple effects of Haley’s griot storytelling across time and culture.

As debates rage over which histories get told, Remembering Roots boldly asserts the necessity to remember and retell our stories. A call to action, this book reaffirms that storytelling is not just an art — it’s a path to healing. A companion reading and viewing guide to the book and film is available here.

Lucas L. Johnson II is a former reporter for the Associated Press, where he worked for more than twenty years mainly covering politics, education, and religion. He is the author of Finding the Good and coauthor of Youth Change Agent. Lucas works in higher education and has taught high school and college students. A freelance writer and communications strategist, Lucas lives in Nashville, Tennessee. You can find him at his website.

Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Stef Ferrari, "Pining for You" (Simon & Schuster, 2026)

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Pining for You (Simon & Schuster, 2026) the classic Hallmark holiday movie gets turned upside down when a teen leaves her small-town Christmas tree farm in pursuit of the city girl who swept her off her feet in this cheeky and cozy rom-com by Food Network competitor Stef Ferrari. Bennie Bosley has Christmas spirit on lock. Her borderline magical ability to give the perfect gift, encyclopedic knowledge of holiday movies, and skill as a baker working at a literal Christmas tree farm mean she’s the authority on all things merry. So, when Bennie sees sparkles after bumping into the most stunning girl she’s ever seen in her small Connecticut town, her friends are all shocked that Bennie doesn’t seem to realize what this is: real holiday magic at work…and the perfect opportunity for her much-needed first kiss. There’s just one problem: her mystery girl, Eve, lives in Brooklyn and Bennie never got her number or her last name. But showing up unexpectedly to make a big romantic gesture is a classic holiday trope for a reason, right? And her friends aren’t about to miss the fireworks. But what was supposed to be a quick Christmas adventure turns into a scramble across Brooklyn when the biggest snowstorm of the decade hits. Will Bennie and crew be able to track Eve down for a merrily ever after and still make it back for their last Cooper Farm Christmas Eve party, or is their holiday movie moment destined for the cutting room floor?

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Lee Alan Dugatkin, "Nary a Horse Left Standing: How a Nineteenth-Century Epidemic Transformed Medicine, Animal Welfare, and the Modern City" (MIT Press, 2026)

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Nary a Horse Left Standing: How a Nineteenth-Century Epidemic Transformed Medicine, Animal Welfare, and the Modern City (MIT Press, 2026), Dr. Lee Dugatkin chronicles this little-known crisis, revealing how the epidemic disrupted nearly every aspect of urban life. From coast to coast, livelihoods collapsed as horses lay sick, or worse dying, on stable floors, fires raged unchecked without horse-drawn wagons, and city development stalled for lack of horsepower. Just as the Gilded Age was dawning and industrialists were poised to amass fortunes, the flu slowed progress to a crawl.

Yet the tragedy also catalyzed revolutions in medicine, animal rights, and transportation. Veterinary science in the U.S. was still emerging, but detailed medical reports from the epidemic helped validate germ theory and discredit outdated beliefs. The crisis also spotlighted early animal welfare efforts, with fledgling groups like the ASPCA advocating for sick horses forced to work. Finally, the sheer vulnerability of relying on animals for transport spurred a shift toward mechanized systems.

As illuminating as it is humbling, the book brings to life a critical account of a crisis that still speaks to the complex public health and transportation challenges we face today.

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Joy M. Perrin, "Efficiency by Design: Transforming Libraries and Archives through Process Management" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Efficiency by Design: Transforming Libraries and Archives through Process Management (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Joy M. Perrin offers library and archive professionals a comprehensive guide to optimizing processes, with a focus on improving efficiency, speed, effectiveness, and reliability. Professionals in libraries and archives often are asked to take on decades old processes and are not provided the tools to rework those processes. This book gives readers practical insight into how they can analyze and re-design their work processes to be more efficient, faster, more effective, and more reliable. Readers will learn methods for getting more done while reducing stress and burnout. Librarians, archivists, and paraprofessionals who find themselves managing a process will find this book an excellent companion. By integrating process management techniques with the specific needs of libraries and archives, this book bridges the gap between theory and practice, providing actionable strategies to streamline workflows. Ultimately, Efficiency by Design contributes to making library and archive management more productive, sustainable, and mindful of the challenges professionals face today.

Guest: Joy M. Perrin is the Digital Initiatives Librarian at the Texas Tech University Libraries, where she leads initiatives related to digital collections, institutional repositories, scholarly communication, and digital preservation. Her research interests include digital libraries, accessibility, artificial intelligence in libraries and archives, and workflow optimization. She holds a Master of Information Science from the University of North Texas.

Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is a Professor of Library Services and served for ten years as the Information Literacy Program and Library Services Coordinator at Delaware County Community College.

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Claudia Verhoeven, "Love and Terror: The Helter-Skelter History of the Manson Murders" (Verso, 2026)

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Love and Terror, The Helter Skelter History of the Manson Murders (Verso, 2026) is the most recent addition to the hundreds of books and films devoted to the killings committed by Charlie Manson’s followers in Los Angeles in August 1969.

What is different about this work is that the author Claudia Verhoeven is an intellectual historian whose previous book was on a Russian terrorist who tried to assassinate Tsar Alexander II in 1866. Verhoerven unpacks the various frames through which the participants, the trial lawyers, and the public at large interpreted the seemingly senseless violence.

Manson was a charismatic ex-con whose lived on a ranch near LA with several dozen devoted followers, mostly teenage girls. After a drug deal gone wrong Manson arranged a series of grisly murders. The prosecution argued this was part of a crazy scheme, inspired by the Bible and the Beatles’ White Album, to start an apocalyptic race war. Skeptics argue Manson was just trying to cover up the drug murders.

Verhoeven, an associate professor of history at Cornell, taught a class where she used the Manson case to train her students how to conduct historical research and how to think about history.

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Violaine Roussel, "Data-Driven Hollywood: The New Data Professionals in the Age of Streaming" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Hollywood today, thousands of data specialists work for streaming video platforms, playing a role not just in distribution and marketing but also in decisions about content and production. In Data-Driven Hollywood: The New Data Professionals in the Age of Streaming (Princeton UP, 2026), Violaine Roussel examines the emergence of this new category of professionals at the heart of the Hollywood dream factory. Roussel shows how the rise of data and algorithm specialists has transformed organizations and rearranged power relationships within them. Drawing on extensive interviews and in situ observations, she describes the ways that technical “data work” carried out by professionals at streaming platforms including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+ has had a significant effect on creative decisions.
Rather than fetishizing data and algorithmic models, Roussel explores the practices of the professionals who shape them, manipulate them, and give them power. She examines the relationships of these workers with traditional producers, describing legitimacy struggles and the eventual stabilization of new professional arrangements. Roussel’s account of the ways that data specialists deploy algorithmic models to reinvent their industry’s approach to content, artists, and the market—the first in-depth sociological study of the rise of this new profession—reveals the new forms of power and knowledge at play in today’s Hollywood.

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Francesca Sbardella, "Inhabiting Silence: An Anthropologist in the Cloister" (Berghahn Books, 2025)

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Monasteries are typically characterized by physical and symbolic limitations on access as they are usually known through written texts and accounts by nuns who live in that world but do not allow others to have access. This has often resulted in research based on indirect sources. Inhabiting Silence: An Anthropologist in the Cloister (Berghahn Books, 2025) is the result of observant participation in which the ethnographer is a protagonist social actor in two French monasteries of Discalced Carmelite nuns. Francesca Sbardella experiences and narrates details of their everyday life that usually remain unseen but contribute to shaping community-building processes and, at the same time, construe the religious woman.

Inhabiting Silence: An Anthropologist in the Cloister (Berghahn Books, 2025) was translated from Italian by Claudio Bendazzoli, with a foreword by Simon Ditchfield and an afterword by Fabio Dei.

Francesca Sbardella is an anthropologist and historian of religion and a professor at the University of Bologna.

* This episode is part of a special collaboration between the New Books Network and the Society for the Anthropology of Europe, a section of the American Anthropological Association. Together, we’re highlighting exciting new work in Europeanist anthropology—featuring authors from across the field, including winners of the William A. Douglass Book Prize and contributors to the European Anthropology in Translation series published by Berghahn Books.

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Ketil Slagstad, "Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine (U Chicago Press, 2025) traces the emergence of trans medicine in Scandinavia in the twentieth century, exploring the construction and negotiation of medical expertise among medical professionals, patients, and activists in the media and government bureaucracy. The book combines the author’s analysis of medical records and other archival sources with oral history interviews with former patients, activists, doctors, psychologists, and civil servants. Physician-historian Ketil Slagstad uses the Scandinavian story of sex reassignment to anchor not only the role of the state but also bureaucracy and social rights. Scandinavian countries, he shows, played a foundational role in the emergence of trans medicine internationally. As a result, Standardizing Sex tells a transnational history of medicine that sheds light on a set of relations and problems that continue to impact discussions of trans medicine and trans rights around the world.
Slagstad’s sources offer a rare opportunity to explore the emergence of trans medicine in action in the clinic, laboratory, waiting room, and operating room, as well as in the bureaucrat’s office, on the psychologist’s couch, and in the publications and meetings of activist groups. Together, these sources allow for the analysis of the increasingly complex negotiations of nosological criteria, medical knowledge, and medical practices in a formative period for transgender medicine. More generally, the book offers a story about the reshaping of the normal and the pathological in modern societies.

Ketil Slagstad is a research fellow at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine at Charité: Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

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Mélanie Lamotte, "By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire" (Harvard UP, 2026)

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

From the beginning of the seventeenth century, French colonies and trading posts sprawled across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In the first pan-imperial history of the early French Empire in the English language, Mélanie Lamotte shows how an increasingly cohesive legal culture came to govern the lives of enslaved and free people of African, Malagasy, South Asian, and Native American descent. She also illuminates the important role played by these populations in the development of the empire, from Louisiana to Guadeloupe, Senegambia, Madagascar, Isle Bourbon, and India.

The early French Empire has often been portrayed as a fragmented conglomerate of isolated colonies or regions. Yet Lamotte shows that racial policies issued by the metropole, as well as by officials in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, significantly influenced one another. Rather than focusing on the actions of administrators, however, Lamotte also reveals the extensive influence of people on the ground—especially those of non-European descent. Through their sexuality and their labor, along with their socio-economic and political endeavors, they played a critical role in building the empire and setting its limits. As they sought justice for themselves, strove to protect their kin, and aimed to improve their social conditions, these individuals also pushed against the advancement of white dominion in unexpected ways.

Archivally rich and rigorously documented, By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire (Harvard UP, 2026)illuminates the transoceanic connections that united the French colonial world—and recasts people of African, Malagasy, South Asian, and Native American descent as key actors in the story of empire-building.

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Gabrielle Thomas, "The Problem of the Devil in Cappadocian Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In The Problem of the Devil in Cappadocian Thought (Cambridge UP, 2026), Gabrielle Thomas questions the popular assumption that the devil served as the primary explanation for evil, sin, and suffering as early Christians grappled with all that is wrong in the world. Interrogating the status of the devil in the teachings of the Cappadocians – Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Macrina the Younger – she identifies their points of agreement, that the devil is a fallen angel, and disagreement, notably how Christ defeated him, his continued existence, and his ultimate end. In her investigation, Thomas engages fourth-century Christian thought in conversation with ancient philosophy, ancient history, classics, and biblical studies. She demonstrates how the Cappadocians negotiated myriad philosophical, theological, and spiritual problems with the devil. Thomas argues that the devil is not simply a strategy for explaining the problem of evil. Rather, the devil himself is the problem.

New Books in Late Antiquity is Presented by Ancient Jew Review

Gabrielle Thomas, an Anglican priest, is Dean and President of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and Professor of Early Christian, Anglican, and Theological Studies at Yale Divinity School. She is the author of The Image of God in the Theology of Gregory of Nazianzus and For the Good of the Church: Unity, Theology, and Women and co-editor of Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church.

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at Umass Boston

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Kevin Van Meter and Robert Ovetz eds. "Points of Departure: Refusal of Work and the Crisis of Capitalism: the Collected Writings of Harry Cleaver" (Common Notions, 2026)

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

“The general thrust of capitalist policy in this period aims at the intensified imposition of work in response to ongoing struggle against it.”

—Harry Cleaver, “Work Is Still the Central Issue: New Words for New Worlds,” in Points of Departure, ed. Robert Ovetz and Kevin Van Meter, p. 35.

What changes if we begin the history of capitalism not with what capital does to workers, but with what workers force capital to do?

This reversal helps set Harry Cleaver’s approach to Marxism apart from more traditional accounts of capitalism and labor. In Points of Departure: Refusal of Work and the Crisis of Capitalism, editors Robert Ovetz and Kevin Van Meter bring together Cleaver’s writings from several decades, including hard-to-find and previously untranslated work.

The first volume in Common Notions’ new Class Compositions series presents Cleaver’s work not simply as theory, but as a practical way of making sense of everyday struggles from the worker’s standpoint. The refusal of work, unwaged labor, class composition, capitalist crisis, and self-valorization take on renewed significance amid contemporary struggles over work and organization. Greek and Turkish translations are also in the works.

Listeners may know Cleaver from his landmark 1979 book Reading Capital Politically. For more than five decades, he has helped develop what became known as autonomist Marxism, an approach that places working-class self-activity at the center of its analysis. In this interview Ovetz and Van Meter discuss the traditions from which his work emerged, and what they hope a new generation of readers might do with it in their search for alternatives.

Although more conventional accounts of political economy often begin with companies restructuring workplaces, introducing new technologies, moving investment, or tightening workplace discipline. Cleaver instead, turns the perspective around by asking what forms of worker resistance may have compelled capital to make those changes in the first place.

That reversal in turn raises questions the editors grapple with, such as: How do everyday acts of resistance become collective power? How can we demonstrate that corporate restructuring is actually a response to worker resistance, and what might other approaches add to or supplement Cleaver’s inversion of class perspective? And when workers create organizations of their own, how can those institutions preserve autonomy without hardening into less responsive bureaucracies?

Drawing on concepts like workers’ inquiry, workplace cooperation, self-valorization, cooperatives, as well as the significance of Zapatistas, we consider what it means to move beyond refusing existing forms of work toward creating new forms of collective life.

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Jonathan Swift and David Womersley ed., "Gulliver's Travels: Cambridge Anniversary Edition" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Gulliver's Travels is one of the landmarks of world literature. Gulliver's adventures with the tiny but spirited Lilliputians, the giant inhabitants of Brobdingnag, the flying island of Laputa, and the rational horses of Houyhnmhnmland have become globally famous for their satirical wit and visionary creativity. Early editions credited Gulliver himself as the author, and many readers believed him to be a real person. Later commentators have variously described the work as proto-science fiction, as inspired children's literature and as a forerunner of the modern novel. The editor's introduction to this celebratory anniversary edition contextualises Gulliver's Travels in Swift's life and work as a whole while exploring its rich and remarkable afterlife. All the original illustrations and maps are included, as are the frontispiece portraits. Generous annotation explains textual details which might now seem obscure, and appendices contain additional documents and images to enhance contemporary understanding and enjoyment.

David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. His books include Divinity and State, Gibbon and the “Watchmen of the Holy City” and The Transformation of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He is also the editor of many books, including the Penguin Classics editions of Gibbons’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson and David Hume’s complete essays. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society.

YouTube Channel: here

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Sara McDougall, "Justice for Jehanne: The Tale of a Medieval Survivor" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the winter of 1472, the city of Dijon, France, became the stage for a remarkable legal drama. On the mayor’s orders, an investigator named Jaques Borestel went door-to-door questioning his neighbors about an alleged sexual assault—and about the victim’s history and place in the community. At the center of Jaques’s inquiry was a woman named Jehanne, who took the unusual step of making a criminal complaint in an age when victims of sexual violence did so at their own peril. Justice for Jehanne: The Tale of a Medieval Survivor (Princeton UP, 2026) follows Jaques’s investigation as he uncovers one woman’s story of resilience and survival.

Applying forensic analysis to witness testimony and Jaques’s case files, Sara McDougall finds in Jehanne a woman of many lives and many secrets. An outsider on her own in Dijon, Jehanne had every reason to distrust the local authorities, who regularly extorted money from the city’s most vulnerable residents. Separating facts from falsehoods, McDougall challenges preconceptions about the experiences of marginalized women in medieval France, showing how neighbors, clergy, and other residents aided Jehanne throughout her legal struggles—and how justice of a sort was exacted from her attackers.
Richly detailed and powerfully told, Justice for Jehanne paints an unforgettable portrait of a woman who mounted an extraordinary response to a crime that was so difficult to prosecute at the time, and of a community that gave her shelter, protection, and acceptance as she endeavored to survive on her own terms.

Sara McDougall is professor of history at John Jay College of the City University of New York and is on the faculty in Biography and Memoir, French, History, and Medieval Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800–1230 and Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne. Her fellowships include the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

YouTube Channel: here

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Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer et al eds., "Mapping Medical Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What does medical anthropology look like in the twenty-first century?

That is the central question of Mapping Medical Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century, a new edited volume by Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer, Junko Kitanaka and Eugene Raikhel, published by Rutgers University Press in 2026.

Rather than simply offering an overview of the field, the book invites us to rethink where medical anthropology has been, where it is now, and where it might be going.

What makes the collaboration particularly interesting is that the editors work across different geographical and intellectual locations. Their perspectives come together in a book that itself crosses borders, disciplines and medical worlds.

The book is also particularly timely as medicine is being transformed by AI, genetic technologies, digital health, pharmaceuticals and climate change, while longstanding questions of inequality, race, colonialism and access to care remain.

In my New Books Network conversation with the editors, we explore these questions and also the story behind the collaboration itself: How did three scholars working across different intellectual and geographical contexts come together? Why map medical anthropology through keywords? What should the field retain, rethink and confront in the twenty-first century?

Mapping Medical Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century does not offer a final map and invites us to keep redrawing the territory.

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Janaka Jayawickrama and Jerome Wright, "Under the Gaze of Global Mental Health: A Critical Reflection" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What went wrong with global mental health?

Under the Gaze of Global Mental Health: A Critical Reflection (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) critically examines how the globalisation of mental health through the dominant medical model has created barriers to understanding and responding to distress with reference to cases from Malawi and Sri Lanka. Its authors argue that mental health must be understood within the overall health of an individual, and individual health is located within the social, political, cultural, economic, and environmental context in which they live. Their analyses demonstrate that supplanting locally developed responses to distress with a Western medicalised model of mental health inhibits a meaningful engagement with individuals and communities in need of care. Further, they argue that this ‘supplanting’ is analogous with a colonial endeavour, and one which diverts attention from the real problems of development. Across contexts the book highlights the difficulties that mental health professionals face in facilitating individuals’ capacities within structurally damaging socio-economic environments and increasingly commercially orientated health systems.

Janaka Jayawickrama is Professor of Social Anthropology and Director at the Research Centre for Health and Wellbeing at Shanghai University.

Jerome Wright is Associate Professor in the Department of Health Sciences, University of York.

Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

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Kirby, "Fairy" (Palimpsest Press, 2026)

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Kirby about their joyful and powerful new book, Fairy (Palimpsest Press, 2026).

In Fairy, Kirby continues to mine their riches and fan the flames lit in their instant classic, Poetry is Queer. Their essays are an act of liberation they call “tending to each other’s freedom,” and are written with signature Kirby directness and panache, from early AIDS-activist monologues, to launching a counter city-wide “safe-sex” campaign that includes the public depiction of an affectionate gay couple, to leaving the States in a love that made them “the most beautiful boy in the world,” to becoming a Canadian queer poetry icon. Like countless fairies before them, Kirby scouts desire paths beyond mere survival for new queer voices to continue to amaze, flourish, and thrive. Or as Fairy says, “This way >>>”

Kirby is the author of She (KFB, 2025), Poetry is Queer (Palimpsest Press, 2021), This Is Where I Get Off (Permanent Sleep Press, 2019), featured columnist at Send My Love to Anyone and publisher at Knife | Fork | Book. kirbyfairy.ca

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Leah C. Stokes, "The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet" (MIT Press, 2026)

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

They were perhaps an unlikely trio: professor Leah Stokes, the policy wonk Sonia Aggarwal in the White House, and the DC insider Adrian Deveny in the Senate, but together they crafted the boldest climate legislation of our time. In The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet (MIT Press, 2026), Stokes chronicles the turbulent path of their climate bill as it veered between breakthrough and collapse—from the hopeful beginnings of the Green New Deal in 2018, to the bill’s near-certain defeat by Senator Joe Manchin in the winter of 2021, to the surprise passage of the landmark legislation in August 2022. During this critical time, the author was pregnant or in the NICU with her premature twins, and Aggarwal and Deveny were new parents too. Interlacing personal narratives with stories from Congress, the White House, and outside activists, Stokes shows how dogged perseverance and collective action can still bend the course of history. The book concludes with an update from the second Trump administration, explaining the parts of the bill that were—and were not—rolled back, and why we should remain hopeful that progress is still being made. Everyone has been told to shrink their carbon footprint and lighten their load on our planet by changing their behavior. But what if instead of making ourselves smaller, we joined with others to maximize our impact? That’s the carbon wave. And this book shows us how to make it.

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An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The story of Polish Jewry, pre-Holocaust Europe’s largest Jewish community, is often told as one of creativity and contestation. In his new book, An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland, University of Chicago professor Kenneth B. Moss traces instead a complex and painful story of Polish Jewish reckoning with diasporic vulnerability, nationalism’s terrible potencies, Zionism’s promises, and the necessity of choice. Moss examines the works of Polish Jewry’s most searching thinkers as they confronted political irrationality, state crisis, and the limits of resistance. He reconstructs the desperate creativity of activists seeking to counter despair where they could not redress its causes. And he recovers a lost grassroots history of critical thought and political searching among ordinary Jews, young and powerless, as they struggled to find a viable future for themselves – in Palestine if not in Poland, individually if not communally.

Join Kenneth Moss in conversation with Stanford professor Steven Zipperstein for a discussion on this new publication and the history it unveils.

Buy the book: here

This book talk originally took place on March 2, 2022.

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Stuart McHardy, "Scotland's Geomythography: Myth, Landscape and the Roots of Culture" (Luath Press, 2025)

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What can we learn from our landscape? How can Geomythography help us understand our cultural heritage? What is Geomythography?

Geomythography is the interpretation of prehistoric and later societies at specific locales through a combination of oral tradition, place-names, landscape analysis and archaeology. The process is a means of finding new perspectives and interpretations to further the understanding of early and extant cultures, the continuities between them and investigating oral traditions that initially arose in pre-Christian myth, much of it concerning a Mother Goddess.

In Scotland's Geomythography (Luath Press, 2025), Stuart McHardy unveils the intricate ties between Scotland’s landscapes and the rich tapestry of its pre-Christian and later traditions. Geomythography is a vital lens through which to understand the enduring relationship between the land and its people.

The book invites readers to discover how communities have thrived within the land of Scotland, fostering a deep-rooted cultural connection. McHardy argues that respect for our ancestors and the knowledge they imparted shape not only individual identity but also communal responsibility towards future generations. This book is an essential read for history enthusiasts, those interested in myth and folklore and anyone interested in finding out more about Scotland’s Geomythography.

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Emily Matson, "China’s Date Debate: How Manchurian Scholars Rewrote World War II" (U Michigan Press, 2026)

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

China’s Date Debate: How Manchurian Scholars Rewrote World War II (U Michigan Press, 2026) by Dr. Emily Matson is an in-depth investigation of the Chinese Communist Party’s remapping of China’s World War II timeline from eight years (1937–1945) to fourteen years (1931–1945). Instead of the previously accepted starting date of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, the Chinese Communist Party defined the war’s starting date as the Mukden Incident on September 18, 1931, which triggered the Japanese Kwantung Army’s invasion of Manchuria. Since the 1980s, scholars from Manchuria have demanded a fourteen-year war timeline to encompass the invasion of their homeland. By the 1990s, other scholars took notice and started to counter with claims that the eight-year timeline was the more accurate. Subsequently, a fierce “date debate” emerged between the two sides that was only resolved by the 2017 proclamation from the Ministry of Education.

Dr. Matson demonstrates that the decision to set China’s World War II timeline at fourteen years was not merely a top-down decision, but was influenced by decades of Manchurian scholarship on the war. China’s Date Debate recenters Manchuria as a region of critical importance for China’s national identity today and the implications of this “date debate” on the Chinese Communist Party’s domestic legitimacy and international image.

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Marita Sturken, "Terrorism in American Memory: Memorials, Museums, and Architecture in the Post-9/11 Era" (NYU Press, 2022)

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Terrorism in American Memory argues that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and all that followed in its wake were the primary force shaping United States politics and culture in the post-9/11 era. Marita Sturken maintains that during the past two decades, when the country was subjected to terrorist attacks and promulgated ongoing wars of aggression, we have veered into increasingly polarized factions and been extraordinarily preoccupied with memorialization and the politics of memory. The post-9/11 era began with a hunger for memorialization and it ended with massive protests over police brutality that demanded the destruction of historical monuments honoring racist historical figures. Terrorism in American Memory: Memorials, Museums, and Architecture in the Post-9/11 Era (NYU Press, 2022) sheds light on the struggles over who is memorialized, who is forgotten, and what that politics of memory reveals about the United States as an imaginary and a nation.

Marita Sturken is Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, where she teaches courses in visual culture, cultural memory, and consumerism. She is the author of Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (1997), Thelma & Louise (2000, reissued 2020), Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (with Lisa Cartwright, 4th edition 2025), Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism From Oklahoma City to Ground Zero (2007), and Terrorism in American Memory: Memorials, Museums, and Architecture in the Post-9/11 Era (2022). She is currently working on a project about the history of amateur photography in the American culture from Kodak to Polaroid to the iPhone. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2023.

Chris Millington is Professor of Modern European History and lead of the Histories and Cultures of Conflict research group at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is the author of eight books including Murder in Marseille: Right-Wing Terrorism in 1930s Europe ((Manchester University Press, 2025), The Invention of Terrorism in France, 1904-1939 (Stanford University press, 2023), and France in the Second World War Collaboration, Resistance, Holocaust, Empire (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).

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Robert Shum, "Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy?: Climate and Energy Politics between Crisis and Decarbonization" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy?: Climate and Energy Politics between Crisis and Decarbonization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) tackles a critical question. Why has the world struggled so much to coordinate policy to address climate change, despite political and scientific consensus? Despite landmark agreements and expanding knowledge, emissions have fallen unevenly and progress has repeatedly stalled or reversed. Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy? explains that failure by focusing on domestic politics: how institutions distribute power, how interest groups exploit “access points,” and why countries with similar wealth and technology diverge. Moving beyond arguments about mere political will, it situates energy and climate outcomes within the institutional architectures of industrialized oil super-producers: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Norway. Shum advances a neopluralist theory of climate politics, arguing that policy is shaped by the strategic capture of institutional venues by carbon-intensive interests. He shows how separation of powers, federalism, party systems, and electoral rules configure opportunities for a de facto carbon oligarchy. By mapping where binding decisions are made and who can reach them, the book offers a generalizable framework for diagnosing blockages, explaining cross-national variation, and identifying leverage points for sustaining ambitious climate policy over time.

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Autumn Lorimer Linford, "Extra! Extra! A History of America's Girl Newsies" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

American pop culture loves newsies. The children who bawled out headlines and sold newspapers on city streets in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been depicted countless times in movies, Broadway shows, books, music, and more, but somehow it’s only ever the stories of newsboys that are told. Scholarly literature too has focused mostly on boy newsies. Yet for nearly as long as there were newspapers in the United States, there were also newsgirls. Girl newsies were photographed, interviewed, studied, argued over, and eventually absorbed into the collective “newsboys” and forgotten.

Extra! Extra! A History of America's Girl Newsies (U Nebraska Press, 2026) by Dr. Autumn Lorimer Linford offers a corrective, demonstrating the importance of newsgirls as early news workers and as symbols of child labor and gender reform efforts. Sometimes younger than ten years old and from impoverished families, girl newsies were already vulnerable to exploitation from the newspaper publishing industry, which relied heavily on child labor during the “golden age” of journalism. However, the newsgirls of this period contributed much to news labor, and they were important to the discussions concerning childhood, child labor reform, and women’s changing societal roles. Properly integrating newsgirls into the history of newsies dismantles archetypes and enables a deeper understanding of child news labor.

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Relative Strangers: Romani Kinship and Palestinian Difference

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Examining how memory, intergenerational transmission, and kinship work together, Relative Strangers (U Toronto Press, 2024) sheds light on Romani life in Palestine. Arpan Roy presents an ethnographic portrait of Dom Romani communities living between Palestine and Jordan, zooming in on everyday life in working-class neighborhoods, and under conditions of perpetual war and instability. The book focuses on how Doms are able to sustain ethnic difference through kinship, even when public performances of difference are no longer emphasized – a kind of alterity that is neither visible by obvious markers like race or religious difference, nor detected by the antennas of the state. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Amman, Roy makes a case for such alterity for Romani people and other groups in the region. Analysing intimate ethnographic scenes through anthropological theories of kinship, psychoanalysis, social theory from the Global South, and more, the book reveals how alterity in the Middle East does not adhere to rigid identitarian categories.

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Ashley Kahn, "Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland" (Atria Books, 2026)

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In 1984, Paul Simon was at a professional and personal crossroads. His new marriage was failing and his career was in danger of stalling. He was forty-two, navigating a digital age, searching for inspiration in a scene driven by music videos, synthesizers, and drum machines.
Driving around that summer, a bootleg cassette of “township jive”—the street music of South Africa—kept him company. Lent to him by a friend, it reminded Simon of the sound and the joy of the early days of rock and roll. He began to invent his own lyrics to the groove, and became drawn to the idea of recording with the musicians on that tape. But South Africa was in the thrall of a racist apartheid system, and with economic and cultural boycotts in place, such an undertaking was risky. He grew determined to find the right conditions to allow for a collaboration.
Simon took a fateful trip to Johannesburg in 1985. It would turn out to be the first step on a musical journey that would lead him to New York, Los Angeles, Louisiana, and London, and eventually to the release of Graceland, a critical and commercial triumph, winning multiple Grammys, selling 16 million records, and spawning a five-year, worldwide tour.
Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland (Atria Books, 2026) is the first book to tell the full story of Graceland, offering windows into Simon’s creative process, the technical innovations that brought his songs to life, the people and places that made the album possible, the forces that helped the album achieve mainstream reach, and the controversies that the music raised—and which remain today. It sheds light on a period when America opened its doors to the sounds and styles of Africa and other faraway lands.
This is an informed, heartfelt celebration of Simon’s magnum opus, a recording forged in a tense cultural moment, but suffused with hope, change, and a sense of global connection.

Ashley Kahn is a Grammy Award–winning music historian, author, and producer. He cowrote Carlos Santana’s autobiography The Universal Tone, and has written books on such legendary recordings as Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. He was a member of the Graceland tour production team, and tour manager for Ladysmith Black Mambazo. He teaches at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music.

Ashley Kahn’s website and Instagram.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Backbeat Books, 2021), Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025), and U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, 2025). He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Agnes Mueller, "Holocaust Migration in German Jewish Literatures" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Holocaust Migration in German Jewish Literatures (Cambridge UP, 2026), analysing the past two decades of literature on Holocaust memory and migration stories, Agnes Mueller engages with writers such as W.G. Sebald, Thomas Bernhard, Edgar Hilsenrath, Benjamin Stein, Mirna Funk, Fred Wander, Barbara Honigmann, Julia Franck, Sasha Marianna Salzmann, Olga Grjasnowa, and Kat Kaufmann to explore current debates on Israel, the German Democratic Republic, gender, Jewish and Muslim identity, and antisemitism.

Her new readings of German-language texts by younger authors present robust challenges to entrenched ideas concerning the singularity of the Holocaust, multidirectional memory, and a range of other memory debates. Jewish identity and Muslim identity are shown in direct conversation with other migrants' experiences, and literature is revealed to be a brave space where Holocaust memory is newly imagined. Mueller's study invites a radically new way to think about the Holocaust and sheds new and valuable light on adjacent contemporary discourses.

Agnes Mueller (M.A., LMU Munich, Germany; Ph.D., Vanderbilt U), Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina, is an expert on recent and contemporary German literature. She is core faculty in Jewish Studies and affiliated with Women's and Gender Studies. Her essay publications are on German American relations, contemporary literature, German Jewish studies, and Holocaust memory. Her 2004 anthology German Pop Culture: How "American" Is It? (U of Michigan P) is still widely used for teaching and research. Her 2015 monograph is entitled The Inability to Love: Jews, Gender, and America in Recent German Literature, (Northwestern UP), available in German translation as Die Unfähigkeit zu lieben (Königshausen & Neumann, 2017). With Katja Garloff she edited German Jewish Literature After 1990 (Camden House, 2018). In Spring of 2025 she was the Carol Kahn Strauss Fellow in Jewish Studies at the American Academy in Berlin. Her new book, Holocaust Migration in German Jewish Literatures (Cambridge UP, 2026) reveals how, in recent German Jewish literature, Jewish and Muslim migration stories converge to shape the future of Holocaust memory. She is currently at work on a new monograph entitled The Family’s Fight: Resisting State Control, where she investigates how families deal with loved ones who are or were political prisoners, and how that relationship reflects back on authoritarian regimes.

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Meghan Garrity, "Mass Expulsion: The Politics of Forced Population Removal" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, governments around the world have expelled, en masse, more than 30 million people. Yet despite its prevalence, mass expulsion remains an understudied phenomenon as scholarly attention has been directed toward the gravest atrocities—genocide and mass killing—or toward forced migration more broadly.

Mass Expulsion: The Politics of Forced Population Removal (Oxford UP, 2026) by Dr. Meghan Garrity examines why and how governments expel, providing a systematic, cross-regional account of mass expulsion over the longue durée. Using the original Government-Sponsored Mass Expulsion (GSME) dataset, the book explains when and where expulsion occurs, who is targeted, and what regimes are most likely to expel. The book identifies two overarching categories of mass expulsion—security and economic—and develops a typology of four corresponding types: counter-irredentist, counter-subversive, reprisal, and nativist. It advances a theory of mass expulsion that traces the decision-making process, showing how key structural, proximate, precipitating, and intervening factors combine to shape the conditions under which governments expel or are restrained. Evidence is drawn from archival research conducted at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the League of Nations archives in Geneva, Switzerland.
This research contributes to the fields of international peace and security, political violence, and forced migration. Conceptually, it fills a gap in the literature by systematically examining mass expulsion as a distinct eliminationist policy aimed at the intentional removal of ethnic groups. Theoretically, it extends existing explanations beyond war and security threats, highlighting an entire class of expulsions targeting perceived economic threats. The book deepens our understanding of critical atrocity restraints, demonstrating the importance of alliances, the “homeland” state of the target group, and international organizations. These restraints generate core policy recommendations that seek to spur greater attention to deterring mass expulsion as a priority for atrocity prevention.

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Leah Kim, "Mom, Unfiltered: Maternal Mental Health and Finding Freedom Through Motherhood (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Leah Kim about her powerful book, Mom, Unfiltered: Maternal Mental Health and Finding Freedom Through Motherhood (Bloomsbury, 2026).

A deeply personal examination of the dire state of our maternal and postpartum care for mothers.
For expecting and new parents, too often the care is so focused on a healthy baby that the mother's physical and mental needs are overlooked. Mothers face intense pressure to have the perfect birth plan, breastfeed with ease, and immediately bond with their baby. Unfortunately, these expectations can lead to anxiety, depression, and overwhelm. But it doesn't have to be that way. In Mom, Unfiltered: Maternal Mental Health and Finding Freedom Through Motherhood, Leah Kim explores her own pregnancy and early motherhood experience as a person of the global majority, the ways society fails new mothers, the mental health struggles of expecting and new mothers, the systemic neglect in care for mothers with marginalized identities, and how motherhood can be the inspiration for getting help and healing. Her story, enhanced with expert interviews, valuable resources, and the testimonies of other mothers, not only illuminates the impact of insufficient maternal care but also shows readers what can be done to improve care for mothers.Mom, Unfilteredis profoundly personal and brutally honest, yet it is ultimately deeply hopeful. It is about survival and growth, an invitation to move beyond our current social, cultural, and familial realities to support mothers in a meaningful way-physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Leah 수진 Kim is a storyteller, author, consultant, podcaster, and community organizer. She is a recovering yoga teacher and spent 10 years as Nike's Global Yoga Ambassador. Her first book "Mom, Unfiltered" will be published in April 2026.

About the host:

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Alfie Marcus on How Great Companies Can Rise Again

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 17:58:00 -0000

Alfie Marcus is ordinarily the host of On the Cusp Between Strategy and Ethics, where he interviews authors about the intersection of organizational strategy, corporate responsibility, and the changing role of business in society. Today, however, I’m in the host seat and Alfie is joining as the guest to discuss his own new book, Comeback: Can Great Companies Rise Again? from the University of Toronto Press. Alfie is a Professor at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management where he holds the Edson Spencer Endowed Chair In Strategy And Technological Leadership. Comeback encapsulates more than 4 decades of research and teaching, seeking to understand why great companies struggle and how they can best chart a path back to success. Many people are familiar with the remarkable story of Apple, including its initial success, implosion, and the triumphant return of co-founder Steve Jobs. Most companies, even great ones, are not like Apple. They rise to prominence, plateau, lose relevance, and must navigate complex market conditions. Each chapter in Comeback presents a case study, walking readers through the companies major challenges, prompting them to think about how they might handle the issues faced by companies like Amazon, Intel, Pepsi, and Disney. For every major company that manages to reinvent itself, there are dozens that failed: think of Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Circuit City, Blockbuster, Toys R Us, Yahoo and many, many more. There are no simple solutions, magic bullets, or easy paths, even for well-positioned incumbents. To help listeners understand what makes for a great comeback story, I’m pleased today to speak with Alfie Marcus.

Alfred A. Marcus is a professor and Edson Spencer endowed chair in strategy and technological leadership at Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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Valeria Vázquez Guevara, "Truth Commissions and International Law: Jurisdiction, Representation, Authority" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Truth Commissions and International Law: Jurisdiction, Representation, Authority (Cambridge University Press, 2026) examines how truth commissions construct authoritative accounts of conflict, and how they account for the plurality of accounts across affected communities. Dr. Valeria Vázquez Guevara examines three of the earliest and most influential truth commissions: Argentina (1983–1984), Chile (1990–1991), and El Salvador (1992–1993), and examines how relevant cultural objects support or counter the official account for each. In doing so, she argues that these truth commissions drew on international law to authorise their accounts of violent conflict, and that this had the consequence of privileging an internationally-authorised truth over other truths, whilst simultaneously strengthening the authority of international law over the post-conflict state.

By demonstrating how truth commissions turn to international law for authority, the book shows how this produces an official account of past violence and promises of future community, which fundamentally affects how communities live together in the aftermath of violent conflict.

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Chika Watanabe, "Play to Survive: Disaster Preparedness Along the Ring of Fire" (Stanford UP, 2026)

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

We live in a fragile world. This much is evident as stories abound of natural disasters that wipe out communities in an instant. How can we survive the future on such a planet, amid intensifying climate change? This question is particularly poignant along the Ring of Fire, a tectonic belt in the Pacific region that routinely faces some of the most devastating disasters in the world. Based on ethnographic research spanning seven years, Play to Survive: Disaster Preparedness Along the Ring of Fire (Stanford University Press, 2026) examines the work of preparedness training in Japan and Chile, two primary nations along the Ring of Fire that experience frequent and intense disasters. Experts from these countries have often collaborated to create some of the most advanced disaster preparedness systems in the world. Dr. Chika Watanabe traces how local city officials, NGOs, and members of neighborhood and grassroots organizations are, counterintuitively, using fun, playful methods to teach preparation for our darkest hours.

While there are many important studies of post-disaster response, much less is written about the future-orientation of disaster preparedness. This book shows how a transnational group of preparedness experts orient people toward potential disasters in gentle and hopeful ways, focusing on improvisation and repair. In a time of political and environmental destabilization globally, this book offers a unique look at how playful preparedness can reset relationships to environments, to the future, and to each other.

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Deirdre Mayer Dougherty, "Race and Place: School Desegregation in Prince George's County, Maryland" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Race and Place: School Desegregation in Prince George's County, Maryland (Rutgers University Press, 2025) considers the everyday experiences of community members throughout the process of school desegregation and how race, place, and truth came to matter in this process in Prince George's County, Maryland from 1945 through 1973. Organized around several successive policies that emerged in this time: school equalization, school choice, neighborhood schools, school construction, school closure, busing for racial integration, and school discipline, Dougherty shows how these policies contained and reinforced assumptions about place and created new racial truths about people and schooling.

Dierdre Mayer Dougherty is an Associate Professor of Educational Studies at Knox College.

Max Jacobs is a PhD student in Education at Rutgers Universty.

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Shaun Gallagher, "The Self and its Disorders" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this interview, Shaun Gallagher discusses The Self and its Disorders (Oxford University Press, 2024)

A ground-breaking theory of the self as a pattern
Interdisciplinary, drawing on philosophy of mind, phenomenology, cognitive psychology, psychiatry, and dynamical systems analysis
Discusses the role of self-narrative in self-formation, its breakdown in various psychopathologies, and its role in therapy
Explores the phenomenology of agency and its disruption in various psychopathologies
Outlines a 4E (embodied, embedded, extended and enactive) approach to understanding the effects of different therapies for psychopathologies

Shaun Gallagher offers an account of psychopathologies as disorders of the self. The Self and its Disorders develops an interdisciplinary approach to an 'integrative' perspective in psychiatry. In contrast to some integrative approaches that focus on narrow brain-based conceptions, or on symptomology, this book takes its bearings from embodied and enactive conceptions of human experience. Gallagher offers an understanding of the self as a pattern of processes that include bodily, experiential, affective, cognitive, intersubjective, narrative, ecological and normative factors. He provides a philosophical analysis of the notion of self-pattern; then, drawing on phenomenological, developmental, clinical and experimental evidence, he proposes a method to study the effects of psychopathologies on the self-pattern. The book includes specific discussions of schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, depression, borderline personality disorder, and autism, among other disorders, as well as the effects of torture and solitary confinement. It also explores a variety of issues that relate to therapeutic approaches, including deep brain stimulation, meditation-based interventions, and the use of artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

Prof Shaun Gallagher, Lillian and Morrie Moss Chair of Excellence in Philosophy, University of Memphis

Shaun Gallagher, PhD, Hon DPhil., is the Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Excellence in Philosophy at the University of Memphis, and Professorial Fellow at the School of Liberal Arts, University of Wollongong. He was a Humboldt Foundation Anneliese Maier Research Fellow (2012-18) and has held Honorary Professorships at Tromsø University (Norway), Durham (UK), and Copenhagen (DK), as well as visiting positions at Cambridge, Lyon, Paris, Berlin, Oxford, and Rome. His areas of research include phenomenology, philosophy of mind, embodied cognition, social cognition, and concepts of self. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. Find Shaun here.

Dr. Anya Daly is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics in the School of Arts and Society, University of Tasmania. Interdisciplinary collaborations are at the core of Anya’s research interests. She investigates the intersections of phenomenology with philosophy of mind, the philosophy of perception, the philosophy of psychiatry, embodied and social cognition, enactivism, ethics, aesthetics and Buddhist Philosophy. Find Anya here

Original recording by Badger Made, Hobart. Contact: billygbadger@gmail.com

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Baruch Fischhoff, "Bounded Disciplines and Unbounded Problems: A Vision for Management Science" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Baruch Fischhoff's Bounded Disciplines and Unbounded Problems: A Vision for Management Science (Oxford University Press, 2025), part of the Clarendon Lectures in Management series) tackles a central tension in academia that disciplines are organized around narrow, bounded methods and theories, while the real-world problems society faces such as climate change, public health, financial crises, technology risk are messy, unbounded, and refuse to respect departmental boundaries. Fischhoff argues that business schools are uniquely positioned to bridge this gap because they already house faculty with both rigorous analytical training and applied, real-world orientation. The book proposes concrete ways management schools can restructure incentives, training, and collaboration so scholars can excel in their discipline while still meaningfully engaging with intractable societal problems.

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Piergiorgio Di Giminiani, "Alterhumanism: Becoming Human on a Conservation Frontier" (U Arizona Press, 2025)

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the Anthropocene, a question has become increasingly urgent: What does it mean to be human? Set against the backdrop of southern Chile’s conservation frontier, Alterhumanism: Becoming Human on a Conservation Frontier (University of Arizona Press, 2025) invites us to recognize the centrality of the human condition in the face of an increasingly uncertain world and imagine future forms of coexistence.

Reflecting on more than a decade of ethnographic fieldwork with smallholding settlers, Indigenous Mapuche farmers, environmental activists, entrepreneurs, and conservation scientists, Piergiorgio Di Giminiani brings to light how these diverse groups navigate the enduring impacts of settler-caused environmental depletion and their aspirations for new ethics of care. Di Giminiani challenges traditional Western humanism, proposing a more relational and open-ended understanding of humanity shaped by interactions with nonhuman others.

Rather than seeking fixed answers, the book explores the fluid and multifaceted nature of becoming human through the lens of conservation politics. By highlighting the entangled, multispecies worlds of southern Chile, Di Giminiani offers a novel approach to understanding the political project of becoming human in the Anthropocene.

Piergiorgio Di Giminiani is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His research focuses on land, indigeneity, conservation, agriculture, and statecraft, with ethnographic fieldwork experience in both Chile and Italy. He is the author of Sentient Lands: Indigeneity, Property, and Political Imagination in Neoliberal Chile (2018) and Alterhumanism (2025). He has also co-edited several volumes, including The Futures of Reparations in Latin America: Imagination, Translation, and Belonging (2026), with Hélène Risør and Karine Vanthuyne, which was featured on the New Books Network; Theorizing Relations in Indigenous South America (2022), with Marcelo González and Giovanna Bacchiddu; and Ecopolíticas globales: medioambiente, bienestar y poder (2016), with Ángel Aedo and Juan Loera.

Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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Piergiorgio Di Giminiani, "Alterhumanism: Becoming Human on a Conservation Frontier" (U Arizona Press, 2025)

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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The Next Issue: Fall 2026 (26.3)

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, Melissa Fuster and Rosi Song of Gastronomica’s Editorial Collective introduce the journal’s latest issue, Fall 2026 (volume 26, issue 3), now available online. Melissa talks with Rosi about what goes into putting a Gastronomica issue together and the backstory of issue 26.3. Rosi shares the inspiration behind her editorial letter and the issue’s thematic focus on migration and food networks, recounting her own journey moving and living across the globe, from South Korea to Paraguay, the United States, and now the U.K. Their discussion highlights new research articles, creative nonfiction writing, and photography from the pages of the journal on topics related to trust building, food networks, provisioning, and nourishment, including a special feature on migrant foodways and culinary mobilities in Japan.

Read Rosi Song’s editorial letter here for the Fall 2026 issue of Gastronomica and access the articles in this latest issue online at the University of California Press here.

H. Rosi Song is a professor of Hispanic Studies at Durham University in the U.K., co-author of A Taste of Barcelona: The History of Catalan Cooking and Eating (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), and a member of the Editorial Collective at Gastronomica. She leads a Horizon Europe project on food, culture, and recipes titled RELISH (Reframing European Gastronomy Legacy through Innovation, Sustainability, and Heritage).

Melissa Fuster is an associate professor of Public Health Nutrition at Tulane University, author of Caribeños at the Table: How Migration, Health, and Race Intersect in New York City (UNC Press, 2021), and a member of Gastronomica’s Editorial Collective.

Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies here is published by the University of California Press here. Quarterly issues are available in print and online.

Listeners can now find the Gastronomica podcast on the New Books Network here. Subscribe to Gastronomica’s podcast feed to stay updated on the newest episodes.

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Nikhil Kalyanpur, "Legal Weapons of the Wealthy: The Offshoring of Elite Conflict in Emerging Markets" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Legal Weapons of the Wealthy: The Offshoring of Elite Conflict in Emerging Markets (Cornell University Press, 2026), Dr. Nikhil Kalyanpur examines a striking feature of today's global legal order: the use of foreign courts by elites to settle domestic disputes. On the surface, the "outsourcing" of disputes by elites from countries with fragile judiciaries looks like a search for fair treatment unavailable at home. Yet extraterritorial dispute resolution varies across such countries. Russian plutocrats, for instance, frequently litigate abroad, whereas Chinese and South African ones rarely do.

Dr. Kalyanpur argues that the pursuit of extraterritorial litigation depends on the balance of power between a state and its plutocracy. In contexts of state capture or state control, the transparency costs associated with transnational law deter plutocrats from seeking resolution abroad. But when the state and the plutocracy have relatively equal power, competing interests can lead to political clashes, with different actors asserting themselves. "Losers" of these clashes, locked out of their institutions, now have less to lose from those transparency costs and so seek resolution abroad. As these elites often escape with much of their wealth abroad, "winners" respond by weaponizing transnational legal institutions to seize rivals' offshore assets and ensure defeated rivals stay defeated.

Through cases from Russia and elsewhere, Dr. Kalyanpur unravels the connections between offshore finance, transnational litigation, and intra-elite warfare. He exposes how liberal courts serve as arenas for emerging market power struggles, globalizing conflicts begun at home. As billionaires continue amassing unprecedented power across democracies and autocracies alike, Legal Weapons of the Wealthy lays out how the architects of the liberal economic order defeated themselves by enabling rule by the rich.

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Holly N. S. White, "Constructing American Childhood: Age-Based Laws and the Illusion of Protection in the Early United States" (U Virginia Press, 2026)

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Edward Blum interviews Holly White on her new book Constructing American Childhood: Age-Based Laws and the Illusion of Protection in the Early United States.

As of 2025, in the United States an eleven-year-old child can be charged with a federal crime while in many states it’s illegal to leave a twelve-year-old home alone. Twenty-six states allow children younger than sixteen to marry while the legal drinking age remains twenty-one. Are these age-based laws really protecting children, and if not, why do they exist? Holly White uncovers the answers to these questions through a history of America’s first age-based laws.

Analyzing trial records, newspapers, personal letters and diaries, as well as legal statutes from the founding era to the Civil War, White shows how restrictive age-based laws were implemented to benefit those who already held power. Over time, these new laws—coming out of child murder and rape trials as well as guardianship and underage marriage disputes—increasingly circumscribed the rights of young Americans in the early republic. As White shows, race, class, status, and gender influenced who came to benefit from the label of “child” in post-revolutionary America. In so doing, Constructing American Childhood explains why Americans continue to be guided by the age-based legal definitions of childhood and adulthood of our past.

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Done in a Day with the Vietnam War: Elisa Tamarkin (JP)

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Elisa Tamarkin, an English prof of high repute (Anglophilia and Apropos of Something: A History of Irrelevance and Relevance) at UC Berkeley, joins RTB to discuss Done in a Day: Telex from the Fall of Saigon. It is an extended reflection on the last day of the Vietnam War, set against the imminent disappearance of war coverage in the nation’s city newspapers, and framed through her own stepfather's experience covering the war.

Tamarkin anatomizes curious forms of self-delusion that flourished in the American Me generation and traces the subtle trajectory that stretching from the journalistic autonomy of the mid-century to the "embedded reporters" of the US war in Iraq to today's implacable governmental hostility to truthful reportage. Back in the 1960's Hannah Arendt and others warned that bubbles of non-information and delusive self-deceit got propagated within the corridors of power and out in the larger public realm. Now cloudy misinformation is the property of a near-ubiquitous social media realm whose corrosive effect (the power to unthink) is far less circumscribed.

Mentioned

Hannah Arendt, "Lying in Politics" (subject of an earlier RTB episode) and "Home To Roost".
Frank Kermode Sense of an Ending (1967).
The philosopher John Pollock published a book called Knowledge and Justification in 1975.
Jamie Cohen-Cole The Open Mind
Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (1973).
Ursula Le Guin The Lathe of Heaven 1971 (Elisa also mentions John's book on Le Guin).
R. A. Lafferty, The Fall of Rome (1971).
Thomas Harris, I'm OK, You're OK (1967).

Recallable Books:

Adam Phillips, On Giving Up.
Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955).

Read the transcript of the episode here.

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Stephen Lee Naish, "Point Break: Movies Minute by Minute" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Stephen Lee Naish's Point Break: Movies Minute by Minute (Bloomsbury, 2026), in Bloomsbury's Timecodes Series, is a detailed, minute-by-minute critical exploration of Kathryn Bigelow's 1991 action film "Point Break". Moving sequentially through the film's two-hour runtime, the book blends formal analysis, cultural history and theory, action genre study, and personal reflection and interpretation. It positions Point Break as both a quintessential action spectacle and a film layered with thematic tensions: masculinity, spirituality, individual risk, personal freedom, environmental awareness, and the search for one's identity. Each minute of the film is treated as a self-contained unit. The cinematography, editing, sound design, performances, and narrative beats are discussed in relation to broader social contexts including surfing subculture, mid-to-late-20th-century American politics, post-Vietnam War attitudes, and the evolving media images of Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. Drawing on a wide array of sources, such as film theory, cultural criticism, and surf memoirs, the book reframes "Point Break" as not merely an adrenaline-driven thriller, but as a work rich in symbolism, mythology, homoerotic desires, and philosophical inquiry. This approach reveals how Bigelow crafts a kinetic, expressive cinema where bodies, landscapes, and motion collide, and how the film's characters operate within intersecting personal, cultural, and ideological currents. The result is a hybrid of scholarship and creative writing that reanimates the film by slowing it down, revealing layers of meaning often obscured by its velocity.

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Jonathan Quong, "Political Philosophy: The Puzzle of Legitimate Injustice" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Can laws be unjust and yet remain, in some sense, morally legitimate? In Political Philosophy: The Puzzle of Legitimate Injustice (Princeton UP, 2026), Jonathan Quong considers central issues in political philosophy through the lens of this single question. He explores and evaluates recent influential work on this topic and then proposes a novel approach of his own. The puzzle at the heart of his account is the phenomenon of legitimate injustice—laws and policies that are substantively unjust yet may be legitimately imposed by government officials. How can such laws be legitimate if, as some have argued, justice is the first virtue of social institutions?

Quong analyzes the work of those who deny that injustice committed by states can be legitimate simply by virtue of its democratic or procedural pedigree; the Kantian account of legitimate institutions and justice; instrumental approaches to political legitimacy; and the recent wave of work in democratic theory focused on its egalitarian character. Arguing that these analyses do not offer an adequate solution to the puzzle and that there are compelling reasons to revise or reject them, Quong lays out his view and explains the implications for more general theories of political morality. He argues that we can explain legitimate injustice by appeal to distributive justice. If political disagreement is inevitable, then unjust legislation is largely unavoidable; it constitutes a burden that must be distributed according to just principles. Quong’s novel and illuminating framework offers a unique introduction to crucial questions in political philosophy.

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Michael Diniscia and Ellyn M Toscano eds. "Civility Unbound: Contesting a Democratic Value" (NYU Press, 2026)

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The idea of civility goes back to classical Rome and the ways in which citizens engaged one another within the republic. The term itself is often used in a number of different ways, reflecting expected behavior, particularly in public spaces, and as a mechanism to manage human interaction. But civility and the use of this idea often shape hierarchical relationships within society and within politics and may define who is to be included within the polis and who may be excluded. Thus, the conversations that led to the new book, Civility Unbound: Contesting a Democratic Value, interrogated the idea of civility in many of its facets and did not necessarily settle on a simple definition or means of implementing civility within contemporary society. Michael DiNiscia, Director of Research and Strategic Initiatives at New York University’s Brademas Center, and Ellyn Toscano, Director of the Hawthorndon Foundation, edited this valuable exploration of the idea of civility within democracy. In so doing, they brought together academics, politicians and former politicians, activists, artists, and individuals from the foundation world to discuss this controversial idea of civility, unpacking the term, the way it is used, and how society may consider civility within the realm of politics and public life.

I had the pleasure of discussing Civility Unbound with Michael DiNiscia and Hussein Rashid, one of the contributing authors. Our conversation covered the content of the book, tracing the sections that include philosophy and political theory, democratic institutions and politics, social justice and protest, media engagement, and lessons from arts and culture. The chapters are fascinating and accessible. As a reader, you feel as though you are part of the ongoing conversation with the various authors, since the chapters are in dialogue with each other and with the reader, without coming to a consensus on the role and capacity of civility within democratic society but with many paths to consider. The impetus for this book, and for focusing on the idea of civility, grew out of the events of January 6, 2021, and an overarching question about whether the United States could return to a state of civility in our politics, after we had witnessed the violent insurrection that attempted to stymie the constitutional process of tallying Electoral College votes. Civility Unbound: Contesting a Democratic Value brings many voices together to, in a way, respond to this violence, this incivility that had been demonstrated by a group of American citizens.

The various contributing authors to Civility Unbound take up the theory and practice of civility, trying to determine what it actually means and the rules around civility and political engagement. Across the chapters we find that there is a paradox around civility, around who is asked to “remain civil” and who gets to define what civility means. Civility may well reside within power relationships and dynamics, with rules applied to some groups or individuals and not to others. Invoking civility may well surface inequalities and the unequal places and footing of those engaging in politics and society. This is particularly important to consider in context of American democracy, and the unequal distribution of power and state violence inherent in the American state. Civility Unbound: Contesting a Democratic Value prompts the reader to consider how democratic engagement works and how we are to participate in attempts at self-rule.

We discussed the First America podcast during the conversation. Here is a link to the podcast website: First America Podcast

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Tatjana Kochetkova and Anway Mukhopadhyay eds., "Transhumanism and Divine Humanity in Global Traditions" (Routledge, 2026)

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Amid global dialogue on the nature of human enhancement, this book traces humanity's pursuit of self-transcendence and enhancement from ancient times to the present, as reflected in diverse traditions across the globe. Transhumanism and Divine Humanity in Global Traditions (Routledge, 2026) examines how the term "transhuman" can move beyond its scientific and technological origins by linking it to ideas, symbols, and practices of transcending human limits found in Asian and global religions and philosophies, including spiritual practices. Ultimately, the book argues that many religions in Asia and beyond emphasise the desire to transcend human limits, addressing life enhancement both spiritually and physically, and advancing a philosophy of self-transcendence that embraces the physical nature of human existence. By bridging perspectives from scholars of Indic spirituality, Buddhist tantric, and transhumanist philosophical discourse, the book facilitates the ability for mutual understanding, and will be of use to researchers studying philosophy of religion, Asian philosophy, the philosophy of science, and philosophical anthropology. Those working in the fields of posthumanism and transhumanism studies will also find the volume of use.

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Jieun Baek, "Privileged But Powerless: How North Korean Elite Grievances Reveal the Regime’s Greatest Weakness" (Yale UP, 2026)

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What do the people closest to power really think about the system they serve? That’s perhaps one of the most important questions one could ask about North Korea, still one of the world’s least understood countries.

Today, we’re joined by Jieun Baek, author of Privileged But Powerless: How North Korean Elite Grievances Reveal the Regime’s Greatest Weakness (Yale UP, 2026). She draws on in-depth interviews with North Korean elite escapees—from senior party cadres and diplomats to military officers and wealthy, politically connected figures—to explore a group often assumed to be secure, influential, and loyal.

She finds that even those with access to better housing, education, overseas postings, and material comforts remain subject to a political system in which one misstep can have devastating consequences—not only for themselves, but for their families. We talk about what it means to be an elite in North Korea, why some people defect while others stay, and what elite grievances can and can’t tell us about the country’s future.

Jieun Baek is an author and scholar specializing in authoritarian governance, regime stability, elite political behavior, and information access in closed societies, with a particular focus on North Korea and Burma. Her research draws on more than fifteen years of fieldwork and sustained engagement with hard-to-reach populations, including defectors, dissidents, diplomats, former officials, and individuals operating within and across tightly controlled political systems. She is also the author of North Korea’s Hidden Revolution: How the Information Underground Is Transforming a Closed Society (Yale University Press: 2016).

She can be found on LinkedIn and Instagram.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Privileged But Powerless. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Marnie Hughes-Warrington, "Artificial Historians" (Routledge, 2025)

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 07:00:00 -0000

I spoke with Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington about her 2026 book Artificial Historians, co-authored with Anne Martin and Lewis Yarlupurka O’Brien. A distinguished historian, philosopher, academic leader, and Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) based at the University of Adelaide, my guest explores how the logic of history, defined around trivalent logic (the “maybes,” the “ifs,” the ontological uncertainties), intersects with and challenges the logic of dominant AI algorithms.

The book raises urgent questions about the changing status of human agency, the ethics of AI-powered data collection about us, and the de facto histories that AI is writing about us every second—histories that may decide whether we can travel, access education, or receive medical care. We talk about the opportunities that this perspective on AI presents to humans (and historians in particular!), how some non-Western conceptions of history—for instance, those of the Indigenous nations of Australia—complicate the dominant Western understanding of what history is, and the challenges we must address as we hand over more and more data and delegate the writing of actual human histories to AI.

Aristotle makes a cameo, and my guest talks about how the economy might be shifting from knowledge bias to ethics bias.

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The Grant Writing Guide: A Road Map for Scholars

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 04:00:00 -0000

The Grant Writing Guide: A Road Map for Scholars (Princeton UP, 2023) is an essential handbook for writing fundable grants. This easy-to-use guide features writing samples, a glossary of important terms, answers common questions, and explains pitfalls to avoid. Dr. Betty Lai focuses on skills that are universal to all grant writers, not just specific skills for one type of grant or funder. She explains how to craft phenomenal pitches and align them with your values, structure timelines and drafts, communicate clearly in prose and images, solicit feedback to strengthen your proposals, and much more. This incisive book walks you through every step along the way, from generating ideas to finding the right funder, determining which grants help you create the career you want, and writing in a way that excites reviewers and funders.

This episode explores: how to align your values and interests with a grant opportunity;

why most of us will end up needing a grant; things you can learn from a grant proposal that succeeded, and from one that didn’t; what your grant reviewer really needs from you and why; and how to use the funder’s guidelines and terminology to your advantage.

Guest: Dr. Betty S. Lai is an associate professor in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, among others. Her work has been recognized with awards from the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Foundation.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is the producer of the both Academic Life podcast and the show’s weekly newsletter. She is a writing coach and developmental editor for academics.

Listeners to this episode may be interested in:

This episode was originally published on Feb 2, 2023.

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"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in Court: The Bern Trial (1933-1935) and the "Antisemitic International"

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Between 1933 and 1935, a trial was held in Bern against members of the Swiss extreme right-wing National Front who had distributed “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a widely disseminated antisemitic publication that spread lies about Jews. The real target of the Jewish organizations that initiated the trial, however, was the pamphlet itself, its origin, its dissemination, and its use in Europe's fascist movements.

During the course of the trial, both sides received ample support in the form of material assistance and propaganda. The defendants and their supporters in Nazi Germany were able to rely on an extensive network that had been established in the early 1920s to combat “Judaeo-Bolshevism.” This conspiratorial “Antisemitic International” united German völkisch circles, Italian fascists, Russian monarchists, and French conspiracy theorists. On the other side, the plaintiffs actively sought to expose the “Protocols” as a forgery in the hope that this would counteract their impact.

In this lecture, Michael Hagemeister will use the Bern trial as a case study of Jewish legal self-defense in order to shed light on both the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and the concerted efforts against the “Antisemitic International” in the 1930s, which have received little attention from historians.

Read more about Michael Hagemeister's research on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

This lecture originally took place on April 10, 2024.

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Téa Obreht, "Sunrise" (Random House, 2026)

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In 2024, Nina’s small-engine plane crashes into a lake in the Wyoming mountains. Her boyfriend Ben, who was flying it, is nowhere to be found. Lost and freezing on the shore, Nina is armed with only a few old protein bars, a phone with no service, and a vague hope of rescue. It is up to her to survive in the vast wilderness. But then she stumbles upon Sunrise—a town of the Old West that is strangely well maintained, but seemingly abandoned. A place that holds the missing link to a ghost story one hundred years in the making.
In 2003, Sand Daw’s golden boy Coll is putting the finishing touches on the town’s annual historical reenactment. But when an upstart would-be author comes to him with questions about one of Sunrise’s most beloved figures, it threatens to upend everything he thought he knew about the city—and himself.
In 1902, town founder, gunslinger, and legendary pulp hero Anton Vargas returns to Sunrise and quickly takes charge of a group searching for a missing boy. But who really is Vargas? What does he know about the boy’s disappearance? And why has he returned after such a long absence?
These three strangers are separated by time and circumstance. But Sunrise’s many secrets are like gunpowder: quiet, contained, until they encounter a spark. Magisterial and suspenseful, Téa Obreht’s novel Sunrise (Random House, 2026) challenges the myths we think we know: of heroes and villains, of the people and places to which we lay claim, and, most of all, of our own lives.

Téa Obreht is the internationally bestselling author of The Tiger’s Wife, Inland, and The Morningside. Her novels have won the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Southwest Book Award, and have been finalists for the National Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize, among others. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, and Zoetrope: All-Story. Originally from the former Yugoslavia, she divides her time between Dublin, Ireland, and Wyoming.

Recommended Books:

Kevin Barry, City of Bohane
Patrick DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers
Katy Simpson Smith, The Maltese Version
Stephen Graham Jones, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

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Linguistic Unease in Healthcare

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Brynn Quick chats with Dr. Nicole Marinaro, a sociolinguist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hamburg. Her work explores how language policies shape people's experiences of accessing healthcare and other public services. Dr. Marinaro’s research focuses on linguistic justice, examining how communication barriers affect patients who speak a language other than the majority language and how these barriers can lead to unequal access to care. Today she and Brynn discuss her 2025 paper "Operationalising linguistic unease for the evaluation of language policies in healthcare".

In this paper, Dr. Marinaro expands on the concept of "linguistic unease" as a practical framework for evaluating whether healthcare language policies truly meet patients' communication needs. Through her research, Dr. Marinaro aims to help policymakers and healthcare organizations create more inclusive systems that ensure everyone can communicate confidently and receive equitable care.

References

Gazzola, M., & Marinaro, N. (2022). Sprachenpolitik und Integration in Ausländerbehörden und Krankenhäusern: Der Fall Berlin und Leipzig. Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Interlinguistik, 2022, 57–84.
Marinaro, N. (2025). Operationalising linguistic unease for the evaluation of language policies in healthcare. Revista de Llengua i Dret (84), 73–93. DOI here

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

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Xiaochang Li, "Divination Engines: Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Since the advent of computers, society has fantasized about conversing with machines. In Divination Engines: Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2026), Dr. Xiaochang Li shows readers how that dream both fueled the demand for data and set the stage for today’s generative AI. 

With original research and clear explanations, Dr. Li elucidates the origins of what’s known as natural language processing (NLP) and the heated twentieth-century debates between computer scientists, linguists, and communication engineers that shaped today’s technology. Starting with early devices that recorded, analyzed, and attempted to interpret human speech, she demonstrates how computer speech recognition, particularly efforts led by Bell Labs and IBM, advanced technology by deemphasizing linguistic meaning in favor of statistical prediction. In other words, researchers gradually abandoned systems that sought to understand human language, opting instead for work-arounds that simply predicted patterns in speech and text data. That solution became incredibly and surprisingly adaptable. As Dr. Li reveals, transforming linguistic questions into engineering ones ushered in the routine operation of search engines, spam filters, and the varied content sorting and recommendation mechanisms that regulate the access, circulation, and legitimacy of information across every platform. But this has all come at the cost of forever requiring copious and ever-growing amounts of new data.

At its core, Divination Engines illuminates how the artifacts of human communication—speech, text, and images—have become both the fodder for and products of computers. This connection between communication and computation, Li shows, has given rise to data-driven analytics, machine learning, and today’s algorithmic culture.

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Whistling Arrows and Heavenly Horses: The Han-Xiongnu War

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

John Ross speaks with Scott Forbes Crawford about his book The Han-Xiongnu War, 133 BC–89 AD (Pen & Sword Military, 2024) For more than two centuries, Han China fought a bitter struggle against the Xiongnu, a powerful confederation of horse-riding nomads from the Asian steppe. This was far more than a border war. It helped shape the future of China, transformed Central Asia, and opened the routes that would become known as the Silk Road.

In writing this history, Scott followed the example of China’s greatest historian, Sima Qian (the subject of BOA episode 82 ), and took a biographical approach. We learn about remarkable figures such as Modun, the ruthless founder of the Xiongnu Empire; Li Guang, the legendary “Flying General”; the explorer Zhang Qian; and Princess Jieyou, a royal diplomat/spy who spent decades advancing Han interests deep in Central Asia.

Notes:

The full title of Scott Crawford’s book is: The Han-Xiongnu War, 133 BC–89 AD: The Struggle of China and a Steppe Empire Told Through Its Key Figures (Pen & Sword, 2023)

To learn more about Scott’s work, including his novel Silk Road Centurion, visit his website : https://www.scottforbescrawfor...

The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press.

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Elizabeth Anne Davis, "Artifactual: Forensic and Documentary Knowing" (Duke UP, 2023)

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Artifactual: Forensic and Documentary Knowing (Duke University Press, 2023), Elizabeth Anne Davis explores how Cypriot researchers, scientists, activists, and artists process and reckon with civil and state violence that led to the enduring division of the island, using forensic and documentary materials to retell and recontextualize conflicts between and within the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities. Davis follows forensic archaeologists and anthropologists who attempt to locate, identify, and return to relatives the remains of Cypriots killed in those conflicts. She turns to filmmakers who use archival photographs and footage to come to terms with political violence and its legacies. In both forensic science and documentary filmmaking, the dynamics of secrecy and revelation shape how material remains such as bones and archival images are given meaning. Throughout, Davis demonstrates how Cypriots navigate the tension between an ethics of knowledge, which valorizes truth as a prerequisite for recovery and reconciliation, and the politics of knowledge, which renders evidence as irremediably partial and perpetually falsifiable.

Elizabeth Anne Davis is Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University.

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Sarah M. Rios, "Diseases Have No Eyes: Valley Fever and Environmental Health Justice" (Temple UP, 2026)

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Diseases Have No Eyes: Valley Fever and Environmental Health Justice (Temple University Press, 2026) investigates how communities in Central Valley, California deal with Valley Fever, a painful illness caused by a soil fungus. The airborne disease’s symptoms can last from two months to a patient’s lifetime and may be fatal. Nearly a third of the national cases are reported in California, where those infected are disproportionately farmworkers and people incarcerated in the region. Poverty, pollution, and prison expose these groups to cumulative environmental and health risks that deny Valley Fever patients adequate medical treatment.

Dr. Sarah M. Rios examines how these populations face racial health disparities and develop strategies of care. She connects environmental justice activists as well as prison advocates and abolitionists who mobilize protests and issue calls to action to the past and ongoing efforts for medical autonomy and healthy communities. Diseases Have No Eyes emphasizes that vulnerable groups have developed an expertise and understanding of Valley Fever out of necessity. In the process, these community members offer an alternative public health response that extends beyond the individual body.

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The Political Philosophy of Mark Twain: On His Absurd, Noble Americans with Ivan Kenneally

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

While many know that Mark Twain created some of the most famous characters in literature—Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Jim and Puddn’head Wilson—too few have understood that the Missouri author wasn’t only America’s greatest humorist, but also one of its most subtle political thinkers. But what was the political philosophy of the elusive and ironic Mark Twain for his new democratic America?

To help answer that question, as we continue Season 6, I have as our guest Ivan Kenneally. A contributor to The New Atlantis and First Things, among other publications, he wrote an essay for The Hedgehog Review on modern reactions to Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), titled: “Mark Twain’s Absurd, Noble America,” which we will be discussing today.

We also talk about the travels of the two runaways Huck and Jim, along with their many disguises and rouses, how Americans like Tom Sawyer read European literature too dogmatically, the conmen Twain depicts in the Duke and Dauphin, technical versus tacit knowledge in his memoir Life on the Mississippi, contemporary interest in Twain from Ron Chernow and Percival Everett, the nature of irony as well as the poverty of modern comedy, and what philosophers and comedians alike can learn from the Missouri author and philosopher.

Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on the JMP substack page, “Madison’s Footnotes.

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Filmmaker Peter Santenello on Your Fellow Americans: Dispatches from Across the Country We Call Home

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:44:00 -0000

Have you ever swapped stories on a porch with Amish snowbirds in Florida? Searched for reindeer with the Siberian Yupik in Alaska? Been a guest on a houseboat deep in the Louisiana bayou? Peter Santenello hadn't either, until after years spent traveling through eighty-five countries and living abroad, he realized the most unfamiliar territory was often his own American backyard. And so, with a camera in hand and an open mind, he began visiting communities across the country that most media overlooks or misrepresents, from tiny towns in Appalachia to the streets of East LA. What began as curiosity became--one story at a time--an intimate, revealing portrait of America today. From road trips and chance encounters to dinners shared in locals' homes, Your Fellow Americans: Dispatches from Across the Country We Call Home (Simon and Schuster, 2026) captures what makes this country so dynamic, so resilient, and most of all, so very human. Because what Peter discovered on his travels wasn't a nation torn in two. He found something more complex and more powerful: people who want to be seen, who are willing to listen, and who still believe we're more alike than we are different.

Peter Santenello is an independent journalist and filmmaker with over four million subscribers on YouTube.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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Muy Lang Lim, "In the Shadow of the Khmer Rouge: A Child Survivor's Memoir" (NUS Press, 2026)

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

As a child, Lim Muy Lang grew up in a prosperous Sino-Khmer family in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When the Khmer Rouge seized power in April 1975, her family, along with the entire population of Phnom Penh, was forced to immediately leave the city for the countryside. What followed was a harrowing struggle for survival under the Khmer Rouge’s radical revolutionary regime, which led to the deaths of all of Muy Lang’s immediate family members, and much of her extended family. In the Shadow of the Khmer Rouge: A Child Survivor’s Memoir (NUS Press, 2026), is Muy Lang’s account of what happened. It’s a story of almost unimaginable pain, cruelty, and loss, but also an incredible struggle for survival. And not least, the book is a delightful, deeply personal recollection of childhood and family life in Cambodia before 1975.

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Erin A. Craig, "Our Strange Duet: Inspired by Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera" (Delacorte Press, 2026)

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Our Strange Duet: Inspired by Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera (Delacorte Press, 2026) is a reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera, spotlighting Christine Daaé as she rises to fame while torn between love, ambition, and the haunting secrets of the opera house from #1 New York Times bestselling author Erin A. Craig. This gorgeous hardcover edition of Our Strange Duet features stunning sprayed edges, custom character endpapers, a foil-stamped case, and a ribbon! She was never just the voice he shaped . . . A rising soprano with a gift she is only just learning to embrace, Christine Daaé has moved through the glittering world of the Opera Populaire longing to find her purpose. Instead, she finds herself caught between two men who refuse to let her slip quietly into the chorus. One is Raoul, her childhood friend turned devoted admirer, offering her a future filled with warmth, safety, and a love that feels like sunlight. The other is a mysterious masked figure who lurks beneath the Opera House: The Phantom. His brilliance, obsession, and dangerous devotion to nurturing Christine’s talents ignites a dark and complicated passion in her heart. As Christine’s star ascends, so does the tension between Raoul and the Phantom. She must decide who she is when the curtain falls—and what she’s willing to risk for the life she wants. Set against the sweeping, romantic world of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera, Our Strange Duet allows Christine Daaé to take center stage to tell her own story: fierce, emotional, and unforgettable.

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David Keohan, "The Wind Beneath the Stone: My Quest to Unearth a Piece of Ireland's Folklore" (Bloomsbury and Chelsea Green, 2026)

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

When world kettle-bell lifting champion David Keohan heard the old tales of stone-lifting, he was captivated, setting off on a quest to rediscover these famous stones and attempt the feats of heroes past by lifting them. Guided by a 1930s archive, the dúchas, in which schoolchildren shared their local folklore, Keohan began to travel the country in search of the stones, as documented in The Wind Beneath the Stone: My Quest to Unearth a Piece of Ireland's Folklore (Bloomsbury and Chelsea Green, 2026). They were often to be found hidden away in quiet villages or cemeteries, their purpose almost forgotten. But, as he journeyed through Ireland, he met those who recalled the stories of the stones and the legends attached to them. Soon, others joined him as he took on the challenge of lifting these pieces of history, the heaviest of which weighed well over 450 pounds.

As Keohan’s efforts garnered more and more attention, he realized that this was more than a personal challenge. Stone-lifting had become a way for Irish people to reclaim their lost heritage, coming together to celebrate what makes their homeland special.

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Kamau Ware, "Battle in the Margins: Black Experiences in New York City During the American Revolution" (Black Gotham Experience)

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

While Lexington and Concord claim significance as the sites of the American Revolution’s opening battles, New York City’s geography, population density, and cultural status made it one of the most important theaters of the war. Between 1776 and 1777, numerous battles were fought for control over the Port of New York, including the Battles of Harlem Heights, Pell’s Point, White Plains, Fort Washington, and the largest battle of the entire revolution, the Battle of Long Island/Brooklyn. Recognizing the strategic importance of New York, and forewarned by his experience at the Battle of Bunker Hill in Boston, Lieutenant-General Sir William Howe and royal governor Lord George Germain recruited Hessian mercenaries and soldiers from across the empire to defend the city from an eventual patriot campaign to claim New York. In 1776, George Washington, as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, began preparations for what we know today as the New York and New Jersey Campaign. Though the campaign failed to fortify New York from Sir William Howe, which remained in British control until the end of the war in 1783, the revolution might have ended altogether on Staten Island when William and his brother, Admiral Richard Howe, entered peace negotiations with the Americans. In a September 11, 1776, meeting, the Howes met with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Edward Rutledge for an unsuccessful three-hour negotiation. Four days later, Howe, as Commander-in-Chief of British Land Forces in America, landed 12,000 troops in lower Manhattan and quickly claimed the city. Though the British took control of New York Harbor and the surrounding agricultural areas, the areas around New York and New Jersey remained active battlegrounds for the rest of the revolution. When the war ended, it saw some of the last British soldiers evacuate the new United States, including thousands of free and formerly enslaved Africans who had served the empire in the war, documented by The Book of Negroes.

Battle in the Margins is a special project of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation in collaboration with Black Gotham Experience, an organization devoted to African Diasporic storytelling, to commemorate the African Diaspora’s impact on the American Revolution. Those listening to this episode in real time in the New York City area can reserve a ticket to the September 19, 2026 Battle in the Margins “Main Event,” a series of original ten-minute plays centering the African Diaspora’s experience, resistance, and role in shaping early American history, shining a light on stories often left out of the nation’s founding narrative. The Battle in the Margins Research Brief is available here.

Kamau Ware is a multidisciplinary artist, historian, and walker. Kamau was born and raised in Pittsburgh, where he founded an artist collective called BridgeSpotters in 1996 that took inspiration from the many bridges in the city as analogous to many disciplines making a creative project. Ware moved to New York City in 2006 and applied his work as an artist and curator to develop a unique approach to visual storytelling, coined StoryStyle that softens the threshold between artist and audience. After establishing his visual storytelling lab, Kamau Studios in 2008, he began working on what would become the Studios flagship project – the Black Gotham Experience (BGX). BGX launched the summer of 2010 as a series of walking tours and has expanded to a series of immersive experiences celebrating the impact of the African Diaspora on New York City.

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Erin Osmon, "Won't Back Down: Heartland Rock and the Fight for America" (W. W. Norton, 2026)

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Hear "American Girl" or "Born in the U.S.A." and, like it or not, chances are you begin to hum along. The soundtrack of grocery stores, pool halls, bowling alleys, flea markets, chain restaurants, drug stores, and political rallies--heartland rock, while beloved by some and derided by others, is inescapable even today. As rollicking as the music it describes, acclaimed music critic Erin Osmon's Won't Back Down: Heartland Rock and the Fight for America (W. W. Norton & Company, 2026) tells the story of the origins, chart-topping development, and tangled legacy of heartland rock, the music that ruled the airwaves of the 1980s and remains instantly recognizable to millions.

Spinning an entertaining and eye-opening account, Osmon delves into the complicated afterlife of heartland rock's classic albums and songs, including Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run," Bob Seger's "Against the Wind," John Mellencamp's "Small Town," and Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down." She demonstrates the centrality of often-overlooked women like Melissa Etheridge, Bonnie Raitt, and Lucinda Williams--explaining how some of the most popular music of the time was made beyond its white-male stereotypes. She traces the genre's connections to country and Americana, and reveals how legendary figures like Prince were inspired by and expanded heartland rock. And she shows how its success revitalized the careers of figures like Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Through it all, she explores the '80s cultural developments that fostered the genre--such as the rise of MTV and the switch to CDs--and argues that the music played a vital role in opposition to '80s conservatism and in support of LGBTQ rights, labor issues, and the environmental movement.

A fair-minded critic with an ear for a great behind-the-scenes story, Osmon makes clear that at its best, heartland rock connected with millions of overlooked people longing to be heard.

Erin Osmon is a music journalist, critic, and author of books on John Prine and Jason Molina. Her writing appears in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Rolling Stone, and others. She won the Deems Taylor/Virgil Thompson Award for album notes in 2023 and several LA Press Club Southern California Journalism awards. She lives in Nashville.

Erin Osmon’s website and Instagram.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Emily Charlotte, "Catching Feelings" (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2026)

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Emily Charlotte's second Varsity Novel book Catching Feelings (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2026) follows Sabrina and her first rule for a drama-free senior year? Don’t fall for the mysterious new football transfer. When Sabrina and Tyler meet by accident outside (okay, inside) the football locker rooms, it’s not a big deal. After a rocky summer, Sabrina is focused on leading the Spirit Committee to its best year ever, while Tyler is eager to leave behind the mess from his old school with a second chance playing football as a transfer. Neither is looking for romance. But as the team’s newest (and most eligible) varsity athlete, Tyler is suddenly the center of attention. And Sabrina is busy dodging Ryan, her longtime flirtationship who is determined to take her to the homecoming dance. Ryan is exactly the kind of chaos Sabrina doesn’t need, so she asks Tyler to go as friends instead. Eager to fend off other unwanted advances, Tyler is happy to accept. Of course, this was before Sabrina realized Tyler is Ryan’s cousin. But as long as they’re just friends, everything should be fine. Tyler is less willing to ignore the connection he feels toward Sabrina, but he’s also desperate to keep his past buried. When the chemistry between them becomes impossible to deny, can their carefully laid plans survive the fallout, or will secrets and social pressure threaten everything they’ve built?

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Duty, Banality, and Hopefulness with Alex Cain

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Alex Cain.

Dr Alex Cain researches in the fields of political theory and ethical theory, with a particular focus on the work of Hannah Arendt, among other figures in the history of philosophy. Her work in this field has so far mostly focussed on the topics of friendship, political action, judgement and the role of experience in philosophical inquiry.

They discuss Sidney Nolan’s duty to paint the concentration camps, the hopefulness of Hannah Arendt, and the importance of the banality of evil.

A transcript of this episode will be available on the Concept : Art website here.

Concept : Art is produced on muwinina Country, lutruwita Tasmania. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

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Edward Cutler, "This Beautiful Country: How Italy's Nature Shaped Its Culture and Civilisation" (Chelsea Green, 2026)

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In This Beautiful Country: How Italy's Nature Shaped Its Culture and Civilisation (Chelsea Green, 2026), discover Italy’s unique ecological past and how it has shaped its present—and its future, with this riveting look at the incredibly diverse natural history and our need to preserve it.

Italy is renowned for its antiquity, classical literature, philosophy, and modern-day culture, cuisine and fashion, but what has gone largely overlooked – and undocumented, even by its people – is its uniquely biodiverse landscape and wildlife. Italy has over 58,000 different species of wildlife, of which 4,777 are endemic, the highest in Europe. Italy provides a home for a third of all European flora and fauna, with a vast range of fruit and vegetable varieties: more grape varieties than France, more wheat than the US and more olives than Spain. 

Edward Cutler, an art historian by trade, began to explore this history when, four years ago on his small Tuscan farm, he found a salamander that turned out to be endemic to that specific location. In understanding how Italy came together as a country, one of the youngest and still geologically active landscapes in the world, and made up of mountains, volcanoes, earthquakes, glacial lakes, desert islands, caves and forests, Ed realised that this natural history has also had an incredibly important influence on its human history, especially its food culture and low-impact agriculture. And along the way, Ed discovers that Italy once was home to pygmy elephants, giant killer hedgehogs, and vampire-toothed deer. Today we can see the relics of those ancient creatures in the flashy blue lizard of Capri, gladiator crabs under the forum in Rome, the crested porcupine, the beautiful Apennine chamois and of course the Marzipan brown bear and Italian grey wolf, not forgetting its flora, including the world’s rarest Christmas tree in Sicily.

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Aonghus MacKechnie, "Edinburgh: City of Romanticism" (Lund Humphries, 2026)

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Romanticism made Scotland famous. It critically shaped the course of Scottish culture, while impacting on cultures elsewhere and inaugurating the country’s still-flourishing and lucrative tourist industry. This book is about Edinburgh’s most emblematic architecture over the long 19th century: the castellated and stone built cityscape of national revivalist architecture. It reveals why Scotland had by the 1820s become one of Europe’s great centres of Romanticism, due both to the majestic Highlands, and to Edinburgh itself as city of Romanticism. Additionally, Edinburgh developed as the main centre and hub for travellers drawn to Romantic Scotland through the work of James ‘Ossian’ Macpherson and Sir Walter Scott: visitors including Schinkel, Mozart, Verne, Turner, Haydn, amongst innumerable others.

Edinburgh: City of Romanticism (Lund Humphries, 2026) by Dr. Aonghus MacKechnie also provides a long-overdue counterbalance to the contrastingly much-examined and much-published topic of Enlightenment Edinburgh, showing how this and Romantic Edinburgh have comfortably co-existed. It examines how Edinburgh’s Romanticism was similarly driven by intellectuals, amongst whom were Enlightenment figures and artistically talented individuals, and it discusses the legacy of those who contributed to the Romantic cityscape of today; an architecture that provides much of the character of the UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site and of the city that countless tourists come daily to see.

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Special Episode: Accounting for Computing, or Why We So Badly Need a New Social and Economic History of Everyday Digital Technology Use

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This special episode features a short talk Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, gave at the Jefferson Scholars Foundation in Charlottesville, Virginia. The event featured a great mix of historians and Science and Technology Studies scholars and was organized by Jacob Bruggeman, who recently finished his dissertation on the politics of computer hackers at Johns Hopkins University and is now headed to a job at Ohio State University. Thanks to Jacob for putting the event together and hearty congratulations on his accomplishments. In the talk, Vinsel argues that we are missing a synthetic social and economic history of how our adoption and use of digital technologies over the past fifty years has affected everyday life in many social spheres, including work, religion, politics, schools, and family life. He also points to some exemplary scholars who have laid some initial groundwork on these topics and gives some suggestions for primary and secondary sources we can use to do this work. Most of all, the talk is an open invitation to collective work - because doing this project well goes far beyond what any individual can do alone.

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Paul Chambers In Conversation with Duncan McCargo

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of Talking Thai Politics, Dr Paul Chambers, talks about his new book, Praetorian Kingdom: A History of Military Ascendancy in Thailand (ISEAS, 2024). This book provides detailed insights to the military’s involvement in Thai politics over the past ninety years and more — and is an essential source for researchers and students looking to dive deeper into this topic.

Paul Chambers is an associate senior fellow in the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s Thailand Studies programme. A prominent scholar best known for his expertise on the military’s role in Thai politics, Paul Chambers has spent more than two decades off-and-on in Thailand, both teaching and researching. His other books include Khaki Capital: The Political Economy of the Military in Southeast Asia (co-edited, NIAS 2017).

Duncan McCargo is President’s Chair in Global Affairs at Nanyang Technological University.

Talking Thai Politics brings crafted conversations about the politics of Thailand to a global audience. Created by the Generation Thailand project at Nanyang Technological University, the podcast is hosted by Duncan McCargo. Our production assistant is Shermaine Lau.

Website: here

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Nancy Yunhwa Rao, "Inside Chinese Theater: Community and Artistry in Nineteenth Century California and Beyond" (U Illinois Press, 2025)

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The first large number of Chinese immigrants began arriving in the United States in the 1840s, and Chinese opera troupes were not far behind. In Inside Chinese Theater: Community and Artistry in Nineteenth Century California and Beyond (U Illinois Press, 2025), Nancy Yunhwa Rao writes the story of the flourishing and resiliency of Chinese opera in America. Chinese opera troupes brought with them an important cultural reminder of China that helped immigrants to build community and maintain connections with their old home in their new one. At the same time, anti-Chinese violence, legislation, and prejudice was a constant and growing threat to Chinese immigrants and Chinese theater. As Chinese theater became part of California and San Francisco culture, popular Chinese actors advocated for their art alongside appeals for civil rights. Rao draws on personal accounts and artifacts to place theater within the everyday lives of Chinese people. She also describes the costumes, singing, staging, and storytelling that impacted mainstream reception and influenced how Chinese communities saw themselves. Rao makes a convincing argument that more attention to the transpacific connections between the US and Asia is vital to telling the true story of America.

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Gastronomy as Sensory Engineering

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

One year after the publication of Gastronomica’s special feature on food and philosophy, Robert T. Valgenti of the Editorial Collective revisits the question of what a philosophical perspective could bring to addressing food-related issues. In this episode, he talks with Gastronomica author and philosopher Sascha Benjamin Fink about human perception and how people experience the world, taking up questions at the cutting edge of science, art, and gastronomy. Sascha discusses the role of the senses and sensory manipulation in gastronomy and explains how common experiences of eating can lend real-world insights into sensory engineering. Over the course of their conversation Bob and Sascha consider different examples – such as the setting of the table, spatial design, experimental cuisine, and the use of AI in recipe development – and weigh in on what sensory engineering can also reveal about gastronomy. The article Gastronomy as Sensory Engineering, co-authored by Sascha Benjamin Fink and Brandon Ashby, appeared in the Fall 2025 issue of Gastronomica.

“Gastronomy as Sensory Engineering” was one of fifteen short papers in a special section dedicated to philosophical perspectives on food issues. Access the articles in volume 25.3 of the journal here and learn more about the special section in Episode 53: Mapping Food and Philosophy of the Gastronomica podcast.

Sascha Benjamin Fink works on the philosophy of mind with research interests in consciousness, sensory engineering, and new technologies, and most recently has been Director of Research at the Centre for Philosophy and AI Research (PAIR) at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. As of August 2026, he works at the University of Cologne on sensory engineering in the DFG-AHRC Project SENSOR (DFG 527947799).

Robert T. Valgenti is a professor of liberal arts and food studies at The Culinary Institute of America. A philosopher and translator, he works on the philosophy of food, Italian philosophy, and hermeneutics and is a member of the Editorial Collective at Gastronomica.

Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies is published by the University of California Press. Quarterly issues are available in print and online.

Listeners can now find the Gastronomica podcast on the New Books Network here. Subscribe to Gastronomica’s podcast feed to stay updated on the newest episodes.

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Karin Barber, "Much Matter in a Penny Paper: Early Yoruba Print Culture in Lagos, 1910–1930" (Ohio UP, 2026)

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Much Matter in a Penny Paper: Early Yoruba Print Culture in Lagos,1910-1930 (Ohio UP, 2026) is a survey of the history and development of Yoruba print culture in Lagos, Nigeria, from the 19th to the early 20th century. The book details the emergence of the Yoruba language press, its themes, and its distinction from the English-language press. The influence of both missionary and secular presses on religion and morality as well as the socio-economic and political lives of the Nigerian people are also emphasised. The book relates the impact of the development of other machines, including transportation technologies like trains, trucks, and bicycles on the dissemination of printed materials across the regions. In terms of methodology, the book combines history and ethnography approaches to tell the story of the Yoruba printing culture in Lagos between 1910-1930.

Alluding to Robert Campbell's installation of the first printing press in 1862, which led to the publication of the Anglo-African newspaper, the book narrates how the focus shifted from English-only publications to include Yoruba language content in the early 20th century, with books about Yoruba towns and poetry becoming popular. While the title of the book is rooted in the Yoruba proverb, “Oro po ninu iwe kobo”, reflecting the richness and diversity of content in early Yoruba newspapers, the book is testament to Professor Karin Barber’s motivation entrenched in her fascination with Yoruba language creativity including oral praise poetry, popular theater, and verbal arts, and her discovery of Yoruba oriki in colonial-era publications.

Mariam Olugbodi is a university teacher and a writer, she is the author of the monograph titled: “Stylistic Features in the 2011 and 2012 Final Matches Commentaries in the UEFA Champions League”, published by Grin Verlag. Mariam’s greatest dream is seeing a world where knowledge is accessible to all. She does this through her volunteering roles on open knowledge platforms as a host and an editor. As part of her effort to maintain inclusion and diversity in knowledge transmission, she volunteers as a teacher in crises contexts. Learn more and connect with Mariam through her social links @ LinkedIn | ORCID | and Meta

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John Trafton, "Los Angeles and Film: A Cultural History of 20th-Century Hollywood" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

It is impossible to talk about the City of Angels without talking about its movie business. The history of American cinema is so intertwined with Los Angeles that the term “Hollywood” is used interchangeably with “American film” worldwide. From the early 20th-century migration of film pioneers from the East Coast to the emergence of local subcultures and global genres, John Trafton traces how the city has been imagined by insiders and outsiders alike in Los Angeles and Film: A Cultural History of 20th-Century Hollywood (Bloomsbury, 2026).

Key case studies include the L.A. Rebellion School, disaster cinema, and the intersections of independent cinema with the music scene and VHS culture. The book culminates in an exploration of Los Angeles neorealist cinema—a form that centers marginalized voices and challenges the myth of Hollywood glamour.

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Eran A. Zelnik, "American Laughter, American Fury: Humor and the Making of a White Man's Democracy, 1750–1850" (JHU Press, 2025)

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A joke is never just a joke—not even in the eighteenth century. In American Laughter, American Fury: Humor and the Making of a White Man's Democracy, 1750–1850 (JHU Press, 2025) Eran A. Zelnik offers a cultural history of early America that shows how humor among white men served to define and construct not only whiteness and masculinity but also American political culture and democracy more generally.

Zelnik traces the emerging bonds of affinity that white male settlers in North America cultivated through their shared, transformative experience of mirth. This humor—a category that includes not only jokes but also play, riot, revelry, and mimicry—shaped the democratic and anti-elitist sensibilities of Americans. It also defined the borders of who could participate in politics, notably excluding those who were not white men. While this anti-authoritarian humor transformed the early United States into a country that abhorred elitism and class hierarchies, ultimately the story is one of democratization gone awry: this same humor allowed white men to draw the borders of the new nation exclusively around themselves.

Zelnik analyzes several distinct forms of humor to make his case: tall tales, "Indian play," Black dialect, riot and revelry, revolutionary protests, and blackface minstrelsy. This provocative study seeks to understand the vexing, contradictory interplay among humor, democracy, and violence at the heart of American history and culture that continues today.

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Raf de Bont et al eds., "Globalizing Wildlife" (UNC Press, 2026)

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Humans have always incorporated wildlife into processes of work, capture, and exchange. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, globalization became the latest in a long line of forces affecting human-animal relations. Grey parrots travelled the world as pets; rats used global shipping infrastructure to spread to far-off islands and became the object of cross-border extermination campaigns; and California sea otters were relocated to accommodate global oil transportation needs. The language of globalization, however, is rarely used to understand the history of these creatures. Globalizing Wildlife (UNC Press, 2026) shows how wild animals were not simply affected by globalization but shaped its concrete trajectories at local, national, and international scales.

The editors and contributors of this collection bring the more-than-human turn to globalization studies, foregrounding not only how globalization matters for wildlife but also how wildlife matters for and constitutes globalization. The volume presents a range of geographically- and species-diverse case studies spanning from the 1870s to the present day to show that globalizing wildlife is far from a homogenous process. Ultimately, contributors reconceptualize globalization and wildlife in relation to one another and foster new connections between the longstanding study of globalization and the dynamic, rapidly consolidating field of historical animal studies.

Contributors are Vincent Bijman, Christina Dunbar-Hester, Regina Horta Duarte, George Iordachescu, Nancy J. Jacobs, Ajit Menon, Gregg Mitman, Nitin D. Rai, Simone Schleper, Jules Skotnes-Brown, Monica Vasile, and James L. A. Webb Jr.

Jacob Ward is an historian at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He has written on the history of science and technology, environmental history, business and financial history, and political history. He recently published Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications (MIT Press, 2024) and he’s currently working on a history of futurology in the United Kingdom and Europe from 1945 to the present day.

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Dog Day Afternoon

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A comedy of frustration and a look at how the media takes and then takes back one’s fifteen minutes of fame, Dog Day Afternoon (1975) is on of Sidney Lumet’s best films with one of Al Pacino’s best performances. Sonny wants to be Lee Marvin but acts more like Don Knotts; he wants to be a folk hero, but becomes more like a meme; he has a romance with the media and finds that his mistress is fickle. Sonny is the kind of person who accidentally appears in a viral video, comes to enjoy the renown, but then learns that his hour upon the stage is signifying nothing.

Bumper music: Bumper music by John Deley.

Interested in the real events that inspired the film and how the film was made? Read Rachel Walther’s Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Mike Takla is on substack at The Grumbler’s Almanac.

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Corrado Neri, "Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Screen Culture" (Anthem Press, 2026)

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Taiwanese cinema is internationally celebrated for the auteurs of the Taiwan New Cinema. Yet over the past fifteen years, ghosts, demons, curses and haunted screens have become increasingly prominent, turning horror from a marginal genre into an important strand of Taiwan’s popular cinema.

Professor Corrado Neri’s new book, Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Screen Culture (Anthem Press, 2026), explores this transformation. Neri argues that Taiwanese horror has reached a new stage of maturity: it is now an established industrial category, has diversified across genres and media, and has developed a sophisticated capacity to address Taiwan’s social, historical and technological anxieties.

The book also launches the new short book series, ‘Anthem Impact in Asian Media, Cinema and Communications’.

In this podcast conversation, Dr Ming-yeh Rawnsley talks with Professor Neri about what Taiwanese horror can tell us about Taiwan itself. Their discussion moves from ghosts and folklore to democracy, historical memory, digital culture and changing understandings of identity. Themes include:

Why horror? – how a once-marginal genre became an important part of Taiwanese cinema.
Taiwan as a ‘Ghost Nation’ – why ghosts offer powerful ways of thinking about Taiwan’s contested history and identity.
Horror, democracy and historical memory – how liberalisation opened new possibilities for confronting difficult histories, notably the White Terror in Detention.
Religion, folklore and the supernatural – how beliefs, rituals and local legends provide filmmakers with distinctive cultural resources.
Digital ghosts – how smartphones, social media, gaming and screen culture have transformed haunting.
Gender, sexuality and queer horror – how films such as Marry My Dead Body use supernatural conventions to explore changing social identities.
Taiwan within Asian horror cinema – how Taiwanese filmmakers engage with regional traditions while developing recognisably local forms.

One of the book’s most compelling arguments is that the supernatural provides a productive language for exploring Taiwan’s relationship with its past and present. Detention transforms the political violence of the White Terror into a spectral landscape of memory, guilt and historical reckoning. The Tag-Along, The Rope Curse and Incantation bring folklore and ritual into contact with cameras, smartphones and social media.

Taiwanese horror is also transmedial. Detention moved from video game to feature film, television series and novel; The Bridge Curse and Incantation have extended into gaming, while The Tag-Along has expanded into webtoon and virtual reality. Horror thus forms part of a wider creative ecosystem in which cinema intersects with digital media, popular culture and Taiwan’s cultural-content industries.

Taiwanese horror therefore deserves attention beyond horror enthusiasts or film specialists. These films frighten, surprise and sometimes make audiences laugh, but their ghosts also carry history. They negotiate memories of authoritarianism and democratisation, questions of gender and sexuality, and move between temples, cinemas, video games and smartphone screens.

The ghosts haunting contemporary Taiwanese cinema are rarely just ghosts. They offer another way of asking questions about Taiwan: how the past survives in the present, how identities are continually remade, and how a rapidly changing society chooses to remember—and imagine—itself.

Dr Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley is a Research Associate at the Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS University of London, and a host for the New Books Network. She is also a co-editor (with Professor Gary Rawnsley) of the short book series, ‘Anthem Impact in Asian Media, Cinema and Communications’.

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Prakash Kashwan, "Decolonizing Environmentalism: Alternative Visions and Practices of Environmental Action" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Brought to you by the BISA Environment and Climate Politics Working Group.

Decolonizing Environmentalism: Alternative Visions and Practices of Environmental Action (Bloomsbury, 2024) helps us reimagine our approach to environmental stewardship critically interrogating the problems associated with existing legacies of environmentalism and how we imagine other ways to addressing the multiple planetary crises.

The authors cast a critical eye on wealthy and influential environmental groups that committed to anti-racist strategies in the wake of the racial awakening of 2020. Yet, they continue to embrace false solutions like carbon markets and biodiversity offsets, which carry deeply racialized consequences. By tracing the roots of these misplaced priorities to detrimental modernity steeped in colonialism and capitalism, the authors call for transformational changes in human-nature relationships. They distill lessons from the divestment movement, which has questioned the fossil fuel industry's moral standing, and food sovereignty activists, who have mobilized global civil society to hold agribusiness corporations accountable.

In these extraordinary times, Decolonizing Environmentalism invites readers to embark on a transformative journey to embrace anti-racist, emancipatory, and regenerative approaches to environmentalism.

Prakash Kashwan is an educator, author, and scholar, whose work cuts across the fields of climate governance, environmental and climate justice, and international affairs. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Brandeis University. He also holds faculty affiliations with the Heller School of Social Policy & Management, and Politics Department at Brandeis. Before moving to Brandeis, he was a tenured Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut and Co-directed the Economic and Social Rights Research Program at UConn's Human Rights Institute.

Pauline Heinrichs is a Lecturer in War Studies (Climate and Energy) at King’s College London. Her research focuses on global environmental politics with a particular focus on climate and energy security, climate justice grievances, international orders and questions concerning security and existential risks in a warming world. She co-directs the Centre for Integrated Research in Risk and Resilience (CIRRR) and the Environmental Security Research Group.

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Steven Herman: Behind the White House Curtain

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Steven Herman spent 1990-2006 in Japan, most of those years with Voice of America. He served as South East Asia Bureau Chief as well as North East Asia Bureau Chief for the Korean Peninsula & Japan. Over his 16 years living in Japan he covered the Kobe Earthquake as well as the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster, which he said was "covering three disasters at the same time.”

He also recounts his more recent days as a White House Foreign Correspondent, especially his time as a traveling pool reporter. You'll learn what it's like to fly on Air Force One, why he got banned (twice) from X by Elon Musk, that "Presidential M&M's" are a thing, and his best advice for those wanting to write a book about their experiences in a foreign country.

Finally, he gives a concise account of what happened to VOA in the Trump Administration, his role as a whistle-blower, and tells us why DOGE shut them down. Herman retired from VOA in mid 2025 and now teaches journalism. In this latter discussion, he reveals how he blew the biggest scoop ever in his journalism career.

Herman is currently the executive director of the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy & Innovation in the School of Journalism & New Media at the University of Mississippi.

Some of Herman's favorite books on Japan are:

Notes in Japan, by Alfred Parsons (1896)
No Surrender: My 30-year War the autobiography of Noda Hiro (1974, transl. Charles S. Terry)
The Warrior's Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa (Princeton Univ. Press, 1991)
You can find Steve Herman on social media at:
Mastadon, Blue Sky, Threads, Substack, LinkedIn and Instagram

The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press.

Subscribe to the BOA podcast from your favorite podcast service.

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Fr. Dwight Longenecker, "Bloodshed and Blessing: Stories of Sacrifice from Ancient Altars to the Holy Mass" (Sophia Institute Press, 2026)

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Something deep within you recognizes it–the instinct that sacrifice matters, that something must be offered, that violence and beauty are woven together in ways that mere reason cannot explain. You are not alone. Civilizations throughout history have felt it.

In Bloodshed and Blessing: Stories of Sacrifice from Ancient Altars to the Holy Mass (Sophia Institute Press, 2026), Fr. Dwight Longenecker takes you on a gripping journey through ten ancient cultures, from the Aztecs to the Vikings, in which blood sacrifice was not the mark of barbarism but the beating heart of an entire worldview. And then he asks the question that will stop you cold: What if they weren’t so different from us?

Well, they weren’t. And once you see this reality, you can’t unsee it. Fr. Longenecker shows you that the violence, resentment, and desperate longing for meaning surging through our culture today are the very same forces that once drove men to the altar of sacrifice. The difference is that we have largely forgotten the One True Sacrifice that puts them all into perspective.

The ancient peoples were our ancestors – not just biologically but spiritually. Their worldview, so seemingly foreign to us, echoes down through the ages into our own deepest longings and anxieties.

In a culture surging with resentment and a desperate hunger for meaning, Fr. Longenecker shows you how sacrifice has always been humanity’s answer–a way of channeling violence into something transcendent, of transforming chaos into communion.

The questions people were asking then are the same ones we are asking now. And the answer, it turns out, has been on the altar all along.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker was brought up an Evangelical, studied at fundamentalist Bob Jones University, and later was ordained as an Anglican priest in England. After ten years in the Anglican ministry as a curate, a chaplain at Cambridge, and a country parson, in 1995 Dwight was received into full communion with the Catholic Church. He has published in numerous religious magazines and papers in the UK, Ireland, and the USA, writing on film and theology, apologetics, Biblical commentary and Catholic culture.

Daniel Moran’s writing about literature and film can be found on Pages and Frames. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches writing and co-hosts the long-running podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, available here on the New Books Network and wherever podcasts are found.

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Tom Trier, "Blue Sea, Black Gold, Red Banner: The South Caucasus and Scandinavia, 1880s–1920s" (Northern Illinois UP, 2026)

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Blue Sea, Black Gold, Red Banner: The South Caucasus and Scandinavia, 1880s–1920s (Northern Illinois University Press, 2026) tells the story of the historical connections between two geographically distant and culturally distinct regions on the edges of Europe: Scandinavia and the South Caucasus. From the late nineteenth century, maritime trade fostered new commercial links and consular relations. Scandinavian merchants, particularly in Batumi and Baku, played key roles. The discovery of oil along the Caspian Sea shores attracted Scandinavian entrepreneurs, notably the Swedish Nobel family, helping to develop Baku into a booming industrial hub.

Tom Trier focuses on the years of upheaval surrounding World War I and the collapse of the Russian Empire, when Georgia—along with Armenia and Azerbaijan—briefly emerged as an independent republic. The four-decade relationship ended abruptly during the Bolshevik Red Army's invasion of the South Caucasus from 1920 to 1921. Drawing on both Scandinavian and Georgian perspectives, Blue Sea, Black Gold, Red Banner examines how Nordic merchants, consuls, and diplomats navigated the shifting political landscape and how Georgia's social democratic leadership looked to neutral Scandinavia as a gateway to broader European political, diplomatic, and economic engagement.

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María Angélica Thumala Olave, "The Love of Books: Attachment to a Changing Cultural Object" (Manchester UP, 2026)

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Why do people read? In The Love of Books: Attachment to a Changing Cultural Object (Manchester University Press, 2026) María Angélica Thumala Olave, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Social and Political Science, explores people’s relationship to books and to reading, demonstrating the pleasure and importance books provide in contemporary life. Moving beyond a narrow focus on the social status offered by books and reading, the analysis shows the role of material objects, along with the emotional engagements and social bonds forged by the practices associated with books and reading.

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Richard Ned Lebow, "Why Nations Still Fight" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Drawing on an original data set of interventions and wars from 1945 to the current day, as well as numerous short case studies, Richard Ned Lebow offers a novel account of their origins and outcomes - one that emphasises miscalculation, failure to conduct meaningful risk assessments, and cultural and political arrogance.

A successive work to Why Nations Fight (2010), in this book Why Nations Still Fight (Cambridge UP, 2026) he explains why initiators routinely lose militarily and politically when they resort to force, as well as accounting for why the great powers, in particular, have not learned from their failures.

Lebow offers both type- and region-specific forecasts for the future likelihood of interventions and wars.

His account reveals the inapplicability of theories nested in the realist and rationalist paradigms to the study of war.

He argues what is needed instead is an "irrationalist" theory, and he takes the initial steps in this direction.

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Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Michael Quinlan, "Unfree Workers: Insubordination and Resistance in Convict Australia, 1788–1860" (Springer Nature, 2022)

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Michael Quinlan’s Unfree Workers: Insubordination and Resistance in Convict Australia, 1788–1860 (draws on considerable Australian legal, archival and statistical sources to ensure that we not only see the management of unfree labour regimes deployed in settler colonies, but also to identify all the strategies that victims of the early imperial prison-industrial complex used to resist the regime.

The first half of Unfree Workers provides a brilliant account of the diversity of coercive labour practices that were demanded under colonial and settler-colonial expansions. Their labour regime was incredibly violent:

A sentence to penal transportation was no trivial thing. The convicts sent to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land were regimented, disciplined and accounted for in ways that pre-empted later social controls. They were also subjected to high levels of state sanctioned violence. The punishments and conditions of work they experienced continued to shape their lives long after they became free, impacting on colonial family formation and life expectancy.

Maxwell-Stewart and Quinlan show the material links between violence and colonial economic necessity. Unfree workers whose skills did not match those in demand were more likely to be accused of work refusal, which put them at risk of demotion to harder labour and increased violence.

Maxwell-Stewart and Quinlan’s Unfree Workers, reminding us that while colonial capitalism is a system of exploitation, it necessarily depends upon class conflict.

The process of transportation was a site for resistance. The convict ship, like the slave ship, was a factory that produced commodified labour for the colonies, ‘converting the idle poor into docile labourers.’ Mutiny offered convicts the opportunity to steal their prison and use it for emancipatory means. Though many conspired, few succeeded, but on-ship radicalisation nevertheless prepared convicts for resistance on land. This included making deals for improved working conditions (including sometimes wages) in exchange for industrious and non-violent work. To this end, imprisoned workers came together in common cause, conducting strikes and go-slows and withholding effort. Just as Caribbean plantations were sites of frequent slave uprising, Maxwell-Stewart and Quinlan show, so too were convict workers also legitimately feared for their capacity for violent rebellion, sometimes with potential support from settlers with wider political goals.

Van Diemen’s Land’s extraordinary record-keeping—itself an instrument of the punitive surveillance characteristic of the prison-industrial complex—means that Maxwell-Stewart and Quinlan have recounted in meticulous, often mapped, detail the size, activity and consequences of collective action among unfree workers.

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Alejandro E. Camacho and Brigham Daniels, "Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of US Environmental Law" (NYU Press, 2026)

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The relationship between humans and the environment in the United States reflects tales of countless contrasting and overlapping trends, movements, and tensions. Law has cultivated both the planet’s biggest environmental threats and its most creative innovations for protecting human and ecological health. U.S. laws have driven both exploitation and temperance; destruction and restoration; and resistance and adaptation.

Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of US Environmental Law (NYU Press, 2026) showcases the fundamental role the law has served in reckoning with environmental harm in the United States. Authors Alejandro E. Camacho and Brigham Daniels explore the full arc of U.S. environmental legal history across five major periods in the United States, reaching as far back as North America’s colonization and ending with the present. Through this rich history, the book considers the ways leadership, social movements, political coalitions, information, and technologies have both been catalyzed by the law and have advanced environmental change.
Camacho and Daniels provide a fascinating and insightful history of environmental law. They ask readers to consider: What lessons can we draw from environmental legal history for contemporary challenges like climate change, AI, and emerging biotechnologies? In looking to the past, Lessons for a Warming Planet illustrates how prior generations each used legal imagination to navigate seemingly insurmountable environmental threats.

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Reinhold Kramer and Tom Mitchell, "'PS: Burn after Reading': The Kellock-Taschereau Commission and Soviet Espionage" (U Toronto Press, 2026)

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

After Soviet cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko defected in 1945, Canada was shocked by the revelation that its own citizens were engaged in espionage for the Soviet Union. "P.S. Burn after Reading": The Kellock-Taschereau Commission and Soviet Espionage in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2026) explores how the Canadian government used the controversial Kellock-Taschereau Commission—sometimes judiciously, sometimes not—to uncover and thwart domestic spies during the early days of the Cold War.

Drawing on a wealth of sources, including the Commission’s extensive records, GRU documents turned over by Gouzenko, American Venona decrypts, Soviet KGB archives, and newly released British MI5 and MI6 files, authors Dr. Reinhold Kramer and Dr. Tom Mitchell provide a comprehensive account of the crisis. They reveal that, despite some civil liberties missteps, the government’s suspicions were largely justified.

The book weaves together the evidence against the spies, the tradecraft of Soviet espionage, complex legal challenges faced by the state, and the political fallout. With access to hundreds of newly released British intelligence files, P.S. Burn After Reading offers both specialists and general readers fresh insights into the espionage crisis of 1945–46 and the pivotal role it played in exposing Canada’s postwar security and intelligence vulnerabilities.

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Darlene Madott, "Closing Ceremonies and Dying Times" (Guernica Editions, 2026)

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with retired lawyer and award-winning author of 10 books, Darlene Madott about her new book, Closing Ceremonies and Dying Times, published by Guernica Editions, September 1, 2026

Closing Ceremonies is a collection of linked love stories that explores the aftermath of love. Who among us has not suffered the after-shocks? The sorrowing souls that inhabit these tales struggle at various stages of the grief cycle: from denial and paralysis to anger and desire for revenge; to bargaining and, ultimately, for some characters and for others incompletely, acceptance and reconciliation. Some of the stories handle the love quandary comedically—for example, the triptych of stories about Francesca and Concetta, who embrace a sisterly friendship born of betrayal. Others are more elegiac, such as the story of Thor and Lovise: unsanctioned lovers who get to orbit about each other, however briefly. “Appropriation” is a coming-of-age story where the longed-for first kiss is obtained, but not in the way the kiss was desired. What links these stories? Human yearning to move out of love away from an obsessive attachment, to a selfless state where genuine love becomes possible again.

About the author:

Darlene Madott is an award-winning author of 10 books, including Winners and Losers, Stations of the Heart, and Making Olives and Other Family Secrets. Winners and Losers (her 9th book) grew out of her legal practice of over 3 decades, and was named The Miramichi Readers Best of 2023. She has twice won the Bressani Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Vanderbilt-sponsored Carter V. Cooper EXILE editions award three times, and for the inaugural Nona Heaslip Best Canadian Short Stories Award. Widely anthologized, she has participated in international literary conferences, most recently as an invited plenary-panel speaker on Alice Munro for the International Conference of the Short Story in English, 2025, Killarney, Ireland. She has been translated into Italian and published by the prestigious Les Flâneurs Edizioni, Italy. Her 10th book, Closing Ceremonies, now includes Dying Times.

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Stefan Collini, "Literature and Learning: A History of English Studies in Britain" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Literature and Learning: A History of English Studies in Britain (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Stefan Collini

The study and teaching of English literature is generally regarded as one of the central disciplines in the modern university, yet for much of its history it struggled to gain academic legitimacy and was frequently derided as 'a soft option'. Its early professors responded by emphasizing its scholarly character, foregrounding philology and literary history in ways that marked the syllabus far into the twentieth century.

Stefan Collini provides here the first full account of the discipline's development from its late-eighteenth-century beginnings up to the early 1960s. Paying special attention to institutional settings, he challenges numerous assumptions about the character of universities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the detailed exploration of syllabuses, exam papers, and other institutional records, the impact of literary criticism is revealed to be later and more partial than is commonly assumed. Rather than seeing the early teaching of English literature as 'a substitute for religion' or 'a means to soften class conflict', Collini emphasizes the role of ideals of learnedness and scholarship, as well as of external factors such as opportunities for employment in the civil service and secondary school-teaching. There are full discussions of the parts played by such figures as John Churton Collins, A.C. Bradley, George Saintsbury, and Walter Raleigh, together with sceptical analyses of the decisive significance usually attributed to Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, I.A. Richards, and F.R. Leavis. Separate chapters are devoted to neglected aspects of the story such as the role of Classics, the importance of the subject for women's higher education, and the connections with English teaching in schools.

Drawing on extensive use of institutional archives and records as well as the writings of contemporary participants, the book offers a vivid and wide-ranging history of English-as-discipline and its centrality across academic, literary, cultural, and educational life over the past two year hundred years, as well as a resounding testament to its continued importance and relevance today.

Stefan Collini, Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History and English Literature, University of Cambridge. Stefan Collini was educated at Cambridge and Yale. Following a Research Fellowship at St John's College, Cambridge, he was Lecturer, then Reader, in Intellectual History at the University of Sussex 1974-86; Lecturer, then Reader, then Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature at the University of Cambridge 1986-2014. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, and Guardian.

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Educating for an Uncertain Future in Interwar Poland

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the two decades between the First and Second World Wars, Jewish parents in Poland faced a proliferation of choices when it came to educating their children. Each choice offered a vision of what future Polish Jews desired, what they expected, and the gap between the two. State schools taught in Polish (sometimes with a schedule to accommodate traditional religious observance), secularist Yiddish schools with strong ties to Jewish socialism and the labor movement, Hebraist schools promoting political and cultural Zionism, and religious schools that retained--or innovated upon--traditionalist educational models reflected different opinions for what Jewish children in interwar Poland would need in the present to secure their future.

In this lecture, Elena Hoffenberg draws upon materials held by YIVO to explore how projections about the future in terms of work, culture, and politics guided parents, educational activists, and young people themselves. Choices as reflections of competing political and religious commitments, as well as material constraints, to better understand what Polish Jews expected for their individual and communal futures.

This lecture originally took place on March 2, 2026.

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Bernadette Ludwig, "Unwelcome Shores: Black Refugees in America" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Unwelcome Shores: Black Refugees in America (Rutgers University Press, 2025) is an ethnographic study of the Liberian refugee community in Staten Island, New York, home to the largest per capita concentration of Liberians in the U.S., that sheds light on the racialization of Black refugees and the racism they have experienced at every step of their migration journey. In this pioneering study, sociologist Bernadette Ludwig explores how Liberians have responded to such racist exclusions, noting how members of this community reject the informal refugee label once they are resettled in the United States. Liberian migrants often view the label as a liability since the larger general public, the media, and the U.S. government tend to regard Black refugees as an economic and social burden unworthy of assistance. Indeed, Black refugees’ humanity is often ignored, Ludwig contends, in favor of overemphasizing presumed barbaric violence, endemic wars, cultural backwardness, and diseases. By detailing the lack of aid and support for Black refugees and describing how Liberian refugees in particular have had to overcome various struggles and barriers in coming to the U.S. and while living here, Unwelcome Shores highlights the overarching role of race and anti-Black racism in American society.

Dr. Bernadette Ludwig is a Sociologist and the Assistant Dean of the Macricostas School of Arts and Sciences at Western Connecticut State University. She is also an Affiliated Faculty with The New School's Zolberg Institute on Migration & Mobility. 

Host: Michael L. Rosino is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Molloy University, studying racial politics, media, and democracy. His most recent book, Democracy Is Awkward: Grappling with Racism Inside Grassroots Political Organizing, is now available with the University of North Carolina Press.

In this episode, Dr. Ludwig mentioned an opportunity to get involved in asylum and deportation cases. Here is the link for scholars to submit their information or attend trainings to become country conditions experts.

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Catherine S. Chan, "Savage: The Making of Modern Dogs in British Hong Kong" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Savage: The Making of Modern Dogs in British Hong Kong (Cornell University Press, 2026) explores the dark side of colonial modernity through canine eyes, showing the many ways that dogs involuntarily contributed to the modernization of twentieth-century Hong Kong. Dr. Catherine S. Chan follows the piecemeal transplantation of British animal humanitarianism as pedigree dogs accompanied hardening class differences, dogmeat became a contested racial issue, and dogs were roped into the long list of undesirables fabricated in the so-called golden era of reforms following the social disturbances of the 1960s.

Dr. Chan reveals a fragmented civilizing project that constructed dogs as dangerous, filthy, and unnecessary nuisances in a burgeoning city, rationalizing the slaughter of tens of thousands of dogs alongside paradoxical criticism of the native population for perpetrating animal cruelty and the promotion of British animal humanitarianism. Departing from anthropocentric perspectives in understanding the use of Britishness in the molding of modern cities, Savage restores the presence and agency of dogs to encourage a rethinking of the patchiness of British colonial governance and the long-lasting repercussions that modernity can have on our relationship with animals.

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Courtney Weikle‑Mills, "Sugarcoated Ethics: Children’s Literature and Atlantic Enslavement" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What if children’s literature was never as innocent as we imagine?

In Sugarcoated Ethics: Children’s Literature and Atlantic Enslavement (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), the relationship between childhood reading and Atlantic slavery is brought into sharp focus. The book argues that children’s literature did not merely emerge alongside the plantation economy; it was deeply shaped by it. Sugar, sweetness, moral instruction, and domestic comfort were all tied to systems of enslavement and colonial trade, even as the violence behind them was softened or erased in stories for young readers.

The book also examines how ideas of white civility shaped childhood. White children, particularly girls, were cast as symbols of innocence, refinement, and moral feeling, while Black children were excluded from those same protections. Through analyses of persecuted-heroine narratives, missionary education, and colonial schooling, the study reveals how children’s literature helped normalise racial hierarchy across the British Empire.

Yet the project is equally attentive to resistance and alternative ethical traditions. Afro-Caribbean oral storytelling, including Anansi tales, songs, and folktales, emerges as a powerful counterarchive. These traditions preserved histories of survival, collective memory, and resistance that colonial print culture often attempted to suppress. The discussion of the “Queen Mary” Fireburn song, for instance, highlights how storytelling became a form of ethical education and cultural continuity across generations.

One of the book’s most striking contributions is its global scope. Children’s texts on slavery circulated far beyond Britain and the Caribbean, travelling to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East via missionary and imperial networks. In translation and adaptation, these works sometimes reinforced imperial ideologies, but they could also be reshaped in unexpected ways by ‘local’ readers and writers.

Sugarcoated Ethics asks readers to reconsider what children’s literature teaches us about morality, empathy, and history. It challenges the assumption that childhood stories are politically neutral and invites us to think more critically about the ethical worlds children’s books continue to create today.

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Diego Galego, "Queering Public Policy: A Disruptive Yet Inclusive Framework for Policymaking" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

For years, LGBTQ+ policies worldwide have been crafted based on heteronormative views, needs, and practices. However, this has gradually changed over the last two decades as LGBTQ+ individuals have become key players in the development of gender-based policies. Diego Galego's Queering Public Policy: A Disruptive Yet Inclusive Framework for Policymaking (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) examines these political and social changes, evaluates how actors have successfully integrated LGBTQ+ needs into the mainstream policy agenda, and provides a comprehensive guide to understanding the policymaking processes from an LGBTQ+ perspective. Drawing on data from Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, and the USA, it presents a systematic framework for understanding "queering public policy" as a policy process. The final chapter offers a roadmap for scholars interested in exploring this evolving field further. This book will appeal to anyone interested in public policy, public administration, and queer studies.

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Encore - Shai Lavi, "Bioethics and Biopolitics in Israel: Socio-legal, Political and Empirical Analysis" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Once upon a time, or so we’ve been told, medical ethics were confined to the patient-doctor relationship. As long as doctors were true to their Hippocratic oaths, as long as they acted with compassion and wisdom, then all expectations were met.

Life is more complicated today, and so is healthcare: an undertaking, like all others, that is influenced by social, political, legal and cultural factors.

Nothing is value-free.

In Bioethics and Biopolitics in Israel: Socio-legal, Political and Empirical Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Professor Shai Lavi and his colleagues have produced a groundbreaking work that offers a novel understanding of Israeli bioethics. It is a milestone in the comparative literature of bioethics.

Bringing together a range of experts, the book's interdisciplinary structure employs a contemporary, sociopolitical-oriented approach to bioethics issues, with an emphasis on empirical analysis, that will appeal not only to scholars of bioethics, but also to students of law, medicine, humanities, and social sciences around the world. Its focus on the development of bioethics in Israel serves as a template for cross-cultural and transcultural research into the moral, ethical, political and social aspects of bioethics.

This episode originally aired on 8/12/2019 and was republished on 8/28/2026.

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Holly Crawford Pickett, "The Drama of Serial Conversion in Early Modern England" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

After mounting London’s outdoor pulpit known as St. Paul’s Cross on 8th December, 1588, Anthony Tyrrell found himself perched before a skeptical audience. He stood in the shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral to declare his recantation of Catholicism and return to England’s official Protestant Church. The trouble was he had been there before – in January of the same year, in fact – to do the same thing. On that occasion, however, he had shocked on-lookers by delivering an anti-Protestant tirade instead of his promised recantation. How could Tyrrell, a serial convert, who eventually changed church affiliation as many as ten times, overcome the doubts of his suspicious audience? Tyrrell and similar converts who made multiple conversions understandably aroused suspicions of hypocrisy that made the performative character of public recantation troublingly evident. Yet as Holly Pickett argues in The Drama of Serial Conversion in Early Modern England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024), these performative elements are actually indispensable to any conversion, whether an individual’s first or fifteenth.

Serial converts served as uncomfortable reminders to their contemporaries that religious identity is always unverifiable. The first study to explore serial conversion as a discrete phenomenon in this era, The Drama of Serial Conversion in Early Modern England challenges confessional divisions within much early modern historiography by analyzing the surprising convergence of Protestant and Catholic in the figure of the serial convert. It also reveals a neglected strain of religious discourse in early modern England that valued mutability and flexibility even in the midst of hardening and increasingly narrow understandings of conversion.

Michael Shaw is a PhD student in Historical Theology at Union College, Belfast, and a Visiting Tutor at the Irish Baptist College. His research focuses on the thought of the Independent Puritan theologian Jeremiah Burroughs (1599–1646). His primary research interests lie in historical theology, particularly early modern Baptist and Congregationalist theology and ecclesiology. He also serves as the Associate Pastor at Strandtown Baptist Church, Belfast.

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Mark S. LeClair, "Foul Play in the Nonprofit Sector: Analyzing Corruption in US Charities" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

It is quite easy to find corruption within nonprofits. This is particularly the case in the subsector of not-for-profits that are incorporated as traditional 501(c)(3) entities. With the continuing erosion of public confidence in charities, these institutions must act now, both individually and collectively, to bolster trust and ensure public support for nonprofits that has been a hallmark of American democracy.

This book explores the causes of malfeasance in the nonprofit realm. It examines how the current inadequate regulatory environment—together with inherent “agency” problems―can lead organizations astray as they turn away from fulfilling donor wishes to instead act in their own self-interest. The book highlights the distinction between “soft corruption” in the nonprofit sector and “hard corruption.” The former includes the misuse of donor funds that do not cross the line into illegality and the latter covers explicitly illegal misappropriation of contributions.

In Foul Play in the Nonprofit Sector: Analyzing Corruption in US Charities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), economist Mark S. LeClair provides constructive overviews regarding charity evaluation. Is it truly fair to judge nonprofits on their financials? The financial figures so frequently dictate the value of a nonprofit, and this often isn’t the best way to judge a charity’s performance. The manuscript includes suggestions for internal sectoral changes and regulatory reforms that can deter corruption at nonprofits.

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Srirupa Roy, "The Political Outsider: Indian Democracy and the Lineages of Populism" (Stanford UP, 2024)

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Defying the dire predictions that attended its birth as an independent nation-state in 1947, the Indian republic is more than seventy-five years old. And yet, it is a place where criticisms of actually existing democracy are intense and strident. In recent years, the trope of victimized people suffering at the hands of a predatory elite and political dysfunction has reaped rewards. The populist language of redemptive outsiders pledging to combat a corrupt system has been harnessed in successful electoral campaigns, like the majoritarian regime of Narendra Modi.

Tracking the shift from postcolonial nation-building to democracy-rebuilding, Srirupa Roy shows how the political outsider came to be a valorized figure of late-twentieth century Indian democracy, tasked with the urgent mission of curing a broken democratic system—what Roy terms "curative democracy." Drawing attention to an ambivalent political field that folds together authoritarian and democratic forms and ideas, The Political Outsider: Indian Democracy and the Lineages of Populism (Stanford University Press, 2024) argues that the long 1970s were a crucial turning point in Indian politics, when democracy was suspended by the declaration of a national emergency and then subsequently restored. By tracing the crooked line that connects the ideals of curative democracy and the political outsider to the populist antipolitics and strongman authoritarian rule in present times, this book revisits democracy from India, and asks what the Indian experience tells us about the trajectory of global democratic politics.

Dhiren Swain is a MIPA PhD Candidate, affiliated to The University of Melbourne and IIT Madras. His current research focuses on the Urban Policies and Community Politics in India and South Asia.

He can be reached at kishoredhiren8@gmail.com

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Elizabeth J. Letourneau and Luke Malone, "One in Five: Why Child Sexual Abuse Is Our Biggest Public Health Crisis—And What We Can Do to Stop It" (Basic Books, 2026)

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

One in five children will be sexually abused before their eighteenth birthday. This isn't a problem confined to a single country, city, or neighborhood. It's something that happens everywhere, and what it costs can be enormous: depression, PTSD, and elevated long-term risk for physical illness, including heart disease and cancer.

In One in Five: Why Child Sexual Abuse Is Our Biggest Public Health Crisis—And What We Can Do to Stop It (Basic Books, 2026), Elizabeth Letourneau and Luke Malone make the case that child sexual abuse is not inevitable. It is preventable, and at this moment in time, we have the tools to stop it before it begins.

Letourneau and Malone don't stop at describing the problem. The book creates a clear picture of how much of the harm is caused by other children. They lay out a road map, built on years of research and real compassion, for keeping kids safe and reaching young people at risk of causing harm before anyone gets hurt.

In this episode of the New Books Network, we follow that road map and ask what changes when prevention rather than punishment becomes the organizing idea behind child safety. The conversation is energized and respectful of survivors and their families, and it projects an urgency that does not lose hope.

I hope you find it worth your time. I think you will, if you are interested in what child sexual abuse prevention can look like in 2026.

- Aniss Benelmouffok

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Catherine Reyes-Housholder, "How Women Win Presidential Elections in Latin America" (Temple UP, 2026)

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Between 1990 and 2020, women candidates won only 6% of the world’s presidential races. How Women Win Presidential Elections in Latin America (Temple University Press, 2026) explains the factors, strategies, and perceptions that help (or hinder) women to democratically access their country’s highest political office. Dr. Catherine Reyes-Housholder introduces a theory of gendered incentives and perceived potential to reveal why a political party would break with tradition and nominate a woman. She also shows how citizens respond when women candidates are running in incumbent parties or competing to displace those in power.

Drawing on comparative research on the presidency and gender, How Women Win Presidential Elections in Latin America examines the successful campaigns of Michelle Bachelet in Chile and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, as well as why Blanca Ovelar lost her presidential race in Paraguay. Dr. Reyes-Housholder’s findings indicate that voter sexism is not a major factor; however, women do not triumph in these elections in the same ways that men do. Rather, the central unknown factor behind women’s victories is how they become candidates of major parties—and gender profoundly influences who parties nominate.

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Matthew Thomas Miller, "Feeling like Lovers: Affect in Medieval Sufism" (U California Press, 2026)

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Matthew Thomas Miller's new book Feeling like Lovers: Affect in Medieval Sufism (U California Press, 2026), and is available as an open access book (see link below), considers how for many medieval Sufis, Sufism was the “path of love”, and God was the Beloved, and so one had to become a lover of the Beloved on this path. And though there remains a rich corpus of Sufi texts from theological, legal to philosophical that speak to and about this trajectory, Miller re-focuses our attention to the felt and affective dimensions of the genre of poetry, especially of qalandariyyat or rogue poetry. In concentrating on these specific poems and their metaphoric and metaphysical treatments of beauty, sama‘ and ultimately fana’, we begin to the grasp the critical significance of how feelings and the felt dimension (experience) informs the path of love, particularly in how Sufis came to know the secret realities of the Beloved. In this way, the spectrum of emotion, aeffect (affect and effect) held in the body then help us restore the relationship between the mind-body in Sufi thought, according to Miller. This book will be of interest to those who enjoy Sufi and Persian poetry, as well as those who study history of emotion, affect, and literature as well as Sufism generally.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit here to learn more.

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An Honest Death: Life's End and Humanist Funerals with Matthew Engelke

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at non-religious funerals in contemporary London, An Honest Death: Life's End and Humanist Funerals (Princeton UP, 2026) is an intimate and moving ethnographic account of funerals for people who don’t believe in God or an afterlife. Focusing on secular funeral celebrants of the British Humanist Association (now called Humanists UK), the book examines how their ritual work is geared toward helping realize a secular world. There is a strong ethical commitment behind this effort, which is to face death with honesty based on the belief that this life is all we have. For the humanist celebrants and those they serve, this is what allows for a life with meaning and purpose. Written in a vivid style, the book centers on the lives and the funerals of particular people, from a three-year-old child to a man in his nineties. Anthropologist Matthew Engelke, who trained as a humanist celebrant as part of his research, describes how these officiants try to craft “sincere” funerals, avoiding language and music that might suggest that the person who died had any religious beliefs. The book also captures the highs and lows for humanist celebrants of working in the funeral business—a business that is, for many of them, a kind of vocational calling. Above all, An Honest Death draws out the tensions in secular humanist thought and practice between reason and the body, rationalism and materialism. Nothing matters more to the humanists than “daring to know” in the Enlightenment tradition, but nothing is so certainly known as the fact that we are finite and embodied creatures.

Matthew Engelke is professor and chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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Theo Wildcroft and Beverley Nolan, "Leading Safe and Simple Yoga Nidras: A Yoga Teacher's Guide" (Singing Dragon, 2026)

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Leading Safe and Simple Yoga Nidras: A Yoga Teacher's Guide (Singing Dragon, 2026), experienced yoga teachers Theo Wildcroft and Beverley Nolan provide a comprehensive guide to teaching yoga nidras. While there are many resources available teaching you how to deliver another teacher's yoga nidras, few are designed to take you step by step through the process of learning to create and deliver your own. Focusing on accessibility and simplicity, and with the participant's safety at the centre of their method, Wildcroft and Nolan present all the necessary tools to craft your own yoga nidras. From the science of sleep to the process of crafting a content structure, practical tips on how to avoid and resolve common difficulties and audio examples - this book is the essential guide to help you grow on your journey to becoming a competent and confident yoga teacher.

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Michelle A. Amazeen, "Content Confusion: News Media, Native Advertising, and Policy in an Era of Disinformation" (MIT Press, 2025)

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

We often blame social media for the rampant problem of disinformation, but the truth is that mainstream news media is often equally at fault. Not only do news outlets disguise paid content to look like online news articles, a practice called “native advertising,” but new research suggests that this form of advertising even influences the real journalism that appears next to it—both perceptions of the journalism as well as its actual substance. In Content Confusion: News Media, Native Advertising, and Policy in an Era of Disinformation (MIT Press, 2025), Michelle Amazeen explores the origins and evolution of this mainstream media practice, how it affects audiences and the industry, and what the implications are for an accurately informed democracy. For policy makers, in particular, the book highlights the longstanding principles from governmental regulation as well as industry professional codes that serve to support clear identification of the provenance of content, an issue that will no doubt intensify with the release of generative artificial intelligence in the wild.

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China Office of Finnish Industries

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Why have Finland’s biggest multinationals teamed up to create a globally unique analysis hub just to decode the future of China? Meet the analysts who are nurturing the next generation of Finnish expertise to bridge the gap between Nordic business and Chinese policy.

In this episode, Julie Yu-Wen Chen at the University of Helsinki talks to Kevin Broady, Marleena Makkonen and Anton Karppanen, three analysts from the China Office of Finnish Industries to understand their mission. The China Office of Finnish Industries acts as a unique nonprofit designed to assist Finnish multinational corporations in navigating the complex geopolitical and economic landscape of the People’s Republic of China. Established in 2022, the organization provides deep strategic analysis on shifting Chinese industrial policies, labor market trends, and the inherent risks of doing business in an increasingly politicized global market. Their work focuses on helping companies understand growing political complexities amid trade tensions while adapting to China's growing influence on international trade. The office is also dedicated to nurturing the next generation of Finnish China analysts through a specialized trainee program for university students. By bridging the gap between academic expertise and corporate decision-making, the team fosters a more sophisticated understanding of how Chinese domestic developments impact Nordic prosperity.

Julie Yu‑Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Master’s Programme in Area and Cultural Studies at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Her new book, Global Knowledge Production about China, explores how the practice of “China‑watching” has evolved over the decades. The book is freely accessible online.

The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway).

We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

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Ukrainian Men Fleeing Conscription: A Discussion with Writer Dan Storyev

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Our conversation focuses on a groundbreaking article by Dan Storyev recently published in The Nation: “Millions of Ukrainian Men Are Fleeing a Cruel Conscription System.” Storyev was on the ground in Odesa to report firsthand for this piece, drawing on encounters with Ukrainian men in flight from the officers of the Ukrainian state agency, known as TCR, in charge of mobilizing fighting-age men for the war in Ukraine against Russia’s invading army. It’s an important story, yet one, as he told me, that few outlets in the Western press want to publish. And as we note, Russia also is experiencing great difficulties in conscripting men for this war. Storyev is a Russian-American writer and the co-author, with Maria Kuznetsova, of the forthcoming book How to Survive Authoritarianism: A Russian’s Phrasebook for Everyday Live in America (W.W. Norton), to be published in September.

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John Davie, "Greek To Us: The Fascinating Ancient Greek That Shapes Our World" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Ancient Greek lives on in our culture in surprising ways. Sometimes funny - the word for an actor, hupokrites, gives us 'hypocrite'; sometimes beautiful - an astronaut is literally a sailor of the skies. And that's before we get to the myths which gave us our Achilles heel or our Midas Touch. And what about crocodile tears, which comes from the Greek's belief that crocodiles cried while eating their victims!

Greek To Us: The Fascinating Ancient Greek That Shapes Our World (Bloomsbury, 2026) is a learned but always entertaining journey through the world of the Ancient Greeks, their extraordinary language and how it has shaped our own understanding of the world today. After all, what is language but the frame through which we understand the world? Davie aims to bring more than just humour, he seeks to trace the thread of ancient Greek thought that runs through our own civilization, always with the lightness of touch and fascinating etymology. We meet Eros and Aphrodite, Alexander the Great and Oscar Wilde, the stoics, Epicurus and Sparta.
While this is a book about language and the touching and illuminating presence of the ancient Greeks in our current words, it's also about how Ancient Greece shapes our culture today.

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Kanchana N. Ruwanpura and Wilfried Swenden eds., "Protecting Workers? Crisis, COVID-19 and South Asia" (Helsinki UP, 2026)

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In our recent conversation about Protecting Workers? Crisis, COVID-19 and South Asia, the editors Kanchana N. Ruwanpura and Wilfried Swenden reflect on the need to move beyond treating the pandemic as a singular, isolated shock. Our discussion reflected on the deeper mechanics of knowledge production, how we reflect on crisis beyond its immediate occurrence, how we conceptualize South Asia today, and the process of bringing such a dynamic volume together.

A central theme was the necessity of examining crisis as a revealing, prolonged condition rather than a temporary disruption. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed pre-existing structural vulnerabilities across Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Theorizing through this moment meant examining how state strategies and worker realities collided when formal safety nets faltered, forcing us to rethink South Asia not merely as a fixed geographic region, but as a shared space of cascading socio-economic pressures and labor struggles. While this volume traces state policy and institutional shifts, the core strength of the volume lies in highlighting the resourcefulness and claim-making capacities of workers fighting for justice. Assembling these regional perspectives provides a critical blueprint for rethinking state-society relations, labor rights, and collective action in post-pandemic South Asia.

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Yuri Pines, "China's Aristocratic Age: Politics and Power in the Springs-and-Autumns Period" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Springs-and-Autumns period is a strange period in Chinese history. Coming after the decline of the Zhou, and before the famous Warring States Period, this period of Chinese history features a large number of small states with no powerful hegemon, no strong sense of the mandate of heaven, rules of chivalry that wouldn’t seem out of place in medieval Europe, and roles passed down through lineage–and not awarded on the basis of merit.

Historian Yuri Pines calls this period China’s "aristocratic age” in his book titled, appropriately, China's Aristocratic Age: Politics and Power in the Springs-and-Autumns Period (Princeton UP, 2026).

Yuri Pines is the Michael W. Lipson Chair in Chinese Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of The Everlasting Empire: The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy, The Book of Lord Shang: Apologetics of State Power in Early China, Zhou History Unearthed: The Bamboo Manuscript Xinian and Early Chinese Historiography, and other books.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of China’s Aristocratic Age. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Thinking About Leaving Academia?

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

You’ve spent so many years earning your degrees. But how do you know if staying in academia is the right thing for you?

Whether you hope to keep working on campus or chart a new path, this episode will help you take stock of what you need, and design the life you want.

Questions this episode asks include: when are you at your best; when do you feel engaged and excited; when do you feel valued; and when are you making a contribution? It then asks you to make connections: where are you when you feel those things, and who are you with?

We also explore what you can do to help yourself make career decisions: going on informational interviews, expanding your definition of “success,” becoming curious about what could make your life better, and considering how you can make adjustments to your current job so it works better for you.

Guest: Dr. Jennifer Polk is a career coach, educator, and recognized expert in PhD careers. She facilitates professional development workshops and delivers keynote presentations at institutions across the US, Canada, and internationally. She’s published in University Affairs, Inside Higher Ed, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Globe and Mail, Academic Matters, and in three books. She earned her PhD in history from the University of Toronto.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You help support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Jamie L. Brummitt, "Protestant Relics in Early America" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Edward Blum interviews Dr. Jamie L. Brummitt on how new book Protestant Relics in Early America.

In Protestant Relics in Early America (Oxford UP, 2025), Jamie L. Brummitt upends long-held assumptions about religion and material culture in the early United States. Brummitt chronicles how American Protestants cultivated a lively relic culture centered around collecting supernatural memory objects associated with dead Christian leaders, family members, and friends. These objects materialized the real physical presences of God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and souls of the dead on earth.
As Brummitt demonstrates, people of nearly all Protestant denominations and walks of life--including members of Congress, college presidents, ministers, mothers, free Black activists, schoolchildren, and enslaved people--sought embodied and supernatural sense experiences with relics. They collected relics from deathbeds, stole relics from tombs, made relics in schools, visited relics at pilgrimage sites like George Washington's Mount Vernon, purchased relics in the marketplace, and carried relics into the American Revolution and the Civil War. Locks of hair, blood, bones, portraits, daguerreotypes, post-mortem photographs, memoirs, deathbed letters, Bibles, clothes, embroidered and painted mourning pieces, and a plethora of other objects that had been touched, used, or owned by the dead became Protestant relics. These relic practices were so pervasive that they shaped systems of earthly and heavenly power, from young women's education to national elections to Protestant-Catholic relations to the structure of freedom and families in the afterlife.
In recovering the forgotten history and presence of Protestant relics in early America, Brummitt demonstrates how material practices of religion defined early American politics and how the Enlightenment enhanced rather than diminished embodied presence. Moreover, Brummitt reveals how the secular historical method has obscured the supernatural significance of relics for the Protestants who made, collected, exchanged, treasured, and passed them down. This book will be an essential resource for scholars and students of early American history, religion, politics, art, and popular culture.

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Paul Johnson, "Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

There is a widespread sense throughout the developed world that progress towards a better society has stalled. Many countries, including the UK, have experienced persistent economic stagnation accompanied by declining trust in institutions. Governments are struggling to respond not only to traditional economic problems but also to newer challenges posed by climate change, migration and technological change. Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next (Princeton University Press, 2026), written by Paul Johnson and coauthors, drawing on the findings of the six-year IFS Deaton Review, connects these conditions to inequality—inequality not just of income and wealth but of health, political participation and opportunity. It not only offers a detailed analysis of the different forms of inequalities but also an in-depth consideration of why inequalities matter, how they have changed and what can, or should, be done about them.

The book explains the enduring effects of early life experiences and education and examines the trends in employment and earnings over recent decades. It argues that economic stagnation since the financial crises of 2008–2009 has exposed inequalities originating in the 1980s. Not only have incomes stagnated, but so has progress towards reducing health inequalities and dealing with inequalities across gender, ethnicity, geography, age and educational level. The combination of earnings inequality and economic stagnation has led to the growing importance of wealth, the increasing concentration of economic power in an older generation and a decline in social mobility. Economic inequalities have also resulted directly in dangerous differences between regions and in political power across groups.

The need to address inequality has never been more urgent. Challenging Inequalities offers a road map for how we have arrived at such a perilous spot—and how we can change course to achieve better outcomes for all.

Paul Johnson is provost of the Queen’s College, University of Oxford, and former director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). He is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Follow the Money.

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Divining the Past: How to Do Conjectural History with Anthony Grafton

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Whether recovering a lost history or charting a new land, scholars and explorers alike often hit at frontiers not only of place, but also knowledge. When the evidence only goes so far, what is the right way to advance?

The answer is to make a conjecture: an educated guess that discourses on what is likely the case. Historical examples range from Italian humanists stealing manuscripts from monasteries and reconstructing classical languages, to Jesuit missionaries speculating about land bridges to the Americas, and even Renaissance magicians pioneering in alchemy and astrology.

This collective practice is called “conjectural history,” and its roots go far back. But how far back? To answer that question, as we continue Season 6, I have as our guest, Professor Anthony Grafton.

A former president of the American Historical Association, and the Emeritus Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, Grafton is a scholar of early modern Europe and written history, a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and London Review of Books, and the author of many books such as The Footnote (1997) and Magus (2023). Today, we will discuss his current project on “conjectural history.”

We discuss the use of conjectural versus counterfactual history, its founders in Herodotus and Thucydides, and proponents like the explorer Jose de Acosta, S.J. and the scholar Lorenzo Valla. Also discussed are Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, the birth of modern science from renaissance magic, C.S. Lewis’ The Discarded Image, recent scholarship on premodern eyewitness testimony to the supernatural, the magician Henry Cornelius Agrippa, and the best lost spots of Princeton University.

Chapter Headings:

00:00 | Introduction & What is Conjectural History
4:30 | The Scottish Enlightenment vs. the Renaissance Tradition
11:42 | Conjectural History & a Case Study: Jose de Acosta
19:30 | Theology, Science & The Renaissance
26:19 | Lorenzo Valla and the Donation of Constantine
38:19 | Conjecture, Divination, and Magic
Closing | Reflections: History, Belief, and Closing Thoughts

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Brian Jay Jones, "George Lucas: A Life" (Little, Brown and Company, 2016)

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The essential biography of the influential and beloved filmmaker George Lucas.

On May 25, 1977, a problem-plagued, budget-straining independent science-fiction film opened in a mere thirty-two American movie theaters. Conceived, written, and directed by a little-known filmmaker named George Lucas, the movie originally called The Star Wars quickly drew blocks-long lines, bursting box-office records and ushering in a new way for movies to be made, marketed, and merchandised. It is now one of the most adored–and successful–movie franchises of all time.

Now, the author of the bestselling biography Jim Henson delivers a revelatory look into the life and times of the man who created Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Indiana Jones in George Lucas: A Life (Little, Brown and Company, 2016)

If Star Wars wasn't game-changing enough, Lucas went on to create another blockbuster series with Indiana Jones, and he completely transformed the world of special effects and the way movies sound. His innovation and ambition forged Pixar and Lucasfilm, Industrial Light & Magic, and THX sound.

Lucas's colleagues and competitors offer tantalizing glimpses into his life. His entire career has been stimulated by innovators including Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola, actors such as Harrison Ford, and the very technologies that enabled the creation of his films-and allowed him to keep tinkering with them long after their original releases. Like his unforgettable characters and stories, his influence is unmatched.

Brian Jay Jones is the author of the New York Times bestseller Jim Henson: The Biography, as well as Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of An American Imagination and Washington Irving: An American Original. His most recent book is The Capitol: The Surprising Biography of an American Building. He continues to believe that Han shot first.

Daniel Moran’s writing about literature and film can be found on Pages and Frames. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches writing and co-hosts the long-running podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, available here on the New Books Network and wherever podcasts are found.

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Dimple Abichandani, "A New Era of Philanthropy: Ten Practices to Transform Wealth into a More Just and Sustainable Future" (North Atlantic Books, 2025)

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Can philanthropy be an anti-racist, feminist, relational, and joyful expression of solidarity? This book argues that it not only can be for the future we seek and for philanthropy to achieve its greatest impact, but it must be.

Nationally recognized philanthropic leader Dimple Abichandani revolutionizes the precepts of modern philanthropy. Offering 10 provocative practice shifts, A New Era of Philanthropy: Ten Practices to Transform Wealth into a More Just and Sustainable Future (North Atlantic Books, 2025) engages readers with fresh answers to the question of how philanthropy can meet this high-stakes moment. This book picks up where key books like Decolonizing Wealth and Winners Take All leave off, offering a guide for donors, foundations, and non-profit leaders navigating philanthropy in urgent times. Clear-eyed, hopeful, and responsive to the moment, this book helps us reimagine the purpose and norms of modern philanthropy. It is an invitation to all of us who believe these resources can contribute to a more just future: start here.

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Robyn Hitchcock, "Stranded in the Future" (Akashic Books, 2026)

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Robyn Hitchcock's second memoir, Stranded in the Future (Akashic Books, 2026), explores the formation of his seminal 1970s band the Soft Boys, and the obsessions that fueled his early creative output. Stranded in the Future is a kind of dystopian self-portrait. It's about obsession, and obsessive behavior. Spanning from 1968 to 1978, it takes in the mythology surrounding Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett (though it doesn't name him) and hinges on Robyn Hitchcock's teenage girlfriend (she isn't named either). The book explores the way that Hitchcock, in his own head, linked these two figures to each other, although they never actually met. On the way, the story mines the incremental hangover of the 1970s as Hitchcock begins to play live, teaches himself to write songs, and eventually forms the Soft Boys. There's a side order of trolleybuses too! Hitchcock's beautiful prose will resonate far beyond the fans of his music, and build on the literary following he established with his first book, 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left.

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Malcolm Murfett, "Eden's Alternative to Appeasement: The Anglo-American Strategy that Might Have Been, 1937–38" (Tithebarn Press, 2026)

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

As Foreign Secretary in Neville Chamberlain's Cabinet in 1937, Eden didn't believe in appeasing the German and Italian dictatorships or the militaristic Japanese regime. Instead, he wanted to confront their aggression head on. Faced with growing Japanese assertiveness, including the launching of an undeclared war on China in July 1937, Eden appealed to the US for help. He believed sending an Anglo-American naval force to the Western Pacific would demonstrate that the democracies were not spineless, but were prepared to stand up for what they believed in. Was this a viable alternative to Chamberlain's appeasement policy, now notorious for its failure in the face of fascism?

In Eden's Alternative to Appeasement: The Anglo-American Strategy that Might Have Been, 1937–38 (Tithebarn Press, 2026), historian Malcolm Murfett tells the story, using a wide range of primary sources from the UK and US archives, of Eden's push to persuade Roosevelt's administration to be more assertive in the Pacific. He reveals the diplomatic dance both sides engaged in, each unsure of the other's reliability, of their own ability to commit, and tied up in their own internal struggles for policy dominance. We get a real insight into how two once-and-future allies managed each other's expectations, as well as the wider strategic parameters within which they were operating.

With eerie echoes of our own times, Murfett explores the challenges involved in both international diplomacy, and foreign and security policy. How standing up for principles and values can become compromised by the requirements of Realpolitik, and logistical constraints.

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David Helvarg, "Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In a matter of decades, a spectacular cold-water paradise thirty million years in the making is succumbing to warming oceans. Kelp forests are largely out of sight, hidden under the ocean’s surface, yet they are one of Earth’s most wondrous and underappreciated marine habitats. It’s an ethereal light-infused realm of sharks, otters, eels, sea stars, crabs, rockfish, and myriad other species vital to a functioning ocean and the countless coastal communities that make their living from the sea. Unlike coral reefs, whose similar plight plays out in tropical waters highly visible to vacationing tourists, kelp forests thrive along cold-water coastlines far from tourist centers. What will it take to stop the decline before these underwater playgrounds bursting with colorful life become vast fields of lifeless urchin barrens?

For readers who know kelp only as tangles on the ocean surface or smelly mounds of seaweed littering beaches, Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp (Princeton University Press, 2026) reveals a thriving three-dimensional underwater world of color and beauty whose loss if allowed to happen will reverberate in unimaginable ways for both nature and humans. David Helvarg, a veteran journalist and accomplished scuba diver, takes us on a memorable journey beneath the waves through kelp’s natural and human history, the billions of dollars of products and services it contributes to our global economy, the unwitting human activities that threaten its survival, and the hopeful movements around the world to restore kelp habitat. Helvarg introduces us to Indigenous leaders promoting sea otter reintroduction, out-of-work urchin fisherman, documentary filmmakers, and ocean scientists all working in an unlikely collaboration to restore and protect kelp forests while promoting a growing range of uses for food, medicine, and energy.

Forest of the Sea is the first book to document what is at stake if we lose these irreplaceable marine jewels, helping readers to understand how these natural systems might adapt and survive.

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How to Write a Book Proposal and Make Your Manuscript Work with Laura Portwood-Stacer

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Are you a scholar sitting on a manuscript that you think could be a book — but you have no idea where to start? In this episode of The Publishing Playbook, host Sarah Russo sits down with Laura Portwood-Stacer, founder of Manuscript Works and author of two books about academic publishing: “The Book Proposal Book” and “Make Your Manuscript Work.” Laura shares what pulled her out of academia and into editorial consulting, and why “publish or perish” no longer guarantees the payoff it once promised. She breaks down the essential elements of a strong academic book proposal, the real differences between the types of publishers out there, and why authors and editors are on the same team more often than they realize. Laura also dishes on whether academic authors actually need a literary agent, and how generative AI is reshaping trust in publishing. Plus: what it was really like competing on “Jeopardy!”

For more information on Laura’s work, please visit Manuscript Works.

Books mentioned in this episode:

“The Book Proposal Book” by Laura Portwood-Stacer

“Make Your Manuscript Work” by Laura Portwood-Stacer

“Trans Technologies” by Oliver Haimson (both Laura and the Page One team worked with Oliver on his book)

“The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World” by Bettany Hughes

Key Moments

00:00 – “That’s Not the Answer” 😤
Laura names the fantasy that finishing a book will magically change your life, and why that unrealistic expectation sets writers up for disappointment.

03:25 – “Publish or Perish” Isn't So Simple Anymore 📚
Laura explains why the old academic career formula has broken down: you can do everything right and still lose the job, the promotion, or the department.

07:12 - The Anatomy of a Strong Book Proposal 📝
Laura walks through exactly what publishers are looking for, breaking down the unspoken checklist most scholars never see.

10:40 – “You’re on the Same Team” 🤝
Laura pushes back on the idea that authors and editors are adversaries, arguing most writers misunderstand just how aligned they actually are with their publisher.

16:37 - Trade, Academic Trade, or Monograph? 🎯
Sarah and Laura unpack the three buckets publishers sort academic books into, and why so many authors overestimate how “trade” their book really is.

20:33 - Do You Actually Need an Agent? 🙋
Laura levels with authors chasing representation: most scholars publishing with university or academic presses don’t need one at all.

21:13 - AI Has Made Everyone a “Paranoid Reader” 🤖
Laura gets candid about how generative AI is eroding trust between editors and authors — and why she resents having become an accidental AI expert.

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Speech and the City

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Ingrid Piller speaks with Yaron Matras about his new book Speech and the City.

In this timely book, Yaron shows that cities can provide an important counter-weight to political polarization by forging civic identities that embrace diversity. The book traces the emergence of a city language narrative that embraces and celebrates multilingualism and helps forge a civic identity. He critiques linguaphobic discourses at a national level that regard multilingualism as deficient citizenship. Drawing on his research in Manchester, he examines the 'multilingual utopia', looking at multilingual spaces across sectors in the city that support access, heritage, skills and celebration. The book explores the tensions between decolonial approaches that inspire activism for social justice and equality, and the neoliberal enterprise that appropriates diversity for reputational and profitability purposes, prompting critical reflection on calls for civic university engagement.

Beyond telling the story of the Multilingual Manchester project, the book also offers an intriguing glimpse into the author’s distinguished career as a linguist, scholar, and activist.

Reference

Matras, Y. (2024). Speech and the City: Multilingualism, Decoloniality and the Civic University. Cambridge University Press.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

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Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, "The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois" (HarperCollins, 2021)

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In 2021, the NAACP Image Award-winning poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers made her fiction debut with The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois, a magisterial epic of African American historical fiction—an intimate yet sweeping novel with all the luminescence and force of Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancer—chronicling the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War, to our own tumultuous era.

Five years, and numerous awards and best-of lists later, Honorée joins the podcast on the anniversary of the novel’s publication to talk about what it meant then, what it means now, and that call from Oprah that shifted everything.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is an essayist, novelist, poet, and a student of United States history. She is the author of seven books spanning three genres, including the NAACP Image Award-winning poetry collection, The Age of Phillis. She was on the podcast on June 20, 2025 to discuss her book, Misbehaving at the Crossroad: Essays and Writing. You can find Honorée on Substack, Facebook, and Instagram.

Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Brian Callaci, "Chains of Command: The Rise and Cruel Reign of the Franchise Economy" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Chains of Command: The Rise and Cruel Reign of the Franchise Economy (University of Chicago Press, 2026) is a surprising look at the big business of owning small businesses and what America's franchise economy means for its workers.

Walk into a McDonald's anywhere in the United States, and it will be identical to every other McDonald's in the country. Yet, that particular store is almost certainly owned and operated by an "independent" franchisee. While McDonald's presents an image of centralized uniformity to the consumer, it shows a different face to the small business owners operating its stores under its control and the workers preparing its product to its standards. How then does McDonald's—and its big business peers—manage to be two things at once?

In this revelatory work, economist Brian Callaci shows how franchisors have altered the legal treatment of corporations in their favor through a decades-long crusade of lobbying and litigation. Their efforts subsequently unleashed a slew of legal and economic sins upon the US economy and labor force, allowing multinational corporations to control continent-spanning empires while outsourcing employment and scapegoating legal responsibilities onto small businesses. The result: the unfettered growth of some of America's most recognizable businesses, at the aggregate expense of America's workers.

Remarkable in both its scale and synthesis, Callaci's story is the first chronicle of this business movement—initially resisted by US courts before experiencing a dramatic reversal of fortune after decades of campaigning by some of America's most established entrepreneurs. An urgent and erudite history, Chains of Command reveals how the US labor market was tamed one small business at a time.

Brian Callaci is Campaigns Director at the Strategic Organizing Center, and previously served as Chief Economist at the Open Markets Institute. He researches and writes about market structure, antitrust law, and their relationship to worker and employer power.

Anna Olteanu is a senior in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University, where she focuses on intellectual history. Her interests include political ecology, the history of economic thought, and literary criticism.

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David Lagercrantz, "Post Mortem: A Mystery" (Knopf, 2026)

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Post Mortem: A Mystery (Knopf, 2026) is the third book in David Lagercrantz's mystery series following detective duo Rekke and Vargas: this time, their hunt for a killer has a literary twist. Professor Hans Rekke and police officer Micaela Vargas have earned a reputation for solving the unsolvable. But they’ve never been confronted by a serial killer. Until now. Rekke receives a visit from Spanish chief inspector Rafael Corales, who is unable to forget the brutal, unsolved murder of a young woman in Santander in 1988. Now other bodies have come to light, marked with signs that seem to be some kind of numerical order. Still recovering from his latest manic episode, his relationship with Vargas strained by a secret she’s keeping, Rekke agrees to help decipher these signs before the killer strikes again. The victim was an aspiring writer, and clues from her posthumously published short story about a stray dog draw Rekke and Vargas deep into the murk of Sweden’s literary scene. To unmask the killer, Rekke must relearn the difference between fact and fiction, and discover what really happened that night back in the 1980s. In yet another intricate and exciting puzzle mystery, David Lagercrantz draws on the literary world that he—and we—know all too well to tell a story about guilt, shame, repressed memories, human depravity, and publishing.

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Niharika Pandit, "Occupying the Everyday: Militarisation and Gendered Politics of Living in Kashmir" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Our recent conversation about Occupying the Everyday: Militarisation and Gendered Politics of Living in Kashmir (Oxford UP, 2026), with author Niharika Pandit, covers the journey of how critical methodology meets the weight of lived experience. This book examines the everyday politics of militarized control in Kashmir following the Indian government’s August 5, 2019, decision to de-operationalize Jammu and Kashmir’s nominal autonomy. The core of our reflection centered on how one theorizes through such an intense archive. The book avoids abstract distance, relying instead on a rigorous post-2019 archive built from ethnographic fieldwork and rooted in interdisciplinary feminist studies. It demonstrates that theorizing is not a passive intellectual exercise, instead, it is an active, grounded practice of mapping power where it is felt most directly. Through intersectional analyses of space, home, time, and storytelling, the text reveals how militarized control operates via spatial, embodied, affective, temporal, and discursive capture. Reflecting on this book serves as a vital reminder that critical theorizing must remain tethered to the grounded realities of resistance.

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After Putin: A Discussion with Political Scientist Julian G. Waller

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Russian leader Vladimir Putin, at 73 years old, is still very much alive, yet the “After Putin” conversation is an active one inside and outside of Russia. What could come next and how to think about that question? My guest is Julian G. Waller, a political scientist at George Washington University and author of a recent Foreign Affairs article “After Putin: Russia’s Coming Succession Crisis.” In our discussion, Waller anchors the “After Putin” question in historical context, as to how succession played out after Stalin’s death in the 1953. And we talk about how the current political environment in Moscow, shaped by Putin’s protracted war in Ukraine, is informing the “After Putin” discussion. Could a revolutionary scenario play out? How bodily safe is Putin? Waller is author of Autocrats Can't Always Get What They Want: State Institutions and Autonomy under Authoritarianism (University of Michigan Press, 2024).

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Shelly Lundberg "How Economics Discovered Women: Bringing Gender Economics into the Twenty-First Century" (U California Press, 2026)

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the 1970s, as women started to enter the labor force in unprecedented numbers, economists began to examine their roles as economic actors. The result was the rise of gender economics, now a major subfield with powerful data and new methods comparing the economic lives of men and women. Yet despite decades of progress, many of the most consequential questions about gender inequality remain unresolved.

In How Economics Discovered Women: Bringing Gender Economics into the Twenty-First Century (U California Press, 2026), renowned economist and demographer Dr. Shelly Lundberg argues that the problem is not a lack of evidence but a failure to challenge entrenched economic models and outmoded assumptions about markets and gender that have limited what the field can explain.

Why does occupational segregation persist? Why do "women's jobs" pay less? Why are men falling behind in education? And why do policies like paternity leave fail to change behavior? Drawing on more than five decades in the field and integrating insights from other social sciences, Dr. Lundberg explains signs of recent progress and charts a path toward a more realistic, socially grounded economics capable of meeting the challenges of gender inequality today.

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Musical Pripetshik: Lyrics and Melodies of Traditional Yiddish Folksongs

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Most of the Yiddish songs we know today were created in the first half of the 20th century and distributed through commercial channels such as sheet music, concerts, radio broadcasts, records and CDs, theater stages, and more recently through songbooks produced in educational settings around the world. Our discussion focuses on lesser-known songs – Eastern Yiddish musical folklore, which emerged over a period of approximately four hundred years preceding the formation of the “popular” repertoire. Although we lack transcriptions of melodies or lyrics from before the end of the 19th century, a comparative study of documentation collected from then until the middle of the 20th century reveals that older layers of this musical-poetic creativity had been preserved over long periods of time. I refer to this older repertoire as the "musical pripetshik." Similar to the traditional combined home-heat-generating cooking oven known as the pripetshik, this old song repertoire was an integral part of Jewish culture, evolving in meaning and function over time. While for many, the image of the pripetshik corresponds to the nostalgic song by Mark Varshavski of 1901, this lecture will explore the earlier history of this and other poetic and musical images to offer an appreciation of their significance.

This lecture originally took place on July 23, 2024.

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Transcending Disciplinary Confinements With(in) Beckett Studies

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This is Dr. Swati Joshi's inaugural episode on the New Books Network. In this episode, she interviews Dr. Lucy Jeffery about her monograph, Transdisciplinary Beckett: Visual Arts, Music, and the Creative Process (ibidem Press, 2021). She is also co-editor and author of Replaying Communism: Trauma and Nostalgia in European Cultural Production, published by CEU Press and AUP in 2026. She is co-founder of the Replaying Communism project, which received funding from the AHRC SWW-DTP (2023) and the Visegrad Fund (2024). Dr. Jeffery's published research is on Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Ezra Pound, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Magda Szabó. Her monograph—Transdisciplinary Beckett: Visual Arts, Music, and the Creative Process—was published by Ibidem in 2021, and, in 2022, she co-edited a special issue for Green Letters, entitled ‘A New Poetics of Space’.

This episode weaves together Beckett's transdisciplinary creative process with Dr. Jeffery's journey of research, and cogitation over challenges to preserve integrity and creativity of the author's works in the wake of rapidly developing AI tools. Furthermore, the colour blue occupies an integral role in Dr. Jeffery's monograph, so this episode entails analytical segments on pigments used in Beckett's works beyond the black, white, and grey. Dr. Jeffery and I also briefly discuss our ongoing special issue, "A Writer's Palette: Colour in Late Modernist Literature," for Textual Practice. Colleagues interested in sharing their proposal until 12th December, can write to us on latemodernists@gmail.com, for more details.

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Chenchen Zhang, "Easting the West: Theorizing the Postliberal Conjuncture from China" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

With commentary on the emergence of a ‘multipolar’ world, of transatlantic rifts and the rise of ‘middle powers’ ubiquitous, tales of the decline of something called ‘the West’ seem to be everywhere. Yet the meanings the idea of ‘the West’ acquires in spaces beyond it tell us at least as much about the state of the world as portents of its demise.

Based on a combination of cultural analysis of historical writings and—most strikingly—deep immersion in often very spicy Chinese social media fora, Chenchen Zhang’s new book Easting the West: Theorizing the Postliberal Conjuncture from China (Oxford University Press, 2026) theorises the shifting significations ascribed to ‘the West’ in China since the late-imperial collision with European empires. Whether imagined as a source of modernity, a colonial exploiter, geopolitical rival or—most recently—a civilisation sunk into decadence and decay, ‘the West’—Zhang shows—is a foil for China-based worldviews which, whatever their anticolonial or anti-Western sentiments, are also entangled with Eurocentric hierarchies of race, nation and gender whose patriarchal and civilisational histories are rooted at least partly that very same ‘West’.

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Sabrina Inowlocki, "Ancient Apologetics and the Bibliographic Imagination" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Ancient apologetics is usually treated as a literary genre or a branch of early theology. This Element offers a different account. It argues that many Jewish and Christian texts conventionally labeled 'apologetic' are better understood through a bibliographic and archival lens: They produce authority not only by defending doctrines, but by organizing books, constructing corpora, mobilizing archives, and regulating interpretation. Tracing a trajectory from the Letter of Aristeas to Jerome's De viris illustribus, this Element shows how citation, collection, cataloguing, and textual ordering made traditions appear authoritative. Examining Aristeas, Josephus, Tatian, Justin, Origen, Pamphilus, Eusebius, and Jerome, it argues that apologetics is best understood as a form of curatorial power through which ancient communities learned to think with books. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review.

Sabrina Inowlocki is a Senior Research Fellow Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry (IRCI) at the Australian Catholic University.

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

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Edward Goldring, "Purges: How Dictators Fight to Survive" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Purges: How Dictators Fight to Survive (Cornell University Press, 2026) by Dr. Edward Goldring delves into one of the key tactics that autocrats deploy to maintain power: the removal of individuals from within the regime.

From Kim Jong Un's execution of his uncle to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's removal of over a hundred Turkish generals, purges bear significant consequences for the survival and endurance of autocrats. Yet much remains unknown about why dictators use purges and whether they achieve their intended effects.

Drawing on an original global dataset on civilian and military elite purges in dictatorships in addition to case studies spanning North and South Korea as well as Turkey, Dr. Goldring examines the logic behind purges and their consequences. He shows that dictators purge to consolidate power, punish disloyalty, and scapegoat elites to alleviate popular threats. But even as purges help dictators consolidate power early in their tenure, purges actually weaken their position when they have been in power for a long time, prompting pushback. In the face of an increasing global shift toward authoritarian norms, Purges offers critical insight into how autocrats maintain—and sometimes lose—power.

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Mhoze Chikowero, "The Military Entertainment Complex: Chimurenga Afrosonic Making of Zimbabwe" (MIT Press, 2026)

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Military Entertainment Complex: Chimurenga Afrosonic Making of Zimbabwe (MIT Press, 2026) by Dr. Mhoze Chikowero is the story of the making of post-independence Zimbabwe from the sounds and songs born of the country’s armed liberation wars, waged against British Rhodesian white settler rule since the 1890s.
The war from 1896 through the twentieth century to resist the initial colonization, as well as the one waged to reclaim land from the colonial farmers in the 2000s, is known as Chimurenga, and the music it produced is thus called Chimurenga music. The sounds and music were Afrosonic—that is, deeply grounded in the ideology of the 1960s–70s war, spawning the cultural liberation of a people whose self-expression the colonial system had criminalized and oppressed for close to a century.
The living labs of the liberation war, Chimurenga, powered not just military but also cultural rearmament, thereby producing cultural blueprints for a confident, regenerative public consciousness and expressiveness as independence. The open-access title captures the sounds of self-liberation, framing a state of militant audibility in public cultural expressiveness, public policy propagation, and contestation. It invites readers to imagine, see, hear, and feel self-liberation war redeployed as popular entertainment in the service of state making.

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Patricia A. Billingsley, "Lorca in Vermont: The Spanish Poet and His American Lover" (High Road Books, 2026)

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A groundbreaking reassessment of the relationship between Federico García Lorca and American poet Philip Cummings and its impact on the poems in Lorca's landmark collection, Poet in New York.
In August 1929, Spanish poet Federico García Lorca left New York City to spend ten days with his friend and lover Philip Cummings at a lakeside cottage in northern Vermont. Lorca in Vermont: The Spanish Poet and His American Lover (High Road Books, 2026) tells the story of two young men with mismatched goals and expectations: Lorca, already well established in his career, who sought a sustained romantic relationship with another man, and Cummings, a new college graduate eight years his junior, who had no interest in long-term commitment or in challenging social conventions. Based on over a decade of research, Lorca in Vermont explores the full course of Lorca’s relationship with Cummings, an affair that spanned three years and two continents. Combining unique access to primary sources, extensive original research, and a fresh analysis of published sources, the book describes not only the pair’s history as a couple but also the suppression of their relationship by Lorca scholars after the poet’s tragic death in 1936. Perhaps most importantly, it reveals previously unrecognized links between the disappointment and loss Lorca experienced in his relationship with Cummings and at least eight of the poems in his landmark collection Poet in New York, a work that has long intrigued and inspired other writers. The book brilliantly blends compelling new findings and an engaging narrative style in a page-turning tale that is a must read for anyone interested in Lorca and his legacy.

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Eran Shalev, "The Star-Spangled Republic: Political Astronomy and the Rise of the American Constellation" (U Virginia Press, 2025)

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Why does the American flag use stars to represent the states? In The Star-Spangled Republic: Political Astronomy and the Rise of the American Constellation (U Virginia Press, 2025), Eran Shalev answers this and many other questions, considering the cosmic imagery—so familiar today but so peculiar on reflection—that suffused the United States’ early political culture. In this comprehensive study, Shalev uncovers how “political astronomy”—the discussion and representation of politics through astronomical models, allusions, and metaphors—reflected and facilitated the emerging worldview that enabled Americans to justify and find meaning in the country’s new democratic modes of governance and its federal system. No other scholar has looked at American political rhetoric through this lens; in so doing, Shalev is able to explain in fascinating detail how Americans turned away from the sun of heliocentric monarchy toward the night sky full of federated constellations, and to discover republicanism imprinted in the firmament.

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A.J.A. Woods, "The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West" (Verso, 2026)

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West (Verso Books, 2026) is the definitive history of a dangerous right-wing conspiracy theory.

“Cultural Marxism” is one of the far right’s favorite buzzwords. But despite its currency, the meaning and origins of the term are rarely investigated. This book uncovers the bizarre story of the cult leaders, right-wing intellectuals, and White House officials who believe a coterie of left-wing scholars and students is plotting to undermine Western civilization. Drawing on years of archival research and using the tools of critical theory, A.J.A. Woods reveals how a group of German thinkers known as the Frankfurt School was recast as the sinister orchestrators of a global conspiracy. Instead of simply debunking this conspiracy theory, Woods offers a sharp analysis and critique of the political movements that have declared war on all that passes for Cultural Marxism in the US, the UK, and Brazil.

Only when we understand the practices and weaknesses of those reactionaries committed to fighting this illusory threat—a conflict causing real-world damage—can we effectively resist. This is an essential book for anyone seeking to understand the ideological currents shaping politics in the twenty-first century.

A.J.A. Woods is an intellectual historian who lives in Brighton, England. In 2022, Woods received a PhD from the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western University, Canada. Their writings on conspiracy theories and reactionary politics have been translated into four languages and appeared in Open Democracy, Patterns of Prejudice, and Marx & Philosophy Review of Books.

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Robin Whelan, "Serving the Christian State in Late Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How did the state become Christian in late antiquity? Many scholars have traced the Christianization of the Roman world in the centuries following the conversion of the emperor Constantine in 312 CE. Robin Whelan, however, turns his attention away from the usual suspects in such accounts-emperors, empresses, bishops, ascetics, and other holy people-to consider a surprisingly understudied set of late ancient Christians: those who served the state as courtiers, bureaucrats, and governors. By tracing the requirements of regimes, the expectations of subjects, and patterns of engagement with churches and churchmen, he argues that that those who served the state in late antiquity could be seen-and indeed, could see themselves-as distinctly Christian authority figures-just as much as the emperors and kings whom they served, and the bishops and ascetics whom they governed. Serving the Christian State in Late Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2026) is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

New books in late antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review

Robin Whelan is Reader in Mediterranean History at the University of Liverpool.

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston

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Jacqueline Vayntrub, "Body Language: Voice, Embodiment, and Textuality in the Hebrew Bible" (Yale UP, 2026)

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Tune in to this interview about Body Language: Voice, Embodiment, and Textuality in the Hebrew Bible (Yale UP, 2026). Jacqueline Vayntrub is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Yale University in the Divinity School. She holds a Ph.D. with honors in Northwest Semitic Philology from the University of Chicago. Her research operates at the intersection of biblical philology, poetics, and the history of biblical scholarship. She is the author of Beyond Orality: Biblical Poetry on its own Terms (Routledge 2019), Body Language: Voice, Embodiment, and Textuality in the Hebrew Bible (Yale University Press, 2026), as well as the co-author of Hebrew Funerary Inscriptions from Iron Age Judah (Society of Biblical Literature Press, forthcoming). Her current major projects include a commentary on Ecclesiastes for the Old Testament Library series (Westminster John Knox Press), and serving as Project Director for an NEH-funded international collaboration investigating the institutional history and anti-Jewish scaffolding of modern biblical criticism.

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Seth C. Lewis, Rodrigo Zamith, and Tomás Dodds, "Journalism in the Age of AI: From Acceleration to Reimagination" (Polity, 2027)

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What if AI’s biggest impact on journalism isn’t replacing journalists, but forcing us to rethink what journalism is for?

In this episode, Joanne Kuai speaks with Seth C. Lewis, Rodrigo Zamith, and Tomás Dodds, authors of Journalism in the Age of AI: From Acceleration to Reimagination (Polity, 2027).

For decades, journalism has been caught on a “hamster wheel” of acceleration: producing more stories, for more platforms, with fewer resources. AI promises even greater efficiency, but is doing more with less really what journalism needs?

Lewis, Zamith, and Dodds argue that the current AI moment offers something more consequential: an opportunity to reimagine journalism itself. The conversation explores what remains distinctly human about journalism when machines can increasingly perform creative and cognitive tasks; how dependence on AI companies and digital infrastructure is reshaping media power; what AI means for journalism education and human judgement; and whether journalism can harness these technologies in ways that strengthen, rather than erode, its democratic purpose.

The conversation also raises a more fundamental question: is preserving journalism as an institution the goal, or should we rethink how society meets its information needs altogether?

Journalism in the Age of AI is available open access. Learn more and access the book here.

About the authors

Seth C. Lewis is the inaugural Elcan Jefferson Scholars Foundation Distinguished Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Previously, he was the founding holder of the Shirley Papé Chair in Emerging Media and Director of Journalism at the University of Oregon. In his research, Lewis examines the social implications of emerging technologies and their consequences for news and public life.

Rodrigo Zamith is an Associate Professor and former Chair of the Journalism Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of journalism and technology, with a focus on understanding the social implications of emerging technologies for how news is produced, distributed, and consumed. He is a recipient of UMass’ Distinguished Teaching Award.

Tomás Dodds is an Assistant Professor in Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Director of its Public Tech Media Lab. His research examines the evolving relationship between journalism and technology, with a focus on how journalists and media organizations can develop open-source tools and artificial intelligence systems that serve the public interest.

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Travis Bruce, "Constructing the Medieval Maritime State: Identity, Violence, and Connection in the Mediterranean" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Constructing the Medieval Maritime State: Identity, Violence, and Connection in the Mediterranean (Oxford University Press, 2026) by Professor Travis Bruce explores how the small medieval kingdom of Denia in Spain became a powerful maritime state after the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate. Its rulers built authority, not only through war and seafaring raids but also by connecting Denia to wider Mediterranean trade, diplomacy, and culture.

The rise and evolution of the taifa of Denia is a powerful case study for understanding the construction of medieval maritime states in the Mediterranean. Dr. Bruce situates Denia within the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate and explores how its rulers forged legitimacy through identity formation, maritime violence, and regional connectivity. Denia's identity was negotiated through rulership, unfreedom, and cultural hybridity, and violence — particularly predatory warfare and maritime jihad — functioned as both statecraft and economic extraction. At the same time, Denia's entanglement in commercial, diplomatic, and intellectual networks positioned it as a key node linking the Islamic Mediterranean and the Latin West. The state's trajectory cannot be reduced to narratives of decline or simple religious conflict but instead reveals a process of negotiation shaped by mobility, interdependence, and the fluid boundaries between public and private power. This narrative reframes Mediterranean history beyond Eurocentric paradigms and underscores the significance of Islamic maritime states within the wider medieval world.

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Leda Elliott, "The Five Seasons Method: A Gentle Path toward Emotional and Spiritual Balance" (Scribner, 2026)

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A gentle yet powerful blend of ancient wisdom and modern wellness that shows how seasonal living can enrich your days.

In the Chinese Five Element system, which links nature’s cycles to our emotional, physical, and spiritual selves, there are five seasons: spring, summer, late summer, fall, and winter. You can feel the energy of that fifth season when the air gets cooler, the light turns golden, and we enjoy a few weeks of transition from the active energy of spring and summer to the calming, restorative energy of fall and winter.

Leda Elliott grew up in Japan and has long been a student of the dialogue between East and West, between body and spirit. Drawing from decades of experience in holistic practices, Leda has developed a unique method for embracing the lessons we can learn from each season—late summer brings grounding, fall brings release, winter brings stillness, spring brings vision, and summer brings joy. Incorporating rituals, meditations, and exercises attuned to each season’s energy can help us feel more aligned. Things like the foods we eat, the colors we wear, and where we focus our attention can all deepen our sense of connection to ourselves and the world.

Leda’s peaceful spirit radiates onto the page in a book offering tips and exercises, personal stories, illustrations, and testimonials from her students. These heartfelt narratives demonstrate how ancient practices can meet the challenges of modern life, providing support for those navigating grief, stress, and fatigue.

The Five Seasons Method: A Gentle Path toward Emotional and Spiritual Balance (Scribner, 2026) will help readers of all ages and abilities get their energy back into balance, one breath and one season at a time.

Leda Elliott is a Tai Chi Master, Reiki Master, and the creator of The Five Seasons Method, a wellness program that integrates Tai Chi, QiGong, breathwork, and seasonal energy principles to help individuals cultivate balance, vitality, and inner harmony. She trained under legendary Tai Chi Grandmaster Bow Sim Mark and is the owner of A Thousand Cranes Studio, where she offers in-person classes, private coaching, Reiki healing, and global online workshops. For more information please visit this website.

Elizabeth Cronin, Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist and certified mindfulness meditation teacher in Norwood, MA. You can find her on Youtube or visit her website.

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Ryan Engley, "Seriality: Media and the Psychic Form of Everyday Life" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This material and theoretical history of seriality shows it to be the dominant form of culture since its inception within 19th-century print culture, as both a media structure and a psychic one.

The serial is everywhere. Commonly identified by the segmented release structure of an ongoing narrative—from installments of Victorian novels to TV episodes to comic books—seriality names the spread of installment-based storytelling across a range of media. However, Ryan Engley argues that seriality is not only a narrative structure but also a psychic structure. Seriality—in its dependence on gaps, delay, and constraint—names the fundamental trauma of contemporary life: that there exists an intrinsic relation between self and other, a relation that is often difficult to see and difficult to bear.

Through formal readings of media texts alongside Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, the dialectical method of G.W.F. Hegel, and Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism, Seriality: Media and the Psychic Form of Everyday Life (Bloomsbury, 2026) shifts the focus of seriality studies. In so doing, Engley presents a rebuttal to the common refrain that our lives, like contemporary media, have become endlessly fragmented. Rather, Engley finds, we have become radically—serially—connected.

Ryan Engley is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Pomona College, USA, where he teaches and researches the intersection of psychoanalytic theory and media studies. Along with Todd McGowan, Engley co-hosts the podcast Why Theory, which brings Continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine contemporary phenomena.

Helena Vissing, PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California and Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. She can be reached at contact@helenavissing.com. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period (Routledge, 2023).

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Steve Feldstein, "Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalries, Private Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare" (St. Martin's Press, 2026)

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Steve Feldstein's Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalries, Private Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare (St. Martin's Press, 2026) opens with a juxtaposition: China spending vast sums to reach the far side of the moon, and Ukraine using cheap drones to blunt a far larger military. Both are stories about technology and power, but they point in opposite directions.

In our conversation, Feldstein argues that the outcome of technological competition is not predetermined. Small states, non-state actors, and private companies with the right engineers can now challenge much stronger adversaries. We discuss Iran, whose military innovation grew out of decades of sanctions rather than in spite of them, and why Western analysts dismissed what was in plain sight. We then turn to China and Feldstein's concern that the United States is making unforced errors, hollowing out the basic research on which its edge depends.

Bytes and Bullets resists both technological determinism and the claim that nothing has changed. But this book is also candid about what cannot be predicted: as machines take on decisions humans once made, who, if anyone, will set the limits?

Our guest is Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

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Old Lhasa: A Biography of a Sacred City

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Michael Aldrich joins John Ross to discuss Old Lhasa: A Biography, his richly detailed portrait of Tibet’s historic capital. It’s the third book in his trilogy on Asian cultural centers. He wrote the first two, on Beijing and Ulaanbaatar, while living in those cities, where he worked as a lawyer. There was no opportunity for this with Lhasa, so he had to rely on multiple trips (from his home in Taiwan) and an incredible amount of reading and research. Rather than writing a conventional history, Aldrich set out to present Lhasa as a living character – a city whose temples, alleyways, legends and surviving traditions can still tell their own stories.

Books mentioned

M.A. Aldrich

The Search for a Vanishing Beijing: A Guide to China’s Capital Through the Ages (Hong Kong University Press, 2006)
Ulaanbaatar beyond Water and Grass: A Guide to the Capital of Mongolia (Hong Kong University Press, 2018)
Old Lhasa: A Biography Originally published by Camphor Press in January 2023 and subsequently reissued in 2025 by Speaking Tiger Books with a new epilogue based on Aldrich’s 2024 return to Tibet.

The episode touches on the amazing story of Ekai Kawaguchi (河口慧海 1866–1945), a Japanese Buddhist monk who spent time in Lhasa in the early 1900s. He is the subject of Scott Berry’s A Stranger in Tibet.

The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press.

Podcast host Amy Chavez is author of The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island. and Amy's Guide to Best Behavior in Japan.

The Books on Asia website posts book reviews, podcast episodes and episode Show Notes. Subscribe to the BOA podcast from your favorite podcast service. Subscribe to the Books on Asia newsletter to receive news of the latest new book releases, reviews and podcast episodes.

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Tatiana Seijas, "American Metropolis: The Making of Mexico City" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Mexico City was America's largest city in the seventeenth century – a genuine metropolis. In American Metropolis: The Making of Mexico City (Cambridge University Press, 2026), Dr. Tatiana Seijas reveals a rich tapestry of stories about essential workers who remade and transformed the city during this period. Her narrative style carries readers to a unique place and time with residents from around the world who sold food, facilitated transportation, provided care, and valued the city's silver. Free and enslaved people from Africa and Asia, immigrants, and Native Americans pursued opportunities in a wealthy, yet deeply unequal environment, where working people claimed parts of the city for themselves. They carved out spaces to create new businesses and protect their livelihoods, altering the cityscape itself in the process. American Metropolis brings Mexico City to life from the perspective of the working people who transformed this early modern metropolis.

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Denialism: Polish Style

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Holocaust distortion in Poland involves reshaping or minimizing facts about the Holocaust, often emphasizing Polish victimhood while obscuring instances of local collaboration, participation, or indifference. It appears in political rhetoric, memory laws, public commemorations, and attacks on critical scholarship. YIVO’s Poland vs. Holocaust History series examines these dynamics and situates the Polish case within a broader European context.

Elżbieta Janicka focuses on the case of the former German Nazi death camp Treblinka, the place of murder and (un)rest of nearly one million Jews from several European countries, the majority from Poland. While keeping in mind that “Treblinka” is as an umbrella term for the forced labor camp Treblinka I (1941-1944), the extermination camp Treblinka II (1942-1943), and a railway station at Treblinka the village, Janicka examines symbolic topography, such as the symbols and narratives that are imprinted into these sites under the auspices of the Treblinka Museum. Regarding the unrestricted Polish bottom-up and top-down fight to “conquer the space” of the Holocaust and make it symbolically profitable for Poland, Janicka raises the question: Why doesn’t the present Polish strategy of “promoting Polish martyrdom upon the Jewish one” trigger an international scandal and condemnation?

Janicka argues that while Polish cultural institutions do not deny the Holocaust itself, they practice a form of denialism by obscuring the reality of Polish involvement in the Holocaust. This lecture fits into a broader debate about Polish public institutions that promote a counter-history of the Holocaust and have at their disposal extraordinary means of propaganda both within Poland and abroad.

This lecture originally took place on February 19, 2026.

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Sandeep Vaheesan, "Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2024), Sandeep Vaheesan recounts the rather overlooked story of how electricity spread across the U.S. economy during the 20th century. This book sheds careful light on the varied institutions and interests mediating the process, including investor-owned utilities and the rural electric cooperative. Vaheesan does not hesitate to critique the successes and failures cropping up along the way; rather, he lays them all bare in service of paving an actionable path toward the decarbonization and democratization of power.

Sandeep Vaheesan is the legal director at the Open Markets Institute. He leads their legal research and advocacy, including the amicus program. He has written and spoken widely on antimonopoly law and policy and building a fair economy. Previously, he worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and American Antitrust Institute.

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Joseph Acquisto, "Baudelaire's Objects" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Baudelaire's Objects (Bloomsbury, 2026) examines Baudelaire's multifaceted use of natural, domestic, urban, and esthetic objects in his verse and prose poetry, as well as the ways his poems reshape our understanding of objects and how those objects destabilize, yet preserve, the subject-object relation. Charles Baudelaire's representation of objects in the natural world establishes a relation that is neither one of identity between human subject and nature nor a relation of domination; he reveals both the natural world and the human subject to be characterized by an irreducible doubleness and nonidentity to itself. Likewise, everyday domestic objects in his poems overflow their boundaries as simple metaphors; their often uncanny aspect highlights their quasi-agency as they define and shape the subject who interacts with them.

Baudelaire's poems-as-objects also take on this kind of agency, acting upon readers in ways that both require and surpass attempts to grasp the poems conceptually as art objects for analysis. This reshaping of subjectivity and objectivity acquires increased intensity in his urban poetry, where city objects are at the intersection of the mythic, the historical, the esthetic, and the commercial.

Baudelaire's Objects shows how paying attention to objects differently, as Baudelaire's poems impel readers to do, is to reorient ourselves in the world by giving objects their due, recognizing the mediating qualities both of objects and of the language with which we represent or create them. We can thus reinvent our understanding of the limits and potential of human subjectivity as it is inextricably intertwined with the world around us.

Guest Joseph Acquisto is Professor of French and Director of the School of World Languages and Cultures at the University of Vermont. He writes on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature with a particular focus on the intersections of literature with philosophy and music. In addition to Baudelaire's Objects, Dr. Acquisto’s books include French Symbolist Poetry and the Idea of Music, The Fall Out of Redemption: Writing and Thinking Beyond Salvation in Baudelaire, Cioran, Fondane, Agamben, and Nancy, Poetry’s Knowing Ignorance, Living Well with Pessimism in Nineteenth-Century France, and Reading Baudelaire with Adorno: Dissonance, Subjectivity, Transcendence.

Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean, with a book manuscript under review on posthumanist ecological engagement in the surrealist movement.

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Ian Bradley, "Liquid Faith: Scotland's Sacred and Supernatural Waters" (Birlinn, 2026)

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Since time immemorial, water has been a major theme in myth, religion and folklore throughout the world. With its 12,000-mile coastline, as well as a plethora of rivers and lochs, Scotland is a particularly rewarding place in which to explore the spiritual dimensions of what is both the most commonplace and yet the most mysterious of all chemical compounds.

Liquid Faith: Scotland's Sacred and Supernatural Waters (Birlinn, 2026) by Ian Bradley is a journey from healing wells, springs, river sources and bogs to the seashore, islands and whirlpools, to discover the legends, superstitions and rituals that have grown up around them. Drawing on spirituality, philosophy and faith as well as history and tradition, Professor Bradley highlights the crucial importance of water over thousands of years, and emphasises its preciousness and vulnerability today and in the future.

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Beth Weinstein, "Architecture and Choreography: Collaborations in Dance, Space and Time" (Routledge, 2024)

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Architecture and Choreography: Collaborations in Dance, Space and Time (Routledge, 2024) examines the field of archi-choreographic experiments: unique interdisciplinary encounters and performed events generated through collaborations between architects and choreographers. Forty case studies spanning four decades give evidence of the range of motivations for embarking on these creative endeavors and diverse conceptual underpinnings, generative methods, objects of inquiry, and outcomes. Architecture and Choreography builds histories and theories through which to examine these works, the contexts within, and processes through which the works emerged, and the critical questions they raise about ways to work together, sites and citations, ethics and equity, control and agency.

Three themes frame pairs of chapters. The first addresses disciplinarity through works that critically reflect upon their discipline’s tools, techniques, and conventions juxtaposed against projects that cite or use other art forms and cultural phenomena as source material. The second interrogates space and the role of spatial dispositifs, institutions, and sites, and their hidden and not-so-hidden conditions, as conceptual drivers and structures to subvert, trouble, unsettle, remember. The third asks who and what dances, finding a spectrum from mobilized architectural bodies to more than human cybarcorps. Modes of collaboration and the temporalities and life cycles of projects inform bookending chapters.

Architecture and Choreography offers vital lessons not only for architects and choreographers but also for students and practitioners across design and performance fields.

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Mark Leonard, "Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail" (Polity Press, 2026)

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

"Expansive visions. Universal institutions. Ideas of progress. It was on the back of these that the West surged ahead and built a global order. I was born into that world. But my children have entered a world of Un-order."

We live in an explosive world. Trump is blowing up political order. Xi Jinping is scrambling the economy. And Putin is redrawing the map of Europe. At a time when every crisis bleeds into the next — from pandemics and wars to climate shocks and AI revolutions — the old rules of global order are collapsing. Mark Leonard reveals how geopolitics is being rewritten in an age of "Un-Order," where no one agrees on the rules, and even the concept of order itself is up for debate. Drawing on years of conversations with leaders and thinkers from Beijing to Washington, Leonard argues that we are witnessing a new divide in international politics between the grand "architects" who try to build a stable global system and the nimble "artisans" who adapt, improvise, and survive amidst disruption. China, he shows, has embraced the "artisan's" mindset while Europe and the West cling to the fading certainties of the "architects". Part analysis, part manifesto, Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail (Polity Press, 2026) offers a bold new framework for understanding power in the twenty-first century — and a call for leaders to stop defending yesterday's world and start learning how to thrive in tomorrow's.

Mark Leonard is co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the first pan-European think–tank.

Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

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Vivek Neelakantan, "The Emergence of International Health Policy in Southeast Asia, India, and Sri Lanka, 1937–1978" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Examining the emergence of international public health policy between the 1930s and 80s, The Emergence of International Health Policy in Southeast Asia, India, and Sri Lanka, 1937–1978 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) by Dr. Vivek Neelakantan sheds light on the role that rural community health initiatives in South and Southeast Asia played in the movement towards ‘primary health care’ and ‘health for all,’ articulated ultimately at the 1978 International Conference on Primary Health Care in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan. The author argues that the movement was not directed exclusively from the headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, but also by institutions such as the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Health Division in rural Southeast Asia, and through local community initiatives including the Bandung Plan for Health in Indonesia.

The book illustrates how an exclusive association of global health with the emergence of the WHO in the 1950s fails to account for the local, national, or regional contexts that shaped the evolution of primary health care in South and Southeast Asia.

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Jane Draycott, "Fulvia: The Woman Who Broke All the Rules in Ancient Rome" (Yale UP, 2025)

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Fulvia was born into wealth, privilege, and prestige around the year 80 BCE, yet there was nothing inherently special about her—she was not a saint, an empress, or a queen. But during the years leading up to the fall of the Roman Republic, Fulvia was moving in the most powerful social circles, and by her death in 40 BCE she had amassed a degree of political and military power unprecedented for a woman.

Fulvia’s success came at considerable cost, however. None of her three marriages to politically powerful men—most famously to Marc Antony—lasted, and three of her five children died violently. She was repeatedly ridiculed for daring to step outside the confines of the domestic sphere. The deliberate and systematic destruction of her reputation shaped her legacy for two millennia.
Ample literary, documentary, and archaeological sources for Fulvia exist, yet most contemporary depictions of her were extremely negative. In Fulvia: The Woman Who Broke All the Rules in Ancient Rome (Yale UP, 2025) historian Jane Draycott, reading between the lines of the ancient evidence, proposes a more nuanced interpretation. Using Fulvia as a guide, she invites readers to visit an unfamiliar Rome, one in which women played a crucial role during Rome’s violent transition from a republic to the dictatorship of the Roman Empire.

Jane Draycott is a historian and archaeologist, and the author of Cleopatra’s Daughter: From Roman Prisoner to African Queen. She is a senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow and co-director of the university’s Games and Gaming Lab.

YouTube Channel: here

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A. J. Murphy, "Pentagon Capitalism: How the Cold War US Military Modeled Itself on Private Business" (Harvard UP, 2026)

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The strategic landscape of the Cold War generated political support for a permanent US military force of unprecedented scale. Faced with the problem of managing this behemoth, leaders of the defense bureaucracy looked to private industry for inspiration: since the military now resembled a huge industrial conglomerate, they reasoned, it should be run like a business. In Pentagon Capitalism: How the Cold War US Military Modeled Itself on Private Business (Harvard UP, 2026), Dr. A. J. Murphy explores the profound consequences of translating military structures of command, logistics, and warfare into capitalist terms.
In the realm of budgeting and finance, defense reformers refashioned the supply process as a buy-and-sell transaction between units, requiring officers to express their need for equipment and labor in dollar terms. Bureaucrats embraced Taylorist work measurement to supervise everything from clerical filing to the production of massive weapons systems. The services even engaged management consultants to establish officer-training academies modeled on the Harvard Business School.
After the Vietnam War, many military leaders pushed back, questioning “managerialism” and calling for a return to traditional concepts of command. Civilian critics also chimed in, protesting the callousness of the business-minded secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, who famously measured success and failure in body counts. By this time, however, the language and values of management had thoroughly infiltrated the military’s institutional structure and daily operations. As Pentagon Capitalism makes clear, the reorganization of the defense bureaucracy along the lines of a for-profit firm durably altered the experience of military work and facilitated the lasting privatization of US national security.

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Andrew Fisher, "Nathan Straus: From Macy's Magnate to International Humanitarian" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In New York City in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centauries, Nathan Straus was famous as a co-owner of the Macy’s and Abraham and Straus department stores. He was also a leading Zionist and briefly, in 1894, a Democratic nominee for mayor of New York.

Yet his greatest achievement, Andrew Fisher argues in Nathan Straus: From Macy’s Magnate to International Humanitarian, was his work in public heath—particularly for the pasteurization of milk. Straus, as Fisher shows, worked with serious scientists and used the knack for promotion that he acquired in his business life to promote research and educate the public.

Nathan Straus, published by Rutgers University Press, restores to history a man who was prominent in his time but is almost forgotten today. The book illuminates philanthropy, public health, German Jewry in New York, Zionism, and the history of department stores and retailing.

Fisher is a historian and the retired founding executive of the Lavelle Fund for the Blind. For thirty-five years he worked for charitable foundations in New York City.

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Samuel Holleran and Max Holleran, "Scattered Steel: The Afterlife of the World Trade Center" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Scattered Steel: The Afterlife of the World Trade Center (Cornell UP, 2026) traces the extraordinary journey of the twisted remnants of the World Trade Center. When the Towers fell on September 11, 2001, nearly all that remained was pulverized concrete and contorted steel. Dr. Samuel and Dr. Max Holleran investigate how fragments of these skyscrapers became modern relics, scattered across all fifty states and beyond, built into hundreds of local memorials in firehouses, parks, and plazas, providing new and creative ways to grieve and remember.

Drawing on years of research and interviews with artists, city officials, and first responders, the authors reveal a semi-improvised process that transformed industrial debris into sacred objects. They explore the aesthetics of rust and ruin, the rituals of transport and dedication, and the cultural tensions between grief, patriotism, and public art. From a quiet town square in Wyoming to a monumental glass "book" in Padua, Italy, these memorials tell a story not only of loss but of how communities far from Ground Zero took a piece of the tragedy—and made it their own.

At once deeply human and sharply analytical, Scattered Steel asks urgent questions: What does it mean to sanctify matter? How do memorials shape collective memory in an age of global, and highly visual, trauma? And what happens when the symbols of tragedy become part of everyday landscapes?

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Mulholland Drive at 25: Film Quarterly

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, J. M. Tyree, the editor of Film Quarterly discusses a dossier of articles about David’s Lynch’s 2001 Mulholland Drive on its 25th anniversary with dossier editor Eileen G’Sell.

Film Quarterly (FQ) is published four times a year by the University of California Press. For more information about the journal, including subscription and submission information, please visit FQ ’s website.

If you are interested in supporting the work of UC Press and its Journals Program, please consider making a charitable donation to the UC Press Foundation. To learn more about the UC Press Foundation and how to contribute, please visit UC Press’s Support Us page.

Articles mentioned:

Eileen G’Sell; Uncanny Intimacies, Abject Desires. Film Quarterly Fall 2026; 80 (1): 26-29. Link
Laura Westengard; The Radical Intimacy of Rot: Mulholland Drive's Queer Proliferations. Film Quarterly Fall 2026; 80 (1): 30-35. Link
Lori Jo Marso; Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This): David Lynch, Simone de Beauvoir, and “Feeling Like a Feminist”. Film Quarterly Fall 2026; 80 (1): 36-41. Link
Temperance Aghamohammadi; “That’s Not My Voice”: Telephonic Logics and Paranoid Listening in Mulholland Drive. Film Quarterly Fall 2026; 80 (1): 42-47. Link
Eileen G’Sell; “This Is the Girl”: Mulholland Drive, Naomi Watts, and the Double Abjection of the Hollywood Starlet(s). Film Quarterly Fall 2026; 80 (1): 48-56. Link

A complete list of University of California Press journals is available at UC Press Journals.

J. M. Tyree is the editor-in-chief of Film Quarterly and an associate professor in the Cinema Program at VCUarts.

A Rabkin winner for arts journalism, Eileen G'Sell is a film critic and teaching professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

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Ed Park, "Three Tenses" (Random House, 2026)

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Three Tenses (Random House, 2026) by Ed Park is not quite a memoir, not quite fiction, not quite poetry and not quite prose—and yet it transcends the sum of all its not-quite parts as a resonant portrait of its young artist. Written when he was 28, Park’s “transmission from the nineties” displays his more earnest, more vulnerable version: a writer toiling away in upstart obscurity, working thankless New York jobs, who has yet to reach the triumph of publishing his first book. Three Tenses would not be that book. Instead, Park stashed it away in a manilla folder. Fast forward to the dog days of the pandemic, 2020, when Park rediscovered his old manuscript, tinkering with it while he worked on other projects, including his novel Same Bed, Different Dreams, which went on to be a Pulitzer Prize finalist after its 2023 publication. Fascinated and charmed by its lack of convention, I knew that I wanted to speak to Park about Three Tenses, and he was kind enough to join me for a chat about the process of confronting—and publishing—his younger self.

Ed Park is the author of the novels Same Bed, Different Dreams, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Personal Days, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, as well as the story collection An Oral History of Atlantis. He is a founding editor of The Believer, and his writing appears in The New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, Harper's, The Atlantic, and other publications. In 2025, he received the Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Deborah Pease Prize from A Public Space

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Jessica Riskin, "The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck" (Penguin, 2026)

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the early nineteenth century, the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed the first evolutionary theory of life and, with it, a new science: biology. Yet for centuries, evolutionary theorists have endeavored to discredit Lamarck and his theory of self-transforming organisms, rejecting the idea that animals play an active role in shaping their own evolution. In his lifetime, he was mocked by his adversaries and personally insulted by Napoleon. In this virtuosic melding of biography, history, politics, and science, Jessica Riskin sets out to correct the record. Riskin tells the story of Lamarck’s life and work as an intense struggle between rival forces to answer questions that remain foundational to our modern worldview: What is a living being, and what is science?

New findings suggest Lamarck’s basic claim was, in many ways, right, and a reconsideration of his life and work is long overdue. Denying the agency of living beings has informed two centuries of eugenic policies and environmental destruction, allowing people to regard the living world as so much raw material to shape and exploit for economic, industrial, and imperial gain.

Deeply researched, strikingly original, and beautifully written, The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (Penguin, 2026) shines a much-needed light on an underappreciated biologist whose radical ideas offered a more inclusive, collaborative, and enlightened approach to science.

Jessica Riskin is the Frances and Charles Field Professor of History at Stanford University, where she teaches modern European history and the history of science. She is the author of The Restless Clock and Science in the Age of Sensibility and is a regular contributor to a number of publications, including Aeon, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the New York Review of Books. She lives in Berkeley, California.

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Ashanté M. Reese, "Gather: Black Food, Nourishment, and the Art of Togetherness" (W. W. Norton, 2026)

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Food justice is defined as the understanding that our food system is unequal and that something needs to be done about it. But how can we create a world where everyone has enough? What does it mean to truly nourish ourselves and our communities?

In Gather: Black Food, Nourishment, and the Art of Togetherness (Norton, 2026), anthropologist Ashanté M. Reese argues for a vibrant new vision of food justice that places Black communities at the center and offers us a visionary, delicious path forward. Reese reveals that to truly create equity in our food systems, we must embrace the abundance that already exists around us—and recognize that the social body is as important as our individual health

Gather presents rich, on-the-ground stories of gathering around food in four spaces—gardens, family reunions, repasts, and protests. Blending rich storytelling with analysis, these chapters argue for the political power of food and invite us to learn from the tactics Black communities have long used to create sustainable, systemic change.

There are no simple solutions to the problems of acute need. But by recognizing that food justice is already all around us, we can start working together to create a more nourishing, joyful world. Gather is an intimate and urgent invitation to embrace local power, build better food systems, and nourish ourselves, body and soul.

Ashanté M. Reese is a writer, anthropologist, and associate professor of African and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Raised in Cooper Settlement, Texas, she lives in Austin and is involved in food justice movements nationwide.

Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Her book, Diasporic Connections: How Afro-Brazilians Use African American Culture to Challenge Racial Exceptionalism is forthcoming from Columbia University Press.

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Emile Chabal, "The Age of Hobsbawm: The Life of a Revolutionary Historian" (Harvard UP, 2026)

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) was one of the foremost European intellectuals of the twentieth century. He published hundreds of articles on modern history and culture, and his books became canonical works and bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic. His crystal-clear writing, vast erudition, and ability to make his Marxist analysis digestible to a wide audience brought him worldwide renown. Yet Hobsbawm was no academic hermit. Through his globetrotting journalism, he was embedded in an extraordinary web of politicians, activists, and fellow intellectuals across Europe, South Asia, and the Americas, including Manmohan Singh, Che Guevara, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Fernand Braudel, E. P. Thompson, Arno Mayer, and Salvador Allende.

In The Age of Hobsbawm: The Life of a Revolutionary Historian (Harvard University Press, 2026), Emile Chabal traces the origins of Hobsbawm’s ideas and most famous writings by exploring his scholarly foundations, delving deep into the archives to uncover hidden links and unexpected conversations that shaped his pathbreaking work. Going well beyond the Ages series of modern history books for which Hobsbawm is best known, Chabal offers the first substantial interpretation of Hobsbawm’s entire body of writing. Indeed, The Age of Hobsbawm is also a trove of unique insights into the generations of Marxist writers with whom Hobsbawm was in conversation—authors whose work continues to shape political debates globally.

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China Comes to Town: Chinese Investment and Local Politics in the U.S. with Emily Conrad

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Chinese investment in the United States has become an increasingly contentious issue that is much more complicated than headlines suggest. In this episode, we reflect on recent debates in Michigan’s democratic primary and use it as a jumping-off point to examine more than 25 years of Chinese investment in the US and subnational relationships with Chinese business. We’re joined by Emily Conrad, whose research examines Chinese manufacturing investment in the US. We discuss where investment is concentrated and how local governments interact with investments, with attitudes ranging from facilitation to passivity to obstruction. We also discuss how Chinese companies navigate the present environment and varied contexts across the US. As federal scrutiny has intensified and states have introduced new restrictions on foreign land ownership and investment, Chinese firms face mounting political and regulatory headwinds. Yet, investments have not disappeared, and companies are adapting, raising questions about how geopolitics is reshaping investment, manufacturing and subnational policies and politics in the US.

Emily’s book The Faithless?: The Untold Story of the Electoral College

Analysis of State Attitudes towards Chinese investments over time from Conrad’s research here

Other resources from the episode:

Rhodium Group’s China cross-border monitor
YouTube podcast with Abdul al-Sayed that mentions some about China: here

Wall Street Journal article about the State Armor organization: here
NPR podcast with one of the best overviews on Gotion:here
More on Gotion:

Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate primary debate audio used in this episode
Tweet on the CCP by Sen. Elissa Slotkin
Financial Times article, China’s assault on Europe’s car market has barely begun

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A Succinct View of How AI is Changing Business and Work Right Now

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Does it seem like the business world is in its own version of an arms race to figure out AI?

It’s a moment when even a little wisdom, grounded in experience and expertise, provides relief.

But how do you get that wisdom?

If you’re KPMG, you turn to your own secret weapon, Stephanie Kim, who leads Signals & Strategy, to combine the firm’s intelligence AND the steady stream of data from the outside INTO a cogent worldview. Tracking, distilling, and interpreting signals has been Kim’s focus for years. If this were a superhero movie, her code name would be The SYNTHESIZER. In our interview, she outlines the implications of how AI is changing and will change the world of business, neatly bundled into the firm’s 2026 Frontiers Report. Its goal is to help leaders navigate uncertainty, identify opportunity, and make more informed decisions about growth, resilience, and competitive advantage.

To hear a singular perspective on the forces driving transformation and the connections between them, tune into this episode and get ready for the future barreling toward us at warp speed. You can download the KPMG Frontiers Report here.

Real Transformations: Business Change That Works from the Inside Out is co-hosted by Julie Anixter and Dan Hill, PhD, entrepreneurs with deep experience as corporate change agents, devoted to helping companies make continuous change work for everyone through clarity and connection. To learn about their keynote talks, workshops, and labs, check out Real-Transformation.com.

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Aleksandar Uskokov, "Deciphering the Hidden Meaning: Language and the Highest Good in Early Advaita Vedānta" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Deciphering the Hidden Meaning: Language and the Highest Good in Early Advaita Vedānta (Oxford UP, 2026) presents a transformative history of one of the most significant ideas in Indian philosophy: liberation. Taking the great philosopher Śaṅkara as the focal point, Aleksandar Uskokov analyzes the relationship between liberation, language, and scripture. While modern portraits of Śaṅkara often cast him as a mystic or a religious reformer, the book paints a more complex portrait of the historical Śaṅkara. As a theologian of liberation, Śaṅkara was a maverick within the prevailing Brahmanical ideology of his time. In an intellectual landscape dominated by Mīmāṁsā ritualists and Vedāntic practitioners of meditation, Śaṅkara introduced a radical claim: that the paraṁ śreyas ("highest good") is attained not through action, ritual, or prolonged meditation, but through the immediate, intellectual understanding of the Upaniṣadic identity statements. Uskokov shows that the birth of the mahā-vākya or "great statement"--such as tat tvam asi ("You are That")--was not the work of Śaṅkara himself, but rather his tenth-century follower Sarvajñātman who used the structural logic of the Mīmāṁsā school. The book meticulously traces the evolution of this soteriological model, exploring how early Advaitins navigated complex debates over language, ritual causality, and the nature of the Self. In doing so, it argues that Śaṅkara's most significant contribution was his intervention against Vedic theologians who viewed scripture as a guide for action and meditation rather than primarily informative.

Open Access here

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Jeff Jarvis, "Hot Type: The Magnificent Machine that Gave Birth to Mass Media and Drove Mark Twain Mad" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Hot Type: The Magnificent Machine that Gave Birth to Mass Media and Drove Mark Twain Mad (Bloomsbury, 2026) is the epic story of the magnificent 19th-century machine that rendered Gutenberg's movable type obsolete and opened the portal to the long century of mass media. The Linotype mechanized the 400-year-old process of setting type one laborious letter at a time, and thus ignited an explosion of newspaper, book, and magazine empires.
This is a tale populated with wondrous characters: tragic inventors, malign media moguls, hand-typesetters called the Swifts who turned their craft into a spectator sport, and authors and journalists who chronicled the turmoil of their time, their every word molded into metal type by what some viewed as a thinking machine. This revolution in media technology helped to propel Mark Twain into literary celebrity, but it also cost him his fortune – as well as his sense of humor and optimism.
The era of the Linotype was a bridge between Twain's Gilded Age with its tycoons of steam, steel, and wire and today's Gilded Age with its barons of bits and AI. Its history provides an opportunity to reflect on how technology changes culture just as new technologies – the internet and artificial intelligence –manufacture their endless streams of words today.

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Seth Masket, "The Elephants in the Room: How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Political Scientist Seth Masket’s new book, The Elephants in the Room: How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders (Cambridge UP, 2026) is a companion book to his earlier work, Learning from Loss: The Democrats, 2016-2020 (Cambridge University Press, 2020). In researching both these works, Masket spends time with party leaders throughout the United States, discussing the loss at the presidential level (for Democrats in 2016, for Republicans in 2020) and seeking to understand what the lessons might be for each party from their electoral loss. The Elephants in the Room focuses in on the idea and trajectory of nominating Donald Trump for the third time in as many election cycles, as the local party leaders of the Republican Party considered what to do in the lead up to the 2024 election cycle. Masket is able to regularly survey Republican Party chairs (state chairs, local chairs, county chairs) during the period leading to the 2024 nomination cycle. He also interviewed many of these same chairs, especially the ones in New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, and other early primary states. The Elephants in the Room: How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders analyzes the thinking among these party leaders—not necessarily at the national level, but certainly long-standing and engaged local-level leaders—and their concern that nominating Trump again would lead to another presidential election loss for the GOP.

One of the key points Masket makes both in the book and in our conversation is that these leaders had built, over time, a political party that they could no longer lead. These leaders are also distinct from the voters themselves, who may be adherents to the party, but are not part of the political party in the same way. Thus, the voters were much more interested in and attracted to the populism that has long lurked within American politics, and, of late, Republican politics, while the partisan leaders were not nearly as drawn to this strain of politics. We discuss the recent history of populist politics in the GOP, with Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential run and convention speech as a key point within the historical trajectory. Trump, in 2015, entered partisan politics building on this already existing faction within the GOP. This is part of the post-2020 election framing, but Masket makes an important point in how the Republican Party differed from the Democrats in learning from a loss at the presidential level. For the Republicans, it was very difficult to learn much from the results of the 2020 election because so few Republicans were or are willing to acknowledge that Trump actually lost the 2020 election. It is quite difficult to learn a lesson from an event that didn’t happen.

Seth Masket, Learning from Loss: The Democrats 2016-2020, Cambridge University Press, 2020.

The Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, CO has copies of The Elephants in the Room.

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Emily Sibley, "The Poetics of Incivility: Satire and Subversion in Modern Arab Culture" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Poetics of Incivility: Satire and Subversion in Modern Arab Culture (Cornell UP, 2026) explores impolite modes of expression—satire, crude humor, and rudeness—as a critical lens for both aesthetic innovation and sociopolitical critique. In the Arab world—from Cairo's Tahrir Square and the thoroughfares of Beirut to war-torn Gaza—political demands have been framed by satirical cartoons and graffiti or in subversive poetry and song. Emily Sibley shows that these forms of resistance are not new to Arab culture but return to mid-nineteenth-century debates over literary propriety.

In case studies concerning women's education in 1850s' Beirut, the satirical press in colonial Egypt, colloquial theater in the era of decolonization, street art and graphic novels during and after the 2011 Egyptian protests, Sibley follows the threads of an expressive culture that announces and celebrates its own impropriety. Concluding with analyses of Gaza poetry on the internet as a space where the stakes of incivility are acutely visible, The Poetics of Incivility offers a timely consideration of incivility as an aesthetic resource for authors and artists engaging with some of the most controversial issues of their times—and ours.

Emily Sibley is Senior Research Associate at Whitman College.

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Sandip Roy, "Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal" (Seagull Books, 2026)

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Chapal Rani was one of India’s most famous performers of jatra, Bengal’s popular theater. Traditionally, all the roles, including female roles, were played by men—and Chapal Rani was perhaps the most prominent performer of women on the stage.

He’s also the subject of a new book from Sandip Roy, titled Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal. Roy, who joins us the show today, tells the story of Chapal Rani’s life, from stardom to obscurity and later rediscovery; how Chapal Rani would transform himself every night onstage; and how jatra changes how we talk about gender and performance.

Sandip Roy is a writer, columnist, and podcaster currently living in Kolkata. He is a columnist for Mint Lounge, The Hindu, and the host of the Sandip Roy Show on Indian Express. His work has appeared in The New York Times, BBC, The San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Huffington Post, Conde Nast Traveller, among other publications. For over a decade, Roy was editor of Trikone, the world’s oldest magazine on LGBTQ+ South Asian issues. He is the author of the novel Don’t Let Him Know.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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A Hosts' Special: Ferry and Plotz Choose Books in Dark Times (EF, JP)

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

For our pandemic-era Books in Dark Times (our first ever Special Series!) Elizabeth and John discussed books that were keeping us afloat, barely afloat, way back in April 2020. Memory lane, here we come!

A book you might not think would be so comforting starts it off, Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) about the plague in London “during the last Great Visitation in 1665.” Classroom resource for Great Plague of 1665-1666 here

Probably based on the journals of Defoe’s uncle Henry Foe, the Journal comforts Elizabeth by its similarities to our current situation, providing a sense of continuity to our forebears. Even if that continuity is through our epidemiological vulnerabilities and our incapacity for coordinated action.

Second, because some aspects of what happened in 1665 seem so familiar, from detailed discussions of the “weekly bills” of dead in each parish and how to interpret them, to arguments over social isolation, contact tracing, the ethics of leaving London for second homes in the country, and the devastating secondary effects of lost commercial activity:

Thirdly: at least it’s not the bubonic plague.

Elizabeth’s love for the 47 novels of Anthony Trollope (or 35 of them, anyways) kicks off a final foray into the deeply comforting books of our childhood–and a discussion of how fantasy nestles into the ordinary.

Mentioned in this episode:

Daniel Defoe, The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719)
E. M. Forester, The Machine Stops (1909)
Anthony Trollope, The Warden (1855)
Frank Capra, It Happened One Night (1934)
Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley (1939)
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868)
E. Nesbit, Five Children and It (1902), The Railway Children (1905)
Read the transcript here; Episode 26 Ferry Plotz

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Claudia Kreklau, "The Making of Modern Eating: How the German Middle Class Forged the Way We Eat, 1780–1910" (Berghahn, 2026)

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Nineteenth-century Germany invented the way we eat. Women experimenting in households, French chefs fleeing guillotines, and one of the most rapidly evolving food industries in the world forged recognizably modern eating practices between 1780 and 1910. While central Europeans merely aimed to survive long winters, experiment with translated recipes and curious ingredients from abroad, and embrace the conveniences of industrial life, their consumption habits and cooking practices created a new product landscape. Throughout this transitional era of history, individuals visibly communicated their self-understandings through food.

The Making of Modern Eating: How the German Middle Class Forged the Way We Eat, 1780–1910 (Berghahn, 2026) by Dr. Claudia Kreklau provides a study of central European food modernity and middle-class identity aims to provide fresh footing for discussions in our own changing global era.

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Arturo Chang, "A New World of Revolutions: Popular Imaginations and Movements Across the Americas" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In A New World of Revolutions: Popular Imaginations and Movements Across the Americas (Princeton UP, 2026), Arturo Chang reconstructs the histories, politics, and legacies of the Age of Revolutions (c. 1770-1850) from the vantage point of popular movements in the Americas. Challenging narratives that center the nation-state, Chang emphasizes the hemispheric politics, practices, and cultural production that connected revolutionary movements from the United States to Argentina. He draws on marching songs, poems, pamphlets, manifestos, plays, proclamations, constitutions, and other archival objects to show that hemispheric imaginaries were critical to the development of postcolonial republicanism in the Americas.

Chang shows that marginalized groups, especially Indigenous, Mestizo, and Pardo communities, contributed to and benefitted from narratives of American emancipation. Armed with hemispheric discourses, they were able to argue for such egalitarian reforms as the abolition of slavery, the elimination of colonial tribute, the protection of Indigenous lands, the end of the Spanish caste system, and the establishment of civic equality. Countering assumptions that actors in popular movements followed elite leaders or had little to say during moments of revolutionary change, Chang shows how each of these campaigns influenced republican principles in ways that reflected their own cultures and histories--and how each produced concrete interventions in the legal, social, and material realities of their communities. Chang links popular movements in New Spain (Mexico), the United States, New Granada (Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, and Ecuador), and the postcolonial Andes (Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina), arguing that, together, they constituted an American tradition of resistance against European rule.

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Happy to Help: Adventures of a People Pleaser

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

As a big sister, Girl Scout, personal assistant, sitcom sidekick, and, finally, mother of three, Amy believed it was her destiny to be a people pleaser. She learned to put others first and to look like she had everything under control, even when she very much did not.
Along the way, she started to wonder why doing it all had been her job. When she tried to hand over some of her to-dos, no one was interested in taking them. And when she asked for help in return, she got advice: have a sense of humor, quit nagging, and stop trying to be perfect.
Happy to Help: Adventures of a People Pleaser explores how you can be the one everyone else depends on and still be struggling—how you can be “happy to help,” even when, for your own sake, you shouldn’t.

Guest: Amy Wilson is the author of the memoir When Did I Get Like This? and the co-host of the award-winning podcast What the Fresh Hell. She is also an actor who has appeared on Broadway, in sitcoms and in films. Happy to Help is her award-winning second book.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

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Taking The Scenic Route To High Quality Education For Indigenous Students

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Dr Agnes Bodis talks to Hannah Madin and Catherine White. Hannah is a Teaching and Learning Officer at the Department of Education in the Northern Territory (Australia), and Catherine White is a Teaching and Learning Coach in secondary education.

We are zooming in on learning English as an additional language or dialect in remote communities in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT). There are numerous Aboriginal languages spoken there as well as dialects of English. However, the language of schooling remains Standard Australian English.

We discuss this mismatch between first or home languages, language of education, and teacher preparedness. Hannah and Catherine outline a collaborative project by the NT Department of Education to remove these barriers to learning in the school context. The project is called “Roadmap to Stage 1 Essential English and Mathematics” and includes not only the creation of teaching support materials, but the creation of an online Community of Practice, a professional learning program and school visits.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

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Roderick Beaton, "Europe: A New History" (Allen Lane, 2026)

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What do we talk about when we talk about Europe? Is it defined by geography? Or is it politics, or shared culture? In Europe: A New History (Allen Lane, 2026), award-winning historian Roderick Beaton tells the story of Europe as never before—as the history of an idea, and a collective identity.

Since its dramatic birth in ancient Greece, 'Europe' has been defined, and redefined, by its people. Through this powerful lens, and with the narrative drive and scope of a novelist, Beaton deftly surveys Europe’s major historical developments: the rise and fall of Rome; the explosion of Christianity; the intellectual ferment of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment; the arrival of Europeans in the Americas; the violent upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the uncertainties of the present. Throughout, original sources allow the voices of the past, from Tacitus to Thatcher, to speak for themselves.

Grappling with the multilayered identities that have always come with being European, Europe places the Europe of today in a long arc of history stretching back more than 2,500 years.

Roderick Beaton is Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King's College London and Chair of Trustees of the British School at Athens, an institute of advanced research. He is a four-time winner of the Runciman Award, for his books An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature, George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel: A Biography, Byron's War: Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution, and Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation, published by Penguin in 2019. He is also the author of The Greeks: A Global History. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, Commander of the Order of Honour of the Hellenic Republic, and an honorary citizen of Greece. He was knighted in 2025.

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Utathya Chattopadhyaya, "Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India" (U California Press, 2026)

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Ganja is the popular name in Hindustani, Bengali, and other South Asian languages for intoxicating substances produced from the plant species Cannabis sativa L. Starting in the eighteenth century, British India's colonial administrators sought ways to systematically tax and govern how ganja circulated from the farms of peasant families in rural Bengal to pipes, plates, and cups elsewhere in the subcontinent.

Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India (University of California Press, 2026) is an open-access book that follows the perpetual incongruity between regulatory efforts to pursue the plant through botanical observation, colonial reportage, and excise statistics and the leisurely, devotional, and creative ganja pursuits among people. Dr. Utathya Chattopadhyaya offers a social history of ganja in a multispecies framework that reveals how the cannabis plant co-constituted histories of empire, gender, subalternity, and labor under British rule. Against the weight of the criminalization and "drug-ness" of cannabis, Dr. Chattopadhyaya puts the multidirectional and polysemic history of ganja as plant matter at the center of analysis.

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A Cure for Loneliness: On Homecoming with Ian Marcus Corbin

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Americans are more isolated, polarized, and depressed than ever in recent memory, and yet many citizens share a deep desire for community and friendship across political lines and in new creative ways. How may we bridge that gap? To help answer that most pressing question, in Episode 2 of Season 6, I have as our guest the philosopher, essayist, and author, Ian Marcus Corbin.

A graduate of Yale Divinity School and Boston College, Mr. Corbin is a senior fellow at Capita, the program director of Harvard University’s Public Culture Project, and the author of To Arrive Where We Started (2026). Drawing on his book, we discuss the human longing for belonging as the way to deal with our modern crisis of loneliness.

We begin with Corbin’s journey from a teenage Christian punk rocker raised by hippies-turned-Pentecostals into an Ivy League philosopher working at the intersection of neurobiology and culture, and along the way, we also discuss texts from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets to Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, Plato’s Symposium, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and Karp Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, not to mention figures like Black Elk and Roger Scruton, as well as Corbin’s personal friendship with Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy.

Chapter Headings:

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WE HEREBY REFUSE: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration with Bruce Rutledge

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

John talks to Bruce Rutledge, founder of Chin Music Press, about running an independent Asia-focused press, the origins of the company in Tokyo, and the move to Seattle, where Chin Music now has a bookstore in Pike Place Market. They talk about Chin Music’s highly successful graphic novel trilogy on the Japanese American incarceration experience during World War II. The wide-ranging conversation is an honest celebration of the challenges and pleasures of independent publishing.

Chin Music Press books mentioned in the episode include:

Their very first book, an anthology called Kuhaku, published in 2005.
Goodbye Madame Butterfly: Sex, Marriage and the Modern Japanese Woman by Sumie Kawakami (2007/2010)
Japan’s Urushi Craftsmen: Can Old World Artistry Survive in the 21st Century by Bruce Rutledge (2020)
When the Waves Came by Michael Larson (2020)
WE HEREBY REFUSE : Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration by authors Frank Abe and Tamiko Nimura and illustrators Ross Ishikawa and Matt Sasaki (2021).
Fighting for America: Nisei Soldiers by Lawrence Matsuda (Author) and Matt Sasaki (Artist)
Those Who Helped Us: Assisting Japanese Americans During the War by Ken Mochizuki (Author) and Kiku Hughes (Illustrator)
Seattle Samurai: A Cartoonist’s Perspective of the Japanese American Experience by Kelly Goto (Author) and Sam Goto (Drawings)

The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press.

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Amy Blakeway, "War and Governance in Scotland, 1543-1559: Destruction, Reconstruction and Reform" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Drawing from local archives alongside national and international records, War and Governance in Scotland, 1543-1559: Destruction, Reconstruction and Reform (Edinburgh UP, 2026) by Dr. Amy Blakeway argues that warfare was the defining feature of government and politics in Scotland for the two decades following the death of James V. It demonstrates that beyond the direct effects of invasion, the need to raise unprecedented taxation, as well as warfare’s secondary consequences, such as plague and price inflation, disrupted communities throughout Scotland, engendering enhanced social control. These effects endured for many years after the peace of 1550: new laws were passed to manage those who had collaborated with the invaders and taxation remained high.
The post-war decade was one of reconstruction, and it was this which drove religious reformation in 1559-60. The book shows that appreciating the scale of the crown’s ambition places the Scottish state’s development closer to that of its European counterparts.

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Nancy Folbre, "Making Care Work: Why Our Economy Should Put People First" (U California Press, 2026)

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A bold critique of conventional economics that reveals why the time and money we devote to care work is vital to our economic future.

Our economy is much bigger than the dollar value of things we buy and sell. It depends on us—our health, our creativity, and our moral commitments. These capabilities don't have price tags but are crucial to a sustainable future. We need to acknowledge and reward the value of caring for ourselves and others, especially our children, our elderly, and those experiencing illness or disability.

From leading feminist economist Nancy Folbre, Making Care Work: Why Our Economy Should Put People First (University of California Press, 2026) provides a compelling historical and economic account of care provision in the United States. Folbre traces the long and colorful history of resistance to bogus claims that only paid work "counts" and that employees in care services are always paid what they deserve. Explaining why care providers remain economically vulnerable today, she argues that more attention to the public benefits of care provision could help build the political coalitions needed to implement policies that put people first.

In this comprehensive and bold book, Folbre upends conventional economic thinking and maps a hopeful path toward a more equitable and sustainable economy.

Nancy Folbre is Director of the Program on Gender and Care Work at the Political Economy Research Institute and Professor Emerita of Economics at UMass Amherst. She is the author of many books, including The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values.

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Po-Yi Hung, "Routes of Taiwan Tea: Mobility, Borders, and Territoriality" (U Washington Press, 2026)

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

From misty mountain oolongs to the global boba boom, Taiwan’s teas carry far more than flavor. They embody contested borders, evolving identities, and the complexities of nationhood. Routes of Taiwan Tea: Mobility, Borders, and Territoriality (U Washington Press, 2026) by Dr. Po-Yi Hung traces tea varieties, processing expertise, and merchants across Taiwan and Southeast Asia to reveal how a simple leaf has become a force in global politics.
Drawing on decades of fieldwork and extensive archival research, Dr. Hung delves deep into the history of Taiwan’s tea industry, from its roots in the Qing empire to its role in modern food nationalism. Hung shows how advocacy for Taiwanization—the movement to recover and celebrate the island’s unique history and culture—occurs not only within Taiwan’s food scenes but also through cross-border exchanges. Oolong cultivation in Thailand’s highlands and bubble tea’s rise in Vietnam demonstrate how tea acts as a nonhuman agent, fostering connections and unsettling conventional notions of sovereignty. Through these routes, tea becomes more than agriculture; it becomes an instrument of diplomacy, a marker of authenticity, and a symbol of cultural pride.
Offering a fresh perspective on Taiwan’s geopolitical positioning, Routes of Taiwan Tea redefines how borders are imagined and lived. It is an essential contribution to food studies, political geography, and East and Southeast Asian studies, illuminating how everyday practices like drinking tea shape global relations.

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Vincent Haddad, "Next Time on Dragon Ball: Playing with a Manga and Anime Franchise" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Since its debut in 1984, Dragon Ball has become one of the most popular, influential, and lucrative media franchises in the world. In Next Time on Dragon Ball: Playing with a Manga and Anime Franchise (U Minnesota Press, 2026), Dr. Vincent Haddad investigates how the franchise has maintained huge global demand despite its formulaic plotlines. Examining its exhaustive repetition of storytelling forms across comics, TV series, games, and merchandise, Haddad argues that the convergence of play, fandom, and narrative made Dragon Ball an unlikely success—and a harbinger of broader shifts in the media landscape of franchises from the 1980s to the present.

Dr. Haddad conceives of Dragon Ball as a “franchise toy,” a corporate media property that is constantly remixed by its fans in ways that its owners resist but also ultimately embrace: appropriation is essential to the franchise’s popularity. Over the past forty years, Dr. Haddad argues, Dragon Ball’s deployment of familiar tropes, cultural references, and narrative forms—from classical Chinese stories and the films of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan to American franchises like Superman and Star Wars—has invited unique transcultural play. Through diverse examples of how fans use its characters as “playthings,” Dr. Haddad shows how Dragon Ball travels across international networked fandoms, highlighting the queer, gendered, and racialized dimensions of this play.

Parsing the dynamics of “sites of conflict” between authorized media and fan content, Next Time on Dragon Ball illuminates how fan engagement across the Americas changes the parameters of what a manga and anime franchise is and can be.

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Angelica Cheng, "The Fast Track" (Simon & Schuster, 2026)

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Angelica Cheng's YA rom-com, The Fast Track (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2026) brings readers into the world of F1 racing. Justine Kwong has always dreamed of becoming a Formula 1 champion. There’s just one problem: no female driver has ever done it before. So when she’s offered a coveted chance to race in Formula 3, she leaps at the opportunity. Sure, half the fans think she’s just there to fill a diversity quota, and her teammate—the infuriatingly cute Cameron Evans—mistakes her for an intern, but Justine knows her talent will leave them all in the dust.
But driving well isn’t the only prerequisite to getting noticed, and Justine’s forced to fend for herself in a sea of prejudice, paparazzi, and petty backstabbing. There’s a lot riding on her ability to navigate the complicated trackside hierarchy—like the open F2 seat that could be her ticket to the big leagues.
Except…when Justine and Cameron’s bickering gives way to unexpected chemistry, the boy she’s falling for may be the one person standing in the way of her dreams—because while they may be teammates, they are also each other’s biggest competitor. And with her only shot at glory on the line, this race could break more than just hearts.

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Paul Yoon, "Etna" (Scribner, 2026)

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Beloved author and winner of The Story Prize, Paul Yoon, is back with the unforgettable story of a working dog, Etna, who, after a devastating war, embarks on an odyssey in the hopes of returning home.
Set in a fictional country in the present day, this is a story told through the eyes of an ex-military dog, Etna. After surviving years of a devastating war, Etna decides one night to leave the men he has fought alongside for years and return home—to the place where he was taken from when he was young, in the thin but persistent hope that if a home exists for him, it might be there.
Thus begins an exhilarating odyssey told through the eyes of a dog as he traverses across ruined landscapes and fights to survive in a world that, even in peacetime, proves to be just as precarious. Along the way, he encounters other animals and humans who are attempting to figure out how to start again. What makes a life when there is no home to go back to? How do we begin to trust each other again after such profound loss?
Etna (Scribner, 2026) is a novel about the power of an idea, about never giving up, and ultimately a novel about finding hope in the most dire of times.

Paul Yoon is the author of five previous works of fiction: Once the Shore, a New York Times notable book; Snow Hunters, winner of the Young Lions Fiction Award; The Mountain, an NPR Best Book of the Year; Run to Earth, a Time Must-Read Book of 2020 also longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; and The Hive and the Honey, winner of the 20th annual Story Prize and longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize.

Recommended Books:

Maria Stepanova, The Disappearing Act
Johnathan Buckley, One Boat

Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers.

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Robyn Gigl, "All We Hide" (Soho Crime 2026)

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In All We Hide (Soho Crime 2026), after Lauren Kelly transitions to female in a small-town District Attorney’s Office, her bosses do whatever they can to push her into retirement. Now stuck in the Homicide Cold Case unit, she investigates the 20-year-old murder of a trans sex-worker whom she knew in high school. Already grappling with a teenage daughter, an ex-wife she still loves, and her father, a former cop struggling with Alzheimer’s, Lauren discovers evidence of a cover up. She’s stunned to find troubling connections to her family, calls her famous film star brother for support, and assembles a team. Someone is definitely trying to stop her.
Robyn Gigl is an attorney and the author of the critically acclaimed Erin McCabe Legal Thrillers, which include: Survivor’s Guilt, named one of the 100 best Mystery/Thriller Books of All Time by TIME Magazine, and winner of the Joseph Hansen Award for LGBTQ+ Crime Writing; By Way of Sorrow, selected by CrimeReads as one of the best crime novels of the year; Remain Silent, a Joseph Hansen Award nominee; and Nothing but the Truth, named one of the best crime novels of 2024 by the New York Times. When she's not writing, practicing law or hanging out with her granddaughters, she loves to go for a jog along the boardwalk at the Jersey Shore.

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Deborah Mayersen, "Genocide Prevention: An Evidence-Based Approach" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

There has never been a more promising time for genocide prevention. More resources and research are being focused on prevention than ever before. Yet we still lack vital knowledge as to the most effective ways to stabilise and reduce the risk of genocide in current at-risk societies. Genocide Prevention: An Evidence-Based Approach (Cambridge UP, 2026) offers a compelling new approach: to understand how to prevent genocide, we need to examine societies in which genocide has been prevented. It is in these societies - in which a demonstrably high risk of genocide was present, but in which genocide did not occur - that we can potentially find key factors that promote resilience to genocide. The volume explores six such case studies, spanning three continents and seven decades. Through careful analysis it identifies eleven factors that have contributed to preventing genocide in multiple cases, and which have the potential to inform current approaches to prevention. Collectively, these offer a new, evidence-based approach to preventing genocide.

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Dan Du, "This World in a Teacup: Credit, Taste, and Power in the U. S.-China Tea Trade, 1784–1911" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Popular history tells the story of how the tea boycott during the American Revolution caused a transition in American taste from tea to coffee, making the young country a coffee-drinking nation. In truth, Americans did not give up their tea so easily, and the United States grew to be the second-largest importer of tea from China. Diverging from British black tea traditions, U.S. consumers preferred green tea, cultivated a particular taste for Oolong tea, and invented the English Breakfast Tea brand to market Chinese black tea.

This World in a Teacup: Credit, Taste, and Power in the U.S.-China Tea Trade, 1784–1911 (University of Nebraska Press, 2026) by Dr. Dan Du is the first book to detail the American tea trade with China after the American Revolution through the early twentieth century. Drawing on archival sources and perspectives from both sides of the Pacific, Dr. Du offers new insights to help understand fundamental developments in U.S.-China relations within a global context. This World in a Teacup shows that, rather than depending on hard-money transactions or a barter economy, a sophisticated credit system buttressed American tea purchases in China: Credit instruments such as promissory notes, bills of exchange, and checks financed the transactions between Chinese and U.S. tea merchants, crystallizing changing power dynamics in the global economy. This World in a Teacup explains how the circulation of these credit instruments challenged the conventional understanding of China’s economy as a primitive system and how the power structure of American, British, and Chinese tea trade in the credit economy reshaped American consumption patterns.

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A Very Jewish Christmas: When Jesus Spoke Yiddish

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

It is a curious fact that among the first Yiddish books ever printed was a translation of the New Testament, which appeared in 1540, only 18 years after Luther's famous translation (which it shamelessly cribbed). In the centuries that followed, another dozen or so missionary translations directed to Yiddish-speaking Jews followed. This talk will explore a dramatic change in the character of these translations in the twentieth century, when new conceptions of the Yiddish language, new cosmopolitanism in Yiddish culture, and new understandings of Jewish-Christian conversion converged to create new translation styles that aimed to express Jesus's Jewishness through a rich and haymish Yiddish.

Join YIVO for a very Jewish Christmas celebration featuring a talk on Yiddish translations of the New Testament by Naomi Seidman.

This lecture originally took place on December 21, 2023.

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Beronda L. Montgomery, "When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy" (Henry Holt & Co.)

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The histories of trees in America are also the histories of Black Americans. Pecan trees were domesticated by an enslaved African named Antoine; sycamore trees were both havens and signposts for people trying to escape enslavement; poplar trees are historically associated with lynching; and willow bark has offered the gift of medicine. These trees, and others, testify not only to the complexity of the Black American narrative but also to a heritage of Black botanical expertise that, like Native American traditions, predates the United States entirely.
In When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy (Henry Holt & Co.), award-winning plant biologist Dr. Beronda L. Montgomery explores the ways seven trees—as well as the cotton shrub—are intertwined with Black history and culture. She reveals how knowledge surrounding these trees has shaped America since the very beginning. As Montgomery shows, trees are material witnesses to the lives of enslaved Africans and their descendants.
Combining the wisdom of science and history with stories from her own path to botany, Montgomery talks to majestic trees, and in this unique and compelling narrative, they answer.

Beronda L. Montgomery, PhD, is a writer, researcher, and scholar who pursues a common theme of understanding how individuals perceive, respond to, and are impacted by the environments in which they exist. Her primary laboratory-based research has been focused on the responses of photosynthetic organisms (i.e., plants and cyanobacteria) to external light cues. Additionally, Beronda pursues this theme in the context of effective mentoring and leadership of individuals, and the role of innovative leaders in supporting success. You can find her at her website.

Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Jacob Hagstrom, "Asymmetric Warfare: Politics and Cultures of Violence in the Modern Era" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Asymmetric Warfare: Politics and Cultures of Violence in the Modern Era (Cambridge University Press, 2025).

The forces that fight asymmetric wars are so distinct that one side avoids direct military confrontation in favor of political, social, or otherwise unorthodox means of resistance. These conflicts have been a mainstay of modern times, though scholars have often separated them into various designations by era. Observers have referred, in chronological order, to Indian warfare, petite guerre (small war), guerrilla warfare, irregular or revolutionary war, and terrorism. The proliferation of labels over time has obscured the continuity of asymmetric wars throughout modernity. Stark distinctions in resources and capabilities have shaped the reasons why states and societies have decided to fight, and the manner in which they have fought. Across the modern era, mismatches arose in the domains of technology, intelligence production, and law. But in recent decades, so-called weak powers have neutralized many of the typical advantages of strong military states.

Jacob Hagstrom is an army veteran and historian. He earned a PhD in history from Indiana University, Bloomington, and taught courses at the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina.

Chris Millington is Professor of Modern European History and lead of the Histories and Cultures of Conflict research group at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is the author of eight books including Murder in Marseille: Right-Wing Terrorism in 1930s Europe ((Manchester University Press, 2025), The Invention of Terrorism in France, 1904-1939 (Stanford University press, 2023), and France in the Second World War Collaboration, Resistance, Holocaust, Empire (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).

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Tár

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Tod Field’s Tár (2022) is one of the best ghost stories we’ve discussed on the show. The story of a troiubled genius, the film is also a wonderfully ambiguous portrat of a person persued by her past in the form of an unseen and vengerful force. Lydia Tár is by turns charismatic, repulsive, fascinating, and frightening. She’s a real person and demands a compicated response, just like the film as a whole. Part Amadeus and part Lolita, Tár is a high-water mark for anyone intrested in a portrat of the artist.

Bumper music: Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 - Trauermarsch by Jason Weinberger & WCF Symphony. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

If, like Lydia Tár, you’re fascinated by Mahler, check out Stephen Downes’ 2025 biography.

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Jehnie Burns on Mixtape Culture

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with writer and researcher, Jehnie I. Burns about her book, Mixtape Nostalgia: Culture, Memory, and Representation (Lexington, 2023). This conversation builds on earlier ones on music and technology, especially our earlier episode with Anthony Kwame Harrison about the ethnography of hiphop. Vinsel and Burns chat about the rise of mixtape culture, how it played out in different subcultures, and how it was wrapped up in and transformed by technological change. We also announce some big news at the beginning of the episode.

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Kiara Wyndham, "Diversityland: Hiding Racial Inequality in an American Suburb" (U California Press, 2026)

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Fort Bend County, Texas, looks like the America we claim to want: a suburb where Black, White, Asian, and Latinx families share cul-de-sacs, schools, and celebrations. Residents trade dishes, honor one another's traditions, and take pride in their community's diversity. Yet beneath this harmony lies what sociologist Dr. Kiara Wyndham calls "the diversity contract"—an unspoken agreement that racial diversity may be celebrated, but racial inequality must not be named. 

Drawing on two years of ethnographic research and more than 150 interviews, Diversityland: Hiding Racial Inequality in an American Suburb (University of California Press, 2026) reveals how the language of inclusion can obscure enduring racial hierarchy. In Fort Bend and communities like it, White advantage adapts to diversity rather than disappearing. Vivid and deeply researched, Diversityland transforms how we understand suburban life and challenges foundational narratives of what racial progress will look like in 21st century America.

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Jeana Jorgensen, "Sex Education 101: Approachable Essays on Folklore, Culture, & History" (Fox Folk Press, 2023)

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Do you look back at your sex ed classes and wonder WTF?! Are you a parent looking at your kid’s curriculum and asking the same question?

Sex Education 101: Approachable Essays on Folklore, Culture, & History (Fox Folk Press, 2023) is less of a how-to of sex education and more of a why. Why does abstinence-only sex ed receive so much federal funding? Why do instructors show gross images of STIs to scare students? The answers, believe it or not, have a lot to do with folklore.

Folklore—informally transmitted traditional culture—has a lot to say about sex. And it is often people’s first point of contact with information and messages about sex. Folklore encompasses urban legends, moral panics, and rumors, which influenced early U.S. policies around sex, and also includes jokes, raunchy folk songs, and beliefs and slang about menstruation or STIs. And thus, folklore shapes sex ed classrooms and school sex ed policies.

Jeana Jorgensen earned her PhD in folklore at Indiana University. She is a lecturer in anthropology at Butler University and part of the editorial team at Marvel's & Tales. Her books include Folklore 101 (2021), Fairy Tales 101 (2022), and Sex Education 101 (2023), and her work has appeared in the Journal of American Folklore, Fabula, Journal of Folklore Research, and elsewhere.

Rachel Hopkin PhD is a folklorist and audio producer.

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Amihai Mazar and Nava Panitz-Cohen, "Tel Rehov: A Bronze and Iron Age City in the Beth-Shean Valle" (The Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, 2020)

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This interview with Professor Amihai Mazar was conducted by Željko Stanojević for the New Books Network. The conversation focuses on Tel Reḥov: A Bronze and Iron Age City in the Beth-Shean Valley, especially Volume V, where the report turns from architecture and pottery to smaller objects and scientific evidence that help reconstruct life at the site.

Amihai Mazar is a leading archaeologist of ancient Israel. His research examines the Bronze and Iron Ages, archaeology and biblical history, ancient Near Eastern art and architecture, and historical geography. Tel Reḥov is especially important because it offers a rich archaeological sequence from the Beth-Shean Valley and evidence for the social, economic, and environmental history of northern Israel.

Volume V is particularly revealing because it asks what can be learned from material that might appear secondary beside monumental architecture. Its first part examines clay, bone, stone and gypsum vessels; grinding stones and other stone implements; metal objects and metallurgical evidence; beads; objects connected with textile production; scale weights; and lithics. Together, these finds illuminate household work, craft activity, exchange, measurement, and technology.

The volume also analyzes the spatial distribution of finds in a distinctive group of ninth-century BCE buildings in Area C. Archaeology is also about understanding where objects were found and how groups of finds functioned together. Distribution patterns can help reconstruct activities within buildings and suggest how work, storage, production, and daily routines were organized. It also includes Assyrian-period burials and later Islamic-period material, showing the site's long history.

The second part of Volume V brings natural-science methods directly into the archaeological interpretation. Radiometric dating contributes to chronology. Studies of animal and fish remains, molluscs, and botanical material offer evidence for diet, agriculture, environment, trade, and the use of local and non-local resources. A soil-flotation project recovers small botanical remains that might otherwise disappear from the archaeological record. These studies show how modern archaeology depends on collaboration between excavators and natural-science specialists.

One striking example is the paleomagnetic study of tilted walls in Area C, Stratum V. Instead of treating damaged architecture only as a descriptive feature, the researchers used physical evidence to investigate seismic destruction. This demonstrates a central strength of Volume V: interpretation is built by combining objects, context, chronology, biological remains, geology, and physical-science methods.

Our discussion with Professor Mazar therefore uses Volume V to ask a larger question: how do small finds and scientific analyses change the historical picture created by excavation? The volume shows that understanding an ancient city requires more than identifying buildings or connecting archaeological horizons with historical narratives. It requires reconstructing technologies, food systems, craft production, movement of goods, environmental conditions, patterns of use within buildings, and the events that transformed them.

Željko Stanojević is a host with the New Books Network and President of the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature, Belgrade. He is also Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the European Hebrew Journal, an international Diamond Open Access journal supporting research in Hebrew, biblical, Jewish, linguistic, historical, and related studies. He also coordinates the European Hebrew Journal International Online Conference, New Discoveries and New Directions in Biblical, Hebrew, and Theological Studies. Authors of recent academic books are welcome to contact him regarding possible New Books Network interviews.

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Ting Hui Lau, "Decolonial Endurance: Lisu Worldmaking Against Chinese Settler Colonialism" (Stanford UP, 2026)

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A series of questions have been sparked by the indigenous urgency of the moment: What does it mean to live through a world coming undone? How do people carry on amid rupture, loss, and grief? Decolonial Endurance: Lisu Worldmaking Against Chinese Settler Colonialism (Stanford University Press, 2026) explores these questions through the turbulent lives of Indigenous Lisu subsistence farmers in China’s Eastern Himalayas, bordering Myanmar and Tibet.

Like many of China’s Indigenous borderlands, this mountainous region has long borne the force of encroaching Chinese state power. Since the 1980s, the Chinese state has been compelling the Lisu to give up their subsistence lifeways, move into urban settlements, and send their children to government boarding schools. In exchange for the so-called gifts of development—healthcare, income, and education—they suffer environmental and social catastrophes such as mass landslides, strange new illnesses, and toxic food.

Drawing on over a decade of engagement with the Lisu, Ting Hui Lau takes readers into the world of ex-shamans, heart-pained mothers, restless spirits, and demon-mad migrants as they grapple with the fallout from state development, which Lau argues is the latest phase in a centuries-long project of settler colonialism along China's Southwest frontier. At once a portrayal of loss and an ethnography of hope, Lau chronicles Lisu worldmaking amid this destruction, centering their quiet resistance through everyday acts of communal caretaking. In a time of escalating geopolitical and ecological crisis, this book calls for a new decolonial politics rooted in the transformative power of endurance.

Ting Hui Lau (email address: lau.th@nus.edu.sg) is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore. She studies sociocultural, psychological, and medical anthropology, development and environmental change, Indigeneity and colonialism, and the borderland areas of East and Southeast Asia.

Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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Karène Sanchez Summerer and Sary Zananiri eds., "Palestine in Transition: Frank Scholten's Visual Archive of the British Mandate Period" (CEU Press, 2026)

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) talks with Karène Sanchez Summerer and Sary Zananiri, the editors of Palestine in Transition: Frank Scholten's Visual Archive of the British Mandate Period. They discuss who Frank Scholten was, the breadth and depth of the images he took in Palestine, and the archival holdings themselves.

You can browse Frank Scholten’s images here.

Follow the City Sarha Instagram account to be updated on when the app exploring Jerusalem’s modern cultural history will launch.

You can purchase a copy here. The book is also available Open Access here.

The CEU Press Podcast delves into various aspects of the publishing process: from crafting a book proposal, finding a publisher, responding to peer review feedback on the manuscript, to the subsequent distribution, promotion and marketing of academic books. We also talk to series editors and authors, who will share their experiences of getting published and discuss their series or books.

Interested in CEU Press’s publications? Click here to find out more.

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Edward E. Andrews, "Newport Gardner's Anthem: A Story of Slavery, Struggle, and Survival in Early America" (Cornell UP, 2025)

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Newport Gardner's Anthem: A Story of Slavery, Struggle, and Survival in Early America (Cornell UP, 2025) explores the remarkable life of Occramer Marycoo, an enslaved African who went on to become one of early America's most important Black leaders.

In the mid-eighteenth century, Marycoo was taken from West Africa to Newport, Rhode Island, where he was forced into racial bondage and given a name that symbolized the power that his new city and new enslaver held over him: Newport Gardner. In this powerful book, Edward E. Andrews pieces together newspaper articles, church records, letters, and Gardner's own writings to tell the story of his life.

After acquiring his freedom via a winning lottery ticket in 1791, Gardner became a kind of Founding Father for Newport's free Black community. He established and led several Black benevolent organizations that helped the community navigate the complicated waters of freedom as Rhode Island slowly began the process of emancipation. He became a popular educator to young Black Newporters, and also emerged as a key religious figure, serving as a long-standing pillar of Newport's First Congregational Church and later founding an independent Black church in the 1820s. His final act was leading a group of about three dozen Black New Englanders to Liberia, in hopes that a new start in Africa would be better than the discrimination they faced in America.

A richly textured account, Newport Gardner's Anthem tells the story of a forgotten Black leader while exploring the new, but tragically limited, opportunities for formerly enslaved people in the post-Revolutionary world.

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Scott Peeples, "How Many Roads: A Life of Bob Dylan" (Reaktion, 2026)

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Scott Peeple's How Many Roads: A Life of Bob Dylan (Reaktion, 2026) chronicles Bob Dylan’s rise from apprenticeships in Minneapolis cafés and Greenwich Village folk clubs to international stardom as a breathtakingly original songwriter and singer. Scott Peeples follows Dylan through decades of radical shifts in his writing, recording and performing styles, from the intimate lo-fi Basement Tapes to the musical collage art and apocalyptic blues of the twenty-first century. Spanning Dylan’s entire career, How Many Roads illuminates Dylan’s deep respect for tradition alongside his artistic restlessness, a combination that extends into his prose writing, filmmaking and visual art. Weaving lucid analyses of Dylan’s major albums and live performances into a briskly paced biographical narrative, Peeples offers newcomers and Dylan die-hards alike a fresh perspective on the most compelling and challenging popular performer of our time

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Mithi Mukherjee, "Asianism and the Fall of Empire: India's Road to Freedom" (U California Press, 2026)

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Offering a new global perspective on modern Indian history, Asianism and the Fall of Empire: India's Road to Freedom (University of California Press, 2026) by Mithi Mukherjee identifies the rise of Asianism in the early twentieth century as the origin and primary driving force of resistance movements that brought down the British Empire. Mithi Mukherjee ties together into a single sweeping narrative two contrasting, conflicting forms of anticolonialism: the emergence of the nonviolent resistance movement under Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa and the militant movement culminating in the war on British India by the Indian National Army under Subhas Chandra Bose in alliance with the Japanese army. Asia emerges in this breakthrough retelling not as an inert geographical category, but instead as a singular agent of change in modern world history.

Mithi Mukherjee is a Professor of History at the University of Colorado Boulder. She specializes in the legal, political, and cultural history of modern India.

Shatrunjay Mall is a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. His work in modern Japanese history, South Asian history, and transnational Asian history explores ideas of Pan-Asianism and its legacies, as well as intellectual, political, and cultural intersections and affinities between colonial India and imperial Japan in the twentieth century.

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Karen M'Closkey and Keith VanDerSys eds., "Media Matters in Landscape Architecture" (Applied Research & Design, 2025)

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Media Matters in Landscape Architecture (Applied Research & Design, 2025) goes behind the scenes to consider how media technologies that have emerged in recent decades are shaping the practices of artists, designers, engineers, and scientists. The media infrastructure of climate science and Earth remote sensing, coupled with the increased availability of spatial information and modeling software, provides the context for many of the chapters in that the media and methods employed are designed to capture phenomena that are not directly visible to human perception, and where there is a high degree of uncertainty or changeability due to dynamic material conditions. Co-editors Karen M'Closkey and Keith VanDerSys bring together authors from a wide range of disciplines—landscape architecture, media studies, science and technology studies, history of science, engineering, ecology, and architecture—to examine how the creation and use of data, images, and models act as the mediums through which a particular understanding of “environment” or “landscape” arises. This framing of environmental media emphasizes the relationships among various design media and the specific material and social environments within which they operate.

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Jon Mackenzie, "The Spectre of Pep: How Guardiola Haunts Modern Football Tactics" (Seven Dials, 2026)

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Spectre of Pep: How Guardiola Haunts Modern Football Tactics (Seven Dials, 2026) by Jon Mackenzie

A spectre is haunting European football. Watch almost any game, no matter the level, and you will notice it. From inverted full backs to extreme high lines, the tactical threads of the match will eventually converge onto a singular point: Pep Guardiola.

For some though, his near total dominance has come at the cost of the game itself, with modern football's protagonists caught between acknowledging Guardiola's greatness and wanting to evolve the sport beyond him. In The Spectre of Pep, acclaimed tactics writer Jon Mackenzie explores this contradiction.

But this is much more than the story of just one man. After tracing Guardiola's ascendancy, displacing giants like Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte, it examines how other elite coaches have fought to establish their own legacies within this landscape - including the likes of Jurgen Klopp, Roberto De Zerbi, Luis Enrique and Mikel Arteta. And with his time at Manchester City coming to an end - in a world where his influence is arguably diminishing - it also speculates on what the next generation of tactics may look like, and how Guardiola's legacy will be viewed in the future.

If you want to understand football today, you have to understand the tactical spectre of Pep Guardiola. To do that, you need this book.

Jon Mackenzie is a writer and presenter working for The Athletic.

Samee Siddiqui is Assistant Professor of World History at Drury University.

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Gregorio Astengo and Davide Spina eds.,"Real Estate: Histories of Architecture and Capital" (gta Verlag, 2026)

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Real Estate: Histories of Architecture and Capital (gta Verlag, 2026)challenges the conventional assumption that architects and planners are the principal authors of urban form. It instead foregrounds the developers, builders, financiers, and media strategists whose pursuit of profit has shaped cities, particularly under global capitalism. Bringing together studies spanning the eighteenth century to the present, the editors, Gregorio Astengo and Davide Spina, and the contributors establish real estate development as a significant field of inquiry within architectural history. It also proposes new methods and sources for understanding how speculation and market mechanisms have produced the built environment.

This interview was conducted by Matthew Wells, Senior Lecturer in Architectural History at the University of Manchester. He researches nineteenth-century European architecture, focusing on artistic techniques, technology, and political economy. Wells is the author of Modelling the Metropolis: The Architectural Model in Victorian London (gta Verlag, 2023).

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Elizabeth Tynan, "Nuclear Archipelago: Secrets, Power and the Biggest Atomic Blast in Australia" (NewSouth, 2026)

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Nuclear Archipelago: Secrets, Power and the Biggest Atomic Blast in Australia (NewSouth, 2026) tells the shocking story of the two British atomic weapons test series held at Western Australia's Monte Bello Islands in 1952 and 1956. Operation Hurricane and Operation Mosaic took place at a rugged archipelago 100 kilometres off the Pilbara coast, and each of the three bombs sent fallout over vast distances across the country. One of the tests, Mosaic G2 in June 1956, the largest nuclear weapon test ever held in Australia, sparked panic at the time that it had been a nuclear accident. In both the Mosaic tests, the crew of a British ship was deliberately positioned in the path of fallout. The biodiverse natural environment of the islands was left contaminated and has never been cleaned up.

The book explores the politics, the secrecy and the controversies, including the true nature of Mosaic G2 and its role in the clandestine development of the British hydrogen bomb.

Elizabeth Tynan is professor in the Graduate Research School at James Cook University, Townsville. She is a prominent writer and researcher of the era of British atomic testing in Australia. Her book Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga Story (NewSouth, 2016) won the Prime Minister's Literary Award (Australian History) and the CHASS Australia Book Prize in 2017. Her follow-up book The Secret of Emu Field: Britain's Forgotten Atomic Tests in Australia was published by NewSouth in 2022.

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Máximo Badaró, "Pedagogies of Value: Marketing Foreign Goods in China" (Berghahn, 2026)

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Pedagogies of Value: Marketing Foreign Goods in China (Berghahn, 2026) by Dr. Máximo Badaró explores how China is reshaping global hierarchies of worth. Through ethnographic research among marketers, consultants, and brokers who promote foreign goods in Shanghai, Beijing, and beyond, this book investigates how value is taught, contested, and transformed in everyday encounters. From luxury brands and consumer ethnography to real estate, wine, and organic food, the book reveals how foreign intermediaries attempt to ‘educate’ Chinese consumers, only to confront shifting power dynamics that challenge Western authority. Blending vivid narratives with sharp analysis, this study argues that China has become a central arena for reimagining the very meaning of value. 

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Shimon Redlich, "Bridge Builder: My Life Since the Holocaust" (Academic Studies Press, 2026)

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How do you build bridges after living through one of history's greatest ruptures? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with historian Shimon Redlich to discuss his memoir Bridge Builder: My Life Since the Holocaust (Academic Studies Press, 2026), the concluding volume of his remarkable four-part autobiographical journey.

Picking up in the late 1950s, Bridge Builder follows Redlich from his years as a student in Jerusalem and the United States to his distinguished career as a professor at Ben-Gurion University. Along the way, he reflects on friendships that crossed religious and national boundaries, his encounters with Jews and non-Jews across Eastern Europe, and his willingness to engage difficult historical and political questions with honesty and empathy.

More than a memoir, the book is a meditation on memory, reconciliation, and intellectual curiosity. Drawing on both personal recollection and meticulous historical research, Redlich explores what it means to carry the legacy of the Holocaust while refusing to let it become the only lens through which to view the world. His story is one of survival, but also of dialogue, scholarship, and the lifelong work of building understanding across divides.

Together, Redlich and Katz discuss the relationship between memory and history, the challenges of confronting painful pasts, and why bridge-building remains one of the most important—and difficult—tasks of our time.

About our contributors:

Shimon Redlich, a child survivor of the Holocaust, was born in Lwow in 1935 and lived in nearby Brzezany until 1945, when he was repatriated to Lodz. He left Poland for Israel in 1950. He studied at the Hebrew University, Harvard, and New York University. He taught history at Ben-Gurion University for almost forty years. Redlich has written numerous books and articles on the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe and his memoirs, of which this book is the fourth and final volume.

Rabbi Marc Katz is the Senior Rabbi at Temple Ner Tamid and the author of Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS).

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Echoes of Incense on the Shikoku Pilgrimage with Don Weiss

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Amy Chavez talks to Don Weiss, currently mid-way through the Shikoku Pilgrimage — Japan's 1,300 km Buddhist route that has been walked for almost as many years. Pilgrims share their journey with Kobo Daishi, patron saint of the 88-temple circuit and founder of Shingon Buddhism in Japan. Don explains his "gratitude pilgrimage," what it means and why he is undertaking it. Along the way, he speaks with fellow pilgrims and priests at a number of temples to assess the experience for international visitors. While the 88-temple route faces challenges — from local depopulation to overtourism — Don finds common ground in conversations with priests about how overseas visitors might help keep the tradition alive, and what temples can do in turn to make the route more welcoming to those coming from abroad.

Don's book Echoes of Incense, about his first trip around the ancient pilgrimage route decades ago, is available as an e-book on Amazon in English and Japanese.

You can follow Don on his gratitude pilgrimage via his You Tube Channel: Just Walk

The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press . Podcast host Amy Chavez is author of The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island, and Amy's Guide to Best Behavior in Japan.

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Matias E. Margulis, "Shadow Negotiators: How UN Organizations Shape the Rules of World Trade for Food Security" (Stanford UP, 2023)

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Shadow Negotiators: How UN Organizations Shape the Rules of World Trade for Food Security (Stanford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Matias E. Margulis is the first book to demonstrate that United Nations (UN) organizations have intervened to influence the discourse, agenda, and outcomes of international trade lawmaking at the World Trade Organization (WTO). While UN organizations lack a seat at the bargaining table at the WTO, Dr. Margulis argues that these organizations have acted as "shadow negotiators" engaged in political actions intended to alter the trajectory and results of multilateral trade negotiations. He draws on analysis of one of the most contested issues in global trade politics, agricultural trade liberalization, to demonstrate interventions by four different UN organizations—the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (SRRTF).

By identifying several novel intervention strategies used by UN actors to shape the rules of global trade, this book shows that UN organizations chose to intervene in trade lawmaking not out of competition with the WTO or ideological resistance to trade liberalization, but out of concerns that specific trade rules could have negative consequences for world food security—an outcome these organizations viewed as undermining their social purpose to reduce world hunger and protect the human right to food.

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Xiaofan Amy Li, "The Aesthetics of Risk in Franco-East Asian Literatures" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Aesthetics of Risk in Franco-East Asian Literatures (Cambridge UP, 2026) is the first book that examines the concept of risk in non-anglophone world literature. Focusing on how risk is produced and reshaped by literary aesthetics, Li argues that risk is a creative rather than negative force in world literature. Instead of disaster narratives, Li approaches risk from the fresh perspective of ludic aesthetics, or playful, gamelike, illusionistic and experimental literary strategies. Comparatively analysing an original selection of texts by modern and contemporary French-Francophone and East Asian writers, each chapter focuses on a particular genre such as the novel, life-writing, poetry, and image-texts. The reimagination of risk in literature is revealed to be closely related to different forms of play such as structured games, masquerade, poetic and intermedial experimentation. Franco-East Asian literatures help us rethink risk in linguistically diverse and cross-cultural contexts, providing a new paradigm for comparative criticism and world literature.

Guest Xiaofan Amy Li is Associate Professor in Comparative Cultural Studies at University College London and holds a PhD in French from Queens' College, Cambridge. Her research spans comparisons and exchanges from the 20th-21st centuries between France, China, and East Asia broadly speaking. Her first monograph Comparative Encounters between Artaud, Michaux and the Zhuangzi (Legenda, 2015) re-reads two avant-garde French writers and the imaginative classical Chinese text Zhuangzi through their intertextual, poetic, and conceptual dialogues. Besides her two monographs, she has published extensively on Surrealism, poetry, and literary translation. She is a member of the AILC/ICLA (International Comparative Literature Association) Research Committee on Literary Theory.

Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean, with a book manuscript under
review on posthumanist ecological engagement in the surrealist movement.

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Zvi Yehuda and Marian Scheuer Sofaer, "The Expulsion of Jews from Iraq, 20th Century: The Agonies of Redemption" (Brill, 2024)

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode we spoke with Marian Scheuer Sofaer, Esquire, and Dr. Einav Yehuda-Shnaidman about The Expulsion of Jews from Iraq, 20th Century: The Agonies of Redemption (Brill, 2024), by Dr. Zvi Yehuda, and translated by Sofaer.

Dr. Zvi Yehuda, born in Iraq in 1936, immigrated to Israel as a teenager during Operation Ezra and Nehemiah and went on to complete a PhD in History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, later founding and heading the research institute at the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center. He began to write the book in 1984, in a conversation with former Knesset Speaker Shlomo Hillel, and grew into a forty-year project of archival research across Israel, the United Kingdom, France, the United States, and Iraq, conducted in Hebrew, English, French, German and Judeo-Arabic. Yehuda passed away before he could complete editing the English translation; his daughter, Dr. Einav Yehuda-Shnaidman, together with Sofaer, brought the English edition to completion.

The book situates the modern Iraqi Jewish community within a more discontinuous history than is often assumed. Yehuda's research identified a substantial gap, from the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries, in which no functioning Jewish community existed in Iraq; the community that flourished into the twentieth century instead descended from waves of immigration beginning after 1740, drawing Jews from Kurdistan, Iran, and Europe, and developing its own distinct Judeo-Arabic dialect.

Following Israel's establishment and victory in 1948, Sofaer and Yehuda-Shnaidman described the systematic persecution that followed: mass dismissals of Jews from government employment, punitive import-export regulations, and new restrictions on real estate and mortgages. Yehuda-Shnaidman emphasized that Prime Minister Nuri al-Said was a central architect of this policy, proposing to the United Nations a plan to force Iraq's Jews to leave within four months, stripped of citizenship and property—a plan ultimately abandoned only after Jordan refused to allow the deportation convoys to cross its territory.

Central to Yehuda's research is his conclusion that the expulsion was not, as long assumed, a response to Zionist activity, but a deliberate, state-directed policy to remove Iraq's Jews and seize their assets. The book also overturns the long-standing claim that bombs thrown at Jewish targets in Baghdad in 1950–51 were planted by Zionists to encourage emigration; evidence uncovered only in 2013 by an Iraqi journalist instead implicates Arab extremists, and points to the wrongful execution of Jews framed for the attacks.

Altogether, the book documents the expulsion and dispossession of some 150,000 Jews from Iraq, part of the roughly one million Jews forced from Muslim-majority countries across the twentieth century—a history Yehuda insisted be established on primary evidence rather than inherited assumption.

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Are We In The Midst Of A Yiddish Renaissance?

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Are we currently experiencing a Yiddish renaissance? This is one of the questions we are often asked at YIVO. YIVO’s own community of Yiddish learners has expanded more than 10-fold in the last two years. Duolingo has added Yiddish as a language. Headline after headline touts Yiddish as unexpectedly alive and well. What does this all mean for Yiddish in the 21st century?

Join YIVO for a conversation about the Yiddish world today. Led by YIVO’s Director of Public Programs Alex Weiser, this program will feature journalist and playwright Rokhl Kafrissen, scholar and In Geveb Editor-in-chief Jessica Kirzane, scholar and Yiddish podcast founder and host Sandra Fox, and YIVO’s Director of Education Ben Kaplan.

This panel discussion originally took place on June 1, 2022.

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Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, "God and Knowledge: Herman Bavinck's Theological Epistemology" (T&T Clark, 2021)

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

N. Gray Sutanto offers a fresh reading of Herman Bavinck's theological epistemology and argues that his Trinitarian and organic worldview utilizes an extensive range of sources. Sutanto unfolds Bavinck's understanding of what he considered to be the two most important aspects of epistemology: the character of the sciences and the correspondence between subjects and objects. Writing at the heels of the European debates in the 19th and 20th centuries concerning theology's place in the academy, and rooted in historic Christian teachings, Sutanto demonstrates how Bavinck's argument remains fresh and provocative. God and Knowledge: Herman Bavinck's Theological Epistemology (T&T Clark, 2021) explores archival material and peripheral works translated for the first time in English. The author re-reads several key concepts, ranging from Organicism to the Absolute, and relates Bavinck's work to Thomas Aquinas, Eduard von Hartmann, and other thinkers. Sutanto applies this reading to current debates on the relationship between theology and philosophy, nature and grace, and the nature of knowing; and in doing so provides students and scholars with fresh methods of considering Orthodox and modern forms of thought, and their connection with each other.

Dr. Sutanto serves as the Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, Washington D.C. and an associate editor of the Journal of Reformed Theology. He has received visiting fellowships at the Theological University of Kampen-Utrecht and Princeton Theological Seminary. He is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society and is on the steering committee for the Reformed Theology and History Unit of the American Academy of Religion. Along with the theologian Herman Bavinck, Dr. Sutanto’s research interests are broad, ranging from modern Protestant theology, prolegomena, humanity and sin, the relationship between philosophy and theology, analytic theology, and Christianity and culture.

For previous NBN conversations on similar topics, see these interviews on Herman Bavinck's Christology and academic addresses or an introduction on Neo-Calvinism or the T&T Clark handbook on the global movement. For the NBN conversation on a Bavinck biography.

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James Loeffler, "Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight over Free Speech in Modern America" (Metropolitan Books, 2026)

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A leading historian’s revelatory exploration of antisemitism in the United States—from 1940s anti-Jewish riots until today—showing that it has long served as a frontline in our wars over freedom of speech and the nature of American liberalism Few issues are as vexed today as antisemitism and free speech. There is scarcely an arena—college campuses, congressional hearings, immigration courtrooms, social media platforms—where we are not polarized over what counts as antisemitism, which speech is protected by the First Amendment, and what the law should do about hatred. At a time of political crisis, antisemitism has become a point of ideological obsession. None of this is new. In a sweeping history of ideas and law, James Loeffler recovers the forgotten roots of our contemporary turmoil. From two antisemitic riots in postwar Chicago to a neo-Nazi march in 1970s Skokie, Illinois, and the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in our own time, Loeffler explores the ways in which America’s courts have grappled with hatred, freedom, and the tensions at the heart of liberal democracy: Are some hatreds more dangerous than others? Is tolerating hate speech the price we must pay for free speech? And can liberalism ever make good on its promise to end hatred through law? Confronting these questions, Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight over Free Speech in Modern America (Metropolitan Books, 2026) restores a missing history of hate speech, antisemitism, and the law, one that points to how we might protect difference without surrendering our principles of equality and freedom.

James Loeffler is an award-winning historian, and Felix Posen Professor of Modern Jewish History at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century. Previously he taught at the University of Virginia and served as Dean’s Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University Law Center. Currently a Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, his writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic.

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Aarthi Vadde, "We the Platform: How the Internet Changed Twenty-First-Century Literature (Columbia UP, 2026)

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

We the Platform: How the Internet Changed Twenty-First-Century Literature (Columbia University Press 2026) by Aarthi Vadde is a groundbreaking account of mass writing in the twenty-first century, identifying rarely recognized forms of literary possibility amid the profound upheavals in traditional publishing. Aarthi Vadde examines the explosion of textuality across digital platforms: countless writers, diverse publishing formats, and vast communities of readers responding to stories publicly and instantly. Countering ubiquitous decline narratives, she offers powerful examples of literary innovation, adaptation, and survival. Among them are Jonathan Lethem and Lauren Oyler’s challenges to individualist ideas of authorship, the Twitter fiction of Jennifer Egan and Teju Cole, Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman’s collaborative writing on Wattpad, conceptual projects like Book from the Ground, and the experimental use of chatbots by authors including Sheila Heti. Through nuanced and illuminating readings, We the Platform shows how platform-based writing has altered cornerstone concepts of authorship, aesthetic form, and craft, delivering a bold new understanding of literature now.

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Rick Ramseyer, "Girl Without a Country: The Untold Story of a Landmark Fight for U.S. Citizenship" (Purdue UP, 2026)

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Should willingness to kill be a requirement for U.S. citizenship? Girl Without a Country: The Untold Story of a Landmark Fight for U.S. Citizenship (Purdue University Press, 2026) by Rick Ramseyer tells the compelling, confounding story of Martha Graber—a Mennonite, registered nurse, and conscientious objector who in 1929 was twice denied citizenship because she refused to say she would take up arms to defend the United States. The unexpected denials, which came despite Martha's pledge to give her life for her adopted country, caught the attention of a diverse group of peace advocates, religious leaders, lawyers, and politicians, setting up a climactic third court appearance.

Martha’s nineteen-month fight for citizenship made national news, featuring dramatic testimony, historical insights, and interesting backstories that stretched from Alsace-Lorraine in western Europe to America’s heartland. Elegantly written by Martha’s maternal grandson with never-before-published details and closely connected with a controversial Supreme Court decision, Girl Without a Country surfaces an array of topical issues, ranging from immigration and naturalization to conscientious objection and patriotism. Perhaps most importantly, Martha’s story considers what it truly means to be an American.

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Sophie Chao, "Land of Famished Beings: West Papuan Theories of Hunger" (Duke UP, 2025)

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Land of Famished Beings: West Papuan Theories of Hunger (Duke UP, 2025), Sophie Chao examines how Indigenous Marind communities understand and theorize hunger in lowland West Papua, a place where industrial plantation expansion and settler-colonial violence are radically reconfiguring ecologies, socialities, and identities. Instead of seeing hunger as an individual, biophysical state defined purely in nutritional, quantitative, or human terms, Chao investigates how hunger traverses variably situated humans, animals, plants, institutions, infrastructures, spirits, and sorcerers. When approached through the lens of Indigenous Marind philosophies, practices, and protocols, hunger reveals itself to be a multiple, more-than-human, and morally imbued modality of being—one whose effects are no less culturally crafted or contested than food and eating.

In centering Indigenous feminist theories of hunger, Chao offers new ways of thinking about the relationship between the environment, food, and nourishment in an age of self-consuming capitalist growth. She also considers how Indigenous theories invite anthropologists to reimagine the ethics and politics of ethnographic writing and the responsibilities, hesitations, and compromises that shape anthropological commitments in and beyond the field.

Dr Sophie Chao is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sydney, author of In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua, and coeditor of The Promise of Multispecies Justice, both also published by Duke University Press. Land of Famished Beings won the 2026 ASAA Mid-Career Book Prize. Her latest book Plantations: Extraction, Extinction, Emergence (Cambridge UP, 2026), came out in June.

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Caroline Bicks, "Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King" (Hogarth, 2026)

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

After Caroline Bicks was named the University of Maineʼs inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, she became the first scholar to be granted extended access by King to his private archives, a treasure trove of manuscripts that document the legendary writerʼs creative process—most of them never before studied or published. The year she spent exploring King’s early drafts and hand-written revisions was guided by one question millions of Kingʼs enthralled and terrified readers (including her) have asked themselves: What makes Stephen King’s writing stick in our heads and haunt us long after we’ve closed the book?
Bicks focuses on five of his most iconic early works—The Shining, Carrie, Pet Sematary, ʼSalemʼs Lot, and Night Shift—to reveal how he crafted his language, story lines, and characters to cast his enduring literary spells. While tracking King’s margin notes and editorial changes, she discovered scenes and alternative endings that never made it to print but that King is allowing her to publish now. The book also includes interviews Bicks had with King along the way that reveal new insights into his writing process and personal history.
Part literary master class, part biography, part memoir and investigation into our deepest anxieties, Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King (Hogarth, 2026)—authorized by Stephen King himself—is unlike anything ever published about the master of horror. It chronicles what Bicks found when she set out to unearth how King crafted some of his scariest, most iconic moments. But it’s also a story about a grown-up English professor facing her childhood fears and getting to know the man whose monsters helped unleash them.

Caroline Bicks is the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine. Her academic books include Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s World and Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare’s England; her popular writing has appeared in the Modern Love column of the New York Times and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and includes a humorous Bard-themed cocktail book, Shakespeare Not Stirred. She is the co-host of the Everyday Shakespeare podcast.

Recommended Books:

Ben Lerner, Transcription
Libby Edwardson, We Sent Them Down Singing
Daniel Mason, Country People

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Hossam el-Hamalawy, "Counterrevolution in Egypt: Sisi's New Republic (Verso Books, 2026)

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Counterrevolution in Egypt: Sisi's New Republic (Verso Books, 2026) is a rare and comprehensive examination of the structures, hierarchies, and methods of the military, police, and intelligence agencies. Drawing on meticulous research, it reveals the strategies deployed to suppress the revolutionary wave, from propaganda and surveillance to mass arrests, torture, and extrajudicial killings. El-Hamalawy traces the power dynamics within these institutions to show how their uneasy unity was both a response to the revolution and a determinant of its eventual fate.

Hossam el-Hamalawy is a journalist and socialist from Cairo, who was among the organisers of the 2011 uprising. He has been involved in the labour movement and the fight against police brutality in Egypt. He holds a PhD in political science from Freie Universität Berlin and is the recipient of the 2011 Anna Politkovskaya Journalism Award. He publishes a weekly newsletter on Egyptian politics at 3arabawy.substack.com.

Alec Fiorini is a PhD student at Queen Mary University London's Centre for Labour, Sustainability and Global Production (CLaSP) researching the political economy of nitrogen fertilizer supply chains.

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Lauren Delapenha, "Supermarketing" (Spring, 2026)

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Lauren Delapenha speaks to Emily Everett about her poems “Supermarketing” and “If You Are Learning English,” which appear in The Common’s spring issue. Lauren also discusses her process and revision methods, her time at the Disquiet Literary Program in Lisbon, and how balancing both teaching and writing challenges her.

Lauren is a Jamaican poet and English teacher. She earned her master’s in creative writing from the University of Oxford, and her work has received an Oxbelly Fellowship, a Helen Zell and Jamaica Poet Laureate’s Young Writers Prize for Poetry, a Grindstone International Poetry Prize, and two Pushcart nominations. She currently lives and teaches in Connecticut.

Read Lauren’s poems in The Common here.

Learn more about her work here.

The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and Facebook.

Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. In 2025 her debut novel All That Life Can Afford was a Reese’s Book Club pick, and her work appeared in The New York Times Modern Love column. Previous publications include the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction.

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Linda Williams and eds. Christine Gledhill et al., "Melodrama As Provocateur" (Duke UP, 2026)

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The centerpiece of Melodrama as Provocateur (Duke UP, 2026) is an essay by Linda Williams (1946–2025). Williams was Professor of Film Studies and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Her highly influential work reframed some of cinema’s most neglected or denigrated genres from a feminist perspective, including documentary, pornography, horror, and melodrama.

Melodrama is the focus of what would become Williams’s final project. In the last few years of her life, she was working on a project that traced melodrama’s divergent fortunes in France and the US—and argued for its enduring relevance in contemporary life and culture.

Williams's work on this project was curtailed when she suffered a stroke, the complications of which led to her death in 2025. In the wake of her passing, some of her friends, collaborators, and admirers joined together to make a book that honors and memorializes her. Not only sharing Williams’s unfinished work with the world, Melodrama as Provocateur also expands on that work through a series of essays by scholars working in melodrama studies across time, place, and media.

For New Books in Film, Alix Beeston sits down with the three editors of Melodrama as Provocateur: Christine Gledhill, an esteemed scholar of film and feminism who is presently a Visiting Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Leeds; Laura Horak, Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University; and Elisabeth R. Anker, Professor of American Studies and Political Science and Director of Film Studies at the George Washington University.

Celebrating the model of incisive and generous research, teaching, mentorship, and collaboration Williams provided, the editors of Melodrama as Provocateur discuss the unique shape of a scholarly book generated in response to a colleague’s unfinished labor. They also take up some of Williams's provocations, including the political possibilities of melodrama in contemporary culture—from Trumpian discourse to trans cinema and beyond—and explore the kinds of labor, thought, and feeling necessary for studying melodrama as a form that moves or provokes us.

Like their book, a work forged in grief and loss, Gledhill, Horak, and Anker's conversation casts film and media scholarship as an act of collectivity and love: a bid for a better kind of world.

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Mark Solms, "The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing" (Pegasus, 2026)

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Once dismissed as unscientific, psychoanalytic therapy is proving to be among our most effective medical treatments of any kind - outperforming psychiatric drugs and rivaling vaccines in its power to prevent and heal. Why does it work so well?
Perhaps because one of the most controversial figures in psychology was right all along. Neuroscience now confirms much of what Sigmund Freud conjectured over a century ago: our deepest struggles stem, not from chemical imbalances, but from buried memories and unconscious conflicts that no pill can touch.
Using enthralling case studies and cutting-edge brain science, pioneering neuroscientist Mark Solms makes the case that psychoanalysis should resume its position as our master theory of the mind. Yet modern research also reveals where Freud got important things wrong. Could correcting these errors make therapy even more effective?
As psychiatric diagnoses soar and standard treatments continue to fail many patients, The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing (Pegasus, 2026) offers a revolutionary hope: a real science of healing, rooted in the radical idea that our suffering arises from truths we haven't yet faced.

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David W. Congdon, "Who is a True Christian?: Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Who Is a True Christian?: Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture (Cambridge UP, 2024) examines how American Christians have tried to determine who qualifies as an authentic Christian and which beliefs should be treated as authoritative. Congdon approaches the question historically, tracing debates over terms such as orthodox, historic and biblical Christianity across the twentieth century and into the present.

The book distinguishes between describing Christianity as it has existed and prescribing what Christianity ought to be. It considers how theological disagreements, cultural identity and political conflict have influenced the boundaries Christians draw around their faith.

In its conclusion, the book proposes a more plural understanding of Christian identity through the ideas of polydoxy and religious autonomy. These proposals form the author's alternative to fixed definitions of a single, universal Christian norm.

Key Ideas:

The meaning of “true Christian” has remained contested rather than historically uniform.
Descriptive accounts of Christianity do not necessarily settle prescriptive questions about what Christians should believe.
Labels such as orthodox, historic and biblical Christianity developed within particular historical and cultural debates.
Religious identity in the United States is often connected to broader questions of culture, authority and politics.
The book closes by considering polydoxy and religious autonomy as alternatives to a single fixed standard of Christian identity.

Takeaway From the Conversation:

The conversation centers on the difficulty of defining authentic Christianity in a diverse and divided religious culture. Congdon's analysis raises questions about who has the authority to establish religious boundaries, how those boundaries have changed over time and what happens when one group claims the power to determine who belongs.

About Podcast Host

Angela Marie Hutchinson is the author of “Create Your Yes! When You Keep Hearing No,” named a Forbes No. 4 book to advance your career. She is a podcast host for New Books Network, where she leads conversations for the neuroscience and Christianity channels. Hutchinson is also a talent and intellectual property executive, former social media professor and BBC commentator. She resides in Los Angeles with her husband and three children.

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Rhys Bowen, "The Castle in the Glen" (Lake Union Publishing, 2026)

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

I love Rhys Bowen’s historical mystery series, especially Her Royal Spyness books, which feature Lady Georgiana Rannoch. The Castle in the Glen (Lake Union Publishing, 2026) appears to be a standalone, although there’s room for it to develop into a series if the author so decides

The novel opens with an excerpt from The Wild Girl, a work-in-progress by an acclaimed mystery writer, Iris Blackburn (to quote from the Cast of Characters, “Think Agatha Christie”). Set on the Isle of Skye, off Scotland’s western coast, The Wild Girl purports to be the first case of Iris Blackburn’s pet detective, Inspector Melrose. But Iris, who’s approaching eighty and suffering from early-stage dementia, hires a young Australian named Emma Callander, whose first book recently appeared in London to great acclaim, to finish the novel.

To secure Emma’s agreement, Iris offers an all-expenses-paid trip to Skye, where Emma can absorb the atmosphere, appreciate the setting, and connect with the character of Inspector Melrose before sitting down to write. Only after Emma reaches the island does she begin to suspect that the fictional mystery may not be fiction after all.

Bowen juggles the three historical timelines—1904, the time of the original deaths; 1932, when Iris visited Skye; and Emma/Iris in 1965—with her usual aplomb. She also leaps nimbly between the novel and the novel-within-the-novel, which Emma reads so that she can get a sense of what the book needs and how she can contribute to finishing Iris’s story. The result is a delightful tale that never takes itself too seriously yet kept me turning pages to the end.

And if you’ve never visited Skye yourself, it really is exactly as described. That I have such vivid and fond memories of my short time there just added to my appreciation of the novel.

Rhys Bowen’s work has sold close to 10 million copies in over 30 languages. She has been nominated for every major mystery award and has won multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards. Her books include the Royal Spyness and Molly Murphy historical mysteries, as well as several international bestselling stand-alone novels. The Castle in the Glen is her latest book. Find out more at here.

C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels, including one co-written with P.K. Adams. Her next book, Song of the Silk Weaver, will appear in September 2026.

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Sarah Ellen Zarrow, "Displays of Belonging: Polish Jewish Collecting and Museums, 1891–1941" (Cornell UP, 2025.)

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Displays of Belonging: Polish Jewish Collecting and Museums, 1891–1941 (Cornell UP, 2025.) illuminates the lives and work of Polish Jewish collectors and museologists, who sought to preserve the treasures of the Jewish past while demonstrating Jewish belonging on Polish soil. As Jews comfortable in the Polish language and within Polish artistic and academic society, they saw themselves as intermediaries between less-integrated Jews and the Polish cultural elite.

At the turn of the century, Jewish ethnographers and museum creators staked their claim to belonging to the civic nation though the display of Jewish folk art, fine art, and Judaica. After the First World War, the nearly three million Jews in the Second Polish Republic were suddenly challenged with finding a place for themselves in a state that increasingly defined itself as a creation of the ethnic Polish nation, to which Jews, by many accounts, did not belong.

By tracing emergent documentation and display practices in partitioned Poland and in the interwar Second Polish Republic, Sarah Ellen Zarrow offers a better understanding of how integrated Jews identified with Polish culture and history and with non-Jewish Poles, and how they conceived of, negotiated, and argued their collective place within Poland. This is not a case of assimilation, nor of acculturation, but rather of displaying a parallel culture that was at once similar and yet distinctive.

Displays of Belonging offers a nuanced understanding of the multiplicity of ways in which Jews in Poland saw their present and dreamed of their future. It places Jewish ethnographic practice and art collection within a Polish context, and sheds light on ways in which ideas about belonging and national identity were negotiated in the space of museums.

Paul Lerner is Chair of the History Department at the University of Southern California where he directs the Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies. Book here Faculty page here Email & Social Media: plerner@usc.edu @plerner.bsky.social

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Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements" (1951): A Discussion with Jay Garfinkel

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, who eventually taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements—the first and most famous of his books—was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences.

Called a “brilliant and original inquiry” and “a genuine contribution to our social thought” by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., this landmark in the field of social psychology is completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today. It delivers a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one.

When it was first published in 1951. the New Yorker wrote, “Its theme is political fanaticism, with which it deals severely and brilliantly.” The Wall Street Journal agreed, calling The True Believer the famous bestseller with “concise insight into what drives the mind of the fanatic and the dynamics of a mass movement” by the legendary San Francisco longshoreman.

This episode was originally published on April 10, 2024.

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Ellery E. Foutch, "A Perfectionist Impulse: The Art of Stopping Time in the Nineteenth Century (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Cultural studies of the nineteenth century often categorize their subjects as being motivated by one of two opposing notions: a wholehearted embrace of progress or an antimodernist nostalgia. A Perfectionist Impulse: The Art of Stopping Time in the Nineteenth Century (U Minnesota Press, 2026) centers a different kind of response to the period’s newly intensified awareness of temporality and history: an obsession with preserving perfection. Engaging a diverse set of case studies, Dr. Ellery E. Foutch explores the era’s desire to forestall the march of time and immortalize the fleeting moment through art and technology.

Beginning with an investigation of artist and naturalist Titian Peale’s butterfly illustrations and specimen boxes, Dr. Foutch assesses the implications of attempts to fix animal life in the “perfect state.” She then turns to Harvard’s Ware Collection of Glass Flowers, botanical models meticulously crafted to serve as instructional tools but most famous internationally as a spectacle for tourists. Finally, she scrutinizes the period’s preoccupation with the fragility of the human body, examining artistic representations of the legendary bodybuilder Eugen Sandow, widely known during his time as the “Perfect Man.” Highlighting the paradoxical way in which these attempts at preservation ultimately sap the vitality from the organic processes they seek to arrest, Dr. Foutch uses these curious objects to unpack a deep set of cultural anxieties around decay and death.

By analyzing objects of mass culture and natural history using methods typically reserved for works of art, A Perfectionist Impulse provides a unique window into how nineteenth-century scientists, technologists, artists, and entertainers rendered a common desire for perfection and immortality. Itself a wondrous collection of attempts to capture the idealized moment, this extensively illustrated book serves as a shining example of our enduring fascination with the ephemeral.

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Daniel Byman, "American Pogroms: How Forgotten Massacres Shape America" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Amidst heightened rhetoric and increasing polarization in the United States, American Pogroms: How Forgotten Massacres Shape America (Oxford University Press, 2026) chronicles the causes and consequences of two centuries of mob violence in American history, highlighting exactly what's at stake when we allow leaders to legitimate violence and the mob to rule.

For much of American history, members of the majority population of the United States indiscriminately attacked and terrorized minority communities. In some parts of the country, mob violence seemed a near-constant part of the region's history, while in others it was a brief, horrific spasm that perpetrators--but not victims--quickly forgot.

In American Pogroms, terrorism expert Daniel Byman argues that there is a word for this type of communal violence: pogrom. Although pogroms are historically associated with the orchestrated campaigns of anti-Jewish violence in Tsarist Russia, Byman asserts that pogroms have been an all-too-frequent feature of American history. Tracing two centuries of communal violence, Byman recounts cases of attacks against American religious minorities such as Catholics and Mormons, the killing of thousands of ethnic Mexicans in Texas, the murder and wholesale expulsion of Chinese workers from the American West, and the repeated attacks on the Black community that killed thousands and enabled decades of brutal discrimination. In all these cases, pogroms helped cement a system of injustice that left religious, ethnic, and racial minorities politically and economically marginalized. While the idea of mob violence now strikes most Americans as unthinkable, Byman warns that increased polarization and selective news consumption in recent years has coarsened discourse and legitimized violence, raising the risk that at least some violence will return.

A broad-ranging synthesis of how and why majorities have so frequently resorted to community-level violence to restore or cement their power, American Pogroms illustrates the outsized role of violence in U.S. history and how it shapes the country today.

Daniel Byman is a Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and the Director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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Yulia Gradskova et al., "Good Mothers, Nations and Nationalisms: Cases from Lithuania, Russia and Sweden" (CEU Press, 2026)

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press, 2026) talks with Yulia Gradskova and Ieva Bisigirskaitė, two of the three authors behind Good Mothers, Nations and Nationalisms: Cases from Lithuania, Russia and Sweden. Together with Soheyla Yazdanpanah, they explore what nationalists mean by "good mothers," demographic anxiety, and maternal activism in Lithuania, Russia and Sweden.

You can purchase a copy here.

Interested in CEU Press’s publications? Click here to find out more:

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James Lochtefeld, "God’s Own Land: Sacred Landscape, Pilgrim Economy and Religious Change in the Ganga Himalaya" (Lever Press, 2026)

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

God’s Own Land: Sacred Landscape, Pilgrim Economy and Religious Change in the Ganga Himalaya (Lever Press, 2026) follows the tectonic shift from traditional religious pilgrimage in the early twentieth-century to contemporary pilgrim tourism, in which ever-burgeoning visitor numbers have brought both benefits and challenges to the Garhwal region of India—the source of Hindu India’s sacred river, the Ganges. Despite Hinduism’s regional and sectarian variation, India’s Garhwal Himalaya region is one the most sacred places to Hindus, drawing pilgrims across sectarian lines from throughout the subcontinent and the world. This sacred land—dev bhumi or “land of the gods”—appears in foundational Hindu stories describing the presence and activity of gods, goddesses, saints, and cultural heroes.
This study from James G. Lochtefeld draws out Hindu convictions regarding the Garhwal’s eternal and continuing sanctity as a holy region, based on the premise of an “imagined landscape.” This region is strongly associated with divine activity and yet this landscape is also a real place with a real history inhabited by real people, who have historically been poor because of the challenges created by the region’s geography. Juxtaposing the history of the region with its construction in the Hindu imaginary, this multidisciplinary study unpacks the nuanced image of the region, its religious significance, and the impacts of pilgrimages on the community through textual, historical, and ethnographic methods.

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Bordering On Indifference: Immigration Agents Negotiating Race and Morality

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Immigration agents have a frontline view of the racial, economic, and legal inequalities that undocumented migration reflects—and yet most agents do not think of the role their jobs play in those inequalities. Instead, they consider themselves law enforcers, trained to confine their work strictly to crime control and security. In Bordering on Indifference: Immigration Agents Negotiating Race and Morality (Princeton UP, 2025), Dr. Irene Vega offers an original, detailed analysis of the rationales that shape how U.S. immigration agents understand and carry out their professional responsibilities. Drawing on interviews with ninety immigration agents—Border Patrol Agents and ICE Deportation Officers, most of whom are Mexican Americans from the region around the border—Dr. Vega examines why they took the job and how their training and socialization shape the ways that they grapple with the racial and moral issues raised by their work.
Dr. Vega shows that indifference is the bureaucratic resource that allows agents to look away from the most morally ambiguous aspects of their work and helps them cultivate legitimacy for their employer. She traces the development of the agents’ “moral economy”—the configuration of norms, values, and sensibilities that undergirds how they perform their work. She also shows how the immigration system benefits from minoritized bureaucrats’ labor. With Bordering on Indifference, Dr. Vega opens the closed doors of nondescript government buildings and goes into remote areas of the Southwestern borderlands to uncover the hidden normative world that immigration enforcement agents inhabit.

Guest: Dr. Irene I. Vega is associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine. She studies how the United States regulates international migration, as well as migrants and their descendants.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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The MANTRAMS Project and Digital Mantra Research: A Discussion with Borayin Larios

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Every day, tens of millions of people use mantras all around the globe. Originating in South Asia and then spreading via practitioners, texts, rituals, and iconography, mantras have been grounded in speech and sound but also take a range of material forms. For instance, they are inscribed on surfaces, written in manuscripts, printed on posters, visually encoded in diagrams, or worn as amulets and textiles. Not surprisingly, mantras also circulate widely in digital spaces.

In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Xenia Zeiler from the University of Helsinki talks to Prof. Borayin Larios about the ERC Synergy project MANTRAMS - Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia, and about digital mantra research. Funded by a Synergy Grant from the European Research Council, MANTRAMS is a pioneering, large-scale research project entirely dedicated to mantras, past and present. The interdisciplinary and comparative six-year project will investigate mantras across millennia and around the world, examining the roots of mantra, their circulation across South and Southeast Asia, and their transcultural significance in global contexts today.

Borayin Larios is Assistant Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Vienna. His research interests span contemporary and classical Indian religious traditions, including the anthropology and history of mantras, popular and everyday Hinduism, material religion, and Yoga and Tantra traditions. In his interdisciplinary approach, he combines cultural anthropology, religious studies, and historical philology. He is a Principal Investigator in the ERC Synergy project MANTRAMS - Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia.

Xenia Zeiler is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her research and teaching are situated at the intersection of digital media, culture, and society, specifically as related to India and global Indian communities. Her focus within this wider field of digital culture is video games and gaming research, in India and beyond. She also researches and teaches digital religion, popular culture, cultural heritage, and mediatization processes.

We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

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Yigal Levin, "The Chronicles of David and Solomon: 1 Chronicles 10–2 Chronicles 9: A New Translation and Commentary " (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this New Books Network interview, Professor Željko Stanojević speaks with Professor Yigal Levin of Bar-Ilan University about his new book, The Chronicles of David and Solomon: 1 Chronicles 10–2 Chronicles 9: A New Translation and Commentary, published by Bloomsbury.

The conversation explores what is new in Levin’s translation and commentary, how the Book of Chronicles reshapes the stories of David and Solomon, and why Jerusalem, the Temple, the priesthood, the Levites, geography, political memory, and the idea of “all Israel” are central to the Chronicler’s message.

The book offers a new English translation and detailed commentary on 1 Chronicles 10 through 2 Chronicles 9. It is part of a planned multi-volume commentary. It begins with the death of Saul and follows the Chronicler’s account of David’s rise to power, the establishment of Jerusalem, the transfer of the Ark, the divine promise concerning David’s dynasty, preparations for the Temple, Solomon’s accession, and the construction and dedication of the Jerusalem Temple.

Levin shows that Chronicles does far more than repeat Samuel and Kings. The Chronicler selects, reorganises, expands, and omits earlier material to create a distinctive interpretation of Israel’s past. David is presented above all as the king who prepares Jerusalem, worship, personnel, materials, and institutions for the future Temple, while Solomon completes that project by building and dedicating the Temple.

The volume also examines priests, Levites, musicians, gatekeepers, officials, military groups, tribes, cities, territories, genealogies, and neighbouring peoples. These details are essential for understanding how the Chronicler imagined Israel’s unity, institutions, memory, and identity. Levin combines Biblical Hebrew, textual comparison, historical geography, archaeology, genealogy, literary analysis, and the history of ancient Israel. The commentary is especially valuable for scholars and students of Chronicles, David and Solomon, the Jerusalem Temple, biblical historiography, Persian-period Yehud, Biblical Hebrew, biblical archaeology, and ancient Israelite history.

Professor Yigal Levin is an Israeli historian and biblical scholar at Bar-Ilan University. His research focuses on the history of ancient Israel, the Book of Chronicles, historical geography, biblical archaeology, biblical historiography, genealogies and tribal identity, Persian-period Yehud, and the relationship between biblical texts, geography, archaeology, and history. He is also Director of the Rivlin Institute for the History of the Land of Israel and its Settlement.

Professor Levin is a member of the Editorial Board of the European Hebrew Journal, an international, peer-reviewed, Diamond Open Access journal published by the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature in Belgrade. The journal publishes research in Hebrew language, Biblical Hebrew, the Hebrew Bible, Jewish Studies, Semitic linguistics, philology, textual criticism, biblical archaeology, ancient Israelite history, Hebrew literature, manuscript studies, translation, lexicography, and related fields. EHJ does not charge authors submission or publication fees.

Professor Levin has also been announced as a speaker at the international online conference New Discoveries and New Directions in Biblical, Hebrew, and Theological Studies, to be held on 6–8 November 2026. The conference brings together scholars from biblical studies, Hebrew studies, theology, archaeology, Jewish Studies, history, and related disciplines.

The interview is hosted by Professor Željko Stanojević, President of the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature, and European Hebrew Journal, and a New Books Network host for Biblical Studies.
European Hebrew Journal

Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature:

Conference: New Discoveries and New Directions in Biblical, Hebrew, and Theological Studies, An International Online Conference Supporting the Diamond Open Access Mission of the European Hebrew Journal

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Kathleen J. Frydl, "Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This is a really good book. Really good. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a fascinating, and perhaps unexpected, journey through Catholic hospitals, the expansion of the carceral state, and corporate and union access to the protections of First Amendment freedom of speech. All the while, Kathleen J. Frydl is rigorously constructing an understanding and positioning of the modern corporation within the governmental structures and protections of the American political system. This is a deeply and thoroughly researched book, with details and information coming from legal decisions, law review articles, political theory, congressional acts, federal government notices, historical data and understanding, medical information, and texts in political science, sociology, and economics. It is indeed a tour de force, but the reader doesn’t really notice because it is such a propulsive and captivating narrative about how modern private corporations learned to capture and implement the advocacy practices that the social movements of the postwar period were using to make gains for previously disadvantaged groups (like African Americans, women, those with disabilities, and more).

Frydl lays out the foundation for the analysis within the framework of liberalism, classical liberalism and modern liberalism. She takes pains to explain these distinctions and how our understanding of liberalism has also contributed to some of the shifts and adjustments that have transpired. What does become clear in all of the case studies and details is that this is really a story about the United States Congress—not the Judiciary—and that Congress has been responsible for many of these changes, even if these actions seem to elide public attention and scrutiny. In fact, it is very difficult to detect Congress’s role in these instances, where Congress acted to essentially remove the Judiciary’s powers to deliberate in these policy realms.

Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is about corporate identity politics, and the ways in which corporations worked to fend off regulatory reform, while not exactly using the expected pathways. Since corporations, unlike, say women or African Americans, do not have a history of exclusion or disadvantage within the American political or economic systems, the concept of corporate identity politics seems a bit odd, but Frydl makes a strong case for this understanding, through the case studies of Catholic hospitals and regulatory reform that provides an avenue towards allowing for more religious freedoms and protections for the hospitals themselves; the legislative reforms with regard to criminal codes in the 1970s and 1980s that instituted harsher sentencing guidelines for individuals but much more lax responses to corporate infractions; and finally in a comparative study of corporate speech regulation and speech regulation of labor unions in the United States. Frydl tells the story from all perspectives and dimensions, including who was working behind the scenes to move these protections forward over the past fifty years. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is a very important analysis of the strengthening of the position of corporate entities within the political, legal, and economic systems in the United States.

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Paul French, "The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City" (St. Martin's Press, 2026)

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The life of Puyi, the last emperor of China, often feels like a spectacle—in no small part due to the 1987 Oscar-winning film The Last Emperor. Yet the true story being Puyi, as well as his wife, the empress Wanrong, is more complicated. Two foreigners were asked to tutor both Puyi and Wanrong: Reginald Johnston and Isabel Ingram, both of whom provide fresh insights into how China’s final emperor and empress lived their lives.

Historian Paul French draws upon these sources, and others, for his latest work: The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City (St. Martin's Press, 2026) to tell a very different story about the life of Puyi and Wanrong: their marriage, the political shenanigans of the early Republic, and how Johnson and Ingram shaped the final chapter of the imperial court.

Paul is the author of many works of history, including Midnight in Peking, City of Devils, Destination Macao, Bloody Saturday: Shanghai’s Darkest Day, and Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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The New Modern Medicine: Disease, Evidence, and Epidemiological Medicine with Jonathan Fuller

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Jonathan Fuller’s The New Modern Medicine: Disease, Evidence, and Epidemiological Medicine (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a philosophical tour through scientific medicine, visiting its distinctive problems, particularly problems brought about by the twentieth century fusion of medicine with epidemiology. Drawing on the author’s training in philosophy of medicine, history and philosophy of science, and clinical medicine, the book examines the contours of the ‘epidemiological medicine’ that resulted from this fusion. It dissects several philosophical problems of the new modern medicine while exploring topics such as theories of contagion and cancer, concepts and theories of disease etiology, the nature of chronic diseases and mental disorders, concepts of medical risk, models of medical evidence and medical prediction, the problems of extrapolating from clinical research, therapeutic skepticism, and the future of modern medicine. Expansive, detailed, rigorous, insightful, and refreshingly penetrable, The New Modern Medicine is an ambitious contribution to the philosophy of medicine and to our understanding of scientific medicine. It is available online open access.

This episode is hosted by Alex Broadbent, Professor of Philosophy of Science at Durham University and Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg. He is Director of the Durham-Johannesburg Centre for Philosophy of Epidemiology, Medicine, and Public Health, and co-leads the Measurement Lab in the Institute for Medical Humanities.

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Huang Chongkai, "The Formosa Exchange" (Honford Star, 2026)

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of the New Books Network, we talk with Jeremy Tiang about his English translation of The Formosa Exchange (Honford Star, 2026)—which will be released on September 18, 2026 (but is available for preorder).
Tiang is a novelist, playwright, and translator based in New York. He has translated more than thirty books from Chinese to English—including Zou Jingzhi's Ninth Building, longlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize—and has served as a judge for the National Book Award for translated literature. Beyond translation, his novel State of Emergency won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018, and his play Salesman之死 won a Obie Award for Outstanding New Play in 2023.

Originally published in Mandarin in 2021 as 新寶島 and winner of that year's Taiwan Literature Award, The Formosa Exchange is a work of speculative fiction by Taiwanese novelist Huang Chongkai (黃崇凱). The novel kicks off with a fantastical occurrence: one night, the entire populations of Taiwan and Cuba swap places, with Taiwanese people ending up on the island of Cuba and Cuban people on the island of Taiwan. This “Great Exchange” becomes a lens for examining national identity, indigeneity, and colonialism, especially with reference to Taiwan’s and Cuba's shared position in the shadow of their much larger neighbors of China and the United States.

Scholars and learners across history, political science, anthropology, literature, and beyond will find much food for thought in The Formosa Exchange. The novel is dense with allusions—it nods to Western thinkers like John Mearsheimer and Claude Lévi-Strauss, while also weaving in references to Taiwanese and Cuban literature, art, and film.

Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater.

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Why the Roman Empire Fell: On Edward Gibbon with Hugh Liebert

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

250 years ago when the United States declared independence, Edward Gibbon across the ocean published the first volume of his magisterial series, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Immediately his text caused a storm of controversy. Many readers thought that Gibbon had implied that the rise of Christianity caused the fall of the western empire. But is that the real story?

To answer that question, in Episode 1 of Season 6, I have as our guest Hugh Liebert. A Professor of Political Science at West Point, he earned his doctorate through the Committee on Social Thought at UChicago, and has written two books: Plutarch’s Politics (2016), and Gibbon’s Christianity (2022).

Drawing on Gibbon’s Christianity, we look at the historian’s paradoxical views on religion, his early conversions to both Catholicism and Protestantism, and how he used those experiences to chronicle the early church as a disciplined new republic that overcame decadent Roman polytheism much as how the Roman Republic conquered aged empires. Along the way, we discuss Gibbon’s ironic and elusive style, his larger essays and memoirs, and the love of literary glory that pervades his fascinating life and complex work.

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In the Shadow of the Shtetl: Yiddish Memories of Small-Town Jewish Life in Ukraine

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Drawing from some four hundred Yiddish-language interviews conducted by the Archives of Historical and Ethnographic Yiddish Memories project, Jeffrey Veidlinger will explore how elderly Yiddish speakers in Ukraine described their memories of Jewish life in the Soviet shtetl, their stories of survival during the Holocaust, and their experiences living as Jews under Communism.

This exploration will help us understand how despite Stalinist repressions, the Holocaust, and official antisemitism, these interviews infused with memories of family life, religious observance, education, and work testify to the survival of Jewish life, even within the shadow of the shtetl.

This lecture originally took place on July 1, 2025.

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Younus Y. Mirza, "The Islamic Mary: Maryam Through the Centuries" (Fortress Press, 2025)

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Mary, the mother of Jesus, has been historically revered throughout the Islamic tradition. This began already in the Qur'an, where she is called by the name "Maryam." The Islamic Mary: Maryam Through the Centuries (Fortress Press, 2025) examines the varied appearances of Maryam in different Islamic cultural and theological contexts. The chapters in this history extend from Maryam's scriptural mentions in the Qur'an and the biography of the Prophet Muhammad, her appearances in medieval debates regarding prophecy, citations of her virtuous model in Sufi discussions of piety, presentations in art and film, through to her role in modern interfaith relations.

Younus Y. Mirza is the Founding Director of the Barzinji Institute for Global Virtual Learning at Shenandoah University. He defended his dissertation in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Georgetown University and has taught at Millsaps and Allegheny Colleges. His research focuses on the relationship between the Bible and the Qur’an and the shared stories between them

YouTube Channel: here

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Sima Qian–China’s Grand Historian

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

John Ross chats with repeat guest Tim McGirk about Sima Qian (c. 145–86 BC), the Father of Chinese History. He earned this accolade for his monumental work, the Shiji (usually translated as Records of the Grand Historian). It covers more than two thousand years, from the legendary early emperors up to Emperor Wu, under whom Sima Qian lived and fell afoul. Sima Qian would use his history writing to criticize cruel leaders, most notably Qin Shi Huang, the despotic first emperor of China, who burned books and attacked the humanistic legacy of Confucius. The backstory of the Records is one of the great bibliographic tales of all time. And as McGirk explains, the man and his work were inspiration for his historical novel, The Wondrous Elixir of the Two Chinese Lovers.

Books discussed:

Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian (English translation by Burton Watson, Columbia University Press, 1961, 1993, 1996).
The Wondrous Elixir of the Two Chinese Lovers by Tim McGirk (Plum Rain Press, 2025)

Related episodes:

In BOA episode 53, John chatted with Tim about his Plum Rain Press novel The Wondrous Elixir of the Two Chinese Lovers. It weaves the story of archeological discoveries in modern-day Mexico with that of Xu Fu, a Taoist alchemist/priest sent to bring back the secret of immortality.
And in episode 65, John and Tim talked about Simon Winchester’s biography of Sinologist Joseph Needham, The Man Who Loved China.

The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press.

Subscribe to the BOA podcast from your favorite podcast service.

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Lauren Stara, "Planning Library Spaces: A Practical Guide for Library Building Projects" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Planning Library Spaces: A Practical Guide for Library Building Projects (Bloomsbury, 2025) is a book designed for librarians, trustees, local government officials, architects, and interior designers who are designing or planning to build, renovate, or reconfigure library spaces. Most librarians embark upon a library building project with little experience in space planning, architecture, or construction. Written by a registered architect and professional librarian, this is a guidebook for librarians embarking on a library building project. It includes a brief history of library facilities, placing them in the context of public buildings. An introduction to library planning principles and a discussion of library design concepts and trends are presented, including the impact of the 2020 pandemic on library design. Sections on working with architects, building design/construction terminology and the basics of reading architectural drawings provide insight into unfamiliar jargon and visual communication. Extensive illustrations and photographs show examples of library layouts and furniture and equipment, and the final chapter addresses the challenges inherent in a major building project. As library services change, buildings must adapt to accommodate and provide these new innovations. Buildings are living things, and this book will offer guidance to those embarking on a project of any scale or size.

Guest: Lauren Stara is a registered architect and a librarian, specializing in library building design. Her past library experience includes everything from front desk clerk to director. As a Library Building Specialist for the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, Lauren administers grant funds and provides technical assistance and advice from initial planning through construction of public library projects. She writes, consults, and speaks on library design, service design, and future trends in libraries and is coauthor of Responding to Rapid Change in Libraries: A User Experience Approach (2020).

Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

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Jarvis C. McInnis, "Afterlives of the Plantation: Plotting Agrarian Futures in the Global Black South" (Columbia UP, 2025)

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Built on the grounds of a former cotton plantation, the Tuskegee Institute, founded by Booker T. Washington, offered agricultural and industrial education as a strategy for Black self-determination. There―and in many other communities in the U.S. South, the Caribbean, and Central America―Black people repurposed and regenerated what had been a place of enslavement into a site for imagining alternative futures.

Jarvis C. McInnis charts a new account of Black modernity by centering Tuskegee’svision of agrarian worldmaking. He traces the diasporic ties and networks of exchange that linked Black communities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although Washington is often regarded as an accommodationist, McInnis shows how artists, intellectuals, and political leaders―including George Washington Carver, Jean Price-Mars, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, and Marcus Garvey―adapted Tuskegee’s methods into dynamic strategies for liberation in places like Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and Jamaica. Even as the legacy of the plantation continued to circumscribe Black life, these thinkers found resources in its ruins to forge new theories and practices of progress, aesthetic innovation, and freedom that contributed to the New Negro Movement of the 1920s and 1930s.

In contrast to traditional understandings of Black modernity as urban and premised on northward migration, McInnis foregrounds rural settings and practices of place making, rootedness, and liberatory agriculture. Shedding new light on the transnational influence of a historically Black institution in the U.S. South, Afterlives of the Plantation remaps Black cultural, intellectual, and political histories down to the very soil.

Afterlives of the Plantation: Plotting Agrarian Futures in the Global Black South (Columbia University Press, 2025) is an award-winning monograph earning recognition as a winner of the 2026 S-USIH Annual Book Prize by the Society for U.S. Intellectual History, 2026 Pauli Murray Book Prize in Black Intellectual History by the African American Intellectual History Society, and the 2026 ASALH Book Prize by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History Kishauna Soljour is an Assistant Professor of Public Humanities at San Diego State University. Her most recent writing appears in the edited collection: From Rights to Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle.

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Bridget Hourican on Frank Callanan's "James Joyce: A Political Life" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The young James Joyce (1882–1941) was forged in the smithy of Irish political controversies, and he took into his European exile a depth of political insight unrivalled among his fellow modernists. In this biography of Joyce in his youth and early exile James Joyce: A Political Life (Princeton UP, 2026), acclaimed Irish historian and biographer Frank Callanan reveals a Joyce who is markedly more politically conscious, informed and complex than the Joyce of Richard Ellmann’s classic account. Written in a sparkling style and rich with historical insights, Callanan’s deeply researched biography is the first sustained account of how Joyce’s Irish and European political and cultural context shaped his life, thought, and writings.
Joyce was eight years old in 1890 when the O’Shea divorce scandal tore Irish nationalism apart, leading to the split in the Irish Parliamentary Party, the death of nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell, and a long, bitter period dominated by the anti-Parnellites. This was the Ireland that Joyce grew up in and rebelled against, and which determined his literary direction. Callanan uncovers a Joyce who was a highly original and dissenting Irish nationalist, who refused to avow or vaunt his nationalism and whose understanding was refined by the experience of living in multicultural Trieste with its fraught ethnic politics and differing models of statehood. Callanan’s Joyce is as heroic as Ellmann’s defiantly modernistic artist but in a more interesting way—a writer who didn’t lack political conviction but whose views didn’t yield to the expectations of his time.
Energizing, witty, profound, and elegant, James Joyce: A Political Life is a magisterial biography that will transform how readers look at Joyce and his politics.

Frank Callanan (1956–2021) was an Irish barrister and historian. His books include The Parnell Split, 1890–91, a narrative of the last year of Parnell’s life, and T. M. Healy, a biography of Parnell’s principal adversary in the Split. He wrote the entries on Parnell, Healy, John Dillon and Conor Cruise O’Brien for the Dictionary of Irish Biography and edited The Literary and Historical Society 1955–2005, a history of the debating society of University College Dublin, to which James Joyce belonged. He also wrote and produced, with Ruán Magan, the 2022 documentary 100 Years of Ulysses.

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos

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Michael R. Griffiths, "The Death of the Author and Anticolonial Thought" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Death of the Author and Anticolonial Thought (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) promises to transform a decades old debate in literary studies about the relation between structure and agency, form and intention by giving a detailed account—previously unstudied—of the way colonized writers have responded to, learned from, and critiqued the death of the author postulate declared by Roland Barthes in 1967. The book is a cultural history of these debates—with a particular focus on two crucial two key case studies, Martinican poet and thinker Édouard Glissant and Palestinian literary and cultural critic Edward Said, this book, then, examines the immediate emergence and intensification of such responses to the postulate of the author’s deathly absence from the text, in order to suggest that metropolitan literary theory drew both critique and engagement from scholars of black, decolonial and Global South background from both before 1967 and Barthes’s declaration and in its wake. This book provides a focused account of the early history of the way global literatures have engaged with, critiqued, and occasionally adopted the lessons and limitations of the poststructuralist critique of that most fetishized and also reviled of figures: the author.

Matthis Frickhoeffer is a scholar of critical theory and French thought with a background in literature studies, linguistics and art theory. His work focuses on questions of form, semiotics, and intertextuality. He teaches at the University of Texas at Dallas.

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Thomas F. Rzeznik, "A Monument of Charity: St. Vincent’s Hospital and Catholic Health Care in New York City" (NYU Press, 2026)

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

St. Vincent's Hospital began with a simple, but radical mission: to care for all those in need regardless of race, creed, or financial means. For more than 160 years, the hospital carried out that work, serving notables and the nameless alike, from impoverished immigrants and those stricken by devastating nineteenth-century epidemics to AIDS patients and the victims of the attacks of 9/11.

A Monument of Charity: St. Vincent’s Hospital and Catholic Health Care in New York City (NYU Press, 2026) provides the first comprehensive history of this remarkable institution, from its humble beginnings in 1849 to its abrupt closure in 2010. Located in the heart of Greenwich Village, St. Vincent's earned distinction not only for the quality of its medical programs, but also for its unwavering dedication to the poor. The hospital was a testament to the vision and labor of the Sisters of Charity, who founded, staffed, and administered the hospital with remarkable skill and devotion.

This captivating account documents St. Vincent's growth into one of the largest and most prominent Catholic medical centers in the United States, as well as its struggles to sustain its religious mission within the ever-changing and increasingly competitive medical marketplace. A Monument to Charity highlights the immense contributions of Catholic sisters to health care in the United States as well as the enduring legacy of all those who worked alongside them to care for the sick and alleviate suffering.

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Julie Kliegman, "Finding Renée Richards: The Groundbreaking Story of Tennis’s Trans Pioneer" (HarperOne, 2026)

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Fifty years ago, tennis player Renée Richards made international headlines in her fight to compete in the women’s draw of the 1977 US Open—marking the first time a trans athlete sued to participate in professional sports in the gender category with which they identify. Renée eventually won her case. Though she lost in the first round of the singles tournament, she and her tennis partner made it to the finals in doubles, losing to Martina Navratilova and her partner.

Finding Renée Richards: The Groundbreaking Story of Tennis’s Trans Pioneer (HarperOne, 2026) chronicles Richards’s extraordinary life, moving from her tumultuous upbringing in Queens, New York, to her career as a successful eye surgeon; her years as a star tennis player to her role as a transgender pioneer. Now in her nineties, Renée remains a complex figure: A person who changed the sports world forever yet questions the place of trans athletes in that world today. GLAAD award-nominated sports journalist Julie Kliegman deftly probes these contradictions, drawing on intimate interviews and offering critical reflections on what is at stake for athletes, fans, and the queer community today, at a time when trans participation in sports is more hotly contested—and condemned—than ever before.

Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep.

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Seamus O’Reilly, "Prestige Drama" (Cardinal, 2026)

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A dazzling novel about a community where an upcoming film production brings their past into sharp focus--and nobody's version is the same.

In Derry, the locals are already in a twist about the arrival of Hollywood actress Monica Logue to research her role for a show about the Troubles--and then she goes missing. Everyone has a story to tell--about Monica's possible whereabouts, and about the historic events that brought her here in the first place: the show's screenwriter, desperate for this last shot at success; the grieving mother whose story he's adapting; the ex-IRA member who knows the price of survival; the local psychic who's seen too much ...

Prestige Drama (Cardinal, 2026) brings to life a chorus of characters as they locate themselves in Monica's disappearance, and in the truth about their own history. From the author of the acclaimed memoir Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?, Prestige Drama is heartbreaking, hilarious, and profound, an indelible portrait of a community both obsessed with its past, and desperate to forget it.

SÉAMAS O’REILLY is a writer and author who has worked as a columnist for the Observer, the Irish Times and the Irish Examiner. He is Features Editor of London satirical magazine, The Fence and his writing has appeared in The Guardian, the New Statesman and the New York Times. His memoir Did Ye Hear Mammy Died topped the Irish Times Bestseller List for seven weeks, and won Best Biography at the 2021 Irish Book Awards. Séamas currently lives in Walthamstow, London with his family.

Recommended Books:

Patrick Radden Keefe, London Falling
Susannah Dickey, Into the Wreck
Jonathan Wilson, The Power and The Glory: A History of the World Cup

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M. H. Ayinde, "A Song of Legends Lost" (Saga Press, 2025)

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A Song of Legends Lost (Saga Press, 2025) is the first, highly praised instalment in the Invoker Series. Set in a world offering an unique combination of an African inspired culture and a fallen tech-based empire at war, the novel feels at once epic and deeply personal. M. H. Ayinde deftly creates an entire, well-imagined society with a minimum of distracting exposition. Her clear prose and astute characterization leave the reader intrigued but never confused.

Onto the story itself—it begins with two protagonists from very different backgrounds who find themselves involved in momentous events. Both are overwhelmed by the unexpected powers they now wield. Jinao, a noble who has failed repeatedly to magically bond with an ancestor, suddenly succeeds, but continues to be plagued by indecision. Temi, a baker from the slums of Nine Lords, hosts a mysterious presence after she is cursed by a witch. From the initial setup, the book widens in scope, introducing a traumatized captain — Elari, a ruthless monk — Boleo, and a penniless girl — Runt.

The world of the Nine Lands, ruled over by the royal Ahiki Clan, who have fought the tech creatures they call grey bloods for generations, has enough war for all of them.

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Christopher R. Rogers, "My City Need Something" (Common Notions, 2026)

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Moving between word and image, the call-and-response collaboration between writer Christopher R. Rogers and photographer karim brown improvises a contemporary portrait of present-day Black Philadelphia, replete with the unfinished activism present since the transnational upsurge of the George Floyd Uprising.
Arriving five years after the crucible of that period, this experimental essay-as-LP challenges us to prioritize the urgency of reckoning with our own hang-ups and half-steps and to reground ourselves within the daily, prefigurative life-work of rehearsing Black liberation. This is a hyperlocal, future-forward recommitment to ongoing principled struggle and a hopeful model of contemporary self-criticism.
Taking its title from a song by the late, beloved Uptown Philadelphia rapper PnB Rock, My City Need Something (Common Notions, 2026) challenges readers to strive for clarity in a time of Black suffering, in a city resplendent with Black joy.

Christopher R. Rogers, PhD is a Philadelphia-based cultural organizer and educator hailing from Chester, PA with more than a decade of experience in supporting radical arts, culture, and community-building. He is a Facilitator with the W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction and co-coordinates the Friends of The Tanner House, incubating a revitalized National Historic Landmark rowhome that Dr. Carter G. Woodson once dubbed the “center of Black intellectual life in Philadelphia.” He previously published with Common Notions as Lead Editor for How We Stay Free: Notes on a Black Uprising (2022) alongside novelist Fajr Muhammad. You can find Chris on Instagram @justmaybechris.

After listening to this episode, head over to the Additions to the Archive Substack, where Chris and Sullivan talk further about community education and activism.

Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.

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William Whyte, "The University: A History in Stone, Silk, and Blood" (Harvard UP, 2026)

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

We often idealize the university as a sanctuary for disinterested reason, where material concerns are set aside in favor of higher principles. Yet when we remember our own college experiences, what springs to mind are not just lofty concepts but also material realities: cramped dorm rooms and musty library stacks, gothic towers and freshly mowed quads.

The University: A History in Stone, Silk, and Blood (Harvard University Press, 2026) puts such seemingly inconsequential details at the center of the institution’s 900-year history. Constructing each chapter around an emblematic material—straw, stone, flesh, blood, silk, paper, iron, and concrete—Professor William Whyte traces the intimate connections between the university’s shifting physical form and its evolving social and cultural meanings. From the medieval University of Paris, where students purchased bundles of straw to use as chairs in otherwise-unfurnished classrooms, to the ocean of concrete at postcolonial Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo University, Professor Whyte shows how competing visions of higher learning left their imprint on generations of university architecture, landscaping, and furniture. Along the way, he highlights perennial fears that, within the social space of the university, the life of the mind would recede before worldly interests: that student bloodlines would be tainted by racial intermixing, that courting donors with buildings named in their honor would become more important than research and education, that the allure of powdered wigs and silk gowns would undermine scholarly discipline.

A richly textured chronicle, The University concludes that, even in the age of remote learning, the college campus is irreplaceable. The future of higher education includes fiber-optic cables, but stone, brick, and steel are here to stay.

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John E. McDonough, "America's Wrong Turn: US Health Care in the Neoliberal Era" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How can a nation with unmatched wealth and medical innovation also have the highest health care costs and the poorest health outcomes among its peers? In America's Wrong Turn: US Health Care in the Neoliberal Era (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), Dr. John E. McDonough offers a compelling explanation for this troubling puzzle of contemporary US life and shows that this reality did not arise by accident.

Beginning in the later twentieth century, a powerful political and economic philosophy began to reshape the United States and continues to mold the institutions that govern health care, insurance coverage, and population health. Across four decades, the rise of neoliberal thinking elevated privatization, deregulation, and profit maximization as guiding principles for public policy. Dr. McDonough illustrates how these ideas influenced medical care at every level, altering government roles, accelerating consolidation, encouraging the financialization of once-mission-driven sectors, and shifting the US health system's priorities away from patients and communities. The consequences of these changes include deepening inequality, eroded public health capacity, and a growing burden of medical debt.

Synthesizing history, policy analysis, and the lived realities of the American health system, Dr. McDonough reveals how a national commitment to economic freedom above all else set the stage for today's dysfunctional health care system. Despite today's crises, he also highlights emerging efforts that signal the possibility of a new direction, one based on fairness, accountability, and the restoration of health as a public value. America's Wrong Turn offers a framework for understanding how the United States arrived at this moment and what it will take to create a system worthy of the people it serves.

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Eckart Otto, "Max Weber's Studies of Ancient Judaism: The Historical Foundation for a Theory of the Modern Age" (Mohr Siebeck, 2002)

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Max Weber's Studies of Ancient Judaism: The Historical Foundation for a Theory of the Modern Age (Mohr Siebeck, 2002) Eckart Otto provides a history of Max Weber's work on the cultural history of ancient Judaism, a subject on which Weber spent more than 10 years. He shows how closely these studies are linked not only to theology and Jewish studies, jurisprudence and economics, the science of history and philosophy but also to the contemporary discussions surrounding the historico-cultural significance of Judaism for the »spirit of capitalism« and the chances for Judaism to preserve its identity in the conflict between assimilation and Zionism.

This conversation is a companion to Željko Stanojević's interview with Eckart Otto about Deuteronomy in the Pentateuch and the Hexateuch: Studies of the Literary History of the Pentateuch and the Hexateuch within the Framework of Deuteronomy.

Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. Eckart Otto is a highly distinguished German theologian, biblical scholar, and internationally recognised authority on Deuteronomy, the Pentateuch, biblical law, the Hebrew Bible, and the legal traditions of the ancient Near East. He is Professor Emeritus of Old Testament and Hebrew Bible at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Professor Eckart Otto is also a prominent member of the Editorial Board of the European Hebrew Journal, published by the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature in Belgrade, Serbia.

This interview is hosted by Professor Željko Stanojević, a Serbian-Israeli Hebrew linguist, biblical philologist, lexicographer, translator, and researcher in Semitic languages. He is President of the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the European Hebrew Journal, and a host on the New Books Network. European Hebrew Journal

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Daniel Majchrowicz, "A Journey to Mecca and London: The Travels of an Indian Muslim Woman, 1909–1910" (Indiana UP, 2025)

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Descended from Mughal nobility, Akhtar al-Nisa Begum Nawab Sarbuland Jung grew up in Hyderabad in southern India, where she lived a quiet, private, and privileged life at the heart of the state's royal court. In 1896, at the age of 20, she married Nawab Muhammad Hamidullah Khan Sarbuland Jung, a prominent lawyer and the scion of a leading Muslim reformist movement. In 1909, the wealthy couple embarked on a four-month journey through the Middle East and Europe, performing the hajj in Mecca and sitting for tea with the future king and queen of England.

A Journey to Mecca and London: The Travels of an Indian Muslim Woman, 1909–1910 (Indiana University Press, 2025) provides the first full English translation of Begum Sarbuland's Urdu travel diary from this journey, of which only three original copies remain. Originally intended for circulation among friends and family and later published, her informal entries not only reveal the everyday practices of an Indian woman of her time, but also detail her impressions and reactions as she explored the world alongside her husband. As Begum Sarbuland encountered other women and Muslims during her travels, those encounters shaped her reassessment of her own identity as a Muslim woman. Her observations hold continued significance for readers interested in critical questions about gender, Islam, and identity. Daniel Majchrowicz has thoroughly annotated his translation and paired it with rich appendices, including a biographical sketch of Begum Sarbuland and excerpts from Hamidullah Khan's own accounts of their journey.

Engagingly written and enriched with years of original research, archival work, and family interviews, A Journey to Mecca and London restores the nearly forgotten narrative of one of India's first Muslim women travel writers to its rightful place in Indian and Islamic history.

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Caro Pirri, "Colonial Failure and Theatrical Form in Early Modern England: Stages of Unsettlement" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Today’s guest, Caro Pirri, is the author of Colonial Failure and Theatrical Form in Early Modern England: Stages of Unsettlement (Oxford University Press, 2025). This book explores how early modern colonial travel writing informed the London theater’s spatial and placemaking conventions. It suggests that what the stage found most compelling about narratives of colonial settlement was their failure to claim interpretive control over unfamiliar places and people. The book goes on to link colonial misreadings of places and people to theatrical strategies for staging disorientation, which Pirri characterizes as a condition of “unsettlement.”

Each chapter focuses on a specific formal device that emerged from colonial misreadings: “uncommonplacing” in Richard Hakluyt’s travel compendium; metonymic possession in Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine; “seasoning” in Ben Jonson’s city comedies; “stagewreck” in Shakespeare’s The Tempest; and “stagework” in the Lord Mayor’s Shows.

By approaching form as an interpretive process that is always engaged in the act of making and being made, Colonial Failure and Theatrical Form offers a model for reading past the seeming impasses of colonial narratives. It shows how narratives of failed settlement served as a productive resources for the formal worldmaking conventions of early modern theater.

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Dalit Studies with Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana and Sanal Mohan

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This episode featured a conversation with Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana, and Sanal Mohan, three scholars in the burgeoning field of Dalit Studies. We began with the significance of the 1990s as a point of departure for new work in this field and segued to the interventions made by their two edited volumes published in 2016 and 2025. We discussed the paths opened up by earlier radical historiographical paradigms, such as Subaltern Studies, which nonetheless failed to address the caste question. The guests noted three key emphases of contemporary Dalit Studies: one, centering Dalit historical agency and intellectual production; two, decentering the binary of colonialism and nationalism, and illuminating the colonial period as a complex terrain of maneuver; and three, foregrounding the importance of “the Dalit social” as a field of variegated power irreducible to the state. We ended with a discussion of the heterogeneity of Dalit sociopolitical formations, what makes “Dalit” cohere as a category, and future directions for the field of Dalit Studies.

Read the transcript here

References

Ramnarayan Rawat and K. Satyanarayana eds. Dalit Studies (Duke University Press, 2016)

Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana, and Sanal Mohan eds. Dalit Journeys for Dignity: Religion, Freedom, and Caste (SUNY Press, 2025)

Rajni Kothari, “Rise of the Dalits and the Renewed Debate on Caste.” In State and

Politics in India, edited by Partha Chatterjee, 439–58 (New Delhi: Oxford University

Press, 1998).

Gopal Guru, “The Language of Dalit-Bahujan Political Discourse.” In Dalit Identity and

Politics, edited by Ghanshyam Shah, 96–107 (New Delhi: Sage, 2001).

Baburao Bagul, Dalit Sahitya ajache Kranti Vidynana (Nagpur: Buddhist Publishing

House, 1978).

Belcchi: village in Patna district of Bihar where eight Dalits and three Backward Caste men were killed by members of the landowning Kurmi caste in 1977.

Keezhvenmani: hamlet in Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu where upper caste landlords burnt alive 44 Dalit agricultural laborers in 1968.

Karamchedu: village in Bapatla district of Andhra Pradesh where members of the Kamma landholding caste murdered six Dalit men, raped three Dalit women, and displaced hundreds of Dalit families in 1985.

Vempenta: village in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh where, in response to the killing of a village official by the People’s War Group, landholders killed more than thirty Dalits and burned more than 100 of their houses in 1998.

Chundur: village in Bapatla district of Andhra Pradesh where members of the Reddy landholding caste killed eight Dalit men in 1991.

Mandal Commission:

Divya Cherian, Merchants of Virtue

B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

Phule: Jyotirao Phule was an anti-caste social reformer and writer from Maharashtra.

NTR: Indian actor and politician who served as the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh for four terms between 1983 and 1995.

Mahad Satyagraha: mass mobilization by B.R. Ambedkar to claim Dalit access to a public water tank in Mahad, Maharashtra.

Ayyankali: Indian social reformer and lawmaker who worked for the advancemetnt of Dalits in the princely state of Travancore.

Ad Dharm: an anticaste movement in the 1920s that claimed a distinct identity for Dalits separate from Hinduism and Sikhism.

Adi Hindu Mahasabha: sociopolitical organization founded in 1923 by Dalit leader Swami Achhutanand in Uttar Pradesh that claimed for Dalits the identity of originary Hindus.

IITs: the Indian Institutes of Technology

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Christopher Campo-Bowen, "Visions of the Village: Ruralness, Identity, and Czech Opera" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Bartered Bride, a comic opera by Bedrich Smetana, premiered in Prague on March 30, 1866. Its pastoral love story and setting in a rural Czech village eventually became an enduring symbol of Czech nationalism. In Visions of the Village: Ruralness, Identity, and Czech Opera (Oxford University Press, 2025), Christopher Campo-Bowen examines how a particular image of the rural village in a set of Czech operas written between 1866 and 1904 became a powerful signifier for Czech ethnoracial and nationalist identity. He follows this conception of Czech identity and its entanglement with opera through the political changes in the years when the Czech lands were ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the upheaval that followed when the Empire collapsed in 1918 and the First Czechoslovak Republic was founded. In addition to composers and their operas, Campo-Bowen investigates the output of critics, administrators, and other urban intellectuals to understand the impact of village operas on public discourse. By setting his analysis within a discussion of how race was understood in nineteenth-century Europe, Campo-Bowen shows that this seemingly straightforward nationalist discourse was shot through with racialized essentialism and ideas about gender that were connected with larger political realities. He ends the book with a discussion of the resonances of this nineteenth-century conception of Czech identity in the current Czech Republic.

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Tsering Döndrup, "The Red Wind Howls" (Columbia UP, 2025)

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Red Wind Howls (Columbia UP, 2025) is an unsettling, gripping, and darkly funny novel by Tsering Döndrup, one of modern Tibet’s most celebrated writers. First self-published in 2006 after no publisher was willing to take the political risk, the novel traces Tibetan experiences under Mao Zedong’s rule, from the 1958 Amdo uprising and the Great Leap Forward to the Cultural Revolution. Through a nonsequential narrative that moves back and forth between characters and events, The Red Wind Howls weaves together experiences of labor camps, unrelenting hunger, environmental devastation, and the destruction of language into a powerful exploration of twentieth-century Tibetan history.

In this episode, I speak with the novel’s translator, Christopher Peacock, about the challenges of translating a work that weaves together oral storytelling and history. We discuss the recurring character Alak Drong, the novel’s striking use of dark humor, the ways its characters navigate famine, labor camps, political campaigns, and shifting systems of survival, and above all the importance of reading literature by Tibetan authors.

Listeners should also seek out Chris’s translation of Tsering Döndrup’s short story collection, The Handsome Monk and Other Stories, and his article on the use of language in Tsering Döndrup’s fiction, here.

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Naomi Kanakia, "What's So Great About the Great Books?: Why You Should Read Classic Literature (Even Though It Might Destroy You) (Princeton UP, 2026)

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Writer Naomi Kanakia has spent her adult life reading the so-called “great books,” those classic works of literature which are–depending who you ask–either deeply unfashionable, or a time-honored testament to human accomplishment.

With What’s So Great About the Great Books: Why You Should Read Classic Literature (Even Though It May Destroy You) (Princeton UP, 2026) Kanakia, a devoted lay reader, unpacks popular anxieties surrounding classic writers like Milton, Tolstoy, and Proust. Using the unpretentious approach she has cultivated on her popular Substack, Woman of Letters, Kanakia addresses common reservations about the great books, questions about why we should bother with literature with dated politics, or books exceedingly difficult to read. For plenty of readers, particularly those who came of age in the last decade, the answers may not be clear. Kanakia offers an intriguing reminder to challenge ourselves, to look beyond the walls of the ideology we have constructed for ourselves. (Just don’t ask her about “Leviathan” by Thomas Hobbes.) “What’s So Great about the Great Books” is out now with Princeton University Press.

Megan Peck Shub (AKA Galley Hag) is a writer, journalist, and a producer who has won Emmy and Peabody awards for her work on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on HBO. She previously worked on Finding Your Roots with Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the PBS history docuseries. Megan’s eclectic slate runs the gamut from literature to pop culture to politics, with a particular focus where those topics intersect.

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Marco Pompili, "Public Housing in Japan: The Dōjunkai Apartments One Hundred Years On" (Brill, 2026)

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Public Housing in Japan: The Dōjunkai Apartments One Hundred Years On (Brill, 2026) is the first comprehensive English-language examination of the Dōjunkai Foundation (1924-2024). Compiled and edited by Dr. Marco Pompili through interviews and studies, it is a must-read for anyone interested in modern Japanese architecture. The Dōjunkai Apartments (1924-1934), the Foundation's best-known work, introduced apartment living to Japan in response to crucial historical and social challenges such as urban reconstruction after the devastating earthquake of 1923 and the emergence of new working and middle classes. The book's texts, by prominent scholars and architects, as well as a series of original drawings and photographs from the period, bring the work of the Dōjunkai Foundation back to life 100 years after its founding. While the Dōjunkai Apartments have unfortunately been lost in the rapid changes and greedy redevelopment typical of Japanese metropolises, this book seeks to contribute to the preservation of their memory and their significance.

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Eckart Otto, "Deuteronomy in the Pentateuch and the Hexateuch: Studies of the Literary History of the Pentateuch and the Hexateuch within the Framework of Deuteronomy" (Mohr Siebeck, 2000)

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Deuteronomy in the Pentateuch and the Hexateuch: Studies of the Literary History of the Pentateuch and the Hexateuch within the Framework of Deuteronomy (Mohr Siebeck, 2000; unrevised e-book edition, 2019), Eckart Otto contributes to the study of Deuteronomy, the Pentateuch, the Hexateuch. The book argues that both the Hexateuch and the Pentateuch developed ideas already articulated in the Deuteronomistic form of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy therefore appears not simply as one component of the Pentateuch, but as a central point of departure for understanding the formation of larger compositions.

Otto places Deuteronomy at the centre of the literary history of ancient Israel. Rather than treating Deuteronomy, the Priestly Writing, Joshua, and Pentateuchal traditions as isolated units, he reconstructs the processes through which these texts were connected, revised, and reinterpreted. The combination of the Priestly Writing with Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic Book of Joshua produced a Hexateuchal composition extending from Genesis through Joshua. A later Pentateuchal redaction separated the Torah from Joshua and placed Deuteronomy’s covenant at Horeb at its centre.

The Hexateuch reaches its narrative conclusion with Israel’s arrival in the promised land, while the Pentateuch ends with Moses and Israel still outside the land. This makes Torah and covenant, rather than possession of the land, central to Israel’s identity. Otto also argues that Hexateuchal and Pentateuchal redactors did not merely use a completed Deuteronomy; they reshaped Deuteronomy itself to serve their conceptions of covenant, law, land, and Israel’s relationship with God.

Deuteronomy contributed to the emergence of the Hexateuch and Pentateuch, but the later redactions of these larger works also transformed Deuteronomy. Otto connects these literary developments with conflicts among priestly groups in the Persian period and with debates over priesthood, law, authority, identity, and inherited traditions.

Through this approach, Otto challenges the traditional separation between Pentateuchal and Deuteronomic research. His study also has implications for the hypothesis of a “Deuteronomistic History,” inviting scholars to reconsider the relationship between Deuteronomy, Joshua, the historical books, the Priestly Writing, and the final form of the Torah. It also contributes to discussions of biblical historiography, authoritative scripture, law and narrative, and the Torah’s emergence as Judaism’s foundational text.

In this New Books Network interview, Professor Otto explains the book’s central arguments in his own words. The conversation addresses the relationship between Pentateuch and Hexateuch, the integration of Priestly and Deuteronomistic traditions, the role of Joshua, the covenant at Horeb, and the priestly conflicts that shaped the Torah in the Persian period.

This conversation is a companion to Željko Stanojević’s interview with Eckart Otto about Max Weber’s Studies of Ancient Judaism: The Historical Foundation for a Theory of the Modern Age.

Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. Eckart Otto is a distinguished German theologian and biblical scholar, known for his work on Deuteronomy, the Pentateuch, biblical law, the Hebrew Bible, and ancient Near Eastern legal traditions. He is Professor Emeritus of Old Testament and Hebrew Bible at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and a member of the Editorial Board of the European Hebrew Journal.

This interview is hosted by Professor Željko Stanojević, a Serbian-Israeli Hebraist, biblical philologist, lexicographer, translator, and Semitic-language researcher. He is President of the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the European Hebrew Journal, and a host on the New Books Network.

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David N. Gellman, "Liberty’s Chain: Slavery, Abolition, and the Jay Family of New York" (Cornell UP, 2022)

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Edward Blum interviews David N. Gellman on his book Liberty’s Chain: Slavery, Abolition, and the Jay Family of New York (Cornell UP, 2022).

In Liberty's Chain, David N. Gellman shows how the Jay family, abolitionists and slaveholders alike, embodied the contradictions of the revolutionary age. The Jays of New York were a preeminent founding family. John Jay, diplomat, Supreme Court justice, and coauthor of the Federalist Papers, and his children and grandchildren helped chart the course of the Early American Republic.
Liberty's Chain forges a new path for thinking about slavery and the nation's founding. John Jay served as the inaugural president of a pioneering antislavery society. His descendants, especially his son William Jay and his grandson John Jay II, embraced radical abolitionism in the nineteenth century, the cause most likely to rend the nation. The scorn of their elite peers—and racist mobs—did not deter their commitment to end southern slavery and to combat northern injustice.
John Jay's personal dealings with African Americans ranged from callousness to caring. Across the generations, even as prominent Jays decried human servitude, enslaved people and formerly enslaved people served in Jay households. Abbe, Clarinda, Caesar Valentine, Zilpah Montgomery, and others lived difficult, often isolated, lives that tested their courage and the Jay family's principles.

The personal and the political intersect in this saga, as Gellman charts American values transmitted and transformed from the colonial and revolutionary eras to the Civil War, Reconstruction, and beyond. The Jays, as well as those who served them, demonstrated the elusiveness and the vitality of liberty's legacy. This remarkable family story forces us to grapple with what we mean by patriotism, conservatism, and radicalism. Their story speaks directly to our own divided times.

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Margaret E. Farrar and Adam Kaul, "Becoming Utopia: History, Heritage, and Sustainability in the American Midwest" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Becoming Utopia: History, Heritage, and Sustainability in the American Midwest (U Nebraska Press, 2026) centers on the tiny community of Bishop Hill, Illinois, whose marketing materials call it “Utopia on the Prairie,” home to a radical communal religious sect that emigrated from Sweden in the 1840s. Through rich textual and ethnographic analyses, Dr. Margaret E. Farrar and Dr. Adam Kaul tell the story of what happens when a small, historically significant Midwestern community negotiates the contradictory impulses of twenty-first-century place-making. At first glance, Bishop Hill is simply a small heritage tourism destination in Midwestern flyover country, but further inspection reveals it to be a complex place that mixes a deep nostalgia for the past undercut by complex origin stories of displacement and colonialism, an active historic preservation movement amid futuristic green energy technologies built by multinational corporations, and a commitment to localism in the context of omnipresent globalization.

Based on fifteen years of fieldwork, Becoming Utopia is an interdisciplinary contribution to conversations about the importance and meaning of place-making, heritage-making, and sustainability (social, economic, and environmental) in the twenty-first century.

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Oli Mould, "Postcapitalist cities: Towards a common urban future" (Manchester UP, 2026)

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What is the future for cities? In Postcapitalist Cities: Towards a common urban future (Manchester University Press, 2026) Oli Mould, a Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London, looks at the past, present and future of the city to consider alternatives to the current capitalist urban model that dominates the world. Re-examining key concepts such as gentrification and care, introducing new ideas like solarpunk, and packed with a huge range of global case studies, the book offers approaches to resist, reject and reimagine the city. A significant intervention for geographers and social scientists, the book will also be essential reading for anyone living in a city today.

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Chad Wellmon, "After the University: Higher Education and the Future of Intellectual Work" (JHU Press, 2026)

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What is a university for? Is it a sanctuary for disciplined study, or has it become something else entirely? In After the University: Higher Education and the Future of Intellectual Work (JHU Press, 2026), Chad Wellmon traces the long and often uneasy relationship between higher learning and the institutions that claim to protect it. Moving from the guilds of medieval Paris and the knowledge factories of Enlightenment-era Göttingen to the research empires of Berlin and Berkeley, Wellmon shows how the modern university has repeatedly reshaped itself to serve shifting social and political demands.

Across centuries, the goods of disciplined study—the joy of reading, the virtues of intellectual rigor, and the possibility of self-formation—have been overshadowed by the pursuit of external rewards such as money, prestige, and power. Part institutional history and part philosophical reflection, After the University examines how today's institutions defend themselves not in the name of learning but in the language of productivity, innovation, and economic utility. Drawing on his experiences as a scholar, teacher, administrator, and witness to crises such as white supremacist marches and the COVID-19 pandemic, Wellmon illustrates how universities justify themselves through the outputs of graduates, research discoveries, and workforce training while leaving unmentioned the very practices that once defined them.

Despite this transformation, Wellmon argues that the university's current state of turmoil exposes a new, enticing possibility: recognizing the practices of disciplined study as goods worth valuing in and of themselves rather than simply as means to other ends. With insight and urgency, After the University asks whether our institutions can still nurture intellectual desire—or whether we must find new homes for the life of the mind.

Soumyadeep Guha is a fourth-year PhD student in the History Department at Binghamton University, New York. He is interested in historical research focusing on themes such as Agrarian/Environmental History, History of Science and Tech, Global History, and their intersections.

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Marisa Karyl Franz, "Near and Desired Things: Shamanism in Late Imperial Local Siberian Museums" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Near and Desired Things: Shamanism in Late Imperial Local Siberian Museums (Cornell University Press, 2026) reveals nineteenth-century Siberian museums, built on Indigenous land and increasingly populated by political exiles, as active sites of ethnographic knowledge-making and centers of scientific research, regional identity, and colonial authority. Rather than collecting from distant colonies, these institutions concentrated on surrounding communities, their tools, beliefs, and everyday lives, to configure ideas about what counted as legitimate knowledge.

Dr. Marisa Karyl Franz traces how Siberian museums helped construct shamanism as an ethnographic category. Shamans, while familiar and embedded in local space, were recast as icons of cultural otherness or representatives of an imagined primitive past. Through the evolving languages of science, anthropology, and empire, the local was abstracted and exported, feeding global museum networks and shaping modern anthropology. Yet, the museums held onto the intimacy of place, preserving tensions between familiarity and spectacle, documentation and desire.

By placing Siberia at the center of a broader intellectual and political history, Near and Desired Things challenges assumptions about where modern knowledge is made and redefines provincial spaces as sites of innovation and as forces that reshape the terms of empire.

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Stefan Al, "Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home" (Norton, 2026)

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A sweeping history of humanity’s most fundamental creation―the home―and its effects on the land, cities, and people themselves.

Americans spend, on average, 90 percent of their lives indoors, with two-thirds of that time spent in their homes. Globally, the construction and maintenance of residential buildings account for a staggering portion of carbon emissions. In this timely and fascinating work, architect and urban-planning scholar Stefan Al deftly weaves together archaeology, engineering, social history, and environmental science to explain how our homes have developed through the ages and in turn shaped civilization and the planet itself.

From tiny pit-houses in the Levant and Mesoamerica thousands of years ago to soaring skyscrapers in Dubai, New York, and Shanghai today, Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home (W. W. Norton & Company, 2026) takes readers on a swift and absorbing tour of the evolution of human habitation. Whisking readers from ancient Pompeii to contemporary Hong Kong, industrial-age Liverpool to postwar Levittown, Al shows how our choices in housing have both reflected and affected ideas about gender roles, privacy, and comfort. Discover how seemingly mundane elements―like door-knockers and corridors―have altered everyday interactions, and how material choices have remade the planet’s surface. He also confronts the darker side of domesticity, exposing the unintended consequences of our architectural choices across millennia, including smoke-filled Neolithic dwellings, deadly fires in crowded Roman apartment buildings, and worsening social isolation in car-dependent suburbs. Finally, he examines the myths and reality of future housing, including 3D-printed homes and space architecture built by robots.

Drawing from personal experiences across global cities and professional insights, Al illuminates how our choices in housing continue to influence everything from social relationships to climate change, ultimately arguing that understanding this rich history is crucial for building a more sustainable future. With billions more people needing housing in the coming decades, Dwelling on Earth reveals how we might transform humanity’s defining challenge into our greatest opportunity.

HOST BIO: Alex Hallbom is an urban planner and writer based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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Beyond Free Speech: Why AI Governance Demands Freedom of Thought

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Are we driving our technology, or is it starting to drive us? In this thought-provoking conversation, Eli Karetny sits down with researcher and author Eduardo Albrecht to explore the invisible, rapidly encroaching frontier of AI governance and data surveillance.Moving far beyond traditional debates about data privacy, Albrecht warns of a near future where the state and corporate partners bypass human speech entirely, relying instead on "sentiment detection" to ascribe thoughts and make decisions that impact our physical lives. Together, they trace the historical trajectory of control—from early fingerprinting and eugenics to modern biometrics and neural implants—and challenge the modern illusion of state efficiency at the expense of human agency.Tune in for a deep dive into the two fundamental rights required to safeguard the future of democracy: absolute transparency over our data, and an evolving, radical defense of our collective freedom of thought.

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Ka-ming Wu, "Infrastructural Urbanism in Contemporary China: Volunteering, Infrastructures and Civic Imaginations" (Leiden UP, 2026)

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Infrastructural Urbanism in Contemporary China: Volunteering, Infrastructures and Civic Imaginations (Leiden University Press, 2026) examines how Chinese citizens negotiate their everyday experiences with urban spaces, improved city infrastructure, and an increasingly tight surveillance regime through volunteering. This book asks how citizens connect to city spaces where facilities for transit, culture, and leisure have been substantially upgraded. Drawing on extensive research, Ka-ming Wu investigates how citizens conduct volunteer activities that not only promote party-state campaigns and engage with new urban spaces and services, but also experiment with political, social, and cultural rights, including advocating for the rights of people with disabilities and promoting unofficial interpretations of national history.

The book argues that volunteering has become an urban practice through which citizens navigate existing hierarchies of urban and rural status, gender, age, and ability, while contesting top-down, mega-event-driven urbanization. It situates Chinese everyday urbanism within the context of China's hosting of multiple international events, its expanding public and digital infrastructures, heightened party-state control, and burgeoning digital activism. The book contributes to the infrastructural turn in urban anthropology and the field of China studies, offering a new understanding of urban rights and public access in contemporary China.

NOTE: The book Ka-ming Wu mentioned in the interview is Stephen Graham’s Cities under Siege: The New Military Urbanism (Verso, 2010).

Wu Ka-ming is Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, with courtesy appointments in the Department of Anthropology and the Centre for China Studies. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, her work is interdisciplinary, situated at the intersection of cultural studies, anthropology, China studies, and environmental humanities. She is the author of Reinventing Chinese Tradition: The Cultural Politics of Late Socialism (UIP 2015) and the co-author of Living with Waste (CUP 2017).

Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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Caryl Flinn and Dana B. Polan, "The Patty Duke Show and the American Sixties: Hot Dogs and Crêpes Suzette" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In The Patty Duke Show and the American Sixties: Hot Dogs and Crêpes Suzette (Oxford UP, 2026), the first ever published on The Patty Duke Show (1963-66), Caryl Flinn and Dana Polan examine the significance of this classic US sitcom within popular culture and within American society at the time. Child acting sensation Patty Duke plays the all-American Patty as well as her staid British counterpart Cathy, who comes to live with Patty's family in Brooklyn. Far from being a frivolous show, the show's use of twin girls--and their comic antics--offers glimpses into different identities and possibilities to try on, in keeping not only with girls' popular culture of the time but the optimism of John F. Kennedy's Camelot years.
At the same time, the series plugged into many of the contradictions of the mid-1960s. It flirted, as much of the US did, with foreign cultures, such as Julia Child's mediation of Frenchness, only to return to and reaffirm core US values. Like Kennedy, who encouraged the country's youth to engage with the world at large, the show gestures towards a cosmopolitanism that, ultimately, retreats into an American-based perspective, as evidenced in the series' preferential treatment of Patty over Cathy--despite the two characters being played by one actor.
Drawing on archival research, Flinn and Polan bring to light the show's production background, which has until now been largely lost to history, as well as considering the series's conception, reception, its many tie-in products, and its ongoing afterlife in the decades since its initial broadcast. In so doing, they reveal hidden and overt issues that shaped American culture and ideology of the 1960s.

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Hiroshima's Last Witnesses and Japan's Nuclear Future

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

M. G. Sheftall has lived in Japan since 1987. He has a PhD in international relations and modern Japanese history from Waseda University in Tokyo. Since 2001, he has been a professor of modern Japanese cultural history and communication at the Faculty of Informatics of Shizuoka University. He lives in Hamamatsu, Japan.

Amy Chavez talks about Sheftall's books on the Asia Pacific War, in particular Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses and Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses both oral histories featuring interviews with survivors of the atomic bombs.

Has Japan's 80 years of peace education been all for naught? The book serves as a prescient warning given the current political climate and Japan's complex relationships with the US, Taiwan, China, and the broader world. Recent developments—including Nihon Hidankyo's 2024 Nobel Peace Prize and the ongoing protests against revising Article 9—bring this subject into sharp focus. Against this backdrop, the author offers his own perspective on Japan's nuclear future.

The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press.

Podcast host Amy Chavez is author of The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island, and Amy's Guide to Best Behavior in Japan.

Subscribe to the BOA podcast from your favorite podcast service.

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Ryan Schweitzer, "Homosexuality in Central Asia: Stories of Hardship and Hope" (B&N Press, 2026)

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Homosexuality in Central Asia: Stories of Hardship and Hope (Barnes and Noble Press, 2026) is Ryan Michael Schweitzer's collection of first-hand narratives from LGBTQ individuals across Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Drawing on years of fieldwork in the region, Schweitzer gathers stories of violence, blackmail, forced marriage, surveillance, and exile alongside quieter accounts of love, friendship, and endurance. Rather than presenting a single Central Asian LGBTQ experience, the book traces how legal status, state security apparatuses, family structure, and religious revival intersect differently in each country to shape what visibility and safety look like for queer people in the region.

About the host

Cholpon Ramizova is a London-based creator and researcher. She holds a Master's in Migration, Mobility and Development from SOAS, University of London. Her thematic interests are in migration, displacement, identity, gender and nationalism—and in the ways these intersect within the Central Asia context.

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Deborah Barer, "Going Off Script: Improvisational Judgment in the Talmud" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What does it really mean to go "beyond the letter of the law"? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with scholar Deborah Barer to discuss her book Going Off Script: Improvisational Judgment in the Talmud, which offers a surprising new interpretation of one of the Talmud's most enduring ethical concepts: lifnim mi-shurat ha-din.

For generations, lifnim mi-shurat ha-din has been understood to mean acting "beyond the letter of the law"—choosing generosity or compassion over strict legal obligation. Barer challenges that assumption. Through a close reading of classical rabbinic texts, she argues that the Talmud originally used the phrase not to describe a particular kind of moral act, but a particular way of making decisions. Rather than rigidly following established rules, rabbis sometimes improvised, departing from expected patterns in pursuit of the right outcome for a unique case.

By tracing how this idea developed from in the Talmud, Barer uncovers how one phrase evolved into a cornerstone of Jewish ethical thought. Her work invites readers to rethink the relationship between law and morality, showing that creativity and flexibility have always been part of the rabbinic legal tradition.

Together, Barer and Katz explore why improvisation matters in Jewish law, how the Talmud balances consistency with compassion, and what this ancient model of decision-making can teach us about navigating difficult moral questions today.

Deborah Barer is Senior Faculty with the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. She holds a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia, with an emphasis on rabbinic literature and Jewish ethics. Previously, she was Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Towson University, and she has also taught at Oberlin College and for the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies (North America). She served as the editor of the Journal of Textual Reasoning.

Rabbi Marc Katz is the senior Rabbi at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, NJ. He is the author of Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS)

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Edward T. G. Anderson, "Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Hindu nationalism is transforming India as an increasingly dominant ideology and political force. But it is also a global phenomenon, with sections of India’s vast and influential diaspora drawn to, or actively supporting, right-wing Hindu nationalism. Indians overseas can be seen as an important, even inextricable, aspect of the movement. This is not a new dynamic—diasporic Hindutva has grown over many decades.

Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism (Oxford University Press, 2024) explores how and why the movement became popular among India’s diaspora from the second half of the twentieth century. It shows that Hindutva ideology and its plethora of organizations have a distinctive resonance and way of operating overseas; the movement and its ideas perform significant, particular functions for diaspora communities.
Edward T.G. Anderson argues that transnational Hindutva cannot simply be viewed as an export: this phenomenon has evolved and been shaped into an important aspect of diasporic identity, a way for people to connect with their homeland. He also sheds light on the impact of conservative Indian politics on British multiculturalism, migrant politics and relations between various minority communities.

Sachin Nikarge has extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard’ as well as ‘soft’ power domains.

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Yana Skorobogatov, "Fate in My Hands: The Death Penalty in the Soviet Union" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Yana Skorobogatov about her book, Fate in My Hands: The Death Penalty in the Soviet Union (University of Chicago Press, 2026). From 1954 to 1991 in the Soviet Union, nearly 40,000 citizens were executed after the death penalty was reinstated as a punishment for homicide. Fate in My Hands introduces readers to the many citizens in this period—women and men of all ages and backgrounds—who found themselves on death row and tried to escape it in the only way available to them: asking for forgiveness. Examining the letters and objects the dead left behind, Skorobogatov recovers their voices and allows them to speak anew. The book is a striking portrait of life in the Soviet Union and the citizens who dreamed of new possibilities even as they faced their tragic end. Using a corpus of never-before-accessed criminal court records, Fate in My Hands brings readers not just into the police interrogation rooms, courthouses, and cells where the condemned awaited their fates, but into the homes, workplaces, and psychiatric hospitals where families and friends alike came together to pursue an elusive, bitter justice in the wake of violent tragedy.

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Leopoldina Fortunati, "The Arcana of Reproduction: Housewives, Prostitutes, Workers and Capital" (Verso, 2025)

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The definitive feminist analysis of reproductive and ‘caring’ labor to emerge from Italian feminism of the 1970s.

Emerging from the great social upheavals that contested the sexual and racial divisions of labor globally in the 1970s, Leopoldina Fortunati’s classic work expands and transforms how we analyze the sphere of reproduction, redefining the value of the individual’s life and the labor performed in the home.

Released here for the first time in its unabridged form with historical notation and contemporary commentary, The Arcana of Reproduction: Housewives, Prostitutes, Workers and Capital (Verso, 2025) is a foundational text and essential contribution to today’s discussions of social reproduction and the history of Italian feminism. Fortunati’s work provides some of the earliest theorizations of ‘immaterial,’ ‘affective,’ and ‘caring’ labor, and of the role of technology in reproduction, articulated decades before their popular reception in English academic literature. Reading this work some 50 years after its original publication gives us the tools to analyze the contemporary state of capitalist development and of women’s lives today. The text remains prefigurative and essential in our era of digital labor.

Leopoldina Fortunati was a core member of Lotta Femminsta and the Wages for Housework Movement internationally. Along with Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Selma James and Silvia Federici, she composed many of the group’s core theoretical and political texts. Her early work continues to inform movements concerned with struggles over reproduction globally and in subsequent work as a theorist of media and technology, Fortunati has been at the vanguard of contemporary theory addressing the relation between gendered labor and technology.

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Jin Y. Park and Sumi Lee eds., "Korean Buddhism: Selected Readings from Primary Texts" (U Hawaii Press, 2026)

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Today we're looking at a book that fills a gap that has existed for a long time. Korean Buddhism: Selected Readings from Primary Texts (U Hawaii Press, 2026), edited by Jin Park and Sumi Lee and published this year by the University of Hawai'i Press, is the first comprehensive introduction to the Korean Buddhist tradition built entirely around primary sources. Bringing together twenty-five foundational texts spanning the seventh to the twenty-first centuries, each translated and introduced by a leading scholar, it offers an unparalleled window into the intellectual and spiritual heritage of Korean Buddhism.

The volume opens with the towering figures of Wŏnhyo and Ŭisang and, over the course of the book, introduces readers to other foundational figures such as Chinul and his influential synthesis of sudden awakening and gradual cultivation, Hyech'o's pilgrimage to India, the great nineteenth-century Buddhist reviver Gyeongheo, and pioneering nun and feminist Kim Iryŏp.

Each selection is accompanied by a scholarly introduction that places the text in its historical and doctrinal context. Together, the readings explore the full breadth of the Korean Buddhist tradition, covering doctrine, philosophy, meditation, pilgrimage, monastic life, interreligious debate, social engagement and reform, feminism, and the distinctive character of Korean Buddhism itself.

Whether you are a scholar, a practitioner, or simply curious about Korean Buddhism, this volume provides an ideal gateway to exploring its greatest thinkers, texts and ideas. By bringing together the writings of its most influential figures throughout the span of fourteen centuries of Korean Buddhism, this volume puts on full display the richness, sophistication, originality, and complexity of one of the world's great yet vastly underappreciated Buddhist traditions.

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Russia’s Jews in World War I

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

When World War I began, the Russian Empire was home to more than 5.7 million Jews, the most densely settled Jewish population in the world. Thirty years later, by 1945, only remnants of this civilization remained. The years of World War I, from 1914 to 1918, launched nearly all the forces that led to this epic destruction.

In A Nation of Refugees: Russia's Jews in World War I, Polly Zavadivker tells how Jewish civilians experienced that war and its epicenter of violence on the Eastern Front. World War I transformed the lives of East European Jews in ways that were second only to the Holocaust in their magnitude. State violence and forced migration determined many aspects of Jewish wartime and revolutionary experience. These policies not only destroyed much of traditional Jewish life but also inadvertently compelled a transformation of Jewish civil society. The collapse of Russian imperialism enabled the growth of an empire-wide humanitarian campaign to rescue the “nation of refugees,” whose plight embodied that of the Jewish nation itself. By exploring this history of Jewish humanitarianism during World War I, Zavadivker provides the origin stories of key leaders and public institutions that served East European Jewry in the interwar years and during the Holocaust.

Join YIVO for a discussion with Zavadivker about this book, led by historian Eliyana Adler.

Buy the book: here

This book talk originally took place on February 25, 2025.

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Gianluca Fantoni, "Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers: A History of the Jewish Brigade" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2026)

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers: A History of the Jewish Brigade (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2026) tells the compelling story of the Jewish Brigade Infantry Group (JBG), a five-thousand-strong military unit, recruited primarily from the Jewish population of Palestine, and the only exclusively Jewish military unit to fight under the British flag during the Second World War. Gianluca Fantoni reconstructs the military and human experience of the brigade in Italy and investigates its enduring and controversial place in memory and public debate.

Formed in 1944, the JBG saw combat in the final stages of the Italian campaign, where its soldiers fought with distinction against German forces. After the war, many of its members – who often had little or no military training, and included artists, scientists, and farmers – engaged in clandestine efforts to smuggle Holocaust survivors and weapons into Palestine, laying the groundwork for the future Israeli state. Others sought retribution against Nazis and collaborators in acts that revealed both the trauma of genocide and the desire for justice.

Far more than a conventional military history, Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers is both a critical study of the political uses of history and a vivid, passionate narrative that brings to life the men and women of the brigade. Accessible and engaging, this book offers readers a rare lens through which to understand the intersections of war, memory, and politics in twentieth-century Europe.

Roberto Mazza is currently a visiting scholar at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at robbymazza@gmail.com. Blusky and IG: @robbyref

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Andres Saenz de Sicilia, "Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx: From the Critique of Reason to the Critique of Society" (Brill, 2024)

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx: From the Critique of Reason to the Critique of Society is the latest book from Dr Andres Saenz De Sicilia, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University London. Andres’ excellent title, published with Brill and released in soft cover with Haymarket Books late last year, is an in-depth exploration of the concept of subsumption as it appears in the works of three great thinkers, and the relevance of the paradigm for modern critical theory.

In this book, Andres traces the concept of subsumption through Kant, Hegel, and Marx, in both its philosophical dimensions and its relevance to critical social theory. Andres examines the utilisation of subsumption as a conceptual framework whereby a particular is brought under a universal, up to the complex and dynamic operations of subsumption in modern-day capitalism, as a system that subsumes human life under the logic of value. As Andres illustrates through the intricate and careful argument in the book, following the use of subsumption in the work of these key theorists not only offers a new perspective to understand these thinkers, but helps articulate a historically-focused and robust framework to investigate the mechanisms of capitalist power. Of particular interest perhaps from a political economy perspective is Andres’ investigation of Marx’s journey through subsumption within the pages of Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx, and also how the theoretical framework of subsumption helps us understand production and social reproduction under capitalism.

Elliot Dolan-Evans is a sessional lecturer and tutor in law at Monash University and RMIT. His research investigates the political economy of global capitalism, forms of international governance, and questions of war and peace. His first book, Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF and the Conflict in Ukraine, is now out with Bristol University Press.

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Emma Parker, "Life Writing and the End of Empire: Homecoming in Autobiographical Narratives" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Life Writing and the End of Empire: Homecoming in Autobiographical Narratives (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024) examines how autobiographical writing reflects the psychological and cultural afterlives of the British Empire. Rather than treating decolonization as a completed historical moment, Emma Parker shows how empire continues to haunt personal memory, identity, and ideas of home. Through close readings of memoirs and autobiographical texts by writers such as Penelope Lively, J. G. Ballard, Doris Lessing, and Janet Frame, the book explores how individuals who grew up in colonial settings experienced their later arrival in Britain as a complex and often disorienting “homecoming.” Many of those writers traveled to Britain in the decades following WWII, during a period of rapid decolonization. Yet when they arrived in London, they often discovered that the imperial “mother country” they had imagined from afar did not match the reality of postwar Britain. Their autobiographies reveal a profound sense of displacement, being both connected to and estranged from the imperial center.

In this episode, Ibrahim Fawzy sat down with Emma Parker to discuss the relationship between life writing and the end of the British Empire; the disorienting experience of colonial “homecoming;” and what autobiography can reveal about empire that other literary forms may conceal. They also explore colonial childhood and domestic space in the writings of Lively, Ballard, Lessing, and Frame, examining settler identity, displacement, memory, and the material afterlives of colonialism.

Emma Parker is Lecturer in Postcolonial Literature at Keele University, UK. Her research focusses on life writing, contemporary literature and colonialism. She has published articles in Critical Quarterly, Auto/Biography Studies, Life Writing, Wasafiri and Moving Worlds, and is a contributor to Documenting Trauma in Comics (2020). She is also co-editor of the collection British Culture After Empire (2022).

Ibrahim Fawzy is an Egyptian literary translator and writer. He is the translator of Hassan Akram’s A Plan to Save the World (Sandorf Passage, 2026). His interests include translation studies, Arabic literature, ecocriticism, disability studies, and migration literature.

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Edlie Wong, "Empire, Race, and Print Culture in the Black Pacific" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Empire, Race, and Print Culture in the Black Pacific (Cambridge University Press, 2026) is an Element which centers the 'Black Pacific' as a generative site for comparative and intersectional methodologies and transnational frameworks for thinking about racial formations, post-national literary forms, and cultural histories. At the end of the nineteenth century, US overseas expansion into the Pacific brought white supremacy and colonial rule into alignment. It also threw into greater relief the contradictions of US citizenship and national identity as legalized segregation and rising anti-Black violence foreclosed Reconstruction's possibilities. Race accrued dynamic new meanings in the age of new imperialism.

Focusing on the earliest of African American literary magazines, the Boston-based Colored American Magazine (1900–09) and its southern rival, the Atlanta-based Voice of the Negro (1904–7), in this Element, Dr. Edlie L. Wong examines the formative role of magazine and periodical writings in the development of early Black transpacific internationalism.

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The Microbiopolitics of Novel Foods

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What role do microbes play in aquaponic farming and cultivated meat production, and how might such novel food technologies impact microbiomes? In this episode, Ishita Dey of Gastronomica hosts Lukáš Senft, Tereza Stöckelová, and Varvara Borisova in a conversation about their new article, “The Microbiopolitics of Novel Foods: The Pro- and Antibiotic Implications of Cultivated Meat and Aquaponic Farming.” In a discussion that connects food futures with environment, sustainability, health, and technology, the research team shares insights from their multisited ethnography of indoor vertical farms, bioreactors, and alternative food production in Czechia. They illuminate the emergence of new food technologies and the regulatory landscape, discuss the demand for protein and alternative protein sources, and reflect on the broader implications for microbial diversity and resilience-building in food systems.

“The Microbiopolitics of Novel Foods: The Pro- and Antibiotic Implications of Cultivated Meat and Aquaponic Farming” by Lukáš Senft, Tereza Stöckelová, and Varvara Borisova, appears in issue 26.1 of Gastronomica. Their article is one of eleven in a newly published special section on microbes in food and food systems. Learn more about the two-part special section and access the articles in the Spring 2026 and Summer 2026 issues of the journal.

Lukáš Senft has a PhD in sociology from Charles University and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. His work on food systems has explored topics related to small-scale farming, mushroom foraging, precision agriculture, and the use of medicinal plants through multispecies ethnography and public scholarship.

Tereza Stöckelová is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and also an associate professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Charles University. An expert in social studies of science, her current research on food and health focuses on extended metabolism in relation to bodies, ecologies, and technologies.

Varvara Borisova recently completed her PhD in anthropology at Charles University and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences where she is pursuing research on science and technology, obesity, metabolism, and alternative proteins.

Ishita Dey is an assistant professor of sociology at South Asian University and a member of Gastronomica’s Editorial Collective. Her new book, a multisited ethnography of sweet-making titled Sweet Excess: Crafting Mishti in Bengal, was published by Routledge in 2025.

Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies is published by the University of California Press. Quarterly issues are available in print and online.

Listeners can now find the Gastronomica podcast on the New Books Network. Subscribe to Gastronomica’s podcast feed to stay updated on the newest episodes.

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Max Perry Mueller, "Wakara's America: The Life and Legacy of a Native Founder of the American West" (Basic Books, 2025)

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the mid-19th century, anyone who was anyone in the American West had heard of the Ute leader Wakara. Yet, by the early twenty first century, his story has been, if not forgotten, at the very least twisted and distorted into something that would have been unrecognizable to him and his contemporaries. In Wakara's America: The Life and Legacy of a Native Founder of the American West (Basic Books, 2025), University of Nebraska religious studies professor Max Perry Mueller not only sets the record straight on Wakara, his life, and his times, but also explains how and why his narrative grew to be so misused. It's a story of public history gone wrong, of grave robbing and NAGPRA, and above all about the complexities and contingencies of history. Mueller makes a convincing case that our understanding of Utah and the broader West has been incomplete without Wakara near the center of the story.

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Donniel Hartman, "Who Are the Jews—And Who Can We Become?" (Jewish Publication Society, 2023)

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of the New Books Network, I speak with Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman about his book Who Are the Jews and Who Can We Become? (Jewish Publication Society, 2023), the 2023 National Jewish Book Award Finalist in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience. Hartman is president of the Shalom Hartman Institute and holds the Kaufman Family Chair in Jewish Philosophy. His work has consistently addressed what constitutes Jewish peoplehood across a landscape of internal difference.

Hartman's central argument distinguishes between the Genesis covenant and the Exodus covenant. The Genesis covenant is a covenant of belonging: membership in the Jewish people that obtains by birth or by formal entry into the community, independent of belief or practice. The Exodus covenant, by contrast, is a covenant of aspiration, calling the people toward holiness, ethical development, and spiritual growth. Where the first establishes identity, the second establishes obligation.

In our discussion, Hartman emphasized that the Genesis covenant requires each community, and each individual, to relinquish the presumption of controlling a singular, authoritative account of the Jewish story. Read together, the two covenants do not divide the Jewish people into separate camps so much as describe the full shape of Jewish belonging: one covenant that secures the people as a people, and a second that gives that peoplehood its ongoing direction and purpose. Jewishness, on this account, transcends denominational boundaries—Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, secular, and otherwise—even as each tradition supplies its own particular mode of enacting the Exodus covenant's demand for growth.

Hartman situated this framework within a longer pattern in Jewish intellectual history: the recurring effort to locate an essential core beneath the full body of commandments, exemplified by Hillel's reduction of the Torah to a single ethical principle. This tendency toward distillation, he argued, helps explain how communities as historically and culturally distinct as Yemenite, Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and secular Israeli Jews continue to recognize one another as belonging to a single people, notwithstanding significant divergence in practice. Shared calendar and shared collective memory, in his formulation, do more to sustain peoplehood than uniformity of observance.

The conversation turned to the relationship between Jewish identity and the State of Israel. Hartman located Zionism itself within the Genesis covenant: attachment to the Jewish people's return to and sovereignty in the land of Israel is, on his account, a constitutive part of Jewish family and belonging, not a separate or optional commitment layered on top of it.

Hartman further addressed the changing status of intermarriage, noting a shift from its historical treatment as a violation of the Genesis covenant toward broader acceptance, particularly in Diaspora communities. He observed that a substantial proportion of Jewish spouses in intermarriages maintain Jewish identity, practice, and communal affiliation, complicating any straightforward inference from rising intermarriage rates to communal decline. Jewish continuity, on this account, is proving more resilient, and more complex, than earlier demographic anxieties assumed.

The conversation closed on the question of how Exodus Judaism—a Judaism oriented toward aspiration, self-criticism, and moral striving—can be sustained in a period marked by contested facts and by the anti-Zionism as antisemitism seen around the world. Hartman offered no definitive resolution, but argued for the continued value of engaging the argument itself: treating the Genesis covenant as the foundation that preserves collective belonging, and the Exodus covenant as the ongoing rationale for what that belonging is for.

As we continue the discussion to find common ground and appreciation of the greater Jewish story, follow Jewish Tapestry for engaging talks on Jewish heritage communities.

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Giulio Boccaletti, "The Environmental Republic: Why Citizens Will Save the World" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Republicanism is arguably the most powerful political idea in history, an extraordinary feat of human imagination that balances individual liberty with collective responsibility. The Environmental Republic: Why Citizens Will Save the World (Princeton University Press, 2026) reclaims this idea as the path to sustaining our life together on a changing planet, reframing our relationship to the environment not as a constraint on liberty but as its republican foundation.
Giulio Boccaletti argues that we must renew our commitment to freedom and civic responsibility through popular sovereignty. He presents the environmental republic as a necessary alternative to blind faith in technocratic management, the shallow moralizing and apocalyptic rhetoric of some activists, and the disingenuous skepticism of vested interests. Our environmental challenges are not simply about “agreeing on the facts” or living within technical limitations—they reflect a deeper failure of political institutions. Drawing on the history of ideas and real-world examples, Boccaletti presents a political framework that places our relationship to our surroundings at the heart of how we exercise our voice, coordinate collective action, and define development itself.
Offering hope in an anxious age of rising authoritarianism and widespread pessimism, The Environmental Republic challenges the false choice between environmental protection and human freedom, showing how place-based institutions can deliver both sustainability and human development through true self-governance.

Giulio Boccaletti is an author whose writings on natural resources security have been translated into several languages. He has held international leadership positions in the private and not-for-profit sectors. He is the scientific director of the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change, one of Europe’s largest research institutions focused on Earth science and transition economics, and cofounder of Chloris Geospatial, a space-tech company specializing in Earth observations. His books include Water: A Biography, and his work has been featured in acclaimed PBS series such as H2O: The Molecule That Made Us, Human Footprint, and The Future of Nature.

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Tom Lin, "Babylon, South Dakota" (Little, Brown and Co, 2026)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Today, we’re welcoming novelist Tom Lin back to the show, whose new novel Babylon, South Dakota (Little, Brown and Company: 2026) moves his fascination with the American West into stranger and more uncanny territory.

A Chinese family moves to a new farm in South Dakota; after the government takes an interest in a plot near their home for some Cold War-era experiments, the family’s life gets much odder, and much stranger. Babylon, South Dakota’s Cold War setting gives the novel a chance to explore nuclear dread, government conspiracies, and even an interest in the paranormal that’s reminiscent of the viral internet phenomenon, the SCP Foundation.

Listen to our interview with Tom Lin on The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu here!

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Babylon, South Dakota. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Amy B. Scher, "The Unexpected Afterlife of Salon Rose" (Tiny Ghost Press, 2026)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Amy B. Scher's The Unexpected Afterlife of Salon Rose (Tiny Ghost Press, 2026) college hopeful Salon Rose arrives to the Nowhere in Between, a way-station between life and death, only to learn she’s been murdered.

Returning to the life she had before is not an option, but before Salon can move on, she is determined to discover who was responsible for her death.

With the help of her new friends––all recently deceased-–and maybe even a fresh crush, Salon must learn to let go if she has any hope of getting out of there. Even if it means confronting some hard to swallow truths.

A darkly funny, touching, suspenseful, and relatable story about moving on, forgiving ourselves, and finding hope in the future.

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Steven Veerapen, "Overlord: A New History of the Life and Reign of Henry VIII" (Simon & Schuster, 2026

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Henry VIII is England’s most famous king. He is simultaneously the virtuous Renaissance prince gone wrong, the psychopathic, paranoid tyrant, the religious disruptor and the much-married glutton.

Overlord: The Life and Reign of Henry VIII (Birlinn, 2026) is a groundbreaking study of Henry’s life examines and destroys many of the long-repeated myths about this complex monarch: he was not particularly gluttonous, not particularly prudish, and not particularly messy in his religious changes. Nor did he see himself as simply King of England. Drawing on archival sources from across the British Isles, Dr. Steven Veerapen reveals how Henry fashioned an image of himself as a law-abiding and benevolent emperor who dreamed of uniting England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and swathes of France under Tudor rule.

Yet the image was false and the dream a nightmare for his queens, his ministers and many of his subjects. This new portrait shows Henry for what he really was: a self-aggrandising actor who, by fair means and foul – murder plots, marriage negotiations and military ventures – did all he could to realise his imperial fantasy.

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Hasidism in Poland on the Eve of the Holocaust

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Light of Learning (Oxford UP, 2024) tells the story of an unexpected Hasidic revival in Poland on the eve of the Holocaust. In the aftermath of World War I, as secularism spread, Hasidic leaders rapidly reinvented themselves as educators devoted to rescuing the youth by means of world-renowned yeshivas, Bais Yaakov schools for girls and women, and eventually underground yeshiva bunkers during the Holocaust. The Light of Learning belies notions of late Hasidic decadence and decline and transforms our understanding of Polish Jewry during its final hour.

Join YIVO for a presentation on this book with author Glenn Dynner along with performances of Hasidic nigunim by Lorin Sklamberg of the Klezmatics.

Buy the book: here

This lecture and performance originally took place on March 13, 2024.

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Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz and Alaka Atreya Chudal "The Swasthani Vrata Katha" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Swasthani Vrata Katha is the most widely read, recited, and listened to Hindu devotional text, especially of local indigenous origin, among Hindu laity in Nepal. Dedicated to and itself the physical embodiment of a local goddess named Swasthani, Nepali Hindus recite the Swasthani every year from cover to cover over the winter month of Magh (January–February). It is a collection of widely circulating Hindu myths about gods, demons, and divine dalliances that forefront Shiva, Sati, and Parvati but it is also a local folk story about women’s real, everyday hardships and the rewards of attending to one’s dharma and devotion to the goddess Swasthani. The Swasthani Vrata Katha: A Secret Vow to the Goddess (Oxford UP, 2026) is the first full-length English translation of the Swasthanifrom the original Nepali. Just like Parvati made Swasthani and her story known beyond the realm of the gods to the human realm, so, too, this translation makes them known beyond Nepal to a broad English-speaking audience.

Open Access: here

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On Behalf of HR Realizing Its Necessary Potential - Not as a Complaint Department

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Pat Garland is an HR leader, author, consultant and Adjunct Instructor at Loyola University’s Quinlan School of Business (in Chicago). Her career has spanned senior posts at Jim Beam, Anixter Intl, where she played a leading role in the company’s success over several decades. Pat is also an equestrian who finds dealing with horses easier than dealing with people (whose motivations often aren’t as clear, even to themselves).

Too often the Human Resources (HR) function at a company gets reduced to being a “hall monitor” or “complaint department” in the words of today’s spirited and pragmatic guest: Pat Garland. HR, when it realizes its potential, should function not as some quasi-clerical payroll and benefits-focused operation (though those functions are vital) but as an enabler of business growth through respecting talent. Most importantly for HR, Garland observes, is starting by understanding the actual business, and then helping to design the flow of people and ideas that enhance its success. Note she doesn’t mention policies. Because she’s anti-policy. So she fit in beautifully at Anixter, which was high on accountability but allergic to running a business on policies. The Anixter culture understood, as Pat clearly does, that everything starts with trusting people. And building talent starts with getting people into roles where the work comes naturally because its a fit. For what kind of tasks are they best suited? Ultimately, the HR bottom line is pretty simple: back to “trust your people.” Enable them to grow, rather than creating rules that allow leaders and managers to cast the blame on HR when things don’t work. The real need in any business is for leaders to lead and coach people well. A great HR leader is part psychologist, part lawyer, part actuary, part accountant, and 100% a humanist. Pat clearly is the latter. And her book, 33 Ways Not to Screw Up HR (NetWorlding Publishing, 2022), proves it.

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Laura Jockusch on Jewish Revenge after the Holocaust (JP)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

After a great human-wrought tragedy, how are victims and their kin made right? What does it mean to take revenge, to exact vengeance, to seek redress, to go vigilante in seeking justice? What counts as the proper or sufficient retaliation or retribution--and what can or should be left to the impartial third-person mechanisms of a justice system?

To ask about those troubling topics from a new angle, Brandeis University's Laura Jockusch (author, previously, of Collect and Record and Jewish Honor Courts) has written about Jewish revenge on genocide perpetrators in her searching, and shocking Jewish Revenge and the Holocaust. Drawing on her great erudition and painstaking archival research, she explores how views changed during and after the war--and in following decades when justice and vengeance came to seem potentially compatible, especially if revenge could be rendered an aesthetic or imaginative phenomenon.

Mentioned in the episode

Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds
Seekers for vengeance and also justice: Eli Wiesel and Simon Wiesenthal
The killing of Ernst Vom Rath (pretext for the Night of Broken Glass)
Aeschylus, The Oresteia (5th century B.C.)
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963, no episode of RTB would be complete without it...)
Bruce Robbins, Atrocity: A Literary History
Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States (1980)
Tony Judt Postwar (2005)
Recallable Books:
Zalman Gradovsky, The Last Consolation Vanished
Jean Amery, At the Mind's Limit: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities
Filip Müller Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers
Kleist, Michael Kohlhass (1810)

Read a transcript here.

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Cycling Cities: Lisbon and Tehran with M. Luísa Sousa and Kazem Afradi

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Cycling Cities is a series of books that investigates 150 years of cycling policy and practice across fifty cities in twenty-five countries, and keeps adding new cities to the list including, recently, Lisbon and Tehran.

In this episode, I interview two authors, M. Luísa Sousa and Kazem Afradi, from the teams of researchers that wrote Cycling Cities: The Lisbon Experience and Cycling Cities: The Tehran Experience.

These books uncover the histories of bicycles and their cyclists from Lisbon to Tehran, from the 19th century to the 21st century, and from royals to revolutionaries. As you’ll hear, while there are of course many differences between Lisbon and Tehran, there are also many commonalities in their cycling histories.

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Georgia Kernell, "Inside Parties: How Party Rules Shape Membership and Responsiveness" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Inside Parties: How Party Rules Shape Membership and Responsiveness (Cambridge UP, 2025) by Georgia Kernell examines how party rules determine how parties select candidates, nominate leaders, and set policy goals. Most research on party organisation pays very little attention to what happens within political parties; this book addresses this gap by examining how internal party rules and procedures shape party membership and political responsiveness. Drawing on an original dataset of party statutes covering 65 political parties across 20 parliamentary democracies, the book offers one of the most comprehensive studies of party organisation to date. The book develops a formal model of party membership and tests these hypotheses using cross-national surveys, member studies, experiments, and computer simulations of projected vote shares. The book finds that a party's level of decentralisation - the degree to which it incorporates rank and file members into decision making - determines which voters it best represents. Decentralised parties may attract more members to campaign for the party, but they do so at the cost of adopting more extreme positions that pull them away from moderate voters. The book challenges our understanding of inner-party democracy, it reveals that Parties that are more internally democratic don't necessarily end up being more representative or responsive to the electorate as a whole. This novel and comprehensive research is an indispensable resource not only for party scholars but also for anyone working on comparative politics and multi-method research. And for anyone who wants to sneak a peek into the "secret garden" of party organisation.

Satyaki Barua is a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Hyderabad. His research focuses on party organisation, party institutionalisation, and political mobilisation, particularly examining the interactions between the state, society, and political parties in India and South Asia. Outside of academia, Satyaki enjoys watching and discussing movies, as well as practising Hindustani classical music.

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In The Scholar’s Workshop: Hidden Histories of Collaboration and Authorship

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

For centuries, many of the world’s most influential thinkers relied on helpers who performed tasks such as taking dictation, correcting, indexing, composing, and endless copying. In the Scholar’s Workshop: Hidden Histories of Collaboration and Authorship (Princeton UP, 2026) introduces readers to these unsung scribes, assistants, and collaborators, showing how the scholarly enterprise is rarely as solitary as we tend to think. Dr. Blair traces how the learned have relied on helpers since antiquity, discussing how and when these amanuenses became visible in manuscript and occasionally in print and explaining why they were uniquely positioned to shape the posthumous legacy of their principal.

Taking an in-depth look at the later Renaissance, she reconstructs the private lives and academic pursuits of leading figures from the period such as the renowned humanist Erasmus, the reformer Martin Bucer, and Paris professors Adrien Turnèbe and Petrus Ramus. Dr. Blair paints multifaceted portraits of the servants, students, and family members who assisted in their work, drawing on sources ranging from scholarly texts in both draft and published forms to correspondence, annotations, biographical accounts, and household rules. Panoramic in scope, In the Scholar’s Workshop challenges conventional views about authorship and attribution while affirming the enduring importance of collaboration in scholarly work today.

Guest: Dr. Ann Blair is the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor in the Department of History at Harvard University. Her books include Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age and (with Paul Duguid, Anja-Silvia Goeing, and Anthony Grafton) Information: A Short History.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire with Simukai Chigudu

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 17:11:00 -0000

"In my home country, they call me a 'bornfree'." Simukai Chigudu was born in Zimbabwe, two years after the end of its bitter war of liberation - a war in which his father had fought. This is the story of his childhood journey through the chaos of that new country's birth to Britain, where he arrived alone, a teenager, burning with ambition but utterly lost in ways he had yet even to discover. Told with astonishing insight, his memoir describes the drama of his quest to belong and to succeed, and how his worldview was both shaped and shattered by Britain, ultimately setting him on a quest to uncover the truth of his parents' past. In excavating their story alongside his own, he brings us closer than ever before to understanding one of the greatest upheavals in modern times - the freeing of a continent from colonial rule - not as history or politics but as a psychological and emotional force, one that divides families from within, even while those same divisions bind them fiercely together across time.

Read the transcript here.

Simukai Chigudu is Associate Professor of African Politics at the Oxford Department of International Development and Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford University. He is broadly interested in the politics of global health and epidemics, race and identity, citizenship and activist movements, with a regional focus on Africa and the African diaspora.

Simukai is the author of The Political Life of an Epidemic: Cholera, Crisis and Citizenship in Zimbabwe (Cambridge University Press, 2020), an examination of the social and political causes and consequences of Zimbabwe’s catastrophic cholera outbreak in 2008/09, the most extensive in African history. This monograph won the Theodore J. Lowi First Book Award from the American and International Political Science Associations. He has conducted research in Zimbabwe, Uganda, The Gambia, and Tanzania, and has publications in several leading social science and medical journals.

Simukai has recently published his first book for the trade, Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire, published by The Bodley Head and Crown in March 2026. This book combines memoir, political history and cultural criticism to show how colonialism continues to shape politics, society and culture in Africa and in Britain and to explore what it really means to decolonise.

Prior to working in academia, Simukai was a medical doctor in the UK’s National Health Service. He holds a DPhil in International Development from the Oxford University for which he was awarded the biennial Audrey Richards Prize for the best doctoral thesis in African Studies examined at a UK university.

Simukai teaches on the MPhil in Development Studies and supervises DPhil students.

Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop.

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Dominic Roser et al., "All the Lives You Can Change: Effective Altruism for Christians" (Eerdmans, 2026)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

All the Lives You Can Change: Effective Altruism for Christians (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2026) is a practical guide for Christians who want their compassion, generosity and service to create meaningful change in the world. The book asks readers to look beyond good intentions and consider which choices can make the greatest difference in the lives of others.

The authors introduce effective altruism, an evidence-based approach to doing the most good, through a Christian framework. They connect careful reasoning, measurable outcomes and thoughtful stewardship with the biblical commands to love God and love our neighbors.

Drawing from Scripture, research and nonprofit experience, the book explores how Christians can give more wisely, choose careers with greater impact and direct their time, money and influence toward urgent global needs. It also encourages readers to expand their understanding of who counts as a neighbor, including people who may be distant, unfamiliar or easy to overlook.

Key Ideas:

Good intentions matter, but Christians should also consider the real outcomes of their efforts.
Loving our neighbor requires radical empathy that extends beyond the people and needs closest to us.
Every person has equal worth, but different causes and charitable approaches can have very different levels of impact.
Evidence, reason and data can serve as instruments of love when they help us understand what people truly need.
Giving to effective causes can sometimes accomplish far more than simply giving more.
Money, careers and influence are all forms of stewardship that can be used to address pressing and neglected global problems.
An impact-driven life is not about solving every problem. It is about faithfully focusing on the lives we genuinely can change.

One of the strongest ideas from the conversation is that Christian love should be centered on the person receiving help, not only on the intentions of the person giving it. Careful reasoning can help Christians become wiser stewards while taking Jesus’s command to love our neighbors seriously. If you read the book, you’ll learn practical ways to move beyond feeling overwhelmed with giving of your resources and focus on where your choices can create genuine change.

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Yiddish Language During the Holocaust

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Holocaust radically altered the way many East European Jews spoke Yiddish. Finding prewar language incapable of describing the imprisonment, death, and dehumanization of the Holocaust, prisoners added or reinvented thousands of Yiddish words and phrases to describe their new reality. These crass, witty, and sometimes beautiful Yiddish words – Khurbn Yiddish, or “Yiddish of the Holocaust” – puzzled and intrigued the East European Jews who were experiencing the metamorphosis of their own tongue in real time. Sensing that Khurbn Yiddish words harbored profound truths about what Jews endured during the Holocaust, some Yiddish speakers threw themselves into compiling dictionaries and glossaries to document and analyze these new words. Others incorporated Khurbn Yiddish into their poetry and prose. In Occupied Words: What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish, Hannah Pollin-Galay uses cultural history, philology, and literary interpretation to explore Khurbn Yiddish as a form of Holocaust memory and as a testament to the sensation of speech under genocidal conditions.

Join YIVO for a discussion with Pollin-Galay about this new book, led by historian Samuel Kassow.

Buy the book: here

This book talk originally took place on December 2, 2024.

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Katharina Stevens, "The Ethics of Argumentation" (Routledge, 2025)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Ethics of Argumentation (Routledge, 2025) offers a new approach to the theory of argumentation that conceptualizes argumentation as a fundamentally ethical activity whose norms are grounded in, and must be selected according to, moral reasons. Current normative approaches to argumentation do not treat ethics as an integral part of argumentation theory. This is at least in part due to a methodological commitment not to address internal states of the arguers, such as intentions and beliefs, which makes moral theorizing about argumentation difficult. This book presents three arguments for why ethics ought to be a central element in normative theorizing about argumentation. First, it shows that ethics is needed for providing normative argumentation theory with its foundation and for offering arguers reliable guidance for decision-making both about which norms ought to govern their arguing and how they should shape each argument they make. Second, it addresses some of the most persistent problems faced by currently dominant normative approaches to argumentation, most notably that they are only reliable under the assumption that unrealistic background conditions are fulfilled. Finally, it provides the groundwork for a systematic ethics of argumentation. It does so by showing how a function of argumentation can be justified via moral reasons and by providing the outlines for both an applied ethics of (meta-level) normative argument design and an applied role-ethics of object-level arguing. The Ethics of Argumentation (Routledge, 2025) is essential reading for researchers and graduate students in a wide range of disciplines-including philosophy, communication studies, linguistics, and rhetoric-who are interested in argumentation, critical thinking and social epistemology"

Katharina Stevens is a philosopher and argumentation theorist working at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. She is one of the editors of the journal Informal Logic and one of the directors of the Critical Thinking and Citizen Engagement Lab at the University of Lethbridge.

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Sara Pappas, "Naturalism's Imaginary Museum, French Art, and the Eclectic Nineteenth Century" (U Toronto Press, 2024)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Naturalism's Imaginary Museum, French Art, and the Eclectic Nineteenth Century (University of Toronto Press, 2024) examines one of the most revered art historical narratives of Western art: the famous turning point for painting and sculpture usually emblematized by the works of Édouard Manet and then the Impressionists. Instead of the usual revaluation of this turning point, Sara Pappas argues for the importance of the failure to find a cohesive story for the art world in the period itself, a difficulty that carries forward to galleries today. In order to demonstrate the importance of incongruity and disorder, Pappas brings together two worlds that may seem incompatible: nineteenth-century literary writers involved in naturalism and the organization of permanent collections of later nineteenth-century French art in today's museums. Drawing on the art novels and art criticism of these writers, the book provides optimal access to the questions that continue to haunt the categorization and display of nineteenth-century art.

Guest Sara Pappas is Associate Professor of French and Visual Culture at the University of Richmond. In addition to this volume, she has published articles on topics from 19th century art criticism by literary figures such as Baudelaire and Zola to the Expositions universelles to contemporary artist Kehinde Wiley’s influence on French art, as well as co-curating an exhibit of Nineteenth Century French and Russian Art at the Harnett Museum of Art.

Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean, with a book manuscript under review on posthumanist ecological engagement in the surrealist movement.

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Matthew Pinsker, "Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln" (Norton, 2026)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

We know Abraham Lincoln as the eloquent, compassionate leader of a nation torn by civil war. But he had another, less visible side, equally central to his character and leadership: Lincoln was a master of party politics. Schooled as a Whig in the rough-and-tumble of Illinois electioneering in the 1830s, Lincoln skillfully navigated treacherous partisan crosscurrents and helped build the Republican party into a viable force. His decades of experience as a party leader proved invaluable to him as president and commander in chief during the Civil War.

Matthew Pinsker’s groundbreaking Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln (W.W. Norton & Company, 2026) draws extensively on Lincoln’s private correspondence to move beyond the marble icon and realize a flesh-and-blood character in Boss Lincoln. Behind closed doors he was shrewd and insistent, capable of deft manipulation, blunt intimidation, or thoughtful argument as needed. As a decision-maker he was attentive to detail but kept his own counsel and trusted his own acumen. His aides noted that in cabinet meetings Lincoln had the final say, and “there is no cavil.” Devoted to elections, he kept careful, handwritten tallies of party turnout, even gifting one to Mary Todd, another partisan, during their courtship. His hymn to democracy at Gettysburg in 1863 carried a partisan message to the political leaders gathered there: The fight for the union would take place at the polls as well as on the battlefield. Boss Lincoln often sacrificed candor for purpose. He used his White House meeting with Frederick Douglass in 1864, ostensibly about emancipation, to send a message to radicals about his need for their support. With emancipation and the war’s outcome at stake, facing withering criticism from all sides, Lincoln won reelection by building a new political coalition through the Union party. Here was Boss Lincoln at his height, captured in absorbing detail in this indelible portrait of our greatest president.

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Muslims and the Minority Question across the Indian Ocean: A Conversation With Roy Bar Sadeh

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this conversation, we are entering an Indian Ocean world connected by steamships, telegraphs, pilgrimage routes, and print. From Bombay and the Gulf to Cairo and Mecca—and onward to Moscow and Geneva—merchants, scholars, activists, and political exiles debated a question that still feels urgent: how can different communities live together without being reduced to permanent majorities and minorities?

Bombay sits near the center of our story. Under British rule, it was a major imperial port. But it was also a meeting place where Indian Ocean merchants financed publications, hosted traveling scholars, and helped ideas cross borders.

At the same time, British censuses and representative politics produced a striking paradox. South Asia contained the world’s largest Muslim population, yet Muslims were increasingly classified as a political minority within India.

Dr. Roy Bar Sadeh is a historian of modern South Asia and the broader Islamic world, joining the University of Oxford in September 2026 as an Associate Professor in the Faculty of History and at St Antony’s College. He is currently a Lecturer at the University of Manchester.

His many articles and forthcoming book with University of Chicago Press, Muslims and the Minority Question: A Global History of South Asia, 1856–1947, follow the people who refused to accept that minority label as their political destiny. Along the way, we’ll talk about food and language, Gulf pearl merchants and printing presses, rival plans for Mecca, an unlikely Soviet-Saudi partnership, and the search for protection beyond the nation-state.

Host: Dr. Ahmed Y. AlMaazmi, an assistant professor of history at New York University Abu Dhabi.

Co-host: Dr. Mohammed Alsudairi, a Lecturer of Politics and International Relations of the Arabic-speaking world at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University.

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Carly Thomsen, "Reproductive Justice, Queerly" (U California Press, 2026)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Queer theory and reproductive justice need each other—now more than ever. As liberals and leftists increasingly frame reproductive justice in terms of LGBTQ+ rights, often adopting the language of “queerness,” it has become difficult to see that their political demands and strategies are often quite conservative. In Reproductive Justice, Queerly (U California Press, 2026), Carly Thomsen examines typical reproductive justice issues—including abortion, surrogacy, crisis pregnancy centers, paid parental leave, and parenting—in queer ways. She shows what can happen when we bring queer theory and reproductive justice together: a queerer, more powerful articulation of what we are fighting for.

Your host Yining Pan is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.

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Samuel Marquis, "Empire and Frontier: Colonel Peter Schuyler and the Valiant Iroquois in King William's War: 1689-1701" (Pegasus Books, 2026)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Empire and Frontier: Colonel Peter Schuyler and the Valiant Iroquois in King William's War: 1689-1701 (Pegasus Books, 2026) by Samuel Marquis presents a powerful episode of early American history, revealing the very human story of friendship and alliance between Colonel Peter Schuyler and the Iroquois during King William’s War (1689–1701). Like Philbrick’s Mayflower and Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon, this new book reveals how fragile alliances and cross-cultural diplomacy changed the course of empires in North America.

At the heart of the book is Peter Schuyler, a Dutch-American mayor of Albany, Indian Affairs commissioner, and militia colonel who earned deep trust among the Iroquois. Decades ahead of his time in his respect for Native diplomacy and sovereignty, Schuyler helped forge and sustain a fragile alliance between English colonists and the Haudenosaunee (Five Nations of the Iroquois) during a decade of brutal warfare. That alliance, known as The Covenant Chain, not only blocked French ambitions in the region, but also shaped the political and military landscape of the American frontier for the next one hundred years.

Told through multiple perspectives, the book also follows two unforgettable Indigenous figures during the conflict. Lawrence, a Mohawk war captain, serves as Schuyler’s compatriot on the battlefield, working for and navigating the survival of his people. Hilletie van Olinda, a biracial Mohawk-Dutch woman, becomes a key translator and diplomatic go-between, using her language skills and cultural fluency to mediate between the Iroquois and English.

Across a decade of war, espionage, and political intrigue—from the 1689 Leisler’s Rebellion and 1690 Schenectady Massacre to the climactic Grand Settlement of 1701—these intertwined stories reveal the human cost and political complexity behind one of early America’s most consequential alliances.

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Jonathan Cheng, "Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult" (Knopf, 2026)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Of the two Koreas, it is the South which appears much the more Christian today, with all major cities dotted with church spires and illuminated crosses. But a century ago it was the northern half of the peninsula that was the more established home for Christianity, the northwestern city of Pyongyang being celebrated as a “Jerusalem of the East.” And among the faith’s devotees were the parents of the man who would eventually come to lead the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea from the middle of the twentieth century.

Kim Il Sung, Jonathan Cheng shows in his fluidly written and richly researched book Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult (Knopf, 2026), grew up in an environment suffused in Christian teachings and actively involved himself in church life, facts which raise questions about his later career as a guerrilla fighter and national leader. Cheng traces the long arc of Christian associations in Kim’s biography, from the arrival of Presbyterianism in Korea through to the leader’s battles with the church as North Korean leader, his softening towards the faith in later life, and of course his erection of a personality cult around himself that had no few similarities with the practices and aesthetics of Christianity. Understanding North Korea from its founding until the present day thus, Cheng shows, demands an awareness of an at-times-astonishing collision of religion, nationalism and authoritarianism which are narrated expertly in this thought-provoking book.

Jonathan Cheng professional web page here

Book website here

Ed Pulford is an Anthropologist and Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and socialism and empire in Eurasia.

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Blair L.M. Kelley, "Black Freedom: A Visual History of Juneteenth and Emancipation Days" (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2026)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

For more than 150 years, Black communities have gathered to honor freedom, resilience, and the ongoing struggle for true liberation. While Juneteenth has recently gained wider recognition, it was one of many Emancipation Day traditions celebrated across the United States. These observances were spaces of joy, remembrance, and resistance—even as the fight for full freedom was unfinished. Black Freedom: A Visual History of Juneteenth and Emancipation Days (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2026) brings together stirring essays and striking images from Juneteenth and beyond, offering a sweeping portrait of how Black people have created and sustained rituals of remembrance, a testament to the generations who, through celebration and storytelling, demanded that their contributions to the making of America be fully recognized.

Blair L.M. Kelley, Ph.D. is a renowned author, historian, and scholar of the African American experience. She is the seventh president of the National Humanities Center, the only independent center for advanced study in the world dedicated exclusively to the humanities. Blair previously held senior leadership roles at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as the Joel R. Williamson Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of the American South and at North Carolina State University where she served as Associate Dean for Interdisciplinary Affairs and Partnerships and the Alumni Graduate Professor of History. You can find her on all social platforms @profblmkelley.

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Valena Beety, "Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity" (New Press, 2026)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A woman miscarries—and is charged with murder. A new mother tests positive for a drug her hospital administered—and loses custody of her newborn. Four women are convicted of horrific crimes against children they never touched, based on junk science and homophobia—and spend nearly twenty years in prison before being exonerated. A queer teenager takes a photo of a child’s diaper rash at work—and is sentenced to 126 years. These cases are not aberrations. They are symptoms of a system that punishes women and queer people not for what they have done, but for who they are.

In the United States, nearly three-quarters of all wrongly convicted women were convicted of crimes that never occurred at all. In Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity (New Press, 2026), Dr. Valena Beety, co-founder of the Indiana Innocence Project and award-winning legal scholar cited by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, reveals how ordinary tragedies—a child’s sudden death, a husband who dies in his sleep—are transformed by prosecutors into murders that never happened. These “no crime” convictions disproportionately target women and queer people, whose identities are recast as evidence of guilt through bias, junk science, and entrenched stereotypes.

Drawing on devastating real-life cases, Dr. Beety exposes how prosecutorial overreach, flawed forensic science, and cultural panic converge—and how fetal personhood laws, the fall of Roe v. Wade, and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation have dramatically expanded the reach of criminal law. What emerges is a chilling portrait of a legal system that increasingly criminalizes pregnancy outcomes, motherhood, and queer identity itself.

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Nozomi Naoi, "The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life" (MIT Press, 2026)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life (MIT Press, 2026) explores the far-reaching influence of the Japanese department store on modern life and our imaginations. In this gorgeously illustrated volume, Dr. Nozomi Naoi explains how Japanese department stores modeled “the new modern Japanese life and identity” through print media and design, physical and imagined space, and the new experiences that these spaces offered. The stores created the notion of a modern subject enjoying a “land of happiness”—and this, in turn, shaped the wider sociological context, including emerging roles for women and perceptions of coloniality.

The book focuses on three areas: the mediascape of proliferating department store posters, advertisements, commercial design, promotional magazines, and merchandise; the physical space, such as the Western-style architecture that characterized many of these early department stores, and the imagined “modern space” created within their walls; and, finally, the production of a novel “dreamworld,” which included dining spaces with children’s menus, new technology such as elevators and escalators, and more.

Although the research on department stores and their role in the quotidian experience is vast, there is nothing like this study, which is uniquely grounded in an art-historical approach that draws on the visual media environment of early twentieth-century Japan and its impact on the everyday.

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Discovering the Latin Mass (with Amb. Archd. Eduard Habsburg): A Travel Guide for the Curious

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The reason Eduard Habsburg, Archduke of Austria and formerly Hungarian Ambassador to the Vatican, has written a ‘travel guide’ to the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) is that he finds beauty, meaning, and joy in the experience of being a pilgrim in a foreign land. We pass through the doors—the portals—of the Church and the otherness of it pulls at our hearts and lays on us a bit of a yoke that will feel new. Especially for young people who’ve been crushed softly by the constant entertainment and accommodation, this hardness refreshes their souls, in the tradition of St. Augustine: “our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Is it surprising it is to learn how the first few times he attended the Traditional Latin Mass, he found it off-putting—“oh no, not those crazy weirdoes”—but of course that’s all the more reason for a travel guide; because he can be our guide, like Virgil for Dante to show us around this new world—or, rather, very old world—that is our Catholic inheritance.

the book, Discovering the Latin Mass: A Travel Guide for the Curious, from Sophia Press
the secret link at Sophia Press that Eduard Habsburg was told us about to claim five free copies of the book so that you might share the Traditional Latin Mass
Eduard Habsburg on Twitter/X
Latin Missal on Amazon

Here is my earlier conversation for Eduard Habsburg (from 2023):

Amb. Archd. Eduard Habsburg on Almost Good Catholics, episode 59: Long Live the Empire! The Habsburg Tradition in the Twenty-First Century

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Tracy Borman, "The House of Boleyn" (Hachette, 2026)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

When nobleman Thomas Boleyn, lord of Hever Castle, is called to London in 1509 to present himself to a newly anointed King Henry VIII, he sets in train events that ensure the Boleyn name will never be forgotten. His daughters Mary and Anne were young then, and though he was ambitious for his family to prosper, he could not imagine what would transpire in the two decades to come.

Blending the history she knows so well with the creativity of her imagination, Tracy Borman brings the Boleyn family’s three-decade rise and precipitous fall to vivid life in The House of Boleyn (Hachette, 2026). Borman surrounds the main dramatic events of the Boleyn saga with a colorful tableau in which familial and inter-familial rivalries threaten and true love often loses out to keen ambition. Anne’s ever-loyal attendant Esther Frideswide and Thomas Boleyn’s perfidious steward Robert Cranwell are as memorable as Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, or anyone in the increasingly dangerous orbit of the royal court. Henry VIII pursues Anne relentlessly, showering her with gifts as the Boleyns are catapulted to political prominence. But when she can’t give him the son and heir he desperately seeks, the family faces a terrible and bloody fate. With lavish and compelling historical detail, Tracy Borman displays her keen gift for storytelling in this resonant novel of family, fate, and intrigue.

Tracy Borman is chief historian of Historic Royal Palaces, chief executive of the Heritage Education Trust, and chancellor and professor of Tudor History at Lincoln Bishop University.

Dr. Kristen Vitale Engel is an Associate Fellow at the Royal Historical Society. She is in the Department of History at Southern New Hampshire University, Global, the Editor-in-Chief of "The Court Observer" for The Society for Court Studies, the Submissions Editor for the Royal Studies Journal and the International Ambassador for HistoryLab+ in partnership with the Institute of Historical Research.

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Emily McBride, "Queen Mab" (FSG, 2026)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

There is a changeling in this story—but who?
Madeleine is young for motherhood, a promising grad student in Victorian and Modernist literature, twenty-three and not long married. Even her mother worries about the timing. But Madeleine’s ambivalence is pushed aside by Tom’s elation and her own joy at bringing new life to the world.
Then comes Maud, perfect and fresh and worth every moment of difficult labor. But after just a few nights, something seems amiss, changed. The child never stops crying. Her hunger is insatiable. Her eyes glint with some kind of ancient mischief. Could Maud be a fairy child, swapped when Madeleine wasn’t paying attention? Is the real Maud dancing in the half-light with the fairies and the foxes? Did the gray cat hide her behind the hedge?
Meanwhile, the world around them continues in its humdrum ease. Tom works toward a promotion, urging Madeleine to connect with other moms and keep in touch with her colleagues. Her parents travel from abroad to meet the baby, but Madeleine is unnerved by her father’s new obsession with genealogy and DNA tests. Interrupted by visions, panicked at her lack of maternal feelings, shut out from her old life, she frantically searches for answers. But the old stories end in sorrow and bloodshed. And fairies do more than kidnap babies.
A riveting portrait of madness, motherhood, the myths that haunt us, and the families who keep us tethered, Emily McBride’s Queen Mab (FSG, 2026) asks us to reconsider what is real and how we might see a truer picture of ourselves through the darkness.

Emily McBride is a Canadian-born editor, writer, and translator living in Barcelona. Her work has been published in The Nation, The Rumpus, and The Stinging Fly. Queen Mab is her debut novel.

Recommended Books:

Roberto Bolaño, Distant Star
Helen Garner, The Children’s Bach

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Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The War of the Worlds

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In light of the dismal Disclosure Day (2026), we return to two films that show Spielberg tackling alien visitation (or invasion) stories while at the height of his powers. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and The War of the Worlds (2005) are decades apart, yet united by a single image and devotion to their audiences. The first is as Disneylike as Pinocchio; the second conjures memories of 9/11. Both show domesticity under great strain as families and infrastructures break down; one ends with hope while the other simply stops.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

The War of the Worlds is based on H. G. Wells’s 1898 novel, which you can purchase here .

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

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J.J. Crayhill, "Raleigh and the Pirates" (Raconteur Press, 2026)

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

J.J. Crayhill's Raleigh and the Pirates (Raconteur Press, 2026) is the launch of The Adventures of Midshipman Raleigh — a science fiction adventure series built on the bones of the great naval tales, transplanted to the lawless frontier of space. Anthony is small, undertrained, and deeply motivated, which turns out to be a dangerous combination — for everyone involved.

Midshipman Anthony Raleigh wasn't supposed to be the hero. He was barely supposed to be on the bridge.

When a pirate warship drops out of hiding to ambush the cargo freighter Pegasus, Captain Smith has one mission for his youngest crew member: take the shuttle, run, and bring help. Simple enough — except the pirates got there first.

With the shuttle sabotaged and the crew captured at gunpoint, Anthony is alone, unarmed, and hunted through corridors, air ducts, and — when things get truly desperate — across the outside of the ship in a malfunctioning spacesuit.

He has three things going for him: an AI named Fuse who enforces regulations with terrifying consistency; a security key the pirates will do anything to obtain; and a grudge against pirates that burns considerably hotter than fear.

That is going to have to be enough.

When he gets his hands on a classified space fighter hidden inside the Pegasus' sealed cargo pod, the pirates are going to find out exactly what a midshipman with something to prove looks like when he decides he has had enough.

And when the pirate captain makes one final play — a shocking claim about Anthony's supposedly dead father — the stakes shift from saving a ship to something far more personal.

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Emily Sneff, "When the Declaration of Independence Was News" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Amy Weitzman interviews Emily Sneff on her new book When the Declaration of Independence Was News and the graduate school experience.

In 1776 people could hear the Declaration of Independence proclaimed in public squares and could read it in the pages of their local newspapers. Stories of the Declaration typically recount the work that took place inside the Continental Congress, focusing on the men tasked with drafting the text. Although Congress declared independence, the work of spreading the news involved printers, post riders, ship captains, civic leaders, soldiers, clerks, orators, preachers, diplomats, and translators.

When the Declaration of Independence Was News reveals the stories behind how the Declaration was communicated in the United States and around the Atlantic. Tracing the travels of the founding document of the United States from Philadelphia to New York, Boston, Charleston, London, Leiden, Paris, and beyond, Emily Sneff shows how people both celebrated the Declaration and critiqued it. In the weeks after the document was penned, it was printed in the columns of newspapers, translated into German and French, and shared with Native American allies. The document induced some people to make public their privately held beliefs about whether they wanted the United States to be independent or to reconcile with King George III. The Declaration was met with unique circumstances everywhere it went, and people modified the text along the way. The questions of who experienced the news of independence, when, and how reveal an expansive and complex history of a critical moment in the American Revolution.

Published for the 250th anniversary of American independence, When the Declaration of Independence Was News returns to a time before the legacy of these words and the outcome of the war against Great Britain were known to reconsider what the founding of the United States meant to the people who were living through it.

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James W. Cortada, "Beyond the Facts: Tacit Knowledge and the Hidden Infrastructure of Our Informed Times" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Beyond the Facts: Tacit Knowledge and the Hidden Infrastructure of Our Informed Times (Bloomsbury, 2025) describes tacit knowledge, what it is, how it used and its role in our current data driven world. Author James Cortada argues that fuzzy, hard-to describe information is greater and more, important than just hard facts. What is tacit knowledge? It is what we might consider knowledge that is unable to be fully communicated; knowledge that we understand implicitly, but it is a bit hard to explain. For example, it is the kind of knowledge one needs to ride a bicycle, but that cannot be described precisely on paper in the way one might be able to explain how to cook a dish. Tacit knowledge is the least understood type of information and one of the most difficult to communicate. Yet there is more tacit knowledge in our lives than the specific facts one can find in a book, on the Internet or in the simple form of a fact. This book is designed to introduce the reader to the concept of tacit knowledge and how to recognize and use it. This book offers definitions of tacit knowledge and compares the topic to explicit knowledge, then describes how the former is used today. The author argues that both types are used today and explains how one can use both types of knowledge in their lives. This book is essential primer to understanding tacit knowledge and learning how to use it to your advantage.

Guest: James (Jim) Cortada is a senior research fellow at the University of Minnesota. He is a leading authority on the role of modern information. He holds a PhD in modern history but worked at IBM Corporation for nearly 40 years in sales and consulting. He has written several books on the business history of the computer industry and just over a dozen on the history and use of information over the past two centuries. So, he straddles the subject between historical evolution and its current uses.

Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

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Elizabeth Darling, "Palace of the Ether: Broadcasting House and the Architecture of the BBC, 1922–32" (Lund Humphries, 2026)

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Palace of the Ether: Broadcasting House and the Architecture of the BBC, 1922–1932 (Lund Humphries, 2026) by Dr. Elizabeth Darling is about the architecture and design of broadcasting in the 1920s and 1930s, examining the buildings which the BBC occupied in its founding decades, with a particular focus on Broadcasting House in London. It argues that these environments were as constitutive of the Corporation’s identity as the programmes and people that they housed. Borrowing from the architectural writer Christopher Hussey’s characterisation of Broadcasting House as a ‘palace of the ether’ Dr. Darling asks how the immaterial medium of the broadcast was given material and spatial form by the BBC, and the engineers, architects and designers whom they commissioned.

The book traces the development of the BBC both technologically and organisationally, and the changing demands it had of the spaces which accommodated it. It shows how associational networks and personal affiliations affected who was commissioned to work on what became Broadcasting House and offers a detailed account of the work of Val Myer, who designed the exterior and shell of the new building, and the team of architects who designed the studio interiors (Serge Chermayeff, Wells Coates, Edward Maufe, Raymond McGrath and Dorothy Warren). In documenting the design of Broadcasting House, and the responses to it, Palace of the Ether offers new insights into British architectural culture at a pivotal moment in the profession’s history.

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Asher Emanuel, "The Valley: Crime and Punishment in a New Zealand City" (Bridget Williams Books, 2026)

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

There were two days to Christmas and Lewis felt like everything was spinning out of control. He wondered what he would say to the judge this time. His client, Rikihana, was already on multiple shoplifting charges. What’s a few more? Lewis thought. These supermarkets were still making a killing.

It’s late 2020. Rikihana Wallace, a prolific shoplifter of no fixed abode, is back in prison with little chance of bail. Nathan Morley, unemployed, is facing burglary charges and hoping his other, as yet undetected, offences don’t catch up with him. Lewis Skerrett, their overstretched legal aid lawyer, is trying to do right by them both.

The culmination of over two years of field research and hundreds of hours of interviews, The Valley: Crime and Punishment in a New Zealand City (Bridget Williams Books, 2026) follows these three Hutt Valley men through courtrooms, prison, hospital, rehab, boarding houses and welfare offices. Told largely in verbatim dialogue, this up-close and personal account brings the realities of the New Zealand criminal justice system to life through the voices of those who experience it first-hand.

Watch the book trailer here

Asher Emanuel is a writer and lawyer based in Wellington. His exposure to the criminal justice system began when he was a judges’ clerk at the Wellington High Court after graduating from law school in 2015. He later worked as an investigator for the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and, as a lawyer, has assisted several government inquiries. His writing on justice and policy issues has appeared in The Spinoff, the New Zealand Herald, and specialist publications, and he is a former editor of Policy.nz, an election policy website. He began work on his first book, The Valley, in 2018 supported by grants from the Michael & Suzanne Borrin Foundation. Asher now works as a civil legal aid lawyer focusing on public law and human rights cases. He is a longstanding member of the executive of the Aotearoa Legal Workers’ Union. Asher grew up in Auckland before moving to Wellington where he studied law and English literature.

Ed Amon has a Master of Indigenous Studies and is a PhD Candidate at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is a writer and a Stand-up Comedian. His main interests are indigenous studies, politics, history, and cricket. Follow him on twitter @edamoned or email him at edamonnz@gmail.com

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Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel, "Seeking Freedom in Indian Country: Slavery, Sovereignty, and Resistance Within the Five Tribes, 1790–1861" (LSU Press, 2026)

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Dr. Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel’s Seeking Freedom in Indian Country: Slavery, Sovereignty, and Resistance within the Five Tribes, 1790–1861 (LSU Press, 2026) is the first comprehensive study of African chattel slavery within the Five Tribes: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole Nations. Dr. Oertel examines how chattel slavery functioned among all Five Tribes before and during the removal process, how the tribes reconstituted slavery post-removal in Indian Territory, and how enslaved Black people promoted freedom-seeking strategies at each stage. Furthermore, her work considers how the conflict over slavery in Indian Territory contributed to the larger national debate over slavery’s fate on the eve of the Civil War.

Historians have examined how the practice of African enslavement emerged within one or two tribes, how forced migration affected slavery within particular nations, and how the debate over slavery divided multiple Indigenous nations. Dr. Oertel, however, is the first to examine Indian Territory as a whole, its significance to the sectional debates, and its role as an incubator of emancipation policies in the United States. Knitting together these individual tribal narratives and supplementing them with extensive primary research on how slavery functioned across Indian Territory, she integrates Indian country into the antebellum march toward the Civil War.

Seeking Freedom in Indian Country joins a rising chorus of studies that integrate southern and western history, which, by default, also pulls together the history of the so-called Indian Wars with the Civil War. Dr. Oertel suggests that we cannot fully understand the causes of the Civil War without also considering the changes brought about by the forced removal of Indians. She argues that settler colonialism and the expansion of African chattel slavery together set the stage for sectional conflict to explode in the West. Ironically, both Indigenous resistance to settler colonialism and Black resistance to slavery challenged white supremacy in ways that foretold the end of slavery but also furthered the settler colonial project.

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Brent Elliott and Roger Bowdler, "The British Cemetery: Architecture, Landscape, Sculpture" (Historic England, 2026)

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Roger Bowdler and Brent Elliott’s The British Cemetery: Architecture, Landscape, Sculpture, published by Historic England (2026), traces the history of the cemetery from the 17th century to the present day. The cemetery emerged as a new landscape form in the 19th century in Britain but had deep roots in earlier churchyard practices and in fashionable garden landscape design. Cemeteries very quickly became a locus for the monumental expression of loss, family identity and social standing. The book offers a clear chronological narrative, with alternate chapters attending to landscape and monuments. The authors present unfamiliar primary data and introduce some welcome new themes including reference to the monumental mason industry and cemetery infrastructure. The authors draw examples from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and in doing so underline the very particular nature of Scottish funerary heritage. The book’s principal strength is its collection of illustrations that include historic and contemporary photographs, landscape design maps and postcards. The text brings the narrative completely up to date, with reference to the natural burial movement and landscapes designed to meet Muslim burial need. This text is now very probably the best introduction to the material culture of the British cemetery, written by experts with over 70 years’ experience in cemetery research and conservation. This interview, conducted by Julie Rugg of the University of York’s Cemetery Research Group, is a meeting of enthusiasts for a landscape form that is moving and thought-provoking in equal measure.

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Monalisa Adhikari, "A Post-Liberal Peace: How Emergent Powers Are Reshaping Global Conflict Management" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In A Post-Liberal Peace: How Emergent Powers Are Reshaping Global Conflict Management (Cornell UP, 2026), Dr. Monalisa Adhikari shows how rising powers like India and China are reshaping global peace governance. Over recent decades, both countries have deepened engagement with institutions built on liberal principles, including those related to peacebuilding. Their growing role raises critical questions about how their approaches diverge from liberal models and their impact on the domestic politics of conflict-affected states.

Focusing on India and China's involvement in peace processes in Nepal and Myanmar, Dr. Adhikari demonstrates that these powers advance distinctive, state-centered programs that privilege regional stakeholders, stability, development, and pragmatism. Operating under conditions of "negotiated coexistence" with liberal peacebuilders, their initiatives neither fully align with nor openly contest existing actors, limiting cooperation while avoiding confrontation. This pluralized form of international engagement enables domestic elites to resist external pressures, producing hybrid peace orders that incorporate some liberal elements yet remain largely at the status quo—and often illiberal.

Rich with archival and interview evidence, A Post-Liberal Peace sheds light on alternative forms of peacebuilding and their on-the-ground effects in an increasingly multipolar world.

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Onyekachi Ugwu, "The Woman Caught in Adultery and the Gospel of John" (Mohr Siebeck, 2026)

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The story of the woman caught in adultery in John’s Gospel has long stirred controversy. Given its checkered manuscript witness, many scholars don’t believe it belongs in John’s Gospel or even in the Scriptures at all, while others think it is Scripture but belongs in a different canonical setting, and still others, like our guest today, believe it is indeed authentically Johannine, foreshadowing Jesus’ own trial and his final victory over darkness.

Tune in as we speak with Onyekachi Ugwu about his recent monograph The Woman Caught in Adultery and the Gospel of John (Mohr Siebeck, 2026).

Onyekachi Ugwu earned his PhD at the Catholic University of Paris in 2024, and is a lecturer in New Testament studies.

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Luca Anceschi, "Pandemic Politics in Central Asia: Authoritarian Contagion" (Routledge, 2026)

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Pandemic Politics in Central Asia: Authoritarian Contagion (Routledge, 2026) examines how the authoritarian regimes of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan exploited the Covid-19 pandemic to consolidate their political control over Central Asia. Through restrictive policies and strategic manipulation, these governments reshaped the region's politics and societies during 2020-2022.

This volume offers readers an insight into three key areas where Central Asia's pandemic power grab was most visible: mobility control, whereby restrictive legislation limited freedom of movement and suppressed dissent; authoritarian information flows, whereby COVID-19-related measures aligned media and digital information to government messaging, further curtailing freedom of expression; and the international politics of the pandemic, whereby the regimes capitalised on global instability to strengthen their kleptocratic hold over Central Asia's politics and society. This book provides a detailed analysis of these strategies, offering a compelling exploration of how crises can be used to entrench authoritarianism.

It is ideal for scholars, students, and professionals in political science, international relations, and Central Asian Studies. The book is also valuable to readers interested in understanding the intersection between public health crises and authoritarian governance.

The Open Access version of this book, available here has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Adam Quinn is a Glasgow-based researcher whose work focuses on activism, social movements and state-society relations in the Post-Soviet space.

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Meryl Branch-McTiernan, "What You Should Worry About" (Akashic Books, 2026)

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Tune in to this interview with Meryl Branch-McTiernan about her new book What You Should Worry About (Akashic Books, 2026).

It's January of 2020 and thirty-seven-year-old Layla Moody is trying to worm her way into a party at the Sundance Film Festival. When she’s not picking up other people’s abandoned drinks or skinny-dipping in the hot tub, she’s trying to gain access to someone who can jump-start her stymied career as a Hollywood television writer. After a run-in with one of her creative heroines, she lands an opportunity to get her show produced. The only catch is, she has to return to New York, which she’s been avoiding since her father’s death.

But soon all is thwarted when COVID-19 shuts down the entertainment industry and any opportunity to propel her life forward. While quarantining alone in her parents’ apartment in Queens, Layla wrestles with the ghost of an ex-boyfriend who disappeared unexpectedly, the grief of processing the loss of her father, and the notion that she just might be the one responsible for her current state of solitude.

Finally, in spite of warnings and stay-at-home orders, Layla throws caution to the wind and joins a share house on Fire Island where she spent summers in her twenties. By returning to the house and its eclectic denizens, she is reintroduced to the comfort and annoying tendencies of other people, and begins to grasp how to find family on her own terms.

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Thomas Richardson, "Soldiers and Bushmen: The Australian Army in South Africa, 1899–1902" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Soldiers and Bushmen: The Australian Army in South Africa, 1899–1902 (Cambridge UP, 2025) by Dr. Thomas Richardson examines the commitment to what was expected to be a short war. It presents a thematic, analytical history of the birth of the Australian Army in South Africa, while exploring the Army's evolution from colonial units into a consolidated federal force. Soldiers and Bushmen investigates the establishment of the 'bushmen experiment' – the belief that the unique qualities of rural Australians would solve tactical problems on the veldt. This, in turn, influenced ideals around leadership, loyalty and traditional combat that fed the mythology of the Australians as natural soldiers. The book also examines the conduct of the war itself: how the Army adapted to the challenges of a battlefield transformed by technology, and the moral questions posed by the transition to fighting a counterinsurgency campaign.

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Eric O Silva, "Contested Realities and Identity Destigmatization: Identity Construction in the Culture Wars" (De Gruyter, 2026)

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Much scholarship has sought to decode the polarization of American culture. Eric O Silva's analysis of the public discourse on contested realities (immigration, vaccines, electric vehicles, transgender youth medicine, campus protests of Israel, the regulation of AR-15s, and race and police brutality) reveals that Americans are not governed by coherent, diametrically opposed worldviews. U.S. culture is more fractured than dominant narratives of a polarized society would suggest. Moreover, these cultural disputes result in the generation of materials for constructing identities. Disagreement over how to define reality inevitably leads to a contest over the authority and moral worthiness of the individuals involved in the dispute. Contested Realities and Identity Destigmatization: Identity Construction in the Culture Wars analyzes how participants in public discourse stigmatize but also destigmatize their adversaries. This study not only demonstrates that there are people who are seeking to "turn down the temperature" in public discourse but the generic processes by which they do so.

Michael O. Johnston is Associate Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. His research explores symbolic interaction, leisure, meaning, place, community, and sociology of everyday life. He is the author of the forthcoming book Smalltown Urban: Performing the City in Rural America (Bloomsbury, 2027), The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla, and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest. His forthcoming book examines how small towns create moments of urbanity through festivals, public gatherings, and everyday social life. Since joining the New Books Network in 2017, he has interviewed more than 100 authors across sociology and the social sciences, helping connect scholars and their work with a broad public audience.

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Paulina Banas, "Visualizing Egypt: European Travel, Book Publishing, and the Commercialization of the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century" (American University in Cairo Press, 2025)

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Following Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1798 campaign in Egypt, new possibilities of travel and improvements in printing technology saw an emergence of publishing ventures in France and Britain dedicated to the production of albums and travel accounts featuring images of Muslim Egypt and Islamic architecture and catering to a growing European fascination with the East. In her debut book, Visualizing Egypt: European Travel, Book Publishing, and the Commercialization of the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century (American University in Cairo Press, 2025) Paulina Banas analyzes the context and process of production of these highly illustrated publications, from their conceptualization to the finished product and its afterlife, from marketing to the sales of these books, and from circulation to their reception by nineteenth-century audiences. By tracing the long, arduous, and often risky publishing journeys of the makers of these books, including publishers, writers, and artists, such as the Frenchman Émile Prisse d’Avennes, Banas reveals a complex terrain of changing market demands, collaborations, and conflicting views, and the unsettled authorship of these works, prompting us to think more profoundly about artistic and intellectual exchange in the world of nineteenth-century Orientalist book production. Visualizing Egypt considers nineteenth-century book illustrations on Egypt and the “Orient” not merely as expressions of enduring ideology and colonial propaganda, but as representations shaped by the often-overlooked commercial exigencies of the growing publishing industry and the reckless competition within it.

Paulina Banas is an Assistant Professor of Art History at The University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she teaches course on Islamic world arts, 19th century European visual culture, and cross-cultural encounters between Europe and the Middle East.

Saman Nasser holds an M.A. in history from James Madison University, where he currently works as an educational staff.

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Posen Library: Jewish Studies Teaching Modules

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Bring the breadth of Jewish history and civilization into your classroom with ready-to-use teaching modules curated by experts.

The Posen Library is an educational resource grounded in primary sources and made broadly accessible through the creation and curation of engaging contextual material. Its goal is to highlight the varieties of Jewish culture and civilization across time and space for English-speaking audiences and to be the first stop for those, in university settings and beyond, who are interested in teaching about the significant breadth of Jewish experiences.

Originally conceived as a 10-volume print anthology, the Posen Library’s free digital platform makes the published content globally accessible. Content from print volumes is added to the site as the volumes are published by Yale University Press. Nine out of the ten volumes have been published to date.

The Jewish Studies Curriculum Initiative comprises teaching modules centered around core teaching topics. Each module consists of an overview and curricular material that can be used in four class meetings, focusing on 20–25 primary sources (texts, images, and other media) with interpretive content and supplementary resources for both students and instructors. Posen Library curricula offer flexibility and are designed to be easily integrated into coursework in a variety of ways—perfect for launching a new class or refreshing a syllabus to include new perspectives and voices.

Sarah Bunin Benor is Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Linguistics at Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles.

Sasha Goldstein-Sabbah is assistant professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the Senior Scholar for Pedagogy at the Posen Library.

Geraldine Gudefin is a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore.

Mentioned in this episode:

Posen Library Teaching modules: here
Jewish Studies Curriculum Initiative Fellowship: here
Sarah Bunin Benor’s “Jewish Culture around the world” Module: here
Lila Corwin Berman’s “Who Is American? Citizenship, Law, and Jewish History in the United States” Module: here
Geraldine Gudefin’s “Jewish Emancipation, Citizenship, and Belonging” Module: here
Geoffrey Levin’s “Jews of the Middle East and North Africa: Empire, Colonialism, and Identity” Module: here
Karen E. H. Skinazi’s “Sephardic Journeys: Literature, Memory, and Jewish Culture” Module: here
Jewish Language Project: here
Jewish Cultures on the Map: here
Jewish English Lexicon: here

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Adam Barsouk, "Outsmarting Cancer: Risk Reduction and the Power of Prevention" (JHU Press, 2026)

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Outsmarting Cancer: Risk Reduction and the Power of Prevention (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026) reframes one of the most pressing medical challenges of our time: how to prevent cancer.

In this timely and accessible book, physician and medical researcher Adam Barsouk, MD, presents a sweeping examination of cancer's true origins-biological, environmental, dietary, infectious, industrial, occupational, and behavioral-and makes a compelling case for why cancer prevention must become a central priority in public and personal health.

With personal stories from his clinical practice and the latest research, Dr. Barsouk explains why more people are getting diagnosed with cancer-and at younger ages-than ever before.

This book explores a wide range of overlooked and misunderstood risk factors, as well as how inequities in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention disproportionately impact underserved populations.

Unlike typical cancer books that focus narrowly on diet or organ-specific disease, Outsmarting Cancer takes a comprehensive, systems-level view, urging readers to look beyond the symptoms and target the root causes.

Dr. Barsouk explores the role of genetic predisposition to cancer alongside environmental, lifestyle, and public policy influences that may contribute to developing the disease.

With rigorous scientific insight, he offers real-world, evidence-based strategies to reduce cancer risk in practical, meaningful ways.

Honest, urgent, and empowering, Outsmarting Cancer challenges readers to rethink how we talk about cancer and how we can reduce its burden before it begins.

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Katie Barclay, "The Kiss: A History of Passion and Power" (Reaktion Books, 2025)

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Kiss: A History of Passion and Power (Reaktion, 2026) by Professor Katie Barclay tells the surprising history of our most intimate gesture: the kiss. Richly illustrated, it explores a millennium of kisses, asking how and why the kiss has retained its power over the centuries, and what it might mean today. From the furtive kisses of fated lovers Heloise and Abelard to The Godfather’s ‘kiss of death’, Professor Barclay shows how the kiss can be romantic, peaceful, transgressive, intimate, erotic and more. There are kisses that are bad ideas, dangerous kisses and funny ones. New kisses are invented and old ones fall out of favour. 

While the kiss continues to change, Professor Barclay shows that we kiss fewer people, and less often, than we used to. The Kiss reveals a cultural inheritance transmitted in story and song, art and literature, and through the everyday kisses that we receive from our parents, or reserve for our lovers; when we kiss, we kiss with the weight of history.

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Abdelwahab Meddeb, "Returns to Marrakesh / Retour à Marrakech" (Syracuse UP, 2026)

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Abdelwahab Meddeb’s Returns to Marrakesh, co-translated by Claudia Esposito and Laura Reeck and published by Syracuse University Press in 2026, chronicles Meddeb’s successive visits to the Red City from 1968 through the 1990s, tracing both his personal journey and Marrakesh’s transformation across three pivotal decades. Through his distinctive blend of poetic prose and attentive observation, Meddeb portrays the city as a historical crossroads shaped by Jewish and Muslim communities, different social classes, Sufi mystics, merchants, and travelers—a richly layered urban space in which cultures, histories, and spiritual traditions continually intersect. Presented in a bilingual edition featuring the original French alongside the English translation, the book introduces a wider readership to the work of one of North Africa’s most significant literary and intellectual voices.

In this episode, Ibrahim Fawzy sat down with Esposito and Reeck to discuss Meddeb’s distinctive literary and intellectual presence, his movement across languages, cultures, and spiritual traditions, and his intimate portrayal of Marrakesh. They also explore the collaborative process of translating his multilingual, layered prose and consider how translation can extend—and even renew—a writer’s literary afterlife.

Claudia Esposito is associate professor of French at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is author of The Narrative Mediterranean: Beyond France and the Maghreb.
Laura Reeck is an independent translator and scholar. She is the author of Writerly Identities in Beur Fiction and Beyond and coeditor of Post-Migratory Cultures in Postcolonial France.

Ibrahim Fawzy is an Egyptian literary translator and writer. He is the translator of Hassan Akram’s A Plan to Save the World (Sandorf Passage, 2026).

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Magdalena E. Stawkowski, "Atomic Collective: Radioactive Life in Kazakhstan" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, Kazakhstan inherited the remnants of one of the world's most contaminated landscapes: the Semipalatinsk Test Site, known locally as the Polygon. Resigned to dispossession, residents have chosen to remain on the abandoned nuclear test site, despite the isolation and the radioactive environment, rather than face marginalization or the rigors of a neoliberal world. Atomic Collective: Radioactive Life in Kazakhstan (University of Toronto Press, 2025) examines this nuclear legacy through a decade-long ethnographic examination of the village of Koian, situated on the border of the test site. Facing residual radiation all around them and isolation, Koianers persist, reshaping their pastoral existence among the ruins and scientific debates surrounding genetic damage.

Drawing on first-hand accounts and archival research, this book explores the resilience and everyday survival strategies of a community left behind to fend for itself in the shadow of nuclear testing. It offers a unique perspective on life in a nuclear zone and poses fundamental questions about human resilience and the impact of historical events on a collective identity. Atomic Collective sheds light on a community overlooked in the larger Cold War histories of atomic testing.

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Virginia McGee Richards, "The Inner Passage: An Untold Story of Black Resistance Along a Southern Waterway" (MIT Press, 2026)

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Some of the earliest canals in colonial America, referred to as the Inner Passage, were constructed by enslaved people living in the Lowcountry of South Carolina in the early 1700s. In a paradox of history, for over a hundred years enslaved Black people used these canals, constructed for white plantation owners, to travel southward to freedom in Spanish Florida.

In The Inner Passage: An Untold Story of Black Resistance Along a Southern Waterway (MIT Press, 2026), Virginia McGee Richards documents the lost narrative of the Inner Passage through 60 extraordinary photographs of landscapes altered by slavery and portraits of Lowcountry descendants, along with an essay describing her discovery of this untold history. In an accompanying essay, Imani Perry writes about her own journey on the Inner Passage, putting Black resistance to enslavement and Southern history into an immediate context. James Estrin brings decades of insight about photography and the power of visual storytelling to his affecting foreword. Together, these words and images offer a powerful living map of history.

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City on Fire: A Novel of Hong Kong with Simon Elegant

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

John chats with writer and journalist Simon Elegant about his third novel, a crime thriller set during the Hong Kong protests of 2019. City on Fire is published by Pegasus Crime, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. The novel follows Inspector Killian Tong’s investigation of a brutal murder against a backdrop of political chaos, police tensions, and also personal conflict – Killian’s half-sister is a radical protester. John and Simon also discuss the background to the 2019 protests, including the National Security Law and the earlier 2014 Umbrella Movement.

Among the books mentioned were:

Manchu (1980) by Robert Elegant (a swashbuckling novel by Simon’s father).
Gorky Park (1981) by Martin Cruz Smith
Among the Braves: Hope, Struggle, and Exile in the Battle for Hong Kong and the Future of Global Democracy (2023) by Shibani Mahtani & Timothy McLaughlin
Simon’s book recommendations
The Immobile Empire (French 1989, English 1992) by Alain Peyrefitte. This is on the 1973 Macartney mission to Peking.
Apple in China (2025) by Patrick McGee, which explores Apple’s deep entanglement with China’s manufacturing system.
Ginkgo Season (2025) by Naomi Xu Elegant, a coming-of-age novel set in Philadelphia.

To learn more about Simon Elegant and his novel, visit the publisher’s website here

The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press . Subscribe to the BOA podcast from your favorite podcast service. podcast service.

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Vaneesa Cook, "Empire and Liberty: The Tied Histories of Two American Landmarks" (Beacon Press, 2026)

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Empire and Liberty: The Tied Histories of Two American Landmarks (Beacon Press, 2026), historian Dr. Vaneesa Cook examines the history of the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty in order to consider, more broadly, the United States' relationship with liberty and empire. Empire and liberty have been part of the American story since the founding, but they are often at odds, sometimes irreconcilably so. Cook examines their changing relationship and meaning using these two iconic buildings as anchors. She also examines the symbolism and importance of the landmarks themselves. She considers how individuals and groups who have had more limited access to liberty have tried to shape the meaning of the symbols and their own rights at the same time. In telling this sweeping history, Cook touches in themes of American identity and ideals.

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Nabi Sahak, "Anglo-Afghan Power and Politics, 1893–1947: The Durand Line Unmasked" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of New Books Network, I speak with Nabi Sahak about his book, Anglo-Afghan Power and Politics, 1893–1947: The Durand Line Unmasked (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).

Anglo-Afghan Power and Politics revisits one of the most contested borders in the modern world. The roughly 2,640-kilometre line drawn in 1893 by Mortimer Durand and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan, which today divides Pashtun communities between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Sahak's central argument is that the historical purpose of the Durand Line has never been settled: was it a temporary sphere-of-influence arrangement, a frontier meant to manage dissent, or a genuine international border? The book contends that answering this question by using long-neglected Afghan-language sources alongside the familiar British colonial record. Anchored chronologically in the period from Abdur Rahman Khan's rise to Afghan independence in 1919, with earlier and later chapters extending the frame back to 1761 and forward to 1947, the book draws on original correspondence between the Afghan Amir and British viceroys, the writings of Afghan historians such as Ghubar, Kakar, and Habibi, the accounts of colonial officials like Holdich and Caroe, and a set of original interviews with contemporary Afghan and Pakistani scholars and politicians. What distinguishes the book is its explicit reframing of the dispute as a matter of missing perspective. Sahak argues that decades of scholarship on the Durand Line have been built almost entirely on British and Pakistani positions, leaving the Afghan and Pashtun view including the lived experience of communities split by the line is largely absent from the international debate. Writing partly from personal history as someone who grew up in Kabul during the Soviet occupation and civil war, Sahak situates the technical and diplomatic history of the boundary within its human cost. The author treats the line not only as a nineteenth-century colonial artefact but as an unresolved question still shaping Afghanistan-Pakistan relations, Pashtun identity, and regional security today.

Qaseem Ahmadzai holds a master's degree in intellectual history from Södertörn University, Sweden. His research focuses on postcolonial theory, historiography, and non-Western intellectual traditions, with particular attention to Afghanistan and the broader Pashto-Persephone worlds.

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Murat C. Yildiz, "The Ottoman World of Sports: Refashioning Bodies, Men, and Communities in Late Imperial Istanbul" (U Texas Press, 2026)

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The history of sports in Turkey is deeply contested. Over the decades, journalists, pundits, non-professional historians, sports scholars, and everyday people have offered competing narratives about the origins of modern sports in the late Ottoman Empire. In The Ottoman World of Sports: Refashioning Bodies, Men, and Communities in Late Imperial Istanbul (University of Texas Press, 2026), Murat Cihan Yıldız tells the story of how Istanbul’s Muslims, Christians, and Jews—gymnastics teachers, football coaches, weightlifters, journalists, athletes, and fans—created a gendered and class-stratified civic project that promoted athletics as a source of fun, beauty, and moral education. Influenced by the emerging global vogue for organized sports, all boys from the expanding middle class of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century imperial capital were expected to exercise and compete on the playing field in order to develop into moral men. Yet even as the embrace of modern athletics transcended ethnoreligious divisions, it did not erase them. Drawing on a wide range of archival research in multiple languages, Yıldız shows that sportsmen created new communal boundaries in team affiliations, fandom, and sports media. Adeptly reconstructing Istanbul’s imperial culture as it was experienced more than a century ago, The Ottoman World of Sports recovers a lived imperial culture whose defining features were shaped by its multiethnic, multireligious, and multilingual sportsmen.

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Anthony J. Barbieri-Low, "Parallel Journeys: Eurasian History Through Travelers’ Eyes (400 BCE–1936 CE)" (Cambria, 2025)

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Parallel Journeys: Eurasian History through Travelers’ Eyes (Cambria Press, 2026) is a comparative history of Eurasia told through travel writing and cross-cultural encounters. In this anthology, Anthony Barbieri pairs accounts from twenty-eight travelers across different historical periods, placing side-by-side travelers looking or going East with those looking or going West. Spanning from 400 BCE through to 1936, the anthology brings together ambassadors, monks, missionaries, merchants, and journalists in order to explore how people understood the cultures, societies, and worlds that they encountered through travel.

Structured around these “parallel journeys,” the book highlights both similarities and differences in the ways travelers described foreign places and peoples. Some travelers used these encounters to criticize the societies they entered, while others turned outward observation into reflection on their own cultures. Across the anthology, travel writing emerges not simply as a way of describing a journey, but as a way of forging ideas about cultural difference, identity, religion, commerce, and political power.

This anthology will appeal to readers interested in Eurasian history, travel writing, world literature, and cross-cultural exchange. It is also a flexible and engaging anthology perfect for classroom teaching, complete with both long and short versions of each account, helpful visuals, and contextual information — an excellent way to get students thinking about what it means to do comparison effectively.

For another overview of the anthology, readers should check out Barbieri’s lecture “Beyond the Mountains and Seas,” available on YouTube here.

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Mikhail Pelevin, "Love, Honour and God: Pashto Writings of Early Modern Times" (Brill, 2025)

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of New Books Network, I speak with Mikhail Pelevin about his book Love, Honour and God: Pashto Writings of Early Modern Times (Iran and the Caucasus Monographs, vol. 5, Brill, 2025).

Love, Honour and God is a survey of three centuries of Pashto literary and educational writing, from roughly 1530 to 1830, the period Pelevin identifies as classical in the history of Pashto letters. Moving from the earliest, now-lost administrative "Daftar" of Shaykh Mali through the sectarian mystical poetry of Bayazid Ansari's Roshani movement, the Sunni traditionalist manuals of Akhund Darweza, and the towering figures of Khushhal Khan Khatak and ʿAbd al-Rahman Momand (Rahman Baba). This book reconstructs a written tradition that has been persistently marginal to both regional and Western scholarship. Pelevin frames this history through what he calls the dissolution of the Persophonie and the slow emergence of Pashto as a written language in the shadow of, and eventually alongside with the dominant Persian literary cosmopolis. Rather than reading this as a proto-nationalist story imposed retroactively, he traces a much older and more specific discourse of Pashtun self-identity — descent, language, custom, and religion, articulated by the authors themselves, long before any colonial or nationalist framework existed to name it.

What makes the book distinctive is its insistence on working from the Pashto texts as primary sources in their own right, rather than as illustrations for arguments made in Persian chronicles, in colonial-era administrative writing, or in the historiography of "Pashtun tribal society" that has tended to treat literary production as peripheral to political and military history. Pelevin is explicit about this reversal: he wants to shift attention from the political to the poetical.

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Kyle H. Keimer and George A. Pierce eds., "The Ancient Israelite World" (Routledge, 2024)

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Ancient Israelite World (Routledge, 2024) presents a collection of studies by international experts on various aspects of ancient Israel’s society, economy, religion, language, culture, and history, synthesizing archaeological remains and integrating them with discussions of ancient Near Eastern and biblical texts. Driven by theoretically and methodologically informed discussions of the archaeology of the Iron Age Levant, the 47 chapters in The Ancient Israelite World provide foundational, accessible, and detailed studies in their respective topics. The volume considers the history of interpretation of ancient Israel, studies on various aspects of ancient Israel’s society and history, and avenues for present and future approaches to the ancient Israelite world. Accompanied by over 150 maps and figures, it allows the reader to gain an understanding of key issues that archaeologists, historians and biblical scholars have faced and are currently facing as they attempt to better understand ancient Israelite society. The Ancient Israelite World is an essential reference work for students and scholars of ancient Israel and its history, culture, and society, whether they are historians, archaeologists or biblical scholars. Chapter 42 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF here under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. Dr. Nathaniel E. Greene is a distinguished international scholar closely associated with the European Hebrew Journal (EHJ), an international double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal.

Dr. Greene serves as a member of the Editorial Board of the European Hebrew Journal. In addition to contributing to the supervision of the scholarly quality of submitted articles, the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature in Belgrade, the journal’s publisher, has released an official academic interview with him as part of its series of scholarly conversations.

His publication and interview, entitled “Scribes, Scripts, and State Formation in Ancient Israel,” were produced in collaboration with Željko Stanojević, the journal’s Managing Editor.

About Dr. Nathaniel E. Greene

Dr. Greene is a lecturer in Hebrew Bible and Old Testament at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, United Kingdom. He received his PhD from the prestigious University of Wisconsin–Madison in the United States.

His principal areas of scholarly expertise and the fields he represents within the journal include:

Biblical Hebrew and Philology: The study of the historical development and linguistic structure of ancient Hebrew.
Northwest Semitic Languages and Epigraphy: The analysis of ancient inscriptions on stone, clay, and other materials from the Levant.
Palaeography: The historical development of ancient scripts and manuscript traditions.
The Formation of the Ancient Israelite State: Anthropological and sociological approaches to the emergence of institutions during the Iron Age, with particular attention to the role of scribes in the formation of biblical texts, including the Deuteronomistic History.
In his research, Dr. Greene also employs modern digital technologies, including advanced Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), to analyse damaged ancient inscriptions and reconstruct patterns of literacy in the Iron Age Near East.

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The YIVO Library in New York: Personal Reflections on Its History and Collections

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the mid-1930s a group of New York Yiddishist intellectuals established the Central Jewish Library and Press Archive, whose collections became the nucleus of the YIVO Library when the Institute relocated from Vilna to New York in 1940. Over the succeeding decades, the Library grew by leaps and bounds, thanks to the dedication of its librarians and supporters. It emerged as a “collection of collections,” absorbing the extensive personal libraries of prominent Yiddish writers, scholars, and book collectors. Crucially, after 1945 the Library also recovered large portions of the Vilna YIVO’s prewar holdings along with thousands of rabbinic works from Vilna’s Strashun Library. Throughout its history, the YIVO Library has been a beehive of scholarship and bibliography, which has been fostered by such outstanding figures as Mendl Elkin and Dina Abramowicz.

In this presentation, Zachary M. Baker will offer some personal reflections on the legacy that the YIVO Library’s founders and builders have left behind.

View the bibliography for this talk: here

This lecture originally took place on February 19, 2025.

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Isabel Heger-Laube, "China’s Landless Peasants and the Role of State-led Rural Urbanization: Narratives, Meaning Making, and the Puzzle of Social Stability" (Würzberg UP, 2025)

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

As part and parcel of China’s compressed modernization, processes of state-led rural urbanization through land expropriation and rural-to-urban relocation have been transforming rural Chinese people’s lives in unprecedented ways. This has led to different, often adverse outcomes for the affected populations – China’s “landless peasants” - as well as to the construction of divergent narratives about the role of the Chinese state’s measures for them. To provide a so-far missing perspective to existing research, Isabel Heger-Laube reconstructs the role of the experienced changes from landless peasants’ own narratives, drawing on the “big” and “small” stories collected through fieldwork in Huaming model town in Tianjin’s Dongli district. By focusing on ordinary people’s subjective processes of meaning making, this book not only puts into perspective objective assessments and persistent narrative tendencies, but also sheds new light on the puzzle of social stability in the wake of large-scale, state-led transformations in contemporary China.

China’s Landless Peasants and the Role of State-led Rural Urbanization: Narratives, Meaning Making, and the Puzzle of Social Stability was published open access with Würzburg University Press in 2025. Free e-book version.

Dr. Isabel Heger-Laube (isabelheger@gmail.com) is a sinologist and social scientist with an interdisciplinary footing in social anthropology, sociology, and psychology. She earned her PhD in Chinese Studies from Freie Universität Berlin in 2024 and currently works as a scientific associate at the School of Social Work, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW). Alongside her work, she is pursuing a degree in psychosocial counseling. Her research interests include urbanization and social change, higher and adult education, aging and care, as well as narrative meaning making and identity formation. ORCiD.

Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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Devin Kennedy, "Coding Capitalism: Computers and the Remaking of the Postwar US Economy" (Columbia UP, 2026)

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Long before Google, Amazon, or Microsoft, computer technology shaped how people worked, how markets operated, and how businesses became big. After World War II, military officials and their partners in industry looked to the newly invented electronic computer as they sought to cut costs, speed up labor, manage supply chains, and—they hoped—bring stability to the postwar economy. Their efforts would shape early computer science and the first applications of computer technology in manufacturing and business, with profound consequences for workers and managers alike. By the 1960s, practices originally developed to improve industrial efficiency were being used by Wall Street, influencing how markets worked and even how traders thought. Digital technology became central to finance, tying together far-flung trading floors and automating decision making—with alarming consequences, including the 1987 Black Monday crash.

In Coding Capitalism: Computers and the Remaking of the Postwar US Economy (Columbia University Press, 2026), Dr. Devin Kennedy offers a new history of the digital economy, showing how the computer emerged from—and transformed—capitalism in the United States. He traces how computer science and technology were made by industry, which molded computation to manage factories, financial markets, and entire firms. Drawing on the archives of businesses, computer researchers, regulators, and financial institutions, Coding Capitalism retells the story of the postwar economy and the computer, revealing how mid-century business laid the foundations of the digital world. Bridging business and economic history with the history of science and technology, this book uncovers the prehistory of big tech and demonstrates how capitalism has shaped computing since its invention.

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The Resurgence of War and the Collapse of Arms Control

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 01:44:00 -0000

How the nuclear guardrails were dismantled. What arms control actually did (risk management, predictability, geography), how it unravelled from the 2000s onward, and why its collapse matters more now as we see a resurgence of strategic instability and armed conflict.

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Joe Ngai and Nick Leung, "The Next China Is Still China: An Insider's Playbook for Winning in the New Era" (Scribner, 2026)

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What’s going on in the Chinese economy? China reported GDP growth of just 4.3% last quarter. Consumption is sluggish, exports are booming, electronics manufacturers and chipmakers are reporting huge profits as car sales slump.

Joe Ngai and Nick Leung dive into the Chinese economy in their latest book The Next China Is Still China: An Insider's Playbook for Winning in the New Era (Scribner, 2026), which came out earlier this year. The book is motivated by a question many executives asked amid new U.S. tariffs and COVID-driven supply shocks: Is there another economy that can replace China’s massive consumer market and deep manufacturing base? The answer: No.

Joe Ngai is a McKinsey senior partner and chairman of the firm’s offices in Greater China. Frequently seen on media such as CNBC and Bloomberg, he has been named one of Forbes China’s 100 Most Influential Chinese Leaders, and he has also appeared on Bloomberg Businessweek China’s “Person of the Year 2025” list.

Nick Leung is a McKinsey senior partner and member of McKinsey’s global board of directors. He is also a lead-director of the McKinsey Global Institute, the firm’s independent research arm, where he directs research on macroeconomics, global trade, and geopolitics.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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The Letters of Emily Dickinson

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Emily Dickinson was a letter writer before she was a poet. And it was through letters that she shared prose reflections–alternately humorous, provocative, affectionate, and philosophical–with her extensive community. While her letters often contain poems, and some letters consist entirely of a single poem, they also constitute a rich genre all their own. Through her correspondence, Dickinson appears in her many facets as a reader, writer, and thinker; social commentator and comedian; friend, neighbor, sister, and daughter.

The Letters of Emily Dickinson (Belknap Press, 2024) is the first collected edition of the poet’s correspondence since 1958. It presents all 1,304 of her extant letters, along with the small number available from her correspondents. Almost 300 are previously uncollected, including letters published after 1958, letters more recently discovered in manuscript, and more than 200 “letter-poems” that Dickinson sent to correspondents without accompanying prose. This edition also redates much of her correspondence, relying on records of Amherst weather patterns, historical events, and details about flora and fauna to locate the letters more precisely in time. Finally, updated annotations place Dickinson’s writing more firmly in relation to national and international events, as well as the rhythms of daily life in her hometown. What emerges is not the reclusive Dickinson of legend but a poet firmly embedded in the political and literary currents of her time.

Dickinson’s letters shed light on the soaring and capacious mind of a great American poet and her vast world of relationships. This edition presents her correspondence anew, in all its complexity and brilliance.

Guest: Dr. Cristanne Miller is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Edward H. Butler Professor of Literature, and serves on the advisory board of the Emily Dickinson Archive. Her scholarship on Dickinson includes Emily Dickinson: A Poet's Grammar; Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them; and The Letters of Emily Dickinson, which she co-edited with Domhnall Mitchell.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the creator, producer and host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Elijah Wald, "Rock ‘N’ Roll: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Rock 'n' roll appeared in the 1950s as the high-energy, electrically amplified music of young dancers and listeners, first in the United States and then around the globe, and from the beginning it symbolized more than music. First popularized as a marketing rubric to sell African-American rhythm and blues to white teenagers, it stood for racial integration, sexual freedom, youthful rebellion, and for change and modernity. It was never a single kind of music, and historians disagree about when it began and which artists or records should be included in its canon--but it was always a flashpoint, whether condemned as an assault on cultural standards or hailed as the most exciting movement of the twentieth century.

Rock ‘N’ Roll: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2026) explores the complex musical styles and evolutions of the genre and also examines it as product, symbol, and vehicle of societal change. The introduction seamlessly integrates the genre with elements of 1955-1965's mass influence including the rise of television and niche radio formats, the civil rights movement, a new concept of "teenagers" as a unique age group, and a sexual revolution. Rock 'n' Roll traces the rise and trajectories of the styles and musicians grouped as rock 'n' roll and their journey to becoming emblems of much more

Elijah Wald is a Grammy winning writer, musician, and historian. His books include Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues; How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music; Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories; The Mayor of MacDougal Street (source for the movie Inside Llewyn Davis); and Dylan Goes Electric! (source for the movie A Complete Unknown). He has taught at various universities and holds a PhD in ethnomusicology and sociolinguistics.

Elijah Wald’s website.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Re-Evaluating CX in the AI Era

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Michael Brand is a CX strategist and trainer, based in Switzerland, who has been named a Thinkers 360 Top 50 Global Thought Leader on Customer Loyalty. Dr. Vincent Covello directs the Center for Risk Communications, and is a nationally and internationally recognized trainer, researcher, consultant, and expert in emergency, crisis, risk, and change communications. Deanna Leonard is a futurist, executive coach, and AI transformation leader. Her career has spanned senior leadership posts across a wide range of Fortune 500 companies.

In this freewheeling, one-hour roundtable discussion, the focus is on the Customer Experience through the lens of both the opportunities and misuses that AI involves. The topics addressed include the following: 1) the importance of active listening, 2) the 20 words that can make or break an exchange with a customer, 3) how front-line CX employees can be enabled to do their jobs better, and 4) the need for training budgets to be protected, if not increased. In emotional terms, two feelings rise to prominence in this session: fear (of not being heard and responded to) and trust (rooted in the demonstration of caring before knowledge gets shared or an action-step taken). The answers as to who people trust, and why, when experiencing stress will be sure to surprise you.

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Marios Koutsoukos, "Restoring the Ancient Religion: The Theurgic Orthopraxy of Iamblichus" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2026)

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Restoring the Ancient Religion: The Theurgic Orthopraxy of Iamblichus (Palgrave MacMillan, 2026) reconsiders Iamblichus’ Response to Porphyry, Late Antiquity’s seminal work on theurgy, which is often referred to as De Mysteriis. Was this text intended to be more than just a defense of ritualism or a philosophical crossing of metaphysical wits between Porphyry and Iamblichus? This volume examines whether De Mysteriis constituted a manifesto of restoration, a call to resignify and revive a religion that Iamblichus felt was spiraling into barren traditionalism.
Through a nuanced examination of Iamblichus’ theurgy, this book shows the emergence of a sophisticated philosophic-ritualistic system, one designed to reform religious practice through divine epiphanies and direct communication with the gods. Using a thorough textual analysis, this book uncovers crucial distinctions between theurgy and magic and explores the mechanics of divine illumination during theurgic rituals in the context of Iamblichus' intricate hierarchy of spiritual beings. In this system, this book demonstrates, material objects could become vessels of divine power and humans could become interlocutors with the divine itself.

New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review

Marios Koutsoukos received his PhD in Classics from the University of Liverpool, UK. His current research focuses on Late Antique theurgy, hermeticism, Graeco-Egyptian magic, animated statues and the survival of mystery cults beyond the sixth century. He also works as a fiction author, translator and screenwriter.

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

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Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman, "The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature: Representations from 1932 to 2024" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026)

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman has a new book out that focuses on the reality of women running for president in the United States, and the fictional representations of this idea that we have seen over the past hundred years. The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature: Representations from 1932 to 2024 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026) takes up a number of different and intriguing examples of this idea, a woman serving as president, and unpacks the various narratives to help us understand what popular culture may be communicating about this concept and what those narratives may be teaching the audience (viewers or readers). Taylor Kollman comes at her research from a variety of perspectives, including Media Studies, Women’s Studies, Feminist Studies, and American Studies. This makes the research particularly rich – since it explores these ideas from a host of analytical viewpoints, helping the reader to consider different genres (television, film, literature) and different approaches. Undergirding all of this is an interrogation of the idea of women and power, which is a controversial concept for many voters, even if it remains unacknowledged.

Taylor Kollman goes through the decades, with a focus on examples of female presidents in a variety of different cultural artifacts. In tracing this concept through almost a hundred years of different narratives, the research highlights some interesting themes, including the accidental way in which women become president within the fictional framework. One of the points Taylor Kollman makes is that, in all the different genres and contexts, there seems to be something wrong with this idea of a woman as president. Often the characters are presented as deceptive, evil, corrupt, illegitimate, or they are seen as incapable of doing the job and are often torn between work and homelife/family life. In tracing these examples, Taylor Kollman also provides the reader with an understanding of the different iterations (waves) of feminism and feminist thought, as well as noting the various backlashes to feminism. The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature takes the reader through a host of different examples, fleshing out these feminist and backlash imaginary spaces that focus on women and power.

Another part of the equation, that is often overlooked in the research on this topic, is that there are fewer female film and television producers, directors, and showrunners, thus often constraining the opportunity to present these ideas of woman and power. This also influences the narratives that come before audiences, since women are not generally “trusted” in the same way that men are to helm major film releases with multi-million dollar budgets. This is another form of reality influencing the imaginary, but in a less expected way. The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature: Representations from 1932 to 2024 takes the reader from Betty Boop for President to Allison Janney as President Grace Penn in The Diplomat and many other fascinating examples of fictional portrayals of women as president of the United States.

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James L. Fitzgerald, "The Mahabharata, Volume 8" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Mahabharata, Volume 8 (U Chicago Press, 2026) is a translation of the twelfth book of The Mahābhārata, an epic tale of history and kingship, reinforced with legends, romances, and metaphysical, theological, and ethical teachings written in Sanskrit 1700 or more years ago. The Book of Peace is focused particularly on the ways people can escape the cycle of rebirth and realize sublime beatitude by way of saving knowledge or yoga meditation or devotion to God Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa. Supported by an extensive introduction and notes, this publication will be greeted as a major event in Sanskrit studies.

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Robert Lee Maril, "Hungry Oklahoma: Confronting Poverty and Food Insecurity" (U Oklahoma Press, 2026)

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Oklahoma, one out of every six residents is poor. One in five children lives in poverty and faces food insecurity. In Hungry Oklahoma: Confronting Poverty and Food Insecurity (U Oklahoma Press, 2026), native son and sociologist Robert Lee Maril follows in the tradition of the national bestsellers Nickel and Dimed and Evicted to illuminate the lived experience of poverty and food insecurity in communities across the state.

Maril's account is immediately personal. He begins with "guests," as shoppers are called by volunteers, waiting in line in the sweltering heat one summer for "Thy Will Be Done," a food pantry, to open. Unable to afford air conditioning, some guests don't buy foods that would spoil on the counter. One woman, Norma, carefully places only canned vegetables in her cart. When she returns to her twenty-year-old pickup, in the truck bed are lawn chairs, blankets, and pans-everything she owns. "The landlord told us this morning we was homeless," Norma says. "I'm not thinking straight."

Drawing on interviews and participant-observation data from his volunteer work at a food pantry, as well as census and sociological data, Maril documents in rich ethnographic detail the status of poverty and low-wage workers in the state today and within historical context. He explores how institutions-such as faith-based organizations, government, and food pantries-structure and shape experiences of poverty. While Maril celebrates the nonprofit and faith-based efforts that make a difference, this book also is critical of conditions and stereotypes that have entrenched poverty in the state.

Hungry Oklahoma ultimately suggests that persistent and pervasive poverty can be eliminated. Its moving accounts of real Oklahomans and their experiences make it a clarion call for not only those interested in policy issues but all Oklahomans who want a better today and tomorrow for those who call the state home.

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The Long Reach of the Strong Arm: Evolving Forms of Transnational Authoritarianism in Asia and Beyond

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How do authoritarian regimes silence critics across borders? And what are the repressive tools and strategies that authoritarian regimes use transnationally? In this episode we are joined by Arild Engelsen Ruud, Mubashar Hasan and Karin Zackari to discuss the role of digital surveillance, emotional blackmail, enforced family isolation, psychological harassment, and the imprisonment of relatives on fabricated charges by Asian authoritarian regimes seeking to control populations and narratives across borders.

You can read more about the research discussed in this episode in the book The Long Reach of the Strong Arm: Evolving Forms of Transnational Authoritarianism, published by Springer.

Arild Engelsen Ruud is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Oslo.

Mubashar Hasan is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Western Sydney University.

Karin Zackari Associate Senior Researcher at the School of Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg.

Kenneth Bo Nielsen, your host, is an Associate Professor of Social Anthropology and the Director of the Centre for South Asian Democracy at the University of Oslo.

We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

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Jinwon Kim, "Koreatown, NYC: The Consumption of a Transnational Brand" (NYU Press, 2026)

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How Manhattan's Koreatown functions as a new ethnic enclave

In the past decade, Korean entertainment has gained global recognition, with Korean movies and TV shows winning Oscars and Emmys, and K-Pop groups becoming wildly popular. In Manhattan, Koreatown has become a popular destination for both locals and tourists, drawing them in with its bars, restaurants, and day spas. In Koreatown, NYC: The Consumption of a Transnational Brand (NYU Press, 2026), Jinwon Kim argues that Manhattan's Koreatown has become a new type of ethnic enclave, what she dubs a "transclave." This commercialized ethnic space exists solely for consumption, leisure, and entertainment, and has been shaped by South Korea's nation-branding strategy, new economic and cultural strategies, patterns in Korean migration, and shifts in tourism and urban policies in New York City.

Kim posits that for many consumers in Koreatown, especially those who are not of Korean descent, the space has become a commercialized place where transnational culture meets the diverse racial and ethnic mosaic of New York City. Kim emphasizes how the space functions to "brand Korea" as a space to "consume ethnicity," reflecting the landscape of South Korea's consumer culture through the physical appearance of buildings and stores and the inclusion of franchise brands. Ultimately, Koreatown, NYC is a fascinating exploration of the intersection of authenticity, ethnicity, and identity in the heart of New York's midtown.

Michael O. Johnston is Associate Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. His research explores symbolic interaction, leisure, meaning, place, community, and sociology of everyday life. He is the author of the forthcoming book Smalltown Urban: Performing the City in Rural America (Bloomsbury, January 2027), The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla, and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest. Smalltown Urban explores how small towns create moments of urbanity through festivals, public gatherings, and everyday social life. Since joining the New Books Network in 2017, he has interviewed more than 100 authors across sociology and the social sciences, helping connect scholars and their work with a broad public audience.

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The Science of Memory with Steve Ramirez

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Today I’m speaking with neuroscientist Stave Ramirez about bullshit and memory. Steve is an associate professor at Boston University, where he runs a lab dedicated to uncovering the mysteries of memory. How memory works, and importantly, how it doesn’t, are crucial questions for understanding everything from the validity of eyewitness testimony to understanding how people overcome traumatic experiences. While the science on memory is far from settled, researchers like Steve are pushing the frontiers of the field forward to better understand how memories are created, stored, and altered. If we can better understand how memory works, we will be better able to understand ourselves. To help us avoid the pitfalls of the bullshit that surrounds the science of memory, I’m pleased to speak with Steve Ramirez.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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Siri Carpenter on Why She Self-Published First — and How It Led to a Traditional Book Deal

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What does it take to turn a self-published book into a traditional publishing deal? Science writer Siri Carpenter — executive director of The Open Notebook and author of The Craft of Science Writing — joins host Sarah Russo on The Publishing Playbook to break down her path from self-publishing to an expanded second edition with University of Chicago Press.

Siri shares how she landed an agent after self-publishing, why course adoption became the key to her book’s success, and the design decisions that helped it stand out. She also previews her newest project, The Best Science Stories and How They Work (also published by UCP), which features articles and annotations from Mary Roach, Ed Yong, and other leading science journalists.

Plus: Siri's take on empathy as a core writing skill, how science writers can combat misinformation, and what she’s currently reading, underwater!

In this episode:

Why Siri self-published The Craft of Science Writing before going the traditional route
How course adoption drove sales and caught a publisher’s attention
The behind-the-scenes story of landing a University of Chicago Press deal
What makes The Best Science Stories and How They Work different from a typical writing anthology
Why empathy is essential in all good writing

If you’re a writer, editor, or aspiring author weighing self-publishing vs. traditional publishing, this episode is for you. Subscribe to The Publishing Playbook for new episodes every week.

For more information on Siri’s work, please visit The Open Notebook

Books mentioned in this episode:

“The Craft of Science Writing,” edited by Siri Carpenter

“The Best Science Stories and How They Work,” edited by Siri Carpenter

“A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There,” by Aldo Leopold

“Why We Swim,” by Bonnie Tsui

“You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World,” by Ada Limón

“The Sea Around Us,” by Rachel Carson

Key Moments

00:57 — Why Siri Started The Open Notebook 📓

Siri opens up about feeling isolated as a freelance science writer, and how a friendship with a fellow journalist sparked the side project that became a major nonprofit.

02:58 — The Real Reason Siri Self-Published Her First Book 📖

Agents wouldn't touch "The Craft of Science Writing,” so Siri went the self-publishing route instead, admitting just how naive she was about the workload ahead.

05:18 — From Self-Published to University of Chicago Press 🎓

Siri walks through how a self-published book still sold over 3,000 copies and eventually landed her an agent and a traditional book deal for a second edition.

10:32 — Designing a Book You Can Read in a Hammock 🌳

Siri describes the collaborative design process behind “The Best Science Stories and How They Work,” where original articles sit side-by-side with expert annotations in the margins.

15:39 — “Every Story Is a Science Story” — Even Traffic Reports 🚗

Siri unpacks The Open Notebook’s tagline with a hilarious real-life story about a stranger shouting “what’s a science story today?” out a truck window.

19:46 — Can Journalists Actually Fight Misinformation? 🔍

Siri gets real about the uphill battle science journalists face against well-funded disinformation campaigns, and the role storytelling still plays in helping readers think critically.

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Two Revolutionary Jews: Leon Trotsky and Chaim Zhitlowsky

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

When Jews plunged into the world of politics en masse at the beginning of the 20th century, a variety of new options were available to them. Two of the leading figures who proffered novel, but opposing political avenues to the Jewish masses were Dr. Chaim Zhitlowsky and Leon Trotsky. Zhitlowsky, a founder of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary party, offered a synthesis of socialism and Yiddish nationalism. Trotsky, a leading Russian Social Democrat, formulated a strict version of internationalism that left no room for Jewish national aspirations. Many Jews, however, did not view their political choices in such stark terms. Instead, they saw both men as leaders and thinkers who pointed the way to Jewish national liberation and working-class revolution, a Jewish homeland, as well as a flourishing life in the diaspora. In this lecture, Tony Michels will explore the political ideas of Trotsky and Zhitlowsky, and how Jews engaged with them during the first half of the 20th century.

This program is the first in a series of programs held in conjunction with YIVO’s current digitization of the Jewish Labor and Political Archives (JLPA). Consisting of nearly 200 collections encompassing 3.5 million pages of archival documents that were collected by the Bund Archives, the JLPA forms the world’s most comprehensive body of material pertaining to Jewish political activity in Europe and the United States.

This lecture originally took place on April 28, 2025.

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Susannah Heschel and Sarah Imhoff, "The Woman Question in Jewish Studies" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Woman Question in Jewish Studies (Princeton UP, 2025) is a critical look at the difficulties women face in the field of Jewish studies, drawing on quantitative data, personal stories, and the gendered history of the field.

The field of Jewish studies has expanded significantly in recent years, with increasing numbers of women entering the field. These scholars have brought new perspectives from studies of women, gender, and sexuality. Yet they have also faced institutional and individual obstacles. In this book, Susannah Heschel and Sarah Imhoff examine the place of women and nonbinary people in Jewish studies, arguing that, for both intellectual and ethical reasons, the culture of the field must change. Heschel and Imhoff explore quantitative data regarding women as editors of and contributors to academic journals and anthologies, examine data regarding citations of women's scholarship, and scrutinize women's presence on panels at academic conferences. They analyze the wider context of the contemporary academy, discussing what is distinctive about Jewish studies. They trace the history of the field, its connections to traditional religious studies, and its growth in US institutions, interspersing this with stories of scholars in the field who have experienced harassment and gender discrimination. Finally, they offer suggestions for a reparative path forward.

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Steven K. Green, "American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love, and Feminism" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Today I'm speaking with Steven K. Green, Fred H. Paulus Professor of Law and Affiliated Professor of History and Religious Studies at Willamette University. We are discussing his book, American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love, and Feminism (Oxford University Press, 2026). Since the first permanent Protestant settlement in Jamestown in 1607, Protestant Christianity has waxed and waned through a series of revivals, migrations, and challenges from alternative faiths like Catholicism and Mormonism. The Gilded Age, from roughly 1870 to 1900, was a unique period for Protestantism in American history. Most Americans still subscribed to a Protestant faith, though threats began to arise not from other confessions, but rather from philosophical and scientific challengers. The so-called freethinkers represented a broad range of beliefs and ideas, being united by a mutual skepticism of religious conservatism and traditional sexual and gender mores. American Infidelity tells the story of this tug-of-war for the soul of a nation, with Christianity on one side and the legacy of thinkers like Thomas Paine on the other.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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Rahim Thawer and Maryam Khan eds., "Queer and Muslim: On Faith, Family, and Healing" (U Regina Press, 2026)

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Rahim Thawer and Maryam Khan's new edited volume Queer and Muslim: On Faith, Family and Healing (U Regina Press, 2026) is a powerful anthology that brings together writers, activists, and scholars who meditate, reflect, and share stories of queer Muslim life, that contains the complexity of rage, grief and resilience but also joy, love, and healing. In the process, Thawer and Khan deconstruct the limitations of western centric formulations of mental health and wellness, which is often individualistic and commodified, and invite readers to think through a decolonial approach that honours Muslim spirituality, religiosity, and culture, which can help us shift towards collectivistic and liberatory goals of healing. This anthology is a great resource for those who are mental health practitioners, and relevant to those who think about gender, sexuality, and Islam.

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Jacqueline West, "Black Point" (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2026)

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Black Point (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2026) is an insular small town steeped in Norse traditions, a teen’s developing romance with a newcomer becomes fraught as dark secrets from the past rise to the surface in this gorgeously atmospheric mystery by New York Times bestselling author Jacqueline West. Lucia Sorenson holds on hard to the things she loves. Her tiny Wisconsin hometown clings to the bluffs above the Mississippi River, threatened by weather, time, and the creep of climate change. Her mother is pushing her to go away to college and see the world beyond their small town, but Lucia is determined to stay and to keep her grandfather’s Viking museum going. When the Black Point Hotel, a 150-year-old landmark that’s been empty for decades, is bought by an outsider, tongues start wagging. Lucia meets the new owner’s teenage nephew, Max, and as they grow closer, she discovers there’s something thrilling about getting to know someone who hasn’t known her all her life—and maybe something more. Then Max discovers some ominous things about Black Point hidden away in the hotel—stories of ghosts and mysterious disappearances. Lucia refuses to believe that her town is hiding a sinister past. But the river is rising, and more secrets are washing to the surface. Soon, Lucia will have to choose between the home she thought she knew and uncovering the dark truths hidden underneath.

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Lisa Blaydes and Samuel Helfont eds., "Ba‘thist Iraq Through Archives: Reflections, Explorations, and Opportunities" (Stanford UP, 2026)

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The opening of Iraq's Ba'th Party archives revolutionized the study of Iraqi politics and history, offering scholars unprecedented access to the inner workings of one of the world's most impenetrable autocracies. Ba‘thist Iraq Through Archives: Reflections, Explorations, and Opportunities (Stanford University Press, 2026) edited by Dr. Lisa Blaydes and Dr. Samuel Helfont brings together leading scholars to take stock of what we have learned from over a decade of research using the Ba'thist archives, contributing to a new understanding of Iraq's history, with wider implications for understanding authoritarianism in general.

The contributors show how research in these unique archives challenges previous assumptions about Ba'thist Iraq and the workings of authoritarian regimes. Their chapters provide fresh insights into how Saddam Hussein's regime functioned both at the elite level and through everyday bureaucratic practices, shedding light on state power, social relations, and international politics of the Middle East. The volume also critically reflects on the ethical questions posed by the archives, including their origins, the impact of their removal from Iraq, and access barriers for local scholars. Rich in empirical detail yet framed by cutting-edge theoretical questions, this book demonstrates how the Iraqi archives have reshaped debates about authoritarianism, governance, repression, and state-society relations well beyond the Iraqi case.

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George Savran, "Jacob: Conflicted Twin, Aggrieved Patriarch" (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2025)

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Jacob: Conflicted Twin, Aggrieved Patriarch (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2025), George Savran brings his narrative interpretive approach to look closely at Jacob's shifting identity. Jacob is indelibly linked to his brother Esau in the Genesis narrative, and their complex relationship as twins foregrounds this problematic connection. Jacob's lineage is examined-he differs noticeably from his ancestors and his offspring in the complexity of his changing character. At times he is a "simple man" at the mercy of the demands of others; elsewhere he is a devious trickster eager to use his wits to achieve personal success. His search for a coherent identity, as it unfolds in this study, leads to his emergence as the patriarch of his family, compelled to make peace with his brother and his sons in the midst of ongoing conflict.

This study brings out how Jacob's mature identity is clarified further by his reactions to three unusual and unexpected encounters which shed light on his ability to recalibrate his self-understanding.

The first is his struggle with the man/angel at the Jabbok, where he receives a blessing with the name Israel, and comes to realize that his relationship to God is more complicated (and less predictable) than he had previously thought.
An additional insight comes the following day during his reunion with Esau, as he learns to appreciate him in a new way and compares beholding his face to "seeing the face of God". This is a remarkable admission by a brother who thought only the worst of his twin.
Jacob's rethinking his own self-importance emerges later in the Joseph story, when he is compelled to realizes that his insistence on his personal concerns will lead to the dissolution of his family.

Savran's interpretation of these reactions underscores their significance in Jacob's development, revealing a character of depth and resilience and giving new meaning to his role as the avatar of Israel.

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On Who Blew Up Nord Stream: A Conversation with Author Bojan Pancevski

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The September, 2022 attack on the Nord Stream pipelines transporting Russian gas to Germany was perhaps the greatest single act of sabotage in modern history. In The Nord Stream Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Explosions that Shook the World (Henry Holt, 2026), Bojan Pancevski makes a compelling case that the culprit was an intrepid team of Ukrainian intelligence agents, military personnel and civilian divers. In our conversation, he explains how he came to this conclusion. And we touch on the wider issue of what Pancevski calls the “Cossack spirit,” at the heart of the determination of courageous and resourceful Ukrainians to resist, by all means available, Moscow’s efforts to subdue Ukraine. Pancevski is the chief European political correspondent of The Wall Street Journal and has considerable experience covering Ukraine.

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Elisabeth Rhoads, "Haggard House" (Bodger Books, 2025)

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

It’s the 19th century, and a village in northern Michigan is the setting for Adam Bolton’s strange, decrepit house, called Haggard House by the community. He’s eleven, and his strictly religious mother only allows him to attend the village school after he promises not to be friendly with the other children. They’re heathens, she tells him. Adam builds an imaginary house in his mind, so when he meets a little girl who likes him, he can imagine her there. His father is a respected carpenter who leads a sad life because of Adam’s over-pious, angry and bitter mother. As a young man Adam escapes for a few years and doesn’t learn of his father’s murder until he returns. And when he goes against his mother’s wishes to marry the woman he loves, everyone pays a price in this well-written tale of madness and piety.

Elisabeth Rhoads is the Vice-President of the second largest branch of the California Writers Club—Orange County. Since 2021, she has been a volunteer juror for the Scholastic Writing Awards. She holds her BA in Theatre and has recently been accepted into Chapman University’s Creative Writing MFA program, starting in Fall of 2026. Originally from Michigan, she spent two summers working on Mackinac Island, which only allows transport by horse and carriage, foot, or bicycle. Her time on this history-soaked island deeply influenced her, and has inspired many stories, including, in part, Haggard House (Bodger Books, 2025)—and is featured briefly in the novel.

She is the author of one novel and has begun a short story series on her Substack, in which she writes a new story each month, based on subscriber prompts. Now living in California with her husband, she enjoys learning Japanese, fermenting foods of all types—although mainly kombucha—and pretends to enjoy exercise-related activities, such as kayaking and running.

As someone who grew up within a strict, religious home, her writing reflects the Victorian influences that made up a large part of her family’s reading habits, such as Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, and Edgar Allen Poe. She hopes that modern readers will find much to connect with, as these old-world literary influences combine with her now much broader view of the world.

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Andrew N. Buchanan and Ruth Lawlor eds., "The Greater Second World War: Global Perspectives" (Cornell UP, 2025)

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Andrew Buchanan and Ruth Lawlor, The Greater Second World War: Global Perspectives (Cornell University Press, 2025)

This ambitious edited collection encourages readers to think in bigger ways about the global Second World War. That includes a wider frame in space and time, but also a larger geopolitical perspective of the war as a world-system crisis and an expanded social perspective on who fought the war and why. A team of international scholars take on this task in chapters ranging from the global alliance system and colonial mobilization to studies of particular cities and dockyards.

In a wide-ranging conversation with both editors, we discuss questions of imperialism, the rise and limits of US global hegemony, the 'ragged ends' of the war, and the social movements of a window of global possibility in 1945–46.

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Paul Langley and Andrew Leyshon, "Fintech Capital: The Digital Transformation of Everyday Money and Finance" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How is finance changing in the contemporary world? In FinTech Capital: The Digital Transformation of Everyday Money and Finance (Princeton University Press, 2026), Paul Langley, a Professor of Economic Geography at Durham Universityand Andrew Leyshon, a Senior Fellow in the Centre for Economy, Policy and Place, Nottingham Trent University and Emeritus Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Nottingham, chart the rise of a new form of capitalism in the digital age. Drawing on detailed case studies from across the world, from familiar everyday examples such as Klarna to continent-spanning institutions such as Standard Bank, the book theorises the dynamics of this new moment in global capitalism. Of interest across the social sciences, the book will be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand money today.

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Jenny R. Labendz, "Beyond Hope: Rabbinic Eschatology of Late Antiquity in Comparative Perspective" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Beyond Hope: Rabbinic Eschatology of Late Antiquity in Comparative Perspective (Oxford UP, 2026) Jenny Labendz addresses distinct patterns within rabbinic eschatology that have been overlooked in scholarship and in Jewish thought. Contrary to what is usually expected of eschatology, this book demonstrates that the rabbis held a sustained eschatology of irresolution. While the rabbis occasionally waxed poetic along the lines of a perfected new world in the eschaton, a vast store of rabbinic texts depicts a deeply imperfect eschaton. This is the profound difference between rabbinic and early Christian eschatology.
Despite its differences from the Christian doctrine of perfection, rabbinic eschatology aligns neatly with a different Christian concept, namely inaugurated eschatology. The eschaton is not only be hoped for in the future, but can be attained in the present. The best of all possible worlds has not yet been entirely actualized, but it has been inaugurated, in the rabbinic view by the exodus from slavery in Egypt, the revelation of the Torah at Sinai, and the construction of the Tabernacle in the wilderness. This is a paradigm shift for thinking about rabbinic eschatology, which rejects the dogmas and binaries that generations of scholars have taken for granted.

In this new book, Jenny Labendz explores the relationship between this world and the best possible world, the limits of that best possible world, and asks a crucially grounding question--what are we talking about when we're talking about the end of the world?

Interviewee: Jenny R. Labendz received her PhD from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2010 and was Associate Professor of Religious Studies at St. Francis College until 2025. She is also the author of Socratic Torah: Non-Jews in Rabbinic Intellectual Culture, published by Oxford University Press in 2013.

Host: Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey out of Hasidism and Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com.

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Adam Y. Liu, "Authoritarian Markets: The Politics of China's Banking Explosion" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Authoritarian Markets explores the political foundations of China's banking boom and its far-reaching impact on the Chinese economy.

In 1978 China had no commercial banks. Today it commands the world's largest banking system, with assets equal to 40 percent of global GDP. In Authoritarian Markets: The Politics of China's Banking Explosion (Cornell University Press, 2026), Dr. Adam Y. Liu argues that this rise was not the product of market reforms but of political bargains and bureaucratic mobilization.

In the 1990s, Beijing issued bank licenses as bargaining chips—securing cooperation from local governments as it pushed through painful reforms. The result was a sprawling, competitive banking market built not in spite of authoritarian rule but because of it.

Drawing on interviews, spatial data, census records, surveys, and experiments, Dr. Liu reveals how local state banks became both engines of China's growth and incubators of its current economic risks. Eye-opening and persuasive, Authoritarian Markets offers fresh insight into the political logic of market development in China and authoritarian states worldwide.

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Anna Lively, "Revolutionary Connections: Russia and Ireland, 1905-1923" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Anna Lively is a historian of modern Ireland, Britain, and Russia. Awarded her PhD in History from the University of Edinburgh in 2022, she is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in History at the University of Strathclyde. Prior to this she held the Roy Foster Irish Government Research Fellowship in the History and Culture of Ireland at Hertford College, University of Oxford, and was a Teaching Fellow in Modern History at the University of Aberdeen. She has published in multiple journals on the centenary of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and on the Irish Save the Children Fund.

From the late nineteenth century, Ireland featured prominently in Russian liberal, conservative, and radical debates about land politics, self-determination, and empire. Equally, Irish commentators from across the political spectrum used Russia as a lens onto questions of imperialism, anti-imperialism, and socialism. But while the Irish and Russian revolutionary contexts are well-studied in isolation, their myriad political, social, and cultural entanglements are not.
Drawing on extensive Russian and Irish archival accounts, newspapers, diaries, letters, memoirs, literary, and visual sources, Revolutionary Connections: Russia and Ireland, 1905-1923 (Oxford UP, 2026) looks in both directions at Irish responses to Russian revolutionary change and at representations of Ireland in Russian-language texts from the 1905 Russian Revolution to the end of the Irish Civil War in 1923. The result is a unique account of international engagement in revolutionary Russia and Ireland and of how Ireland was imagined beyond the Anglophone world. This mutual, if selective and conditional, engagement reflected wider technological changes in news communication and the expansion of international news agencies. Diasporic networks, including in Britain and the US, helped to shape Russo-Irish relations and Irish publications and political actors engaged with different parts of the Russian empire, including Ukraine, Finland, and Poland.
Through five thematic chapters, the book considers Russo-Irish relations from contrasting and often overlooked angles, including Irish eyewitness experiences on the Eastern front during World War One and religious perspectives. Using a transnational methodology and expansive source base, the book offers a fresh angle on the entangled history of revolutions in the early twentieth century and the translation of news and ideas across borders.

Revolutionary Connections: Russia and Ireland, 1905–1923 will be published in September 2026 with Oxford University Press

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Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth, "Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions (Oxford University Press, 2026), Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth reveal the vast and complex world of France's Atlantic enterprises in the premodern era. Drawing upon years of archival work, Hodson and Rushforth demonstrate how France's overseas activities created its empire, intentionally or not, and how these distant places built the French state and used it for their own ends. Beyond the Ocean covers an impressive sweep of history, from the late eleventh century through the early nineteenth, and yet the authors manage to retain a human element. Their judicious inclusion of micro-histories and primary-source quotation, as well as their lively prose, helps the reader enter into what it may have felt like to live through these developments, to participate in the era when "France became France, and the Atlantic became a world." Crucially, their attention to the non-European actors in this story and women's worlds and work makes the book a helpful corrective to top-down approaches to imperial histories. Beyond the Ocean is a must-read for Atlantic world scholars, but has value for anyone interested in early modern Europe or cultural exchange.

Elspeth Currie is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Boston College where she studies women’s intellectual history in early modern Europe.

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Matthew Ritger, "Houses of Correction: Carceral Institutions and Humanist Culture in Early Modern England" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Today’s guest, Matthew Ritger, is the author of Houses of Correction: Carceral Institutions and Humanist Culture in Early Modern England (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026). This book delves into the archival records of Bridewell, Europe’s first house of correction, which was overseen by the humanist reformer Richard Grafton. It makes the case that the Bridewell prison and workhouse were central to the history of humanism in ways that both challenge idealized notions of European humanism and illustrate its commitments to civic and Christian reform. The book explores Bridewell’s mission to discipline the poor and the “idle” through hard labor, vocational training, and basic education, while also exposing its coercive and exploitative practices, which included whippings, forced labor, and the infliction of fear.

Houses of Correction also explores how Bridewell contributed to a broader humanist culture of correction, which united textual methods with practical forms of knowledge, and which extended to rhetorical and textual forms, as well as literary productions. The book’s five chapters connect the history and influence of Bridewell to a range of literary texts, including Thomas More’s Utopia, Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest, and Milton’s Of Educationand Samson Agonistes.

Through its interrogation of the logic of carceral humanism, Houses of Correction demonstrates the crucial role that Bridewell played in cultivating a culture of correction that pervaded humanist education, textual practices, and literary representations.

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New Trends in YIVO Scholarship

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Since 1925, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research has been a pioneer in the field of Jewish studies. At the core of YIVO since its founding was its commitment to scholarship which supported the Jewish “folk.” This manifested in a variety of initiatives, including youth autobiography contests and a youth research division (yugfor), an Economic-Statistical section (ekstat), and the establishment of various YIVO branches. These YIVO's activities continue to pique the interests of scholars, who have recently produced new scholarship analyzing these initiatives through the lens of new pioneering research methods.

Join YIVO for a panel discussion sharing new research on these historic YIVO initiatives featuring presentations by William Pimlott, Kamil Kijek, and Nicolas Vallois, followed by a conversation led by Jessica Kirzane.

This panel discussion originally took place on June 11, 2025.

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Lana Swartz on Digital Money and Digital Cultures of Money

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Lana Swartz, Associate Professor of Media Studies and Shannon Mid-Career at the University of Virginia, where she runs the Digital Cultures and Economies Lab. Swartz is a creative and wide-ranging thinker and researcher. The pair focuses on Swartz's book, New Money: How Payment Became social media, and talks about her recent work on youth money cultures and on the rich business and media dimensions of contemporary nail artists and salons.

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Charles Akl, "Red Like Orange" (Hoopoe, 2026)

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A Conversation with author Charles Akl about his debut novel Red Like Orange (Hoopoe, 2026)

An offbeat tale of creativity, friendship, and finding your voice in this uproarious journey through Cairo's music scene in the early 2000s, where everything from American rock to Egyptian popular songs cultivates big dreams

Winner of the Sawiris Cultural Award

Following a breakup with his long-term girlfriend, “Local,” as he is known to his friends, moves from Alexandria to Cairo. In his new apartment, he discovers an old accordion, while his roommate unexpectedly decides to take up the saxophone, despite never having touched one before. And so, in the blistering summer heat, the two of them, without any formal training, dive into their first musical experiment: they put his mother’s cookbook to music.

Along with an eccentric assortment of acquaintances and occasional bandmates, Local crashes through his twenties and in and out of Cairo hangouts, heated debates on different music scenes, and various impromptu jam sessions and attempts at musical production.

This is a raucous journey through offbeat downtown Cairo in the early 2000s and the music of the era, from Mohamed Mounir to Pink Floyd. Suffused with a sardonic humor and full of hilarious observations, Red Like Orange vividly chronicles life lived just outside the mainstream.

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Meredith Gamer, "City of the Gallows: Art and Execution in Eighteenth-Century London" (Yale UP, 2026)

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

City of the Gallows: Art and Execution in Eighteenth-Century London (Yale UP, 2026) uncovers the complex and often unexpected connections between eighteenth-century London’s sites of punishment and its spaces of art-making, instruction, and display. Drawing together a wide range of images, objects, and texts – from popular woodcuts and anatomical sculptures to moral tracts and dictionaries of slang – it offers new readings of works by major artists, such as William Hogarth, Johan Zoffany, and Joseph Wright of Derby, and shines a light on others that traditional accounts of the period have overlooked or ignored. In doing so, this book shows how state violence shaped the art and visual culture of this era, whose legacies persist to this day.

Kelsey Brosnan is an art historian specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French art. Her book on the still-life painter Anne Vallayer-Coster was published by Lund Humphries and Getty Publications in 2026. kb2348@gmail.com

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David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab eds., "Understanding Social Images: Essays on Visual Methods and Teaching Visual Anthropology" (Berghahn, 2025)

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode I discuss the book Understanding Social Images: Essays on Visual Methods and Teaching Anthropology (Berghahn, 2025) with co-editors David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab, a posthumous collection of writings by the late anthropologist Marcus Banks. Banks was a key the figures in development of visual anthropology, but his work remains of continuing relevance. This volume brings together several of his essays on film, photography, archive work, as well as reflections of visual methods such as photo-elicitation and ways of teaching visual anthroplogy.

The conversation begins with Marcus Banks himself, his place within anthropology, his influence on visual anthropology, and the broader effort to preserve and extend his work through a set of posthumous collections. From there, the discussion turns to one of the central themes that emerge from across several essays, namely, that images are not simply illustrations or transparent representations, but socially and temporally situated objects with disctinct social lives. From there, we discuss Banks’s interest in the materiality of the visual and how the circulation and afterlives of images gather new meaning over time.

A substantial part of the interview focuses on Banks’s film Raju and His Friends (1988), which proved foundational to his later reflections on ethnographic filmmaking, and especially on the ethics and politics of representation. As well as providing an introduction to Marcus Banks’s work and serving as a tribute to a scholar whose influence continues to shape the field, many of the topics covered in the interview touches on many broader questions in anthropology itself, and as such will be of interest not only to students of visual anthropology, but to anthropology students and anthropologists more generally.

David Zeitlyn is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Wolfson College. His work spans visual anthropology, photography and archives, religion and divination, and long-term fieldwork in Cameroon. He also collaborated with Marcus Banks on the second edition of Visual Methods in Social Research.

Chihab El Khachab is Associate Professor in Visual Anthropology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Wolfson College. He is a social anthropologist specializing in visual and media anthropology, especially Egyptian media production, and is the author of Making Film in Egypt: How Labor, Technology, and Mediation Shape the Industry.

Further reading and resources mentioned in the recording

Jainism as Social and Visual Practice: Anthropological Perspectives
Marcus Banks. Edited by John E. Cort, David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab. New Delhi: Primus Books, 2026. This posthumous volume gathers Banks’s writings on Jain social organization and visual representation.
The revived HADDON catalogue of ethnographic films
Originally created by Marcus Banks in the 1990s, HADDON is an online catalogue of archival ethnographic film. The revived site presents a restored version of the database, now hosted through Paul Henley’s Silent Time Machine project.
Raju and His Friends (1988)
The film discussed at length in this episode, and a key reference point for Banks’s later reflections on visual anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking.

Marcus Banks was Professor of Visual Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA), University of Oxford until he passed away in 2020. He was a pioneer in integrating visual approaches into the mainstream of social and cultural anthropology. With Howard Morphy, he edited the influential volume Rethinking Visual Anthropology (Yale University Press, 1999).

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Linford Fisher, "Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History" (Liveright, 2026)

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Although the first enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown in 1619, European slavery in America began more than a century before. In a work distinguished not only by its original research but by its “passionate prose” (James F. Brooks), historian Linford Fisher demonstrates how the enslavement of Indigenous people began in the years just after 1492, ensnaring an estimated three to six million Natives throughout the Americas. Although largely erased from the public consciousness, Native enslavement continued for centuries to become a colossal phenomenon that affected nearly 600,000 Native Americans in North America alone, revealing the shocking truth that American colonizers enslaved Natives in roughly the same numbers as they imported enslaved Africans.
From Virginia to California, from New England to Barbados, Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History (Liveright, 2026) traces the history of Indigenous enslavement and land dispossession, detailing how colonizers captured Natives and often deliberately mislabeled them as Black slaves to avoid detection. While the American Revolution pealed the bells of freedom for colonists, it paved a larcenous trail of westward expansion that subsequently plundered Indigenous land and stole the labor of Natives from nations like the Cherokee, Navajo, Nisean, and many others. “This double theft,” Fisher writes, “was central to the origins, growth, and eventual success of the English colonies and the United States—not just initially but throughout all of American history.”
In this expansive narrative, Fisher weaves together accounts of major episodes in American history including early colonization, the American Revolution, and the Civil War with lesser-known stories of Native enslavement and land loss. Fisher upends conventional histories about the nature of American slavery, revealing enslaved Natives in places we have overlooked, including southern antebellum plantations and the nineteenth-century American West. After Congress outlawed Native slavery in 1867, Americans forced Indigenous children into boarding schools and white homes, where they labored under forced assimilation. This practice was not reformed until the latter twentieth century, when Native nations finally secured increasing rights and self-determination.
Nearly fifteen years in the making, this magisterial volume not only uncovers a five-century genocidal history but also illuminates the myriad ways Native Americans have fought for their sovereignty and maintained community. The most comprehensive work of its kind, Stealing America emerges as a saga of both persistent colonialism and Indigenous resilience, one that reframes American history at its core.

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Claire Hubbard-Hall, "Her Secret Service: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence" (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2024)

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Since the inception of the Secret Service Bureau back in 1909, women have worked at the very heart of British secret intelligence - yet their contributions have been all but written out of history. Now, drawing on private and previously-classified documents, leading historian Claire Hubbard-Hall brings their gripping true stories to life in Her Secret Service: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2024).

From encoding orders and decrypting enemy messages to penning propaganda and infiltrating organisations, the women of British intelligence played a pivotal role in both the First and Second World Wars. Prepare to meet the true custodians of Britain's military secrets, from Kathleen Pettigrew, personal assistant to the Chief of MI6 Stewart Menzies, who late in life declared 'I was Miss Moneypenny, but with more power', to Jane Archer, the very first female MI5 officer who raised suspicions about the Soviet spy Kim Philby long before he was officially unmasked and Winifred Spink, the first female officer ever sent to Russia in 1916. In Her Secret Service, Hubbard-Hall rescues these silenced voices and those of many other fascinating women from obscurity to provide a definitive account of women's contributions to the history of the intelligence services.

The book, now in paperback, includes a postscript based on a new treasure trove of documents.

Her Secret Service won the 2025 Dr Polly Corrigan Book prize. The Prize aims to recognise scholarship within the realm of intelligence and security, written by female scholars and/or about women. It encourages scholars to go beyond traditional lines of inquiry and explore how women contributed to and participated in the making of the ‘Secret World’.

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Patrick Nunn, "Whispers from Celtic Seas: The True Meanings of Ancient Stories from Northwest Europe" (Reaktion, 2026)

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What if the legends of submerged cities, land-making witches and sea-crossing bishops are not mere inventions but echoes of real events? Whispers from Celtic Seas: The True Meanings of Ancient Stories from Northwest Europe (Reaktion Books, 2026) by Professor Patrick Nunn at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia revisits coastal traditions from the Celtic fringes of northwest Europe, showing how they preserve memories of dramatic environmental change—floods, land loss and shifting shorelines—carried forward through oral storytelling for generations. Drawing on cutting-edge geological and archaeological research, this book recasts these tales not as fantasy, but as historical testimony grounded in lived experience. With clarity and insight, it also brings to life the tellers and collectors of these stories, tracing how oral knowledge endured even as literacy spread. A compelling invitation to listen again to old stories, and to hear what the land and sea remember.

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David J. Teece and Sohvi Heaton, "Dynamic Universities: How Strategic, Entrepreneurial Leaders Can Strengthen Higher Education" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In times of deep uncertainty, the university needs to transform itself into an entrepreneurial entity to maintain long-term evolutionary fitness. Dynamic Universities (Cambridge University Press, 2026) explores how strategic, entrepreneurial leadership can help US higher education institutions thrive amid unprecedented challenges. Drawing on the dynamic capabilities’ framework, David J. Teece and Sohvi Heaton provide a strategic roadmap to help university leaders identify emerging opportunities and threats, take decisive action, and sustain competitiveness. Through compelling case studies including Stanford and Berkeley and interviews with global university leaders, this book offers practical insights into managing complexity, fostering innovation, and building resilient academic ecosystems.

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Leah Pope Parker, "Light of the Everlasting Life: Disability and Crip Eschatology in Old English Literature" (U Michigan Press, 2025)

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

From disability metaphors to narratives structured around bodies presented as aberrant, early medieval English thoughtworlds conveyed the promise of resurrection and the hope of salvation through crip and disabled bodies. Light of the Everlasting Life: Disability and Crip Eschatology in Old English Literature (U Michigan Press, 2025) argues that early medieval Christian eschatology, as manifested in Old English literary texts, was a crip eschatology: a theology of the afterlife that relied upon disabled bodies and concepts related to disability in order to convey promises of resurrection and salvation. In addition to demonstrating how literature manifested theological approaches to the afterlife, Leah Pope Parker articulates the ways of thinking about bodies and disability that were available to ordinary early medieval people, many of whom experienced their bodies in ways that resonate with what we call disability today, but who rarely appear in the historical record.

By analyzing Old English texts, including Alfredian translations, Ælfric's saints' lives, and poetry from the Exeter and Vercelli Books, Parker introduces novel ways of characterizing disability's effects in literature. "Spiritual prosthesis" reveals rhetorical, narrative, and theological reliance upon disability to convey the promise of a Christian afterlife. "Systems of aberrance" emerge as a result, in which bodies marked as deviant--including disabled, monstrous, heroic, saintly, and dead bodies--form a network of embodiments that reinforce the narratives they inhabit and that of Christian salvation history. Locating crip eschatology in early medieval literature, Light of the Everlasting Life rewrites standard histories of disability, of the body, and of medieval Christian eschatology.

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Michelle Bigenho and Henry Stobart, "Heritage Fever: Law and Cultural Politics in a Decolonizing State" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The early twenty-first century ushered in a period of change in Bolivia. The country welcomed its first Indigenous president, a new constitution, and a profusion of laws that recognized individual music and dance expressions as intangible cultural heritage. Using cultural heritage lawmaking as a window through which to view the de-centered workings of the Indigenous-focused Plurinational Bolivian State, Heritage Fever: Law and Cultural Politics in a Decolonizing State (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Dr. Michelle Bigenho and Dr. Henry Stobart unpacks the myriad motivations for heritage making in this this politically transformative moment. Heritage Fever reorients UNESCO-driven heritage debates towards a different set of questions—a pivot the authors call “heritage otherwise.”

These inquiries focus on how citizens use law to frame expressive culture and engage their new state. Through grounded case studies, Bigenho and Stobart reveal how competing claims over cultural expressions stimulate aficionado research and produce an abundance of cultural activities. Managing these productive conflicts often involves strategic uses of scale within the country's new political autonomies, even as old-style nationalisms lurk beneath a plurinational sheen. One case study highlights imagined Indigenous autonomy as bolstered by decolonizing historiography that predates the Plurinational State by several decades.

Privileging the stories told by those who championed or who were bureaucratically involved in the respective heritage-making campaigns, Heritage Fever's research draws from the authors' combined fieldwork in Bolivia over the last 30 years, recent multi-sited fieldwork conducted as a team, and ethnographic interviews conducted with Bolivians involved in heritage-making projects. Contributing to legal anthropology, critical heritage studies, ethnomusicology, and anthropology of the state, Heritage Fever looks beyond intellectual property frames, opens new perspectives on archival thinking, reflects on decolonizing practices in expertise and knowledge production, and uncovers the agency of mid-level citizens in a decolonizing state.

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Mark Kitto, "China Running Dog" (Plum Rain Press, 2025)

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In his novel China Running Dog (Plum Rain Press, 2025), a young man in his early twenties lives in Shanghai in the year 2000, in a greed-crazed free-for-all moral and lawless vacuum created by the Chinese Communist Party. Johnny Trent, small-time entrepreneur from Basildon in the UK, ends up in China, where he meets Felix Fawcett-Smith, fresh off the boat and from the other side of the tracks. An unlikely friendship begins.

Johnny impresses the well-bred Felix with his street smarts until Felix takes Johnny’s advice too literally – and too far – and slips into Shanghai’s murky underbelly. He enters a world where the Party, power, and connections to them, are all that matter, where criminals are given sainthoods and saints sent to hell.

Johnny tries to stop Felix’s spiral, not least because Felix is taking a sweet, angelic girl, Anita, down with him and Johnny has feelings for Anita that he has never dared to put into words. But Felix thinks he knows best. Like Johnny, all he wants is respect.

It’s up to Johnny to save whoever he can, besides himself.

Books mentioned in this podcast: Shanghai Baby by Wei Hui, Shanghai by Richie Yokomitsu (transl. Dennis Washburn), Candy by Mian Mian

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Toby Miller and Joan Pedro Carañana, "Global Sports Go Green—Or Do They?" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Just how much damage is sport doing to the planet? In Global Sports Go Green—Or Do They? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) Toby Miller, Profesor Distinguido at the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico and Joan Pedro Carañana, Associate Professor of Journalism at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain examine the ecological impact of major sporting events. Using case studies of The World Cup, The Olympics, The America’s Cup and Formula One, the book demonstrates the vast range of economic, social, cultural and climate impacts of these mega-events. Offering a wide ranging and compelling critique, along with consideration of resistance to carbon sports, the book is essential reading for everyone with interested in whether global sporting spectacles can really be sustainable.

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A Conversation with LeUyen Pham illustrator of "As I Dream of You" (First Second, 2026)

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

As I Dream of You (First Second, 2026) illustrated by LeUyen Pham and written by Jennifer Lee. Falling in love is supposed to hurt. That’s what Franny and Sam, two cynical teenagers raised on tales of heartbreak and loss, have come to understand. Yet when they fall for each other, they find the reality of love is something else entirely: it’s electrifying, all-encompassing, and easy. Theirs is a love that can conquer anything...perhaps even death. But Franny and Sam’s quest to stay together—no matter the cost—soon blurs the line between reality and fantasy, and their shared dream threatens to turn into a nightmare.

In this episode, Pham talks about illustrating graphic novels and picture books as well as working as an artist.

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Victoria Donovan, "Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East" (Daunt Books, 2025)

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East (Daunt Books Publishing, 2025) is a unique reflection on the much-mythologised Donetsk and Luhansk regions of the Ukrainian east, the old and recent history of the region as seen by an esteemed academic multi-disciplinary scholar Victoria Donovan in her numerous travels to the region prior to the full-scale invasion. Seen through a deeply empathetic lens of conversations with local curators, historians, museum workers, and artists, the region is shown in its complexity, with the uniqueness of its landscapes, endangered biodiversity, entangled colonialisms of its past and a threatened future.

Since start of Russia’s war against Ukraine in 2014, its eastern region—Donbas—has been synonymous with conflict. With the escalation of that war in 2022, its, cities such as Bakhmut and Lysychansk have become familiar to us through the images and reports of brutal devastation. Victoria Donovan excavates a rich, multicultural history of this area, and paints a radically different picture.

Travelling from the dramatic, jagged peaks of Bilokuzmynivka to the marshland of Mariupol, from a warehouse rave to an abandoned gypsum mine, the physical world and its importance to this region’s identity is brought to vivid life. But above all else, by speaking to those whose lives are embedded there now—curators, artists, railway workers, young people who have grown up amidst instability and destruction—Donovan amplifies local voices and reveals the intensely personal lived reality of Putin’s war.

Victoria Donovan is Professor of Ukrainian and East European Studies and Director of the Centre for Global (Post)socialisms, Southeast, Central and East European Studies at the University of St Andrews.

Viktoriia Grivina is an independent anthropologist and writer, author of Kharkiv, a War City (Ibidem, 2025), and Kharkiv is a Dream: Public Art and Activism, 2013–2023 (Ibidem, 2025).

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Amy Brann, "Make Your Brain Work: Perform at a Higher Level" (Kogan Page, 2025)

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Make Your Brain Work
By Amy Brann
Neuroscience expert, author, consultant and global speaker

Make Your Brain Work: Perform at a Higher Level (Kogan Page, 2025) is a practical, science-backed guide to improving focus, performance and mental energy without burning out. Written for people balancing multiple responsibilities, the book explains how to stay productive, mentally sharp and in control, even when demands and pressure are high.

The book also explores the neuroscience of smarter leadership, high-performing teams and innovation. Brann examines working memory, what the mind needs to achieve goals and how to help the brain perform at an optimal level.

Drawing from current neuroscience, Amy Brann translates complex research about the brain into clear strategies readers can apply in everyday work and life. She explores why attention fades, distractions take over and decision-making becomes more difficult when the brain is tired or under stress.

The book emphasizes that high performance is not simply about pushing harder. It is about understanding what the brain needs to function well and creating habits that support focus, creativity, resilience, clear thinking and sustainable success.

Key Ideas:

The brain performs best when its limited attention and energy are managed intentionally.
Understanding working memory can help us process information, solve problems and pursue goals more effectively.
Mental rehearsal can activate neurons and strengthen neural circuits even when an action is only imagined. For example, imagining your finger contracting can prepare your brain and muscles to perform the movement more effectively.
Neuroscience can help leaders make smarter decisions and create the conditions for high-performing teams.
Brain-aware leadership can encourage collaboration, creativity, innovation and meaningful change.
Mental fatigue can weaken focus, self-control and the quality of our decisions.
Working with the brain, rather than continually forcing it beyond its limits, can support greater success while helping to prevent burnout.

Key Takeaway from the Conversation:

One of the strongest ideas from the conversation is recognizing that our brain can help us become smarter leaders, more creative thinkers and stronger performers. Brann’s insights about working memory and high-performing teams show that success is not only about effort. If you read the book, you’ll learn how to think clearly, innovate, collaborate and achieve meaningful goals.

Brann does not focus only on managing fatigue or avoiding burnout. She also demonstrates how understanding the brain can help people lead more effectively, develop innovative ideas, make smarter choices and perform at a higher level.

About Podcast Host

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Mitra Sharafi, "Fear of the False: Forensic Science and the Law of Crime in Colonial South Asia" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Fear of the False: Forensic Science and the Law of Crime in Colonial South Asia (Cornell University Press, 2026) uncovers colonial South Asia's critical role in the development of forensic science. Around 1900, the government of British India created a web of institutions for the scientific detection of crime. Driven by anxieties about "native mendacity," newly minted forensic analysts focused on uncovering faked evidence planted by South Asians. These experts, joining toxicologists known as "chemical examiners," were supposed to extract objective, scientific truth in the service of British justice. But in trying to counteract the presumed tendency of colonized peoples to lie, the system enabled widespread misconduct by state experts, increasing the risk of wrongful convictions of South Asian defendants. Through scrupulously documented legal cases, Mitra Sharafi reveals that colonial dynamics put special pressure on the relationship between truth and justice. Examining falsity on both sides of the law through the use of testing to (mis)identify poisons, blood, and spermatozoa, as well as debates over adversarialism and inquisitorialism in the colonial courtroom, Fear of the False explores advances in forensic science and shortcuts in criminal procedure against the backdrop of colonial mistrust. Thanks to generous funding from the University of Wisconsin Law School, the ebook editions of this book are available as open access volumes through the Cornell Open initiative.

Mitra Sharafi is a legal historian whose research focuses on South Asia. She is the Evjue-Bascom Professor of Law at University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently serves as the president of the American Society for Legal History. She has been the host of the South Asian Legal History Resources website since 2010.

Saumya Dadoo is a PhD candidate at Columbia University's Department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS).

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Todd McGowan, "Self-Sabotage: How We Try Not to Flourish" (Polity Press, 2026)

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Self-Sabotage: How We Try Not to Flourish (Polity Press, 2026) contends that an unconscious impulse to undermine our own interests plays a dominant role in our lives. The idea of a primary drive to self-destruction is at odds with the prevailing common sense in a world where almost everyone believes that we strive to flourish. Yet often we fail to flourish not because some people are wicked but because the drive to sabotage ourselves outweighs the pleasures of flourishing. Our tendency to self-sabotage distorts our politics, throws off our romantic relationships, and generally makes human existence difficult. It is why we become involved with partners who continually create unhappiness for us, and also why we elect leaders who derail the nation. Although the act of self-sabotage is clearly self-destructive, it appeals to us because it has a creative power. Through sacrificing ourselves, we create sublime value in the world. Our willingness to sacrifice our own interest elevates the value of the object we pursue and lifts it out of the realm of the ordinary. Self-sabotage leads to immense amounts of social harm. But at the same time, the tendency to self-destruction provides the basis for our ability to act ethically and surmount social pressure in the name of some higher value.

Todd McGowan teaches theory and film at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Embracing Alienation, The Racist Fantasy, Emancipation After Hegel, Capitalism and Desire, and Only a Joke Can Save Us, among other books. He is also the co-host of the Why Theory podcast with Ryan Engley.

Helena Vissing, PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California and Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. She can be reached at contact@helenavissing.com. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period (Routledge, 2023).

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Galina Bogatova, "Casting War As Love: Russian Colonialism in Familial Terms" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Casting War As Love: Russian Colonialism in Familial Terms (Palgrave Macillan, 2026) by Dr. Galina Bogatova unpacks the hidden imperial logic behind Russia’s dominance over its neighbors, revealing how the Kremlin weaponizes "familial system" myths to justify control, including its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. From the Tsarist empire to Putin’s digital propaganda, Dr. Bogatova examines how Russia portrays itself as a disciplining “father,” a self-sacrificing “mother,” or an “elder brother” to post-Soviet states, protecting, subjugating, and manipulating them in the name of unity. 

Blending psychology, discourse analysis, and historical inquiry, this groundbreaking book exposes how language sanitizes oppression, legitimizes conquest, and sustains imperial ambitions. A thought-provoking exploration of power, ideology, and resistance, it offers a fresh perspective on Russia’s enduring influence over its former empire.

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Samantha Iyer, "Agrarian Superpower: Food, Development, and the Global Ascendancy of the United States" (Columbia UP, 2026)

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The United States’ superpower status is often associated with its industrial, financial, and military might. Yet its global power after the Second World War hinged in part on something often seen as backward: agriculture. In contrast to Britain, the predominant global power of the nineteenth century, which depended on its current and former colonies for food and raw materials, the United States produced vast agricultural surpluses. During the 1950s, an era of decolonization and rising Cold War competition, the United States became the dominant exporter of food staples to industrializing nations in the Third World through its massive food aid program.

Through the lens of food and agriculture, Agrarian Superpower: Food, Development, and the Global Ascendancy of the United States (Columbia University Press, 2026) by Dr. Samantha Iyer offers new ways to understand the roots of the post–Second World War global order and the US position in it. Samantha Iyer traces how two former British territories and agricultural competitors of the United States, India and Egypt, became two of the largest importers of US food aid. She investigates the origins and consequences of the US-centric postwar food regime by examining changes in the production, distribution, and consumption of agricultural surpluses from the late nineteenth century to the early 1970s. Bringing together life in villages, towns, and cities with national, imperial, and international affairs, Dr. Iyer demonstrates that food aid was the expression of a changed political, economic, and ecological world that the United States did not create alone. Drawing on sources in Arabic, French, Urdu, and English, Agrarian Superpower is a groundbreaking comparative history of food, agriculture, and development.

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Elisabeth van Houts, "Empress Matilda: Queen of the Romans, Ruler of the English" (Yale UP, 2026)

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Born in 1102, Empress Matilda combined the blood of two dynasties: the house of Wessex and their conquerors, the dukes of Normandy. As a widowed German empress, she was named as heir successor by her father, Henry I. But, after his death in 1135, Matilda’s place on the English throne was usurped by her cousin, Stephen of Blois. Civil war followed, and she ruled the south-west of England in opposition.

In Empress Matilda: Queen of the Romans, Ruler of the English (Yale University Press, 2026), Professor Elisabeth van Houts explores the remarkable life of medieval England’s only queen regnant. Van Houts examines female rulership in the Middle Ages, from Matilda’s relationships with her husbands, to her self-identification as granddaughter of William the Conqueror. Matilda used her persuasiveness effectively with the men who surrounded her, including her father, husbands, half-brothers and cousins.

This is a fascinating account, which reveals Matilda to be an assertive, if on occasion disappointed, woman who made the best of her position with intelligence and stamina.

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Samuel Moyn, "Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It" (FSG, 2026)

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A leading social critic identifies our least-discussed major crisis, and sets out to solve it.

As Americans debate President Biden’s infirmities and President Trump’s erratic behavior, we’ve neglected the bigger problem before us: a massive transfer of power and wealth to the oldest among us, and the curtailment of the prospects of the young. In Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2026), the historian and social critic Samuel Moyn offers a piercing diagnosis of our age divide and its consequences. Even apart from the presidency, in legislatures, businesses, and the courts, the average leader’s age has risen dramatically. The elderly predominantly fund campaigns and dominate their agendas, often with the intent to block any challenge to their status. The tax code is rigged on their behalf, as is an economy geared to sheltering financial and housing assets. The United States was founded on the promise of generational renovation but has become an increasingly febrile country of old men.

But it doesn’t need to be this way. With understanding and wit, Moyn shows how elder power can be dismantled. With strong safety nets in place, mandatory retirement ages can be established. The early transfer of assets between generations could be encouraged and young voters can be granted more voice. In such a world, the elderly themselves would be freed from power games to confront the existential opportunities of aging, while the young would find their path to starting out in life unblocked at last.

Samuel Moyn is the Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University. His books include Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, The Last Utopia, and Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World. Cohost of the Digging a Hole podcast, he is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and many other publications.

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Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Jews have been active participants in shaping the healing practices of the communities of Eastern Europe. Their approach largely combined the ideas of traditional Ashkenazi culture with the heritage of medieval and early modern medicine. Holy rabbis and faith healers, as well as Jewish barbers, innkeepers, and peddlers, all dispensed cures, purveyed folk remedies for different ailments, and gave hope to the sick and their families based on kabbalah, numerology, prayer, and magical Hebrew formulas. Nevertheless, as new sources of knowledge penetrated the traditional world, modern medical ideas gained widespread support. Jews became court physicians to the nobility, and when the universities were opened up to them, many also qualified as doctors. At every stage, medicine proved an important field for cross-cultural contacts.

In A Frog Under the Tongue: Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe (Liverpool UP, 2024), Marek Tuszewicki studies manuscripts, printed publications, and memoirs to tease out therapeutic advice, recipes, magical incantations, kabbalistic methods, and practical techniques, together with the ethical considerations that such approaches entailed. His research fills a gap in the study of folk medicine in Eastern Europe, shedding light on little-known aspects of Ashkenazi culture, and on how the need to treat sickness brought Jews and their neighbors together.

Join YIVO for a discussion with Tuszewicki about this book, led by cultural critic and playwright Rokhl Kafrissen.

Buy the book here

This book talk originally took place on November 11, 2024.

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Max H. Bazerman, "Negotiation: The Game Has Changed" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The world has changed dramatically in just the past few years and so has negotiation. Traditional negotiating tactics, while still effective, need to be tailored to vastly different situations and circumstances. In Negotiation: The Game Has Changed (Princeton University Press, 2025), Harvard Business School professor Max H. Bazerman, a legendary pioneer in the field of negotiation, shows how to negotiate effectively today by adapting proven negotiation principles and strategies to challenging new contexts. Negotiation is a fundamentally new way of thinking about the importance of context in negotiation.

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Yevgenia Nayberg, "Another Tongue" (Neal Porter, 2026)

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this, our second interview, I talk to celebrated author-illustrator Yevgenia Nayberg about her brand new book (April 14!), Another Tongue, published by Neal Porter Books. We discuss dual languages, both from the point of view of her journey from Russian to English which is recounted in the book, but also in the context of the two other languages that she masters, i.e., text and illustration. We also discuss another new book of hers:
Chernobyl, Life, and Other Disasters: A Graphic Memoir, published just three months ago, also by Neal Porter Books. Yevgenia shares her creative process, her upcoming book and advice for aspiring authors and illustrators.

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Mikuláš Pešta, "Student Internationalism and the Global Cold War: The International Union of Students in Socialist Prague" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of the CEU Review of Books Podcast, I sat down with Mikuláš Pešta to talk about his new book, Student Internationalism and the Global Cold War: The International Union of Students in Socialist Prague (Bloomsbury, 2026). During our discussion we touched upon how the International Union of Students ended up being headquartered in Prague, the organisation's various activities, and the life of the Secretariat, amongst other topics.

You can purchase the book from Bloomsbury here. The book is also available Open Access here.

The CEU Review of Books Podcast Series explores the questions that affect us all through in-depth talks with researchers, policy makers, journalists, academics and others. We showcase the most current research linked to Central Europe through these discussions.

At the CEU Review of Books, we encourage an open discussion that challenges conventional assumptions to foster a vibrant debate.

Visit our website to read our latest reviews, long reads and interviews.

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Andrew Flachs, "Feeding the World as If People Mattered: How Small Farms Produce Value Beyond Yields" (U Arizona Press, 2026)

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Backyard gardens flush with cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers where bees buzz and chickens scratch. Beyond, a forest filled with blackberries and jewelweed. Inspired by childhood memories of his grandmother’s overflowing backyard garden, author Andrew Flachs has embarked on a multi-continent, decades-long look at agriculture and its value.

The dominant view of agriculture has focused only on what we produce. It sees value in terms of capital gains or yield efficiency, masking how our global food system produces tremendous amounts of food commodities while failing to feed people, support rural communities, or enhance ecological well-being. Feeding the World as if People Mattered: How Small Farms Produce Value Beyond Yields (University of Arizona Press, 2026) asks us to look more deeply and more humanely at what we perceive to be most valuable in our agricultural systems.

This book draws on fifteen years of anthropological research, taking readers to fields in South India, Eastern Europe, and North America, where people are already feeding the future amid global change. From these fields, Flachs shows us how a radical rethinking of the value of small farms and farmers is already happening. Bringing together conversations in agriculture, economics, anthropology, and the environmental humanities, Flachs deftly shows how small farms reproduce social and ecological relationships that are the only sustainable path forward.

For anyone who is curious about the food on their plate and the people who helped to get it there, Feeding the World as if People Mattered will offer a new way to find value in the food we grow and the people who grow it.

Dr. Andrew Flachs researches food and agriculture systems, exploring genetically modified crops, heirloom seeds, and our own microbiomes. Born and raised in rural Pennsylvania, he graduated from Oberlin College with dual Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Arts degrees in 2010. He earned his PhD from Washington University in St. Louis in April 2016 and was a 2016-2017 Volkswagen Exchange Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Heidelberg University Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies. He is currently an associate professor of anthropology at Purdue University. His work among farmers in North America, the Balkans, and South India investigates ecological knowledge and technological change in agricultural systems spanning Cleveland urban gardens and Indian GM cotton fields. His research has been supported by public and private institutions including the Department of Education, the National Geographic Society, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the Social Science Research Council, while his writing on agricultural development has been featured in numerous peer-reviewed publications as well as public venues including Sapiens, Salon, and the National Geographic magazine. His work has been recognized by eight international awards, including most recently as a finalist for the Society for Economic Anthropology Kate Browne Creativity in Research Award and the International Convention of Asia Scholars’ Book Prize.

Sandra Elizabeth is a graduate student enrolled at the Department of Sociology in Shiv Nadar University, Delhi- NCR. She looks at rice farmers’ and their way of life in Kuttanad, Kerala—which is dubbed as the state’s rice granary. She can be reached out on X.

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Barbara Holifield, "Being with the Body in Depth Psychology: Development, Trauma, and Transformation in the Unspoken Realm" (Routledge, 2024)

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Being with the Body in Depth Psychology: Development, Trauma, and Transformation in the Unspoken Realm (Routledge, 2024), featuring a foreword by Donald Kalsched, examines the integration of the subjectively experienced body in the practice of depth psychology. Barbara Holifield draws from philosophical perspectives, neuroscientific and infant research, developmental theory, and trauma studies to offer a comprehensive overview of embodiment within a relationally based psychoanalytic approach. Clinical vignettes demonstrate the critical value of working with the bodily-felt dimension of implicit relational memory and emphasize how bodily-felt sense facilitates access to feelings.

The primacy of bodily-based knowing revealed through infant research illuminates an interior world of sensorial apprehension that conceptually based knowing and psychoanalytic thought often overlook. Furthermore, it establishes the body as intrinsic to relational life. Freud’s 1923 statement that “The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego,” is as cogent today as it was then (1961, p. 26). It has only been confirmed by infant research and affective neuroscience. Psychic life is born in the body and is sustained by the body. It is in and through the body that relationship begins. Disruptions in one’s earliest relationship with the primary caregiver are synonymous with disruption of the integral unity of psyche and body.

Further, the book highlights the organizing role that felt sensation, sensory perception, and affective experience have on facilitating the re-establishment of psyche indwelling the soma. Because disruptions of the felt sense of psyche integral to soma occur in infancy, work of this nature falls out of the purview of traditional psychoanalysis. “It requires instead a working-through focused on the present, on the heart of the analytic relationship, and on the activation of an awareness of one’s own inner mode of functioning” (Lombardi, 2017, p. 23). Focus on direct sensorial and relational experience in the body is foundational in working with the analysand’s unformulated experience. As this occurs, affects are able to be borne, reflected on, and lived as feelings-in-the-body while simultaneously making way for the establishment of new relational organizations. Throughout the book, clinical examples show how the mythopoetic imagination and soma entwine––at times, attention to the somatic dimension stirs the creative unconscious in the form of dreams, active imagination, artworks, and movement. Reciprocally, the imaginal world informs and stimulates somatic experience. In this way, the mythopoetic reality revealed in a depth analysis weaves somatic experience into a tapestry of personal meaning, facilitating deep psychophysical transformation. Here the body serves as a portal to the numinous––healing that goes far beyond the relief of symptoms to a renewed sense of aliveness.

This book offers guiding principles for psychotherapists and clinicians of all levels to engage the bodily basis of experience in their clinical practice. It will appeal to general readers interested in integrating mind and body, including those in the healing arts, fine arts, dance, athletics, meditation, yoga, and martial arts.

Barbara Holifield, MSW, LMFT, SEP is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. With over forty years of clinical practice in depth psychotherapy and somatic healing — and her certification as a Jungian Analyst since 2006 — her work lives at the intersection of Jung and the body, bringing together somatic experiencing, affective neuroscience, relational psychoanalysis, and the wisdom of the bodily-felt sense to offer a path of healing for those who have suffered developmental trauma and its long aftermath.

A certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) trained directly by Dr. Peter Levine, Barbara taught Somatic Psychology for approximately twenty years at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) — one of the foremost graduate programs in somatic and depth psychology in the United States. She is also an internationally recognized teacher of Authentic Movement, a contemplative body practice rooted in Jungian active imagination that she has taught across the United States and abroad for approximately forty years.

Her clinical writing explores the relationship of body, trauma, self, and our participation in the dream of the earth. Her articles have been published in Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, Psychological Perspectives, and the Journal of Analytic Psychology. She has also contributed a chapter to The Body in Psychotherapy (North Atlantic Press) and a chapter to the anthology Authentic Movement: Moving the Body, Moving the Self, Being Moved (Jessica Kingsley Publishers). She maintains memberships in the International Association of Analytical Psychology (IAAP), the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy (USABP), the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP), and the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT).

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Ashton Lazarus, "Performing Transgression: Crowds and Bodies in Heian Japan" (Harvard UP, 2026)

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What happens when performance defies social and political boundaries? Performing Transgression: Crowds and Bodies in Heian Japan (Harvard University Press, 2026) offers a new cultural history of non-elite spectacle in Heian Japan (794–1185), uncovering how performances on the margins—boisterous dengaku music and dance, daring sangaku acrobatics, and the infectious lyrics of imayō songs—challenged and fascinated the aristocracy.

Ashton Lazarus reveals how these unruly arts were documented by the very elites they unsettled, appearing in historical chronicles, diaries, prose, poetry, and illustrated scrolls. More than mere precursors to later forms like noh and kyōgen, these performances formed a dynamic cultural force with real political impact. By tracing their influence through literary studies, performance studies, and historiography, Lazarus rethinks the interplay between politics, class, and culture in Heian Japan.

Performing Transgression illuminates how acts of defiance and creative expression resonate across time, offering fresh insights into the ways performance bridges the vanished past and the present.

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Lily Kelting, "Against Heritage: The Reinvention of Traditional Foods" (UNC Press, 2026)

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The rise of “heritage” foods—that is, the reinvention of traditional foods—has enjoyed a high profile thanks to the oft-praised efforts of chefs such as Sean Brock and René Redzepi. But Lily Kelting observes the popularity of heritage foods as something more: a global movement in response to climate catastrophe and the rise of right-wing, populist movements that center a return to the past as part of their ideology. Weaving ethnography, discourse analysis, critical theory, and sensory, embodied critique, Kelting tracks and critiques the boom of traditional food revival movements in the American South, Denmark, and India. Ultimately, Kelting argues that the heritage culinary professionals wish to revive is equal parts nostalgia and invention: They engage, subvert, and ignore food histories in their creation of new food movements. As Kelting documents our contemporary moment, she shows how the conversations surrounding these new food movements leave out people already keeping their traditions alive. Against Heritage: The Reinvention of Traditional Foods (University of North Carolina Press, 2026), then, serves as a reparative revaluation of the work of the cooks largely excluded from the contemporary media conversation about heritage revival.

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Grégory Pierrot, "Fantômes de la révolution noire: Une histoire culturelle transatlantique" (Ròt-Bò-Krik, 2026)

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Black Power! A name with a ring to it on both sides of the Atlantic, taken as a sign of Black American rage incarnated by a few names: Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panthers, Angela Davis.

Behind these archetypes of the 1960s and 70s stood a political movement as mutable as it was international, that of Black Power, with the goal of bringing about a global uprising. This insurrection of Black worlds has haunted the West for centuries, rumbling beneath the words of Frantz Fanon and Lorraine Hansberry, the films of Melvin Van Peebles and Sarah Maldoror, in the albums of Sun Ra and Archie Shepp, the poems of Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez. In Fantômes de la révolution noire: Une Histoire culturelle transatlantique ([Ghosts of the Black Revolution: A Transatlantic Cultural History] Éditions Ròt-Bò-Krik, 2026), Grégory Pierrot evokes the ghosts of Black Power and shows that the arts are real laboratories where the Black Revolution is formed, reinvented, and broadcast.

Guest Grégory Pierrot is Associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut, where he studies the cultural and artistic networks of the Black Atlantic. In addition to Fantômes de la révolution noire published by Ròt-Bò-Krik earlier this year, Dr. Pierrot has translated and co-translated a series of essays and novels from and into French, and edited or co-edited several volumes concerning the literature of and about the Haitian revolution in French and English. He is also the author of The Black Avenger in Atlantic Culture and Decolonize Hipsters.

Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean, with a book manuscript under review on posthumanist ecological engagement in the surrealist movement.

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Systemic, Non-Linear Change Is Today’s Path Forward

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Ilene Fischer is the founder and CEO of Sophia Network, where she guides executive leaders through the turbulence of disruptive change, mergers, reorganizations, and breakthrough innovations – applying her signature Innovation Ecosystems methodology to turn strategic vision into reality. Earlier in her career, she was a partner at Charlie Kiefer’s Innovation Associates and managing director at the Tom Peters Company, and has been an advocate for women’s causes in an array of fields.

“Innovation theatre” in which changes are promised without ever happening is Ilene’s bete noire. Give me a corporate culture steeped in fear, and you can be sure that vital experimentation won’t be valued. In this interview, she makes a strong case for constant iteration that cuts across departmental silos in order to keep pace with the nine disruptive factors she sees as happening simultaneously in the business world today. Is AI big? Yes. But so is what quantum computing makes possible. One of the biggest points she makes in this conversation is that companies are starved for multidisciplinary talent, and the talent they do manage is attract will leave promptly if not given a license to apply that talent and achieve results. Change starts with deep listening (no judging) and grows exponentially into a virtuous circle if done with respect; fail that test, and a vicious cycle will emerge instead.

Ilene's book Innovation Ecosystems: A Dynamic Blueprint for Organizational Success and Engagement is published by John Murray Press, a division of Hachette. The book will be released on October 20 and is available for preorder now.

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Eamonn Gearon, "The Arab Bureau: The Story of Britain's Most Ingenious Intelligence Unit" (Hurst, 2026)

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Many of us have watched the classic 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia, the somewhat fictionalized work based on the life of T. E. Lawrence during the Arab Revolt and the First World War.

But Lawrence was part of the Arab Bureau, an effort to better understand and influence the region as Britain fought the Ottoman Empire for control of the Middle East. Chastened by their intelligence failures at Gallipoli and Kut al-Amara, the British tried to do something unthinkable: Actually learn how local communities operated, and ensure that propaganda was culturally authentic.

It’s the subject of The Arab Bureau: The Story of Britain's Most Ingenious Intelligence Unit (Hurst, 2026), a new book from Eamonn Gearon which he calls the first in-depth investigation into what this intelligence agency did.

Eamonn is a global historian, specialising in the Middle East and North Africa and the history of intelligence, whose books also include The Arab Revolt. His doctoral research uncovered previously unknown Arabic documents which shed new light on British intelligence work in the region.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Arab Bureau. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Dominik A. Haas, "South Asia Before Religion: Reflections on an Anachronistic Concept" (Knowledge Commons Works, 2026)

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

South Asia Before Religion: Reflections on an Anachronistic Concept (Knowledge Commons Works, 2026) critically examines the applicability of the concept of religion to premodern South Asian culture. I argue that premodern South Asia did not possess a concept equivalent to religion as understood today – neither as a distinct system of religious teachings and practices, nor as a fundamental cultural category separate from non-religious domains such as the secular, philosophy, or science. Using Āyurveda and philosophy as examples, I show that imposing anachronistic categories on past cultures risks misrepresenting their inner logics and social realities. I advocate deconstructing modern notions of religion and refraining from reconstructing the past with religion as a template. However, concepts of religion can serve a purpose when used as historicized objects of comparison or reference for premodern concepts and systems, in order to facilitate access to premodern cultures and contribute effectively to contemporary discourses.

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Julia R. Azari, "Backlash Presidents: From Transformative to Reactionary Leaders in American History" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Julia Azari, Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, has a new, award-winning[*] book centering on the connection between race and the American presidency, specifically in the reaction to presidents who made progress on the issue of race in the United States. Backlash Presidents: From Transformative to Reactionary Leaders in American History focuses on four different periods in American political history and a number of different presidential administrations including: Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump. Race and the American presidency are not usually topics that are looped together, and this is also part of the point that Azari is making in the book, since presidents often try to elide racial politics and policy issues. Race is also not usually connected to presidential impeachments, but this is yet another key point that Azari raises, connecting racial progress, the backlash responses, and the subsequent impeachments. In noting these connections, Azari threads examples over time where presidents directly confronted race in American politics, working towards more racial equality, and how these efforts also prompt a backlash response. The key case studies in Backlash Presidents are Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War in the 1860s, Lyndon Johnson’s efforts in the 1960s in regard to the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, as well as anti-poverty legislation, and finally Barack Obama as the first Black president of the United States, which was both symbolic and structural. Backlash Presidents traces not only the progress made during these administrations, but also the responses that followed in the subsequent administrations. It is these next administrations, of Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump, where each of these presidents were either impeached or were about to be impeached, and how this dynamic pulls together a variety of different threads to help us to understand presidential politics, institutional development, and American political history all in context of the question of race.

Azari’s research is connected to the idea of political time, but with the important addition of pulling out the problem of race in the United States. Backlash Presidents contributes to our thinking about not only the time and context of presidents and their administrations, but also to thinking about what it is that presidents do to politics itself. Part of this analysis also interrogates populism, positioning these movements within the context of racial backlash, while also building out the understanding of the president’s position within his own party, especially during these fraught periods. In each of the key examples, Azari highlights the ways in which Johnson, Nixon, and Trump were outsiders to what was going on inside their parties—in each case the Republican Party at the time—and how these shifting partisan foundations opened up different kinds of vulnerabilities for these presidents.

In each of the case studies, there is also the discussion of the role that the U.S. Congress plays, since they are the actors who move towards impeaching and trying the president. Members of the House of Representatives need to move beyond constraints in order to impeach a president, and in these instances, they have concluded that the president is not correct in some basic and meaningful way, that the president is not upholding his oath of office, and is also undermining the forward movement on race and racial equality.

Backlash Presidents: From Transformation to Reactionary Leaders in American History is a deeply researched analysis, with important historical context and details to help flesh out the particular time period under consideration. The examination is further complicated and built out with important understandings of party politics in the United States, and how president fits into their political party, or may be seen as an outsider. Racial dynamics in the United States undergirds the entire theory, and helps us see the tensions within partisan politics, presidential politics, and American democracy.

[*] The Presidents and Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association awarded Backlash Presidents the 2025 Richard E. Neustadt Best Book Award, given for the best book on executive politics published during the year.

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Cast Out: A Call For A Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Cast Out: A Call For A Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration (Beacon Press, 2026), civil rights lawyer Joseph Margulies insists that those who commit even the most heinous crimes are one of us and should be judged in a spirit of forgiveness. He explains that American society is too often unforgiving, preferring to cast out those we consider irredeemable by fixating narrowly on the question What did they do? and imagining that those who have done great wrongs have no past worth learning and no future worth preserving.
Through intimate interviews, his rich chapters bring to life 6 men and women, sharing their (sometimes brutal) crimes, the grim but all-too-human paths that led them there, and their evolution and insights. Eye-opening and unflinching, Cast Out makes us truly see those society locks away—the so-called “worst of the worst.” It challenges the reader to see us in them and them in us, and in that way, to recognize the humanity we all share.

Guest: Joseph Margulies is a writer, litigator, Professor of the Practice of Law and Government at Cornell University. He was Counsel of Record in Rasul v. Bush (2004), and in Munaf v. Geren (2008). His books include Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power; and Cast Out.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the creator, producer and host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Mohamed Alyahyai, "The War" (Dararab for Publishing and Translation, 2026)

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A psychological Arabic novel in English translation, The War by Mohamed Alyahyai follows a man who begins to question whether he is truly the one who returned from war.

On a winter night, Issa Saleh prepares a small gathering at his home. By the end of the evening, they are gone—and he is no longer certain they were ever there.

As memory fractures, the war resurfaces not as event but as instability, where identity itself begins to slip and the narratives that sustain survival unravel.

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Dana Burchardt, "The Authority of International Courts: A Behavioural Framework" (Hart Publishing, 2026)

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Why do some international courts wield broad authority while others face pushback or fade into irrelevance? The Authority of International Courts: A Behavioural Framework (Hart Publishing, 2026) by Dr. Dana Burchardt provides novel theoretical and empirical insights into this question. It offers a fresh, interdisciplinary perspective on the authority of international courts, drawing from law, political science and behavioural research.

It develops, in Part I, a theoretical model and analytical framework for assessing these questions. The model explains how authority relationships between courts and their audiences—such as states, NGOs, individual applicants, and domestic courts—are formed, maintained, or contested. In Part II, the book applies this analytical framework to in-depth case studies of two selected international courts: the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States. These studies not only provide deeper insights into the authority of these courts but also demonstrate how the analytical framework can be applied to other international courts to generate an enhanced understanding of international court authority.

The book sheds new light on why some courts enjoy enduring authority and others face pushback, offering powerful tools for understanding the behaviour of international courts and their audiences.

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Building A Freedom Infrastructure in the Age of Networked Control

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Host Licia Cianetti talks to Venezuelan democracy activist and co-founder of the World Liberty Congress Leopoldo López. As part of PPP’s ongoing collaboration with the Journal of Democracy they discuss Leopoldo’s recent article on Democracy in an Age of Networked Control. They discuss the technological challenges that democracy activists worldwide face today, and how some activists are rethinking their use of technology to elude the infrastructure of control and create new infrastructures for freedom.

Guest:

Leopoldo López is a Venezuelan democracy activist and the cofounder of the World Liberty Congress, which is a global network that connects democracy advocates and leaders from across the world. From 2014 to 2020 he was imprisoned for leading peaceful protests and civil resistance against the regime of Nicolás Maduro. Currently he is a Fellow at the Wilson Center.

Presenter:

Licia Cianetti is Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham and Founding Deputy Director of CEDAR. She is the Principal Investigator of an upcoming research project on “Resisting Inter-Scalar Authoritarian Networks and Coalitions” (funded by the EU under Horizon Europe grant no. 101286676).

Transcript here

The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.

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David I. Waddington, "The Hidden Curriculum of Video Games" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2026)

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Despite decades of inflammatory rhetoric, the real risk of video games lies not in their violent imagery but in the ethical and political sensibilities they normalize. Video games reward speed, efficiency, control, and meritocratic mastery, training players to align with a technolibertarian worldview - one that celebrates individual will, technological power, and skepticism toward collective forms of governance. Rather than asking whether games produce violent individuals, we might more productively ask how they contribute to a commitment to radical capitalism and a belief in highly individualistic worldviews. In this unsettling work David Waddington traces the philosophical roots of technolibertarianism, founded on faith in technological progress and personal freedom. He identifies a darker turn in this thinking, animated by the ideals of Ayn Rand and her archetype of the "tech hero of capitalism." Many games, Waddington argues, invite players to inhabit this archetype, treating mastery, control, and relentless striving as moral virtues. While educational research often praises games for motivating students and fostering problem-solving, Waddington asks a deeper question: What kinds of people do games help us become? Drawing on Martin Heidegger and other thinkers, he explores whether gameplay expands human possibility or narrows it by habituating players to efficient yet restrictive systems. The Hidden Curriculum of Video Games (McGill-Queen's UP, 2026) critiques mainstream game design and educational technology, offering hopeful alternatives and examining reflective games that resist dominant gameplay logics. Written with clarity, passion, and philosophical depth, this thought-provoking work opens new horizons on technology, education, and the moral imagination of play.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist.

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Nick Yablon, "From the Skyscraper to the Wildflower: C. G. Hine's 1905 Photographic Survey of Broadway" (Columbia UP, 2026)

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In 1905, when Broadway was already the most famous thoroughfare in New York City, a recreational photographer from Newark, New Jersey named Charles Gilbert Hine set out to document the street’s entire length.

Taking pictures from downtown Bowling Green and its skyscrapers to uptown Inwood with its fields and wildflowers, Hine depicted a Broadway animated by the presence of the past and the relentless pressures of change.

Through his lens appear shanties, brownstones and country houses; horse-drawn wagons and trolley cars; downtown sex workers and uptown famers.

Hines’ photographs lingered in the collection of the New York Historical until they were discovered by Nick Yablon, a professor of history and American Studies at the University of Iowa.

Now they appear in Nick’s new book, From the Skyscraper to the Wildflower: C.G. Hine’s 1905 Photographic Survey of Broadway (Columbia University Press, 2026).

Combining Hines’ photographs with his own analysis, along with maps and other images, Nick has produced an illuminating book that depicts Broadway, its peoples, its buildings, and the many neighborhoods that Broadway traverses, at a distinct moment in time.

A digital companion to From the Skyscraper to the Wildflower, with a selection of Hine’s photographs, an interactive map of Broadway, and more, can be found here.

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Michael Patrick Cullinane, "Theodore Roosevelt and the Tennis Court Cabinet" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In his final days in office in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt invited dozens of friends to the White House for lunch. They had never met as a group, but they had one thing in common: Each played tennis with the president and advised on policy matters. Roosevelt half-joked that the public would never know how much these tennis partners did to make his administration a success. Journalists dismissively called them the “Tennis Cabinet,” making light of their contribution, but Roosevelt knew otherwise.

In Theodore Roosevelt and the Tennis Court Cabinet (Potomac Books, an Imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, 2026), Michael Patrick Cullinane explains that the inner circle led the administration’s campaigns against corporate greed, investigated public health violations, and formulated consumer protections. They founded environmental conservation policies, prosecuted civil rights violations, and implemented bureaucratic efficiencies that saved the government billions. Roosevelt’s tennis mates shaped the nation’s diplomacy, ending wars and promoting American interests abroad.

Never had a more eclectic group advised a U.S. president. The Tennis Cabinet included legendary frontier lawman Seth Bullock and the starched-shirt corporate lawyer Henry Stimson, who served in five presidential administrations. Texas wolf wrangler Jack Abernathy played with stuffy bureaucrats like Labor Commissioner Charles Patrick Neill and social activist James Bronson Reynolds. The French ambassador Jean Jules Jusserand spun yarns with football hero George Washington Woodruff and Roosevelt’s college friend and banker Robert Bacon. James Garfield, namesake son of a martyred president, sipped mint juleps with Supreme Court Justice William Henry Moody. And J. P. Morgan’s silver-spooned son-in-law Herbert Satterlee kept company with rugged soldier Luther “Yellowstone” Kelly.

For all their differences, these men shared a desire to help the president transform the nation from a parochial nineteenth-century republic into an imperial and industrial global power. They have escaped the attention of reporters and historians only because of Roosevelt’s towering celebrity. Turning away from Roosevelt as the singular force behind his administration, it is possible to see how the contributions of his Tennis Cabinet quietly sowed the seeds of the American Century.

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Mark Crinson, "Aviationland: Heathrow and the Making of an Airport Landscape" (Paul Mellon Centre, 2026)

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Aviationland: Heathrow and the Making of an Airport Landscape (Paul Mellon Centre, 2026) by Professor Mark Crinson is the first critical study to examine how a major international airport takes shape on the ground, and what that means for the landscape around it. Focused on Heathrow airport, it traces how the area has been formed and reformed by overlapping systems of architecture, infrastructure and enclosure, from the common land of Hounslow Heath in the eighteenth century to the global transport hub of the present day. 

The book explores the different forces that have shaped the airport’s environment: the remaking of landforms, the design of terminal buildings, and the surrounding sprawl of hotels, schools, factories, and business parks. At the same time, it shows how the Heathrow area has been moulded by wider shifts in energy, mobility, and the economy, and how the airport has in turn left a lasting mark on its surroundings, both materially and ecologically.

Drawing on previously unpublished material, Aviationland includes close studies of key sites, as well as figures who shaped how we see the airport today, including Richard Rogers, Patrick Abercrombie, and J. G. Ballard. Bringing together architectural, landscape, and infrastructural histories that are seldom read in tandem, this volume makes the case for Heathrow as a distinctively modern landscape. The result is a nuanced account of how local places become entangled within global systems, and what happens when they do.

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Martin Shaw, "The New Age of Genocide: Intellectual and Political Challenges After Gaza" (Agenda Publishing, 2025)

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Israeli destruction of Gaza has returned the idea of genocide to the center of world politics, with sharp conflicts between the protesters and lawyers who invoke it and the governments and media that deny it. The New Age of Genocide: Intellectual and Political Challenges After Gaza (Agenda Publishing, 2025), by the foremost sociological theorist of genocide, Martin Shaw, defends the idea against thinkers who have questioned it, and argues that it is essential to the understanding of mass atrocities. It maintains that Gaza has opened a new age in which the West not only fails to prevent, but also participates in genocide.

As well as discussing the genocide idea, the book analyses the Gaza genocide in the context of the longer histories of the problem, both globally and in Palestine. Further chapters deal with "forgotten genocides," the attempted Russian elimination of Ukraine, and the history of British complicity.

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Debolina Dutta, "A Jurisprudence of Conversations: Law, Life and Feminism in Post-colonial India" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Grounded in empirical studies, this book is both a history of the emergence of feminist jurisprudence in post-colonial India and a model of innovative legal research. The book inaugurates a creative practice of scholarly activism that engages a new way of thinking about law and feminist jurisprudence, one that is geared to acknowledge and take responsibility for the hierarchies in Indian academic practices. Its method of conversation and accountability continues the feminist tradition of taking reciprocity and the time and place of collaboration seriously. It helps make visible the specific ties between post-colonial life and law and joins the work of refusing and reimagining the hierarchical formation of legal knowledge in a caste-based Indian society. A significant contribution to the history and practice of feminist jurisprudence in post-colonial India, A Jurisprudence of Conversations: Law, Life and Feminism in Post-colonial India (Cambridge University Press, 2026) will appeal to both an academic and activist readership.

Debolina Dutta is a Research Fellow at Melbourne Law School's Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW)

Saumya Dadoo is a PhD Candidate at MESAAS, Columbia University

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David Denby, "Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer" (Henry Holt, 2025)

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What made a generation of Jewish artists and intellectuals transform American culture? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with acclaimed cultural critic David Denby to discuss his book Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer (Henry Holt, 2025), a vibrant portrait of four extraordinary Americans whose Jewish identities helped shape the modern United States.

Though they worked in vastly different fields, Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, and Norman Mailer shared a remarkable historical moment. Coming of age after World War II, they entered an America where Jewish opportunity was expanding and antisemitism was beginning to recede. Their Jewish heritage, energized by the freedoms of American life, fueled bold, unconventional careers that reshaped music, comedy, literature, feminism, and public debate.

Denby paints these figures in all their complexity: ambitious, difficult, generous, provocative, and endlessly creative. Rather than offering simple hero worship, he explores how their outsized personalities and relentless drive allowed them to challenge old assumptions about art, politics, gender, humor, and what it meant to be both fully Jewish and fully American.

Together, Denby and Katz explore why this particular generation produced so many cultural revolutionaries, how Jewish identity informed their work without defining it, and what their legacies reveal about the changing place of Jews in postwar America.

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Matteo Gatti, "Corporate Power and the Politics of Change" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Corporate Power and the Politics of Change (Cambridge UP, 2025) Matteo Gatti examines how corporations have taken on roles traditionally reserved for governments – advocating on social issues, setting internal norms, and stepping in where public institutions fall short. This phenomenon, called corporate governing, takes two forms: socioeconomic advocacy, when companies take public stances, and government substitution, when they deliver services or protections the state does not provide. Drawing on legal doctrine and insights from the social sciences, Gatti shows how this shift reflects broader pressures within firms and deep dysfunction outside them. The rise of corporate governing has also triggered political, legal, and cultural backlash that challenges its legitimacy and reach. This book offers a framework for understanding how corporate power reshapes policymaking and what that means for business and democracy.

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Suzy Hansen, "From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan" (FSG, 2026)

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

From Suzy Hansen, whose previous book, Notes on a Foreign Country, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2026) is a story for a world out of joint. An absorbing account of one neighborhood in Istanbul that has seen profound change, it offers lessons for all of us who feel the pressure of the disorienting global forces remaking our lives. Karagümrük, a neighborhood once dominated by Ottoman-era homes, is now known for petty thieves, cheap apartment blocks, and an influx of Syrian refugees. It’s here that Hansen went looking for the truth behind the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s authoritarian turn, a catastrophic regional war, and an accelerating geopolitical crisis. She asks: Was Turkey a harbinger of what would soon arise in other countries, the resurgence of authoritarianism? Or do the lives in this neighborhood, and the transformations of Erdoğan’s Turkey, reveal a more complex story? During a decade spent reporting from Karagümrük, Hansen discovered the neighborhood’s secrets and got to know some of its people: Ismail, the longtime muhtar, or neighborhood councilman; Huseyin, a loyalist in Erdoğan’s Islamic nationalist AK Party; and Ebru, a real estate agent and mother with ambitions to unseat Ismail. Through these local perspectives, Hansen connects the events unfolding in Karagümrük to the forces roiling Turkey, the Middle East, and the world, capturing the sweep of the last ten years in microcosm.

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Maria Pinto, "Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival" (UNC Press, 2026)

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival (University of North Carolina Press, 2026), naturalist, forager, and educator Maria Pinto uncovers strange and beautiful connections between the natural and human worlds, mingling reportage, research, memoir, and nature writing, touching on topics that range from Black farmers’ domestication of the unforgettable aroma of truffles, to the possibility that enslaved people wielded mycological poisons against their enslavers.

Pinto brings a new perspective and a distinctive literary voice to this mix of environmental and lived history, and every page sings with her enthusiasm for the networks in which we are embedded: fungal, ecological, ancestral, and communal. Join us in pursuit of beautiful, perplexing, delicious, and deadly mushrooms as we explore this understudied kingdom’s awe-inspiring diversity, discovering how fungi have been used by people, especially those on the margins, for survival, pleasure, revelation, and revolution.

When she’s not in the woods (and sometimes when she is), Maria Pinto is a writer, editor, and educator. She teaches writing for various literary organizations. She reads fiction for Peripheries Journal and serves on the board of Hale, an outdoor education and land conservancy nonprofit. Her writing has been supported by Assets for Artists at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the Mass Cultural Council, the Writers’ Room of Boston, The Mastheads, and The Garrett on the Green. You can find Maria at her Website and on Instagram.

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Daniel L. Gardner, "Thresholds of Digital Gameplay" (MIT Press, 2025)

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Contemporary digital gameplay is only accessible by navigating an ecosystem of interfaces that support its computational nature. Account logins, controllers, and an assortment of menus, settings, and other peripheral-to-gameplay elements support a range of practical and necessary functions that result from the transformation of gameplay into digital gameplay, as well as broader shifts toward an increasingly networked and data-driven world. The games industry has adopted usability testing on top of play testing to evaluate how these interfaces may influence the accessibility and success of their game software, but how embedding gameplay within webs of software, hardware, and platform infrastructures impacts the medium, players, and production has not yet been fully explored.

In Thresholds of Digital Gameplay (MIT Press, 2025), Daniel Gardner demonstrates how a series of interfaces and other elements on the periphery of digital gameplay fundamentally alter the phenomena of gaming. This book examines non-gameplay-centered material or mechanical attachments that surround and enclose gameplay while directing or mediating our experience of it—for example, access controls, character configuration, and microtransactional storefronts.

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Timothy Mitchell, "The Alibi of Capital: How We Broke the Earth to Steal the Future on the Promise of a Better Tomorrow" (Verso, 2026)

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Stealing the future and concealing the theft—capitalism’s method, as examined by the author of the acclaimed Carbon Democracy Today, extraordinary wealth seems to arrive from nowhere. The trick of conjuring this unearned wealth is, in fact, the key to understanding capitalism’s origins and a clue to why the catastrophe of climate collapse is upon us: value is created by consuming the future. In The Alibi of Capital: How We Broke the Earth to Steal the Future on the Promise of a Better Tomorrow (Verso, 2026), Professor Timothy Michell explains how this came about through the imperial expansion of the West, encumbering today’s generations with repayments on earlier extractions. Timothy Mitchell identifies the forms of capitalisation, credit, and coercion that turn prospective assets into present income. Rejecting the common idea that claims on the future create only financial or fictitious capital, he traces the terraforming projects – the destruction of rivers, the colonising of territory, the expansion of infrastructure, and the burning of carbon—through which the future has been squandered. Terms such as finance, technology, the economy, and growth function as alibis that conceal this devastating form of extraction.

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Kelly M. Duke Bryant, "Negotiating Childhood: French Colonialism and African Children in Senegal, 1848-1940" (U Mass Press, 2026)

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Kelly M. Duke Bryant’s Negotiating Childhood: French Colonialism and African Children in Senegal, 1848-1940 (U Mass Press, 2026)explores how colonial child protection policies and African children’s responses to them produced new ways of defining, measuring, documenting, and experiencing childhood in the French colony of Senegal from 1848 to 1940. In this groundbreaking book, Bryant takes the scholarship in new directions, offering to a literature dominated by studies of British colonies in the twentieth century a study of childhood in a French colony from the immediate post-emancipation period through the 1930s. This focus allows her to complicate the generally accepted timeline of child protection in colonial Africa and question other assumptions about children’s history on the continent.

The author, Kelly M. Duke Bryant, is an Associate Professor of History at Rowan University and the current President of the French Colonial Historical Society.

The host, Elisa Prosperetti, is an Assistant Professor of African and global history at NIE/NTU in Singapore. She is the author of An Anticolonial Development: Race, Schooling, and Emancipation in Twentieth-Century West Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2026).

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Elad Lapidot, "State of Others: Levinas and Decolonial Israel" (Indiana UP, 2025)

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Elad Lapidot is Professor of Jewish Thought at the University of Lille, France. His work is guided by questions concerning the relation between knowledge and politics. Among his publications: State of Others: Levinas and Decolonial Israel (Indiana UP, forthcoming), Politics of Not Speaking (Albany: SUNY Press, 2025), Jews Out of the Question: A Critique of Anti-Anti-Semitism (Albany: SUNY Press, 2020), Hebrew translation of Hegel’sPhänomenologie des Geistes (Tel Aviv: Resling Publishing, 2020), Heidegger and Jewish Thought: Difficult Others, edited with M. Brumlik (London/New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), and Etre sans mot dire : La logique de ‘Sein und Zeit’ (Bucarest: Zeta Books, 2010).

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Kurt Warner, "False Idols: How Diversion is Destroying Democracy" (Vernon Press, 2024)

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

False Idols: How Diversion is Destroying Democracy (Vernon Press, 2024) examines how modern forms of diversion shape civic life and weaken democratic responsibility. Drawing on the ancient Roman idea of “bread and circuses,” Kurt Warner explores how contemporary society is saturated with distractions that keep citizens focused on what is immediate, pleasurable, profitable, or spectacular, rather than on what is politically and socially meaningful.

The conversation introduces listeners to the book’s central concern: how celebrity culture, consumerism, economic pressures, sports, politics, art, music, literature, the internet, social media, and video games can become “false idols.” These forces do not merely entertain us; they influence how we think, what we value, and how we understand our responsibilities to one another.

A key point of discussion is the book’s comparison between ancient Rome and the contemporary United States. Warner uses “bread and circuses” to consider how societies become complacent when citizens are absorbed by basic needs and entertainment while civic duty fades into the background.

The episode also explores the book’s opening narrative, which follows an ordinary man, Chris, through a day filled with advertising, media, branding, and social pressure. This scene illustrates one of the book’s central arguments: distraction is often woven into everyday life before people have noticed its influence.

Warner’s background in psychotherapy adds an important dimension to the discussion. 'False Idols' connects personal awareness with civic awareness, asking how people can recognize the forces directing their attention and reclaim the ability to think critically.

Ultimately, this episode invites listeners to reflect on the relationship between attention and democracy. 'False Idols' asks what it would mean to wake up from the collective daze of distraction and choose more meaningful forms of civic, ethical, and social engagement.

Key Themes and Context:

“Bread and circuses” in the modern world - One of the book’s central ideas is that Juvenal’s famous phrase “bread and circuses” remains relevant today. Warner uses it to examine how entertainment, consumption, and everyday distraction can draw citizens away from civic responsibility.

The many forms of diversion- The book considers a wide range of modern distractions, including celebrity worship, money, sports, politics, art, music, literature, the internet, social media, and video games. Together, these examples show how distraction can operate across culture, politics, economics, and everyday life.

Democracy and civic duty - At the heart of the book is a concern with democracy. Warner argues that distraction becomes dangerous when it weakens civic engagement and allows people to avoid the difficult work of political and ethical responsibility.

Critical thinking as resistance - The later chapters of 'False Idols' focus on critical thinking as a way of resisting manipulation and recovering agency. The book invites readers to examine not only what they consume, but also how their attention, values, and judgments are shaped.

The psychological dimension of distraction - Warner’s background in psychotherapy informs the book’s attention to emotion, avoidance, and self-awareness. Distraction is presented not only as a social or political problem, but also as something that affects how individuals relate to themselves and others.

Vernon Press – Bridging Scholarly Ideas and Global Readership

Vernon Press stands out as a bilingual independent publisher of scholarly books in the humanities and social sciences. Their mission is crucial — to provide a home for ideas of international importance and to embrace scholarship from underrepresented voices and perspectives. Through its diverse catalog, Vernon Press engages with global readers, contributing to academic and public discourse.

Dessy Vassileva, the Marketing & Design expert at Vernon Press, brings a 360º multidisciplinary approach to her work at Vernon Press.

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Julie Buntin, "Famous Men" (Random House, 2026)

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Will Miles is trapped. Trapped in tiny Greening, Michigan, where a toxic high school rumor has turned her into a social exile. Trapped in the predictable routines of her mother, and under the unrelenting gaze of her mother’s increasingly sinister boyfriend. But when Will stumbles across the early poems of Nathaniel Fellow, a famous writer forty years her senior who also grew up in Greening, she feels she’s found a kindred spirit. A passing comment from her mother only adds to Will’s fascination: Is Nathaniel the father she's never known?
Will orchestrates a plan to track Nathaniel down, following in his footsteps to New York City, where she learns he's not the answer to her past, not the way she imagined. But their meeting sparks a complicated, consuming relationship that gives Will sidelong access to a world she’s only ever imagined: of writers and intellectuals, a financial safety net, and, most intoxicatingly, a glimpse into her own potential. But who is Nathaniel Fellow, off the page? And what will shaping her life to suit his cost her? When a torrent of information about his past threatens not just her life with Nathaniel, but the story she tells herself about him, Will is faced with a choice that will change everything.
A gripping novel about ambition, parents and children, and all the ways women still pay for men’s mistakes, Famous Men (Random House, 2026) traces one woman’s journey to the truth of where she comes from, what she’s capable of, and how she might start again.

Julie Buntin‘s debut novel, Marlena, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, released in ten territories worldwide, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen outlets, including The Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews. She is the co-editor of Notes to New Mothers, a collection of dispatches from postpartum life by sixty writers and artists. Previously, Buntin was an editor and director of writing programs at Catapult. Now, she writes and teaches in Ann Arbor, where she is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan.

Recommended Books:

Dur E. Aziz Amna, A Splintering
Chloe Benjamin, The Understory
Louise Kennedy, Stations
Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries

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R. Joseph Parrott, "Dream the Size of Freedom: How African Liberation Mobilized New Left Internationalism" (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Dream the Size of Freedom: How African Liberation Mobilized New Left Internationalism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) by Dr. R. Joseph Parrott explores how anti-colonial movements in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau reshaped US activist engagement with the Global South from the 1960s through the 1970s and influenced American foreign policy as the Vietnam War drew to a close. These Portuguese African liberation movements, led by nationalists like Eduardo Mondlane and Amílcar Cabral, built global solidarity networks to support their military and social challenges to empire while defending against Western intervention. US activists disillusioned with the Cold War came to see African self-determination as central to global campaigns for racial and economic justice. A broad coalition ranging from Black Power radicals to religious liberals mobilized against the North Atlantic alliance with Portugal. In the process, this grassroots movement helped define a New Left Internationalism that championed decentralized, multiracial organizing and a collaborative vision of US foreign policy to redress historic inequalities between Global North and South.

Drawing on more than fifty oral histories and research in government and activist archives on three continents in English, Portuguese, French, and Afrikaans, Dr. Parrott reconstructs the transnational anti-imperial network that injected Global South priorities into US political debates. Popular protests and informational campaigns led to collaborations with legislators eager to constrain the powerful executive branch. In 1976, this grassroots-legislative alliance halted Gerald Ford’s anti-communist intervention against the Soviet-backed government of newly independent Angola. This victory of New Left Internationalist ideas anticipated future anti-apartheid and Latin American peace movements while also fueling a conservative revival of Cold War containment. By exploring US engagement with the contested process of African decolonization, Dream the Size of Freedom highlights the origins of two contrasting visions of American foreign policy that defined debates over the country’s proper role in the Global South into the 1990s.

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Richard Bell, "The American Revolution and the Fate of the World" (Penguin, 2025)

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Matthew Mason (Professor of History at Brigham Young University) chatted with Richard Bell (Professor of History at the University of Maryland) about his new book The American Revolution and the Fate of the World (Penguin, 2025). They had a wide-ranging conversation about this wide-ranging book, including how and why there hasn’t been a book quite like it written before, and how Bell illuminates both the “greatest hits” of American Revolutionary legend and some “deep cuts” that readers probably haven’t encountered before. For instance, they discussed how Bell recasts iconic events like the Boston Tea Party as having a much bigger context and impact than the provincial setting for most tellings. But also they mused over why certain events and participants, such as American privateers captured and turned into prisoners of war suffering for their country just as much as the soldiers at Valley Forge, have not been part of the central mythology of the Revolution. This and more make up this conversation about this important book.

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Brendan Greeley, "The Almighty Dollar: 500 Years of the World's Most Powerful Money" (Crown, 2026)

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

America’s money is global money—nearly every nation in the world writes international contracts in dollars, and in 2023, central banks around the world held nearly $6.7 trillion in dollar reserves, three times any other currency. Today, the United States’ global hegemony rests largely on its ability to produce unlimited treasury bonds that are sold around the world, dollars that supported America’s explosive growth in the twentieth century and funded its massive wars in the twenty-first. American power and the American dollar have become synonymous.
Yet in this brilliant 500-year history The Almighty Dollar: 500 Years of the World's Most Powerful Money (Crown, 2026), Brendan Greeley argues that America’s sovereignty over the dollar is an illusion—that the dollar had already empowered and destroyed nations long before it washed up on colonial shores, and that no country or king has or can ever truly control it. Reaching back to the dollar’s birth as the taler in the 15th-century silver mines of St. Joachimsthal, Greeley reveals how the dollar first thrived as a commodity for merchants and bankers—a big, silver coin that was trusted around the world, even as the miners who pulled it from the ground had trouble getting paid in that same silver. Greeley traces a captivatingly complex path across time and place, from the industrial collapse at the heart of Spain’s 17th-century silver empire, to the birth of American paper dollars in colonial Maryland, 19th-century New Orleans bank failures, and the small town of Hawarden, Iowa, which created its own dollars during the Great Depression. At every surprising turn, Greeley upends assumptions about global currencies and draws out the centuries-old tension between how dollars are manufactured and whom they actually serve.
Singular in its breadth, The Almighty Dollar dismantles the myth that America created or has ever truly controlled the dollar. Through meticulous research and vividly rendered stories of merchants, monarchs, and everyday people both past and present, Greeley shows how the dollar became America’s greatest export, spawning a vast financial industry that enriches the wealthy, even as the rest of the country’s industries suffer.

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Stefan Höltgen et al., "Commodore 64: Past, Present, and Future of a Home Computer" (Projekt Verlag, 2026)

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Commodore 64 is the most signiﬁcant computer of its era. From 1982 to 1994, a total of 27 million units were sold—more than any other computer from a single manufacturer afterwards. Due to its widespread use as well as its technical features, the C64 has a huge international following—even to this day. The 19 contributions compiled in Commodore 64: Past, Present, and Future of a Home Computer (Projekt Verlag, 2026) illustrate the signiﬁcance of the platform for the digitalization of society, the general public’s computer science knowledge, as well as digital art and culture—both in the past, present, and also in the future. Volume 5 of the »Computer Archaeology« series is partly based on the conference of the same name held in 2024 at the University of Bonn and has here been supplemented with additional contributions from the ﬁelds of artiﬁcial intelligence, quantum computing, and digital humanities.

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Marie Léticée, "Camille's Lakou" (Vanderbilt UP, 2025)

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Camille’s Lakou (Vanderbilt UP, 2025), a novel by Guadeloupean writer and educator Marie Léticée, tells the story of Camille, a young Caribbean girl living with her single‑parent mother in a 1960s urbanized zone at the edge of Pointe‑à‑Pitre, Guadeloupe, following her through her adult life as a Caribbean migrant in Florida. Léticée explores neocolonial culture clash and identity conflict themes that will be familiar to readers of the Francophone Caribbean coming‑of‑age novel and its revisions by women writers such as Capécia, Lacrosil, Manicom, Schwarz‑Bart, Condé, Pineau, and others. Léticée makes it her own by fleshing out a time and place not well‑represented in Guadeloupean literature. While previous bildungsromanefrom the writers mentioned here typically focus on rural peasant or urban bourgeois settings, Camille’s Lakoushifts location to an impoverished urban environment. “Lakou” is translated as “courtyard” or, more colloquially, “yard.” The author explores the culture and politics of lakou society while raising the issue of how this social dynamic is transformed through the impact of globalization and dispersal into a diasporic experience outside the island milieu of Camille’s childhood.
In a collaborative translation effort between the author and Kevin Meehan, Camille’s Lakou will bring the realities and joys of Léticée’s Guadeloupe to an English audience for the first time.

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Lucy D. Curzon, "Art and Citizenship in Conflict: British Women War Artists, 1939–45" (Manchester UP, 2025)

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Art and Citizenship in Conflict: British Women War Artists, 1939-45 (Manchester UP, 2026) by Dr. Lucy Curzon examines the work of women war artists in order to highlight the complexity of citizenship and gender in Britain during the Second World War.

Evelyn Dunbar, Mary Kessell, Ethel Gabain, Stella Schmolle, and Laura Knight, among others, were commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC) to document the millions of women who took up sometimes unconventional roles-in agriculture, the auxiliary services, and manufacturing, among others-to support the British war effort. Indeed, their prints, drawings, and paintings were part of a broader scheme to uphold morale and promote much-needed citizen involvement on the home front. While there is growing interest, the importance of their remit in the history of the Second World War and the quality of their artistry have nonetheless not yet secured them a significant place in scholarship. Art and Citizenship in Conflict seeks to amend this gap.

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Emanuel Tov, "Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert, Revised Second Edition" (Brill, 2025)

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert, Revised Second Edition (Brill, 2025) revises the first edition of this book (2004) which is long overdue. Many segments needed revision due in large part to the veritable flood of studies published in the wake of the first edition. In other cases, the author changed his mind in his continued study of the scrolls improved by the new images of the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library. Hyperlinks to this library are now added to most references to the scrolls. This book covers many aspects of a handbook for those who study the scrolls, material culture, and edit scroll fragments.

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Ian J. McNiven, "Sentient Seas: Archaeologies of Seascapes and Maritime Rituals" (UP Florida, 2026)

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Sentient Seas: Archaeologies of Seascapes and Maritime Rituals (UP Florida, 2026), published by University Press of Florida (2026), offers a global perspective on maritime cultures, examining how societies across time and space have understood and interacted with the sea. Synthesizing archaeological evidence, historical documents, and ethnographic accounts, Ian McNiven explores maritime traditions from ancient civilizations in the Middle East and Mediterranean to medieval Europe and Scandinavia to contemporary Indigenous communities in the South Pacific.

McNiven investigates diverse cultural practices including shipbuilding, the treatment of shipwrecks and shipwreck victims, and maritime resource use, interpreting the evidence through the perspectives of mariners who understood the seas to be sentient and capable of acting with intentionality. He introduces the concepts of “terrestrial seascapes” and “ontological switching” to illustrate how land-based shrines and votive offerings extend maritime cosmologies and maintain a liminal transition from land to sea. By bridging anthropological and archaeological research with transdisciplinary blue humanities scholarship, Sentient Seas approaches seas as spiritscapes, recontextualizing folkloric beliefs about maritime superstitions.

Ian J. McNiven is Research Professor of Indigenous archaeology at the Monash Indigenous Studies Centre at Monash University in Melbourne, and a Chief Investigator with the Australian research Council Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures. He is coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous Australia and New Guinea.

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Caste as a Material Question with Rahul Sonpimple

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This episode featured a conversation with Rahul Sonpimple, founder of the All-India Independent Scheduled Castes Association. Our conversation began with Rahul’s conception of Indian history and the place of anti-caste struggle within it. We delved further into Rahul’s own understanding of “anti-caste” as deeply rooted in Ambedkar’s own argument about the necessity of force in emancipatory social transformation. Rahul was especially forthright about the political cost of elevating meekness as a moral condition, a choice that he associates with the rise of a Dalit middle class focused primarily on securing its own representational authority. This took us to a discussion of the need for an independent and consolidated Dalit politics rooted in the lives of the Dalit poor with sufficient leverage to negotiate terms with the state. The last part of the episode focused on Rahul’s critique of both Ambedkarites and Indian Marxists for their disregard of caste as a material question. He spoke at particular length about the failure of Indian Marxists to advance a materalist critique of caste and how their analytical separation of caste and class has played into the hands of the Hindu Right. We ended the episode with Rahul laying out his own definition of Ambedkarism as a material and spiritual politics that recognizes the Dalit poor as a revolutionary class with the potential to rebuild society.

Read the transcript here

Guest

Rahul Sonpimple is author and founder of the All-India Independent Scheduled Castes Association.

References

B.R. Ambedkar, The Buddha and his Dhamma, 1957.

B.R. Ambedkar, Small Holdings in India and their Remedies, 1918.

B.R. Ambedkar, Buddha or Karl Marx, 1956.

B.R. Ambedkar, “Mr. Russell and the Reconstruction of Society,” 1916.

Rahul Sonpimple, “Against Hindu Rashtra: Ambedkar’s Buddhist Rashtra as Nation,” The Ambedkarian Chronicle, May 4, 2026.

Rahul Sonpimple, “Remembering Babasaheb Ambedkar: The Unfinished Task of Burying Manu,” The Ambedkarian Chronicle, April 14, 2026.

Rahul Sonpimple, “Kanshi Ram Sahab: Beyond Bureaucratic Dalit Passivity,” The Ambedkarian Chronicle, March 15, 2026.

Rahul Sonpimple, “Spontaneity in Ambedkar: Beyond the Passivity of Popular Dalit Discourse,” The Ambedkarian Chronicle, April 16, 2025.

Rahul Sonpimple, “The End of Independent Ambedkarite Dalit Politics?” Round Table India, July 12, 2024.

Rahul Sonpimple, “Dalit conversions: An act of rebellion against caste supremacy,” Al Jazeera, 14 June 2018.

Himsa and ahimsa are foundational ethical concepts in Buddhism. Himsa refers to injury, harm, or violence and ahimsa to non-harming, non-violence, or compassion. Ambedkar critiqued extreme, blanket doctrines of ahimsa as unworkable and often hypocritical.

Chokhamela was a saint-poet from Maharashtra, India who belonged to the Mahar caste and was a devotee of Vitthala.

Bhakt: devotee

Vitthala: Hindu deity worshipped mainly in the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka as an avatar of Vishnu.

Kabir and Ravidas: medieval poet-saints who were part of the Bhakti movement (7th-17th century), which emphasized devotion to a personal god, rather than rituals and scriptural knowledge, as the path to spiritual liberation.

Samata Sainik Dal: a social organization founded by B. R. Ambedkar in 1927 with the objective of safeguarding the rights of all oppressed sections of Indian society.

Bhima Koregaon: a village in Maharashtra that was the site of an 1818 battle between the army of Peshwa Baji Rao II and an East India Company force comprised mainly of Mahars, a Dalit caste. This battle has attained legendary status for Dalits who view it as a victory of Mahars over the Brahminical Peshwas.

Baniya: refers to mercantile castes primarily from the states of Rajasthan and Gujarat.

Kanshi Ram: Indian social reformer and politician who founded the All India Backwards and Minorities Communities Employees' Federation (BAMCEF) in 1971 and the Bahujan Samaj Party in 1984.

Jogendra Nath Mandal: Bengali politician and Dalit leader who held the law portfolio in the 1946-47 Interim Government of India and served as the Minister of Law and Labor in Pakistan from 1947-50.

Rajah: M.C. Rajah was a Tamil politician and Dalit leader who served on the Madras Legislative Council in the 1920s and founded the All India Depressed Classes Association in 1925.

Kamble: B.C. Kamble was a Marathi politician and Dalit leader who led the Republican Party of India for decades.

BAMCEF: All India Backwards and Minorities Communities Employees' Federation

UGC Bill: officially the University Grants Commission (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026, is a set of regulations aimed at ending discrimination against marginalized communities in higher education. Following widespread protests and a public interest litigation (PIL), the Supreme Court of India stayed the regulations in January 2026.

Bhagwa kapda: saffron clothing

Scheduled Caste Federation: a political organization founded in 1942 by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar dedicated to advocating for the rights and political self-representation of the Dalit community.

Republican Party of India: a political party established by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar in 1956.

PESA: Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act, 1996 is a landmark legislation enacted by the Government of India to ensure self-governance for tribal communities living in Fifth Schedule Areas.

Manusmriti: a text that served as a foundational legal and societal framework in ancient India.

EWS: refers to the Economically Weaker Section, a government classification referring to those within the unreserved (general) category eligible for a 10% quota in government jobs and educational admissions.

Karan Johar: an Indian filmmaker, producer and television personality.

Dharavi: a residential area in Mumbai (Bombay) considered one of the world’s largest slums.

Adani: Gautam Adani is an Indian billionaire and chairperson of the multinational conglomerate, the Adani Group.

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Molly M. Brookfield, "Watching the Girls Go By: A History of Street Harassment in the United States" (UNC Press, 2026)

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Molly Brookfield’s book, Watching the Girls Go By: A History of Street Harassment in the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2026) explores the historical, legal, and cultural history of street harassment in the United States. Historically, Brookfield identified the "masher panic" (late 19th–early 20th century) when reformers and municipalities labeled male accosting of women a public problem and enacted anti-masher ordinances or applied disorderly-conduct laws. On law and policy, the book highlights primarily local legal responses against harassment, with municipal codes and reinterpretations of existing ordinances more common than coherent federal action that criminalizes mashing.

In Watching the Girls Go By, street harassment is situated on a continuum with other gendered and sexualized violence, with the argument that street harassment normalizes and underpins more extreme harms against women. The book portrays historical scholarly perspectives to street harassment including those of Cheryl Bernard and Edith Schlaffler. Also, the book builds on diverse historical sources and employs varying terms for similar behaviors. The author uses "intrusive behaviors" as a more precise analytic category while preserving period-specific terms when discussing particular historical contexts.

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Anja Foerschner, "Female Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Female Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001 (Bloomsbury, 2024), Anja Foerschner offers a compelling exploration of the women artists, curators, scholars, and activists who shaped the cultural landscape of Yugoslavia and its successor states. Drawing on both original research and existing scholarship, she traces the emergence of the New Art Practice of the late 1960s and 1970s, highlighting the pivotal role of Belgrade’s Student Cultural Centre, where women were instrumental in forging a progressive artistic and curatorial vision.

Through insightful examinations of performance art, video art, and the development of feminist thought in Yugoslavia, Foerschner reveals how the region carved out a distinctive place within the international postwar avant-garde. Situating Yugoslav feminism in dialogue with Western and neighbouring contexts, she sheds new light on the complex intersections of art, politics, and social change. By exploring artistic responses to the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and the enduring political dimensions of cultural production, this book invites readers to reconsider the legacies of activist art and their resonance in our present time.

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J. W. Mason and Arjun Jayadev, "Against Money" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Money is everywhere in our daily lives. It lurks in the swipe of a card at the grocery store, in looming student-loan debts, in the prices of things we want, and in our subconscious navigation of the modern world. In this revelatory book, economists Mason and Jayadev explain how and why money is so deeply misunderstood by the world it dominates—as well as the dangerous social implications of this misunderstanding. Against Money (University of Chicago Press, 2026) tackles the most dearly held “truths” of economics, arguing that the world of money has never been an impartial representation of the world of things. Instead, its existence in different forms—debt, capital, liquidity, and interest—increasingly shapes events in the real world rather than just reflecting them. Sometimes money enables new forms of cooperation; more often it facilitates domination. Human existence is not just facilitated by money but also governed by it.

J.W. Mason is an Associate Professor of Economics at John Jay College, City University of New York and a Senior Fellow at the Groundworks Collective. He was formerly the Policy Director for the New York State Working Families Party. Arjun teaches Economics at the University. Arjun Jayadev is Professor of Economics at Azim Premji University in India.

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Khiara Bridges, "Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans" (MIT Press, 2026)

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

An unsettling exploration of the persistence of racism in reproductive healthcare in the US—and why even affluent Black women are imperiled by substandard care.
From a leading expert on race, class, maternal health, and reproductive rights.
Racism in maternal healthcare is not reserved for the poor. An unsparing picture of inequities in prenatal care and childbirth in the United States, Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans (MIT Press, 2026) reveals that not only are black people three to four times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause, but racial disparities in maternal mortality persist across income levels. That is, wealthier black people are much more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period than their white counterparts. Focusing on a San Francisco obstetrics clinic that caters to the affluent, Khiara Bridges looks at the choices around prenatal care and childbirth that class-privileged, pregnant black people are making in order to survive what has been called the “black maternal health crisis.”
Bridges, whose previous work exposed how race and racism are embedded in maternal healthcare for the poor, draws on two years of participant-observation to show how wealthier black people try to leverage their class privilege to avoid some of the negative effects of their blackness—only to discover that in a country that has never reckoned with its horrific racial past, there is no escaping racism’s reach. Throughout the book, engaging, heartbreaking, infuriating stories of women’s experiences with pregnancy and prenatal care illustrate how race and racism matter regardless of wealth or status.

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Martin Fitzgerald, "The Umbrella Man and Other Stories: What We Talk about When We Talk about the JFK Assassination" (Biteback Publishing, 2026)

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What does the JKF assassination mean to us now? In ⁠The Umbrella Man and Other Stories: What We Talk About When We Talk About the JFK Assassination⁠, (Biteback Publishing, 2026) ⁠Martin Fitzgerald⁠ explores the lives and stories of the people present on that day in Dallas at Dealey Plaza. In doing so, the book examines cultural memory, artistic representations, history, conspiracy theory and the global impact of the event. Drawing on personal reflections, rich archival sources, and contemporary interviews, the book offers a brilliant and compelling narrative that goes beyond the circumstances of 1963 to the present day. The book will be of significant interest to a range of humanities scholars as well as to anyone interested in the ongoing legacy of one of the twentieth century’s defining events.

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Elana Resnick, "Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe" (Stanford UP, 2025)

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Sustainability has become a touchstone for development worldwide, promising an antidote to environmental degradation and capitalism's excess: waste. Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe (Stanford University Press, 2025) presents a fundamentally different account of sustainability and waste itself by uncovering the intersections of international environmental reforms and racialized labor. In Bulgaria, Roma comprise the bulk of the country's waste workers, while anti-Roma racism casts them as socially disposable. Without their labor, however, the country cannot meet the sustainability targets required by the European Union. Drawing on fieldwork that spans twenty years, including eleven months working alongside Romani women street sweepers, and years embedded in waste organizations, political campaigns, Roma NGOs, and activist groups, Elana Resnick examines the power hierarchies that shape both waste management and European geopolitics.

Instead of focusing on only environmental harms or toxic distributions, Refusing Sustainability approaches Romani life-worlds as spaces of creative production, and also tells several larger stories: of postsocialist racial capitalism, environmental progressivism, democratic failures, mutual aid, and the power of women's friendships. Through these stories, Resnick illuminates how ordinary people, racialized as discardable, resist systems that simultaneously rely on and exclude them.

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Gabriella Soto, "Border Afterlives: Migrant Deaths, Forensic Investigations, and the Politics of Haunting" (U Arizona Press, 2026)

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Border Afterlives: Migrant Deaths, Forensic Investigations, and the Politics of Haunting (University of Arizona Press, 2026) begins with the undocumented individuals who die crossing the U.S.-Mexico border—deaths that are both preventable and politically produced. Moving between the practical and the philosophical, forensic anthropologist and author Gabriella Soto asks what it means to care for the dead and what society owes to those who die in its name. Through the lens of haunting, she explores how the dead continue to shape the living, not as objects of horror but as moral agents whose presence demands justice. Centered primarily in Arizona and South Texas, Border Afterlives offers a border-scale comparative account of forensic practices, critiques the limits of “best practices” in under-resourced systems, and calls for a re-imagining of forensic humanitarianism grounded in reciprocity and dignity, beyond human rights. This is a book that insists on remembering the dead.

In this conversation, we discuss the difficult interplay between federal immigration policy and local practices of death care on the border, the implications of policies that cause increased death tolls, the politics of humanitarian immigration reform, and, finally, how allowing ourselves to be haunted by the slow mass casualties of the border can and should inspire us to act.

Gabriella Soto is a contemporary archaeologist who examines the material world to understand pressing social issues. Integrating ethnographic methods, GIS technology, and archival research, she specializes in migration materialities, focusing on Latinx migration and security at the US-Mexico border. Her work analyzes the material footprints of transit, forensic death investigations, and security and humanitarian infrastructure. An ACLS fellow whose work has also been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Soto is a research affiliate at the Binational Migration Institute and holds faculty affiliations at Arizona State University’s School of Transborder Studies, School of Interdisciplinary Forensics, and the Latinx Oral History Lab. Her research has appeared in American Anthropologist and Political Geography, and her article on migrant material culture won the American Anthropological Association’s Gordon R. Willey Paper Prize. Dr. Soto is the author of Border Afterlives: Migrant Deaths, Forensic Investigations, and the Politics of Haunting (University of Arizona Press, 2026).

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Celebrating "Piece by Piece: How Stephen Sondheim Made Musical Puzzles Come Alive" with Stacy Innerst

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Stacy Innerst is a renowned children’s book artist and painter. His picture books have received a host of starred reviews and have been honored with the Sydney Taylor Book Award (for The Book Rescuer), the New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Books Award (Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The Case of RBG Vs. Inequality) and the SCBWI Golden Kite for Picture Book Illustration (The Music in George’s Head.).

In tour wonderful conversation, we celebrate his new book, Piece by Piece: How Stephen Sondheim Made Musical Puzzles Come Alive
written by Erin Frankel (Author), artwork by Stacy Innerst which launched with Caulkins Creek in April, 2026. We discuss Stacy's love for drawing, his metamorphosis from magazine illustrator to children's book artist (with an emphasis on artist), and how his deep love for history and music infuses his work.

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Georgia Holly et al, .eds., "Heritage in the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) and Beyond" (U Edinburgh Press, 2025)

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Heritage in the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) and Beyond (U Edinburgh Press, 2025) outlines the need to embed Ocean Heritage into ocean science, sustainable development, and marine conservation to meet the goals of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030) and beyond. Ocean Heritage—spanning tangible sites, such as shipwrecks or submerged harbours, and intangible connections such as traditional practices and knowledge systems—remains underrepresented in ocean governance. Yet it offers critical insights for more effective policy and research. Its inclusion is essential to ensuring science is informed by human–ocean relationships and responsive to the needs of communities.

Led by the Cultural Heritage Framework Programme (CHFP), the Ocean Decade’s only programme focused on Ocean Heritage, this text demonstrates how heritage supports all 10 Ocean Decade Challenges. Ocean Heritage strengthens climate adaptation, improves spatial planning, and supports equitable governance by grounding decisions in historical context and lived experience. The paper draws on more than 20 CHFP-endorsed initiatives, offering clear case studies and actionable recommendations for policy alignment, institutional support, and multidisciplinary collaboration.

As the Ocean Decade reaches its midpoint, this book offers a path forward: one where science draws on the full range of human—ocean relationships to guide sustainable, equitable action. Ocean Heritage is not a symbolic gesture—it is a fundamental human right. Rather than treating culture as an add-on to marine conservation, this paper calls for its broad integration into ocean science and decision-making.

Athena Trakadas is a maritime archeologist who studies underwater and coastal marine cultural heritage and advises international and national heritage, marine science and governmental organizations.

Helen Dewar is an historian of the Atlantic World and French colonization in North America in the 17th and 18th centuries. She is a professor of history at the Université de Montréal (Québec, Canada) and the author of Disputing New France: Companies, Sovereignty and Law in the French Atlantic, 1598-1663 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022). helen.dewar[at]umontreal.ca Helen’s institutional website

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Hector Amaya, "The Economy of Anonymity: Power in the Age of Identification" (Stanford UP 2026)

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

We use avatars to play video games. We use pseudonyms on social media. We use VPNs to mask our identities and activities. In the digital realm, anonymity is everywhere, a persistent option for those who wish to hide, experiment, and deceive. But we are anonymous in more contexts than the digital. In urban settings, we routinely experience the anonymity of the crowd, and routinely use anonymity to participate in political life and social protests. Anonymity matters. This book is a wager that we can learn much about society, humanity, and power by analyzing the structural tensions and possibilities of anonymity, and by analyzing how the economy of anonymity is changing in a modernity defined by computation.

While many have explored the connections between surveillance, datafication, and privacy, relatively little has been done to theorize anonymity and its critical role in our lives. The Economy of Anonymity: Power in the Age of Identification (Stanford University Press, 2026) rebalances our intellectual investments by expanding our understandings of anonymity. Putting the work of Gloria Anzaldúa and Bernhard Siegert into conversation, Hector Amaya examines the contours of anonymity in different social domains—in relationship to individuals, institutions, and contexts; to epistemology and ontology; and to history and society. As the book shows, anonymity entails paradoxical possibilities—sometimes anonymity is experienced as freedom and other times as powerlessness, or subjugation.

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US 250: A Conversation with Peter John Loewen

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This week on Democracy Dialogues, Rachel Beatty Riedl speaks with Peter John Loewen to reflect on the 250th anniversary of US independence. They discuss the ways in which America’s unique founding moment has shaped democratic institutions and practice, and the paradox of America’s profound democratic experiment.

In this episode, Loewen describes his research on the representative nature of elected politicians – how they are similar to and different from ordinary people in their decision making. He also tackles questions of polarization and what happens when people have increased contact with other points of view. And the conversation wraps up with a discussion of higher education and democracy, and what role universities can play in shaping the next generation of democratic citizens.

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Ambrogio Caiani, "Flirting with Evil: The Catholic Church in the Age of Total War and Globalisation" (Apollo, 2026)

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

It's a shadowy, ornate world of cover-ups and hidden motives. In Flirting with Evil: The Catholic Church in the Age of Total War and Globalisation (Apollo, 2026), Ambrogio Caiani lifts back the heavy velvet curtains of thechancel and peers behind the locked mahogany doors of the Vatican to reveal the shocking truths that make up a century of Catholic corruption.

For many, Catholicism's flirtation with evil has become impossible to ignore: a pope courting Nazi officials and, horribly, turning a blind eye to the Holocaust; the Vatican becoming embroiled in a series of dodgy financial dealings; the child abuse continuously perpetrated by members of the clergy. Time and time again, Catholic figures have made terrible choices in private and preached in public about goodness and morality.

This is the first history that focuses exclusively on Catholicism throughout the twentieth century, sketching not only scandalous stories of corruption but also lively portrayals of Catholicism's key characters—from a beret-clad communist revolutionary priest to the bizarre morning routine of the pope who followed a daily cold bath with dry unbuttered toast. Caiani, a critical Catholic himself, takes a frank and sceptical look at the trajectory of global Catholicism and wrestles with vital questions about the future of the church. Taking in the wider socio-political contexts of a world at war and the accumulating momentum of social progress, this brilliant history traces the evolution of the Catholic church alongside the development of our modern society right up to the election of Pope Leo XIV in 2025.

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Angela Frederick, "Disabled Power: A Storm, A Grid, and Embodied Harm in the Age of Disaster" (NYU Press, 2025)

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A call to place disability at the center of climate and disaster responses
Every disaster is a disability disaster, argues Angela Frederick. Disabled Power: A Storm, A Grid, and Embodied Harm in the Age of Disaster (NYU Press, 2025) tells the stories of Texans with disabilities who endured the 2021 Texas power crisis, which forced millions of Texas residents to endure a dayslong winter storm without heat or water. Based on 58 in-depth interviews with disabled Texans and parents of disabled children, Frederick highlights how disabled people and those with chronic health conditions are uniquely harmed when basic infrastructure such as power and water systems fail. She argues that the vulnerability people with disabilities experienced during this disaster was not an inevitable consequence of individual disabled bodies. Rather, disability vulnerability was “produced” by policies that “disabled” vital infrastructure.
Frederick also emphasizes another meaning of the phrase “disabled power:” the individual and collective resilience and creativity Texans with disabilities exercised to survive the disaster. Despite common perceptions of people with disabilities as passive victims, Frederick shows how many found strategies to survive and to provide and receive care within their communities. Ultimately, the implications of this disaster extend far beyond Texas and underscore our increased vulnerability to infrastructural failures as extreme weather events become more common. Disabled Power offers a blueprint for reimagining vulnerability and resilience to center people with disabilities in disaster research and emergency response.

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Laura B. McGrath, "Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this interview, we speak with Laura B. McGrath, an Assistant Professor of English at Temple University and the author of Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction (Princeton University Press, 2026). Her writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books and The Atlantic.

Middlemen rewrites literary history from the perspective of one of its most important but least visible figures: the literary agent. Chronicling the story of agents in the United States from the 1950s to today, Laura McGrath uncovers their critical role in the making of American literature. From the famed three-martini lunch to the Frankfurt Book Fair, Middlemen takes readers behind the scenes to show how agents influence what we read. Along the way, it explains why many debut novelists never publish another book, why agents champion short story collections even though they sell poorly, how agents advocate for writers of color in a system that values whiteness, and why there are so many New York novels.

Weaving together original archival research, data analysis, and interviews with scores of agents and other publishing professionals, Middlemen demonstrates that agents—eighty percent of whom are in fact women—are much more than “middlemen.” As intermediaries between author and publisher, agents act as advocates, matchmakers, negotiators, and tastemakers, and they must balance artistic values with the commercial imperatives of publishing conglomerates. The book describes the decisive role agents have played in celebrated novels—from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist—but also in the creation of entire literary categories like the debut novel, the story collection, postmodernism, multiethnic fiction, and world literature.

Featuring profiles of agents past and present such as Sterling Lord, Lynn Nesbit, Candida Donadio, Marie Brown, and Andrew Wylie, along with perspectives from agents at all stages of their careers, Middlemen is an entertaining and eye-opening account of how literary fiction—and the literary canon—is made.

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Gretchen Heefner, "Sand, Snow, and Stardust: How US Military Engineers Conquered Extreme Environments" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Deserts, the Arctic, outer space—these extreme environments are often seen as inhospitable places at the edges of our maps. But from the 1940s through the 1960s, spurred by the diverse and unfamiliar regions the US military had navigated during World War II, the United States defense establishment took a keen interest in these places, dispatching troops to the Aleutian Islands, North Africa, the South Pacific, and beyond. To preserve the country’s status as a superpower after the war, to pave runways and build bridges, engineers had to understand and then conquer dunes, permafrost, and even the surface of the moon.

Sand, Snow, and Stardust: How US Military Engineers Conquered Extreme Environments (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Gretchen Heefner explores how the US military generated a new understanding of these environments and attempted to master them, intending to cement America’s planetary power. Operating in these regions depended as much on scientific and cultural knowledge as on military expertise and technology. From General George S. Patton learning the hard way that the desert is not always hot, to the challenges of constructing a scientific research base under the Arctic ice, to the sheer implausibility of modeling Martian environments on Earth, Dr. Heefner takes us on a wry expedition into the extremes and introduces us to the people who have shaped our insight into these extraordinary environments. Even decades after the first manned space flight, plans for human space exploration and extraplanetary colonization are still based on what we know about stark habitats on Earth.

An entertaining survey of the relationship between environmental history and military might, Sand, Snow, and Stardust also serves as a warning about the further transformation of the planet—whether through desertification, melting ice caps, or attempts to escape it entirely.

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Bradford A. Bouley, "The Barberini Butchers: Meat, Murder, and Warfare in Early Modern Italy" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In 1644 four norcini or pork butchers were accused of killing not pigs, but seven of their fellow citizens, stripping the meat from the bones, then combining it with pig to make sausages, which were then sold to Romans from their shop behind the Pantheon. In the multiple pamphlets describing this supposed crime, the authors of this accusation blamed residents of Rome themselves, who had become so obsessed with meat that they turned a blind eye to such horrendous acts. This fabricated story points to an underlying reality—that in the early seventeenth century, a series of popes dramatically increased the amount of food and wine consumed by Romans, culminating in a per capita consumption of over a pound of meat per day during the reign of Pope Urban VIII (d. 1644).

The Barberini Butchers: Meat, Murder, and Warfare in Early Modern Italy (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2026) traces the efforts and activities of a range of actors who strove to bring meat to the Roman table. Dr. Bradford A. Bouley shows how Rome’s preoccupation with food was the result of papal policy in the aftermath of the Reformation; food, and especially meat, served as religious and political propaganda, symbolizing the correctness of the Catholic faith and demonstrating the extent of papal power. Dr. Bouley details the dramatic reorganization of Roman foodways needed to satisfy this demand for meat, as large herds of animals had to be funneled from the countryside to the city. This consumption was ultimately not sustainable, triggering a crisis that fueled sensational rumors of murder and cannibalism and eventually, Dr. Bouley contends, sparked the outbreak of civil war, as vassals rebelled against papal oversight.

The Barberini Butchers recovers this significant episode in food, environmental, and cultural history, one that brings early modern politics and history into conversation with concerns over human use of natural resources and consumption of animal products that continue to resonate clearly today.

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Stacey Copeland, "Lavender Sounds: From Lesbian Radio to Queer Feminist Soundwork" (U Michigan Press, 2026)

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Stacey Copeland, Assistant Professor of Cultural Heritage and Identity at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, joins Jana Byars to talk about⁠ Lavender Sounds: From Lesbian Radio to Queer Feminist Soundwork⁠ (University of Michigan Press, 2026) delves into lesbian radio history and its evolution into queer feminist podcasting today, exploring the politics, aesthetics, and cultural activism embedded in queer feminist soundwork. Through deeply personal and archival explorations, Stacey Copeland traces the emergence of queer feminist soundwork—a unique blend of community-led storytelling, political resistance, and creative expression rooted in feminist and LGBTQ+ activism. At the heart of the book lies a powerful idea: sound is not just heard but felt, connecting generations through shared voices and struggles. In conversation with award-winning and cutting-edge queer and feminist podcast producers from across Canada and the U.S., Lavender Sounds invites us to turn a feminist embodied ear to the past to uncover the ways gender, race, and sexual orientations are embedded in our everyday media listening practices. From pioneering Canadian radio shows like Vancouver's The Lesbian Show and Montreal's Dykes on Mykes to today's queer chumcasts and audio documentary, Lavender Sounds is a journey through auditory landscapes where joy, protest, intimacy, and identity intersect. This book opens a vibrant conversation about how radio and podcasting are vital tools for marginalized communities to connect, create, and claim space in the media world.

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Renisa Mawani, "Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empire" (Duke UP, 2018)

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In 1914 the British-built and Japanese-owned steamship Komagata Maru left Hong Kong for Vancouver carrying 376 Punjabi migrants. Chartered by railway contractor and purported rubber planter Gurdit Singh, the ship and its passengers were denied entry into Canada and two months later were deported to Calcutta.

In Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empire (Duke University Press, 2018) Renisa Mawani retells this well-known story of the Komagata Maru. Drawing on "oceans as method"—a mode of thinking and writing that repositions land and sea—Mawani examines the historical and conceptual stakes of situating histories of Indian migration within maritime worlds.

Through close readings of the ship, the manifest, the trial, and the anticolonial writings of Singh and others, Mawani argues that the Komagata Maru's landing raised urgent questions regarding the jurisdictional tensions between the common law and admiralty law, and, ultimately, the legal status of the sea. By following the movements of a single ship and bringing oceans into sharper view, Mawani traces British imperial power through racial, temporal, and legal contests and offers a novel method of writing colonial legal history.

The conversation also covers how the book, published in 2018, has shaped the author’s more recent work as well as how historical methods and approaches have evolved in the years since publication.

Helen’s institutional website

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Susanne Paola Antonetta, "The Devil's Castle: Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today" (Catapult, 2025)

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Devil’s Castle: Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today (Catapult, 2025) delves into the forgotten history of eugenics and links it to present-day psychiatry to explain how we as a culture continue to get mind care so wrong.

In The Devil’s Castle, Susanne Paola Antonetta weaves a haunting narrative that confronts the darkest chapters of psychiatric history while offering a bold vision for the future of mental health care. In 1939, the eugenics movement growing throughout the West did its worst in Nazi Germany. Through the Aktion T4 euthanasia program, five asylums and an abandoned jail were transformed into gas chambers. Tens of thousands of lives—predominantly adults with neuropsychiatric conditions—were extinguished in those structures, ultimately paving the way for the horrors of the Holocaust.

Interlacing her experiences of psychosis with the complex history of psychiatry, Antonetta sheds light on the intersections of madness and societal perceptions of mental difference. She brings to life the stories of Paul Schreber and Dorothea Buck, two historical figures who act as models for mind care and acceptance. This gripping exploration traverses the spectrum of neurodiversity, from the devastating consequences of dehumanization to the transformative potential of understanding and acceptance.

With The Devil’s Castle, Antonetta not only unearths the failures of our past, but also envisions a more compassionate, enlightened approach to consciousness and mental health care. This is a story of tragedy, resilience, and hope—a rallying cry for change that dares to challenge the limits of how we define and support the human mind.

Susanne Paola Antonetta is the author of The Devil's Castle: Eugenics, Nazi Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Hurts Us Now. She is also the author of The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here, Make Me a Mother, Entangled Objects, Body Toxic, A Mind Apart, and four books of poetry. Her awards include a New York Times Notable Book, an American Book Award, an Amazon Best Memoir of the Year award, and others. Her essays and poems have appeared in The New York Times, Ms., The Huffington Post, The UK Independent, The Hill, Orion, Psychology Today, and The New Republic and have been featured on CNN as well as the CBC Ideas documentary series. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

For more information about her work please visit her website here and sign up for notifications about her regular contributions to Psychology Today.

Elizabeth Cronin, Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher in Massachusetts. You can follow her on Instagram, Insight Timer, YouTube (@drelizabethcronin) or visit her website.

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Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, "Animals and the Right to Politics" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The assumption that only humans can engage in politics—that only humans are 'zoon politikon'—is foundational to the Western tradition of political philosophy. While there is increasing recognition of animals' moral status (both within moral philosophy and at the level of public opinion), animals are not recognized as political subjects. This carefully researched but accessibly written volume—following on from the authors' earlier book Zoopolis—argues that animals too have a right to politics: a right to be recognized as political subjects and agents, and as members of political communities entitled to collective self-determination. ⁠Animals and the Right to Politics⁠ (Oxford University Press, 2026) draws on recent scientific work on animal societies, cultures, and decision-making, as well as recent work by political theorists rethinking ideas of agency and community—especially the significance of emplaced and embodied encounters and relationships to the activity of politics. Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka draw a picture of what it would mean to create spaces and practices, not only for politics conducted by humans on behalf of animals, but also politics with and by animals on their own terms. It then explores how this approach could inform a wide range of contemporary debates in human-animal relations, including wildlife conservation, urban planning, and animal labour.

⁠Sue Donaldson⁠ is a Canadian author and animal advocate. She has published more than 40 academic articles, and is the co-author, with Will Kymlicka, of Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford University Press, 2011) which won the Canadian Philosophical Association Book Prize in 2013, and has been translated into 11 languages. She is co-convenor of the Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics research group at Queen's University, Kingston, Canada.

⁠Will Kymlicka⁠ is the author of seven books published by Oxford University Press, including Contemporary Political Philosophy (2nd ed., 2001), Multicultural Citizenship (1996), and Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (co-authored with Sue Donaldson; 2011). He is currently the Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen's University, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. His works have been translated into 34 languages.

⁠Kyle Johannsen⁠ is Sessional Faculty Member in the Department of Philosophy at Trent University. His most recent authored book is Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering (Routledge, 2021).

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Rory Cormac, "Fakers: A Top-Secret Tale of Phantoms and Forgeries on the Disinformation Front Line" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Fakers: A Top-Secret Tale of Phantoms and Forgeries on the Disinformation Front Line (Oxford UP, 2026) reveals the rise and fall of the mavericks running Britain's Cold War forgery empire. Their secret mission was audacious: to disrupt and discredit adversaries across the world using phantom groups, fake sources, and counterfeit documents.

The leader was a remarkable character, wrestling with personal and professional dilemmas: Hans Welser. An Austrian refugee and one-time MI5 suspect interned behind barbed wire, Welser was a great survivor who rose to become special operations adviser to the Foreign Office, working hand in glove with MI6. His second in command was an eccentric, hard drinking, and high-flying journalist-turned-propagandist called John Rayner. Brought out of semi-retirement, for one final posting. Their team of bowler-hatted refugees, voluble ex-journalists, trailblazing women, and licentious literary sorts navigated loyalty and betrayal — both professionally and romantically — from the diplomats' attic, in the most sensitive part of the Foreign Office's secret propaganda department.

The newly declassified files expose an array of plots, some comically absurd and others dangerously controversial. The forgery empire impersonated everything from hippies and ghosts to Islamists and ballet composers in their campaign to smear hostile politicians, stir tensions among adversaries, and even stymie the career of a contentious British historian. All took place against a high stakes backdrop — both overseas as states competed beneath the looming threat of nuclear war and in the corridors of power at home where grey-suited bureaucrats circled, keen to shut down the team for good.

With timely insight into how propaganda works and how to respond to disinformation, Fakers is a thrilling journey into a secret world where nothing was as it seemed.

Rory Cormac is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Nottingham and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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Paul Stangl, "San Francisco Seafood: A History from Ocean to Table" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

For early San Franciscans, seafood was an important source of nutrition and a feature of social life, inspiring culinary developments that remain components in California cuisine more than a century later. Consumers interested in flavorful alternatives to meat and associated health benefits could follow recipes for nearly fifty types of marine life from state waters, such as salmon, flounder, and oysters. Others are no longer available, out-of-vogue, or simply forgotten. Further, overfishing and environmental damage decimated many local seafood stocks, providing a cautionary tale with global significance.

In San Francisco Seafood: A History from Ocean to Table (Bloomsbury, 2026), Dr. Paul Stangl traces the development of San Francisco's fisheries, seafood markets, cookery, and dining culture from the Gold Rush to the 1920s. Migrants from around the world imported fishing techniques and cuisines, then slowly adapted as they came to understand local resources and each other. Newcomers found the tastiest fish through trial and error and assimilated the “best” into a new cuisine. Different ethnic and occupational groups collaborated, fought, and learned from one another as they irreversibly altered the natural world around them. By the end of the First World War, San Francisco's seafood cuisine scarcely resembled that of the 1850s, due to cultural adaptation, technological advancements, and changes to the natural environment. It was no longer derivative of New England and France, but included influences from the Southern states, Asia, and South America.San Francisco Seafood chronicles the city's transformation from a fish-barren town-where restaurants served canned, pickled, and dried fish from the East Coast-to a seafood-rich metropolis that harvested seafood from Mexico to Alaska. He emphasizes how the impacts on nature and local labor serve as a necessary cautionary tale for today's global seafood trade. This is a thorough and insightful history of a once emerging, and now essential, cuisine for food and history buffs alike.

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Fenwick McKelvey, "SimPolitics: America’s Quest to Solve Politics with Computers" (MIT Press, 2026)

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This book is available open access.

For more than six decades, the public has been promised that computers will revolutionize politics, both nationally and internationally. In SimPolitics: America’s Quest to Solve Politics with Computers (MIT Press, 2026), Dr. Fenwick McKelvey traces the entwined history of politics and computers from the 1960s to the late 1980s. He shows how programmers, consultants, academics, political scientists, and peace activists all worked—sometimes in tandem, sometimes not—to build simulations to win campaigns, predict coups, forecast the future, and render politics as legible as a spreadsheet.

Drawing on novel archival and historical research, Dr. McKelvey recounts the history of efforts to simulate politics by building models of elections, voters, and international relations. Comparing attempts in the United States to simulate domestic electoral politics and international affairs, he reveals the unexamined connections and conflicts between the two projects. His book provides a helpful guide to taking stock of exaggerated claims that AI and technology will fix politics, while presenting the long history of such promised technological fixes.

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Matthew Campbell, "The Man Who Stole the Gods: A True Story of War, Obsession, and a Global Art Conspiracy" (Penguin, 2026)

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

On June 10, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York returned two pieces of artwork to Cambodia: an Angkor statue and a sandstone lintel. It’s the latest repatriation effort by the U.S.’s premier art museum, and the third time the Met has had to give up Cambodian artifacts specifically.

Matthew Campbell’s The Man Who Stole The Gods: A True Story of War, Obsession, and a Global Art Conspiracy (Penguin, 2026) dives into the story of the Cambodian antiquities trade, from looted temples in the Cambodian forests, through dealers in Bangkok like Douglas Latchford, and then into museums and billionaire homes in the West. And he also digs into how this trade fell apart: How the U.S. Department of Justice and activists in Cambodia pressured dealers and museums like the Met to give this art back.

Matthew is an award-winning reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek. His previous book, Dead in the Water—co-authored with Kit Chellel—was selected as a Book of the Year by The Economist, the Financial Times, and The Times. Matt has reported from more than twenty-five countries on crime, corruption, terrorism, economics, and the environment. His work has earned some of journalism’s highest honors, including awards from the Gerald Loeb Foundation, the Overseas Press Club, the National Press Club, SOPA, and SABEW for both feature and investigative reporting

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Man Who Stole the Gods. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Heart-Centered Connections: Seven Essential Skills for Helping Neurodiverse and Marginalized Children Thrive

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Heart-Centered Connections: Seven Essential Skills for Helping Neurodiverse and Marginalized Children Thrive is a transformative guide for working with a child who is left out, left behind, or labeled “difficult.” Dr. Niki Elliott teaches the best practices to support kids who are misunderstood and marginalized—those who are neurodivergent, have a learning disability, or are trauma survivors. In this practical book, Dr. Elliott brings clear guidance and a hopeful message: when safety, compassion, and trust come first, real learning can begin. Heart-Centered Connections shows you how to create that foundation.

Based on decades of her groundbreaking research, Dr. Elliott offers seven pillars that will help you create environments where kids can achieve their full potential. You will learn how to: increase your ability to handle stress so you remain composed when a child acts out; establish stronger bonds, even with kids who initially seem defiant; teach in a way that creates joy and confidence; design neuro-inclusive environments in which youth of all abilities can flourish; view the child from a new perspective, offering them choice and dignity; and help the child settle their nervous system state so they can focus and learn.

Guest: Dr. Niki Elliott is a clinical professor and director of the Center for Embodied Equity and Neurodiversity at the University of San Diego SOLES, where she leads research, professional certificates, and statewide initiatives that transform K–16 learning environments through trauma-informed, neuro-inclusive design. A veteran educator of more than 30 years, Dr. Niki is known for translating complex neuroscience into powerful, accessible practices that strengthen belonging, emotional safety, and academic engagement for neurodiverse learners.

Host: Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for Listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Ute Hüsken and Suganya Anandakichenin eds., "Pathika: Studies of South Asian Texts and Traditions" (HAS, 2026)

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A conversation featuring the editors of the new Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing series Pathika - Studies of South Asian Texts and Traditions (HAS, 2026)

Pathika – Sanskrit for "traveler" or "one who follows a path" – is a new series dedicated to the textual traditions of South Asia, engaging with the rich landscape of South Asian literary and religious traditions. The series encompasses critical editions, annotated translations, and in-depth studies of texts spanning the full breadth of South Asian traditions. From inscriptions to previously untranslated manuscripts, Pathika provides a venue to both established scholars and emerging researchers to publish their work on the textual traditions of South Asia. The volumes adhere to rigorous philological standards while making important texts and translations accessible to a wider academic audience. Pathika particularly welcomes interdisciplinary approaches that situate texts within their historical, religious, and cultural contexts. The series fully supports all South Asian scripts.

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Spirituality, Science and Environmentalism in Taiwan

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Who is Shennong, the Divine Farmer? And how can he help us understand the intricate relationships between spirituality, science and environmentalism in Taiwan today? These questions are at the heart of new research by the University of Oslo’s Koen Wellens and Mette Halskov Hansen. In this episode, we are joined by Koen Wellens for a conversation on religious responses to environmental change, community temples, and reconnecting to nature via the Divine Farmer in the context of contemporary Taiwan.

You can read more about the research discussed in this episode in the book Religion and Ecological Crisis: Responses from Asia, published by Leiden University Press.

Koen Wellens is Professor of China Studies at the University of Oslo.

Kenneth Bo Nielsen, your host, is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Centre for South Asian Democracy at the University of Oslo.

We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

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April Henry, "In the Blood" (Christy Ottaviano Books, 2026)

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

April Henry's latest thriller, In The Blood (Christy Ottaviano Books, 2026) introduces readers to Tessa. Adopted as a newborn, Tessa has always wondered who her biological parents are. After turning eighteen, she takes a DNA test in hopes of finding the answers. With best friend El and lab partner Victor, Tessa uses the results to start building her family tree. But they find more dead ends than answers. Her biological mother, who was raised in a religious cult, has cut all ties with her controlling family. And her biological father remains a complete mystery, at least until the police show up. For fifteen years, they’ve been trying to identify a serial killer known as the Portland Phantom. Tessa may be the link they’ve been waiting for.

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Christopher M. Federico et al., "The Authoritarian Divide: Partisan Identity, Voting, and the Transformation of the American Electorate" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Political Scientists Christopher Federico, Stanley Feldman, and Christopher Weber have an important and fascinating new book from Oxford University Press focusing on understanding authoritarianism, especially in the American context. As experts in political psychology, the authors are keen to consider authoritarianism as a psychological concept, which is more about submitting to authority, as a kind of conformity, and less about a particular political regime structure. The Authoritarian Divide: Partisan Identity, Voting, and the Transformation of the American Electorate (Oxford UP, 2026) is about trying to understand voters and how some of them are attracted to this idea or concept, and how this attraction then works itself out within the electorate and within our contemporary political moment.

In order to understand this theory of psychological authoritarianism, the authors trace the idea from origins in critical theory and pre-World War I European thinkers (Freud, Benjamin, etc.) who were examining the concepts of conformity vs. autonomy, and how these ideas functioned in political life. The authors also examined differing approaches to child-rearing, since this also reflects these same concepts of conformity and autonomy, but in how they are put into practice in bringing up children, either with more freedom or in a more rules bound approach. In using these measures, Federico, Feldman, and Weber also pulled together data from election surveys starting in the 1990s and moving forward that include questions that get at some of the same ideas. The authors also used experiments to test individual inclinations towards autonomy or uniformity. The thrust of voter’s choices was not about economics or specific public policy in these analyses, but around social issue differentiation and social context. The research for The Authoritarian Divide is complex and brings together a variety of different methodological approaches in order to examine this political divide, and to tease out the impact of psychological authoritarianism in American politics.

The Authoritarian Divide: Partisan Identity, Voting, and the Transformation of the American Electorate reveals that this inclination towards psychological authoritarianism is much more prevalent among white conservative voters than among other voting blocs in the United States. This has also led voters to sort themselves within the two parties accordingly, with far more of those who are inclined towards psychological authoritarianism moving into the Republican Party, and fewer moving into the Democratic Party. The result of this sorting has contributed to the rise in polarization within American politics over the past thirty years.

The Authoritarian Divide explains a lot about voter thinking and approaches to American politics over the past three decades. It helps to decipher the entrenched polarization because the examination is not about policy distinctions or issues, it is about how individual voters think and why they are inclined to think in particular ways about politics. The authors clearly assess the distinctions within the voting populace of the United States, and, in so doing, unpack different approaches to voting and vote choices in different sectors of the electorate. The Authoritarian Divide really helps us to understand our current political climate and to see how the rise of Donald Trump fits into a temporally longer era of American politics, partisan politics, racial politics, and the tensions between democracy and authoritarianism.

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Luna Sabastian, "Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva" (Harvard UP, 2025)

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Fascism swept the world in the 1920s and 1930s, but not only because of the seductive rhetoric of Mussolini, Hitler, and their collaborators. In India as well, a distinctive brand of fascist thought emerged—influenced by Euro-American ideologies but also departing from them in critical ways. The first systematic examination of this political philosophy, Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva (Harvard UP, 2025) revises our sense of what fascism can be, while demonstrating that it is very much with us in the form of Hindutva, the ethnic-nationalist movement at the center of Indian politics today.
Luna Sabastian offers a novel interpretation of Hindutva, both its canonical formulation by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and its reinvention by Deendayal Upadhyaya after Indian independence. Sabastian shows how Hindutva generated ideas of Hindu race and religion that had the potential to erase Muslims not through genocide or ethnic cleansing but by means of violent absorption. Focusing on aggressive miscegenation, Indian fascists proposed a singular kind of racial project, eschewing notions of purity even while maintaining a starkly eliminationist objective. Fascism in India also grapples with Hindutva ideas of caste and its relation to race—particularly in comparison with Nazi uses of these concepts—and of sovereignty, which Indian fascists envisioned beyond the “blood and soil” narrative of the nation-state. Finally, Sabastian reflects on Hindutva’s reorientation toward Hindu piety after the creation of Pakistan effectively resolved India’s “Muslim problem.”
Bringing clarity to an ideology little understood in the West, Fascism in India is an eye-opening perspective on Hindutva and a profound meditation on the proliferation and evolution of right-wing thought.

Sachin Nikarge has extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard’ as well as ‘soft’ power domains.

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Recall This Book x The Caste Pod: a Crossover episode with Ajantha Subramanian

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the spirit of Hannah Arendt's natality principle (that new things are always and should always be being born, each one unique and endowed with limitless potential) we at RTB love it when a new podcast appears. Especially one as thoughtful and original as The Caste Pod, which assembles scholars and activists to make sense of what caste is, how it's experienced and how it has travelled globally.

Join us to discuss and share an extended excerpt is its widely published (check out her earlier books!) founder Ajantha Subramanian, Professor of Anthropology at CUNY Graduate Center, and producer (with Lori Allen) of the “Violent Majorities” series here at RTB.

John and Ajantha delve into the founding of the podcast, and then enter into the business end of the series, which is to explore the complex interplay between caste, race and class as organizing features of economic inequality and its corresponding features of cultural discrimination and oppression.

Ajantha's extended conversation with Prachi and Ram of Savera, a multiracial, interfaith, anti-caste coalition of Indian Americans from The Caste Pod episode 10 lays bare its premise: to put scholars and activists into conversation and opens a space engineered for each to learn form the other.

Before introducing the Savera excerpt, Ajantha frames the topic by way of Isabel Wilkerson's influential (if problematic) book Caste and its neglect of class and economic issues, and also the case against Cisco for caste discrimination in California that in significant ways internationalized the fight around caste's role in perpetuating economic and political inequity.

Listen and Read Here.

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RTB x The Caste Pod: a Crossover episode with Ajantha Subramanian

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Listen and Read Here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Chad S. A. Gibbs "Survival at Treblinka: Geography, Gender, and Social Networks in Jewish Resistance" (U Wisconsin Press, 2026)

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

On August 2, 1943, prisoners at the Nazi extermination camp Treblinka, located in occupied Poland, launched an uprising against their captors, during which hundreds successfully escaped while guards killed as many in the process. In this groundbreaking work, Chad S.A. Gibbs draws upon recently discovered sources and novel research methods to fundamentally reassess Jewish resistance at Treblinka—both before and during the revolt.

Using the testimonies of revolt survivors, prior escapees, those who passed through the camp, and a handful of bystander witnesses and former SS guards, Gibbs sheds new light on the events of August 2 as well as many prior acts of resistance in Survival at Treblinka: Geography, Gender, and Social Networks in Jewish Resistance (U Wisconsin Press, 2026). Critical to these new interpretations of the revolt are the actions of women prisoners, who here assume a central place in this story for the first time.

Paul Lerner is Chair of the History Department at the University of Southern California where he directs the Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies. He is the author of The Consuming Temple: Jews, Department Stores, and the Consumer Revolution in Germany, 1880–1940. plerner@usc.edu @plerner.bsky.social

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Nora L. Rubel, "Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of the Settlement Cook Book" (Columbia UP, 2026)

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In 1901, Lizzie Black Kander put together a cookbook based on the classes she taught at the Milwaukee Jewish Mission. “I was trying to teach a group of young foreign girls in a crowded neighborhood how to cook simple and nutritious food, yet have it attractive and inexpensive as we prepare it in America,” she recalled. The Settlement Cook Book would go on to be the most successful charitable cookbook in American history, remaining a best-seller into the 1970s. Despite including nonkosher recipes, it became a mainstay in Jewish kitchens and an enduring touchstone of Jewish American culture.

Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of The Settlement Cook Book (Columbia University Press, 2026) by Dr. Nora Rubel tells the remarkable story of The Settlement Cook Book, demonstrating how it shaped Jewish American identity—and was in turn shaped by generations of Jewish women. Dr. Rubel traces the cookbook’s evolution across forty editions over several decades, through waves of immigration, shifting gender roles, upward mobility, suburbanization, and rapid changes in Jewish life. She argues that the book celebrates pluralism, allowing it to serve at once as a tool for Americanization, a repository of tradition, and a platform for culinary innovation. Ultimately, The Settlement Cook Book is a record of American Jewish women’s history, told through the food they made and the lives they led. A cultural biography of an iconic cookbook, this lively and inviting book shares an inclusive vision of American cuisine.

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April Howells, "The Unforgettable Mailman" (Alcove Press, 2026)

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the midst of texting and cell phones, online websites and GPS, it can be difficult to remember an era when almost all communication took place by landline or snail mail, as it’s now called, and driving depended on the ability to read a printed map. But April Howells’s debut novel vividly recaptures that world.

The Unforgettable Mailman (Alcove Press, 2026) opens in Chicago in October 1966. The post office, overwhelmed with unsolicited mail in the days before the ZIP code, has shut down temporarily, and an elderly resident named Henry Walton decides that someone must deliver the mail. People depend on letters, after all, and without them, connections with their nearest and dearest will fade.

Henry himself suffers from a bad leg leftover from World War I and an increasingly dicey memory. But despite these obstacles, he succeeds in breaking into the post office and leaving with approximately 300 letters, destined for places as far apart as Canada and the Dakotas. Throughout the story we see Henry’s interactions with the recipients of the letters as well as the letters themselves, and through the exchanges Henry’s own past becomes ever clearer. After a while, his journey intersects with that of Roger, a high-school student in search of the father who left home, and the two of them pursue the delivery of the letters as we learn more about what makes each of them tick.

This haunting novel, which came out a couple of months ago, captivated me from the very beginning. Henry is beautifully portrayed and sympathetic, and so are all the people with whom he interacts along the road—including, of course, Roger.

April is a storyteller who finds heartwarming inspiration in little-known pieces of history. With a background in magazine publishing, she’s spent the last decade leading Global Internal Communications and Employee Engagement for premium apparel brand lululemon. The Unforgettable Mailman is her debut novel.

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New Books Network

Billy Fleming, "Building Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice, and Energy Transitions" (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2026)

John Charles Simon and Jennalee Donian, "Understanding Laughter and Humor: Why We Laugh, Why We Don’t, and Why It Matters" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2026)

Isabela Seong Leong Quintana, "Urban Borderlands: Multiracial Histories and Gendered Borders in Los Angeles" (UNC Press, 2026)

Debarati Sanyal, "Arts of the Border: Fugitive Bodies at Europe’s Edges" (Fordham, 2025)

R. Joshua Scannell, "The Carceral Surround" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

Emeka Umejei, "China in African Media: Between Influence Operations and Decolonization" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Han Hsien Liew, "Preaching Pious Rulership in Medieval Islam: Ibn Al-Jawzi's Political Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Joseph G. Rosenstein, "Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers): The Big Picture" (Academic Studies Press, 2026)

Marjolijn Bol, "The Varnish and the Glaze: Painting Splendor with Oil, 1100–1500" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

Gavin Healy, "A Guide to Mao’s China: Showing the Nation to Foreign Guests" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Stefan Al, "Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home" (Norton, 2026)

Stefan Al, "Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home" (Norton, 2026)

Francesca Lessa and Sebastián Santana, "Operation Condor: The Pact That Terrorized a Continent" (Storia, 2025)

Michael E. Neagle, "Chasing Bandits: America's Long War on Terror" (UNC Press, 2025)

Charles Lachman, "They Shall Not See the Dawn: The Manhunt for the Third Reich's Most Wanted" (Diversion Books, 2026)

Christopher Freeburg, "Soul: A Brief History of Black Cultural Life" (Yale UP, 2026)

Patrick Griffin, "The Age of Atlantic Revolution: The Fall and Rise of a Connected World" (Yale UP, 2023)

Sanjay Joshi, "Brahmins of the Himalaya: Upper-Caste Ways of Belonging, 1850-1950" (SUNY Press, 2026)

Unseen Existences (with Brian Zahnd): How to See the Divine Mystery Here and Now

Charlie Walker, "On Thin Ice: An Explorer's Memoir of Siberia, Surveillance and Survival" (Duckworth, 2026)

Ian Brown, "70: A Diary of My Seventy-First Year" (Penguin Random House, 2026)

William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe, "Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency" (Princeton UP, 2025)

A Nation Wrestles With God: American Prophets, Philosophers, and Firebrands

Robert A. Wilson, "Kin Matters: Relational Beings in the Fragile Sciences" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Mubanga Kalimamukwento, "The Shipikisha Club" (Cassava Republic Press, 2026)

Tom Lin, "Babylon, South Dakota" (Little Brown and Co, 2026)

Michelle Adams, "The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North " (FSG, 2025)

Thomas Breimaier, "Tethered to the Cross: The Life and Preaching of Charles H. Spurgeon" (IVP Academic, 2020)

Leonhard Emmerling, "The Idiots: The History of the Homo Nullus" (Seagull Books, 2026)

Ashish Koul, "Reinventing Caste: Islam and Hierarchy in Late Colonial India" (Stanford UP, 2026)

Ben Westhoff ed.,"Lives Interrupted: The Fentanyl Tragedy" (﻿Arsenault Family Foundation, 2026)

Voices from North Korea: Refugees Tell Their Stories

Daniela Gerson, "The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II" (Grand Central Publishing, 2026)

Erin Maglaquel "Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body" (Astra House, 2026)

Ellen Prentiss Campbell, "Vanishing Point" (Apprentice House Press, 2026)

Lucas L. Johnson II, "Remembering Roots: How an American Classic Transformed the World" (Broadleaf Books, 2026)

Stef Ferrari, "Pining for You" (Simon & Schuster, 2026)

Lee Alan Dugatkin, "Nary a Horse Left Standing: How a Nineteenth-Century Epidemic Transformed Medicine, Animal Welfare, and the Modern City" (MIT Press, 2026)

Joy M. Perrin, "Efficiency by Design: Transforming Libraries and Archives through Process Management" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Claudia Verhoeven, "Love and Terror: The Helter-Skelter History of the Manson Murders" (Verso, 2026)

Violaine Roussel, "Data-Driven Hollywood: The New Data Professionals in the Age of Streaming" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Francesca Sbardella, "Inhabiting Silence: An Anthropologist in the Cloister" (Berghahn Books, 2025)

Ketil Slagstad, "Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Mélanie Lamotte, "By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire" (Harvard UP, 2026)

Gabrielle Thomas, "The Problem of the Devil in Cappadocian Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Kevin Van Meter and Robert Ovetz eds. "Points of Departure: Refusal of Work and the Crisis of Capitalism: the Collected Writings of Harry Cleaver" (Common Notions, 2026)

Jonathan Swift and David Womersley ed., "Gulliver's Travels: Cambridge Anniversary Edition" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Sara McDougall, "Justice for Jehanne: The Tale of a Medieval Survivor" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer et al eds., "Mapping Medical Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

Janaka Jayawickrama and Jerome Wright, "Under the Gaze of Global Mental Health: A Critical Reflection" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)

Kirby, "Fairy" (Palimpsest Press, 2026)

Leah C. Stokes, "The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet" (MIT Press, 2026)

An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland

Stuart McHardy, "Scotland's Geomythography: Myth, Landscape and the Roots of Culture" (Luath Press, 2025)

Emily Matson, "China’s Date Debate: How Manchurian Scholars Rewrote World War II" (U Michigan Press, 2026)

Marita Sturken, "Terrorism in American Memory: Memorials, Museums, and Architecture in the Post-9/11 Era" (NYU Press, 2022)

Robert Shum, "Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy?: Climate and Energy Politics between Crisis and Decarbonization" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)

Autumn Lorimer Linford, "Extra! Extra! A History of America's Girl Newsies" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)

Relative Strangers: Romani Kinship and Palestinian Difference

Ashley Kahn, "Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland" (Atria Books, 2026)

Agnes Mueller, "Holocaust Migration in German Jewish Literatures" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Meghan Garrity, "Mass Expulsion: The Politics of Forced Population Removal" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Leah Kim, "Mom, Unfiltered: Maternal Mental Health and Finding Freedom Through Motherhood (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Alfie Marcus on How Great Companies Can Rise Again

Valeria Vázquez Guevara, "Truth Commissions and International Law: Jurisdiction, Representation, Authority" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Chika Watanabe, "Play to Survive: Disaster Preparedness Along the Ring of Fire" (Stanford UP, 2026)

Deirdre Mayer Dougherty, "Race and Place: School Desegregation in Prince George's County, Maryland" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

Shaun Gallagher, "The Self and its Disorders" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Baruch Fischhoff, "Bounded Disciplines and Unbounded Problems: A Vision for Management Science" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Piergiorgio Di Giminiani, "Alterhumanism: Becoming Human on a Conservation Frontier" (U Arizona Press, 2025)

Piergiorgio Di Giminiani, "Alterhumanism: Becoming Human on a Conservation Frontier" (U Arizona Press, 2025)

The Next Issue: Fall 2026 (26.3)

Nikhil Kalyanpur, "Legal Weapons of the Wealthy: The Offshoring of Elite Conflict in Emerging Markets" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Holly N. S. White, "Constructing American Childhood: Age-Based Laws and the Illusion of Protection in the Early United States" (U Virginia Press, 2026)

Done in a Day with the Vietnam War: Elisa Tamarkin (JP)

Stephen Lee Naish, "Point Break: Movies Minute by Minute" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Jonathan Quong, "Political Philosophy: The Puzzle of Legitimate Injustice" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Michael Diniscia and Ellyn M Toscano eds. "Civility Unbound: Contesting a Democratic Value" (NYU Press, 2026)

Tatjana Kochetkova and Anway Mukhopadhyay eds., "Transhumanism and Divine Humanity in Global Traditions" (Routledge, 2026)

Ben Westhoff ed.,"Lives Interrupted: The Fentanyl Tragedy" (Arsenault Family Foundation, 2026)

Yuri Pines, "China's Aristocratic Age: Politics and Power in the Springs-and-Autumns Period" (Princeton UP, 2026)