New Books Network
Book of the Day/ History

The Way of Bach

Three Years with the Man, the Music, and the Piano

Dan Moller

Hosted by Zachary McCulley
A tale of passion and obsession from a philosophy professor who learns to play Bach on the piano as an adult. Dan Moller grew up listening to heavy metal in the Boston suburbs. But one day, something shifted when he dug out his mother's record of The Art of the Fugue, inexplicably wedged between ABBA's greatest hits and Kenny Rogers. Moller was fixated on Bach ever since. In The Way of Bach …
Medicine

The Filth Disease

Typhoid Fever and the Practices of Epidemiology in Victorian England

Jacob Steere-Williams

Hosted by Claire Clark
Typhoid fever is a food- and water-borne infectious disease that was insidious and omnipresent in Victorian Britain. It was one of the most prolific diseases of the Industrial Revolution. There …
Italian Studies

The Photoromance

A Feminist Reading of Popular Culture

Paola Bonifazio

Hosted by Nicoletta Marini-Maio
Paola Bonifazio’s The Photoromance. A Feminist Reading of Popular Culture (MIT Press, 2020) is the first feminist reading of photoromances that examines both its industry and its fandom, arguing for …
Jewish Studies

They Left It All Behind

Trauma, Loss, and Memory Among Eastern European Jewish Immigrants and their Children

Hannah Hahn

Hosted by Robert Snyder
Hannah Hahn’s They Left It All Behind: Trauma, Loss and Memory Among Eastern European Jewish Immigrants and Their Children (Roman and Littlefield, 2020) explores the impact of conflict, social change …
Philosophy

Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory

Patricia Hill Collins

Hosted by Sarah Tyson
Is intersectionality a critical social theory? What must intersectionality do to be both critical and a social theory? Must social justice be a guiding normative principle? And what does or …
Chinese Studies

Forgotten Ally

China's World War II, 1937–1945

Rana Mitter

Hosted by Keith Krueger
If we wish to understand the role of China in today’s global society, we would do well to remind ourselves of the tragic, titanic struggle which that country waged in …
European Studies

The Constitutional Theory of the Federation and the European Union

Signe Rehling Larsen

Hosted by Tim Jones
“The autarkic European nation-state, if it ever existed, was the exception rather than the rule. Nevertheless it is the myth of the self-sufficient nation-state that lies at the heart of …
Jewish Studies

Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement

A Revolution in the Name of Tradition

Naomi Seidman

Hosted by Zalman Newfield
Sarah Schenirer is one of the unsung heroes of twentieth-century Orthodox Judaism. In Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement: A Revolution in the Name of Tradition (Littman Library of …
Christian Studies

Eating Together, Becoming One

Thomas O'Loughlin

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
In November 2015, Pope Francis made a call to theologians to explore whether Catholic practice ought to be amended to include Christians from different churches in full participation in the …
American Studies

Margaret Mead

A Twentieth-Century Faith

Elesha J. Coffman

Hosted by Lilian Calles Barger
Elesha J. Coffman's Margaret Mead: A Twentieth-Century Faith (Oxford UP, 2021) takes a careful look at Mead’s religious origins and influence. As a famous American anthropologist, Mead’s intellectual contributions to mid-century culture …
Islamic Studies

Women and Gender in the Qur'an

Celene Ibrahim

Hosted by Shehnaz Haqqani
In Women and Gender in the Qur’an (Oxford University Press in 2020), Celene Ibrahim explores key themes related to gender in the Qur’an, focusing on women, such as female sexuality …
Book of the Day/ Political Science

Separate But Faithful

The Christian Right's Radical Struggle to Transform Law and Legal Culture

Amanda Hollis-Brusky and Joshua C. Wilson

Hosted by Susan Liebell
How do we understand the nuances of efforts by Christian conservatives to affect American law – and evaluate their success? What lessons do they hold for other social movements? Dr. Amanda Hollis-Brusky, associate professor of politics at Pomona College and Dr. Joshua C. Wilson, professor of Political Science at the University of Denver join the podcast to discuss Separate But Faithful: The Christian Right's Radical Struggle to Transform Law and Legal …
Mathematics

Math Without Numbers

Milo Beckman

Hosted by Jim Stein
One of the questions I am often asked is exactly what do mathematicians do. The short answer is that they look at different mathematical structures, try to deduce their properties …
Literary Studies

Forms of Poetic Attention

Lucy Alford

Hosted by Britton Edelen
In this episode, I interview Lucy Alford, professor of English Literature at Wake Forest University, about her book Forms of Poetic Attention, recently published by Columbia University Press. Alford argues …
History

London and the Seventeenth Century

The Making of the World's Greatest City

Margarette Lincoln

Hosted by Joshua Tham
Margarette Lincoln's London and the Seventeenth Century (Yale University Press, 2021) explores the ups and downs of life in Stuart London through the eyes of those who lived through it.  The Gunpowder Plot, the …
Anthropology

Streetwalking

LGBTQ Lives and Protest in the Dominican Republic

Ana-Maurine Lara

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
In Streetwalking: LGBTQ Lives and Protest in the Dominican Republic (Rutgers University Press, 2020), Dr. Ana-Maurine Lara examines the dominant modes of power that seek to suppress LGBTQ lives and …
Film

The Brothers Mankiewicz

Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics

Sydney Stern

Hosted by Joel Tscherne
Herman J. (1897–1953) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993) wrote, produced, and directed over 150 pictures. With Orson Welles, Herman wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane and shared the picture’s only …
Russian and Eurasian Studies

Only Among Women

Philosophies of Community in the Russian and Soviet Imagination, 1860–1940

Anne Eakin Moss

Hosted by Colleen McQuillen
In Only Among Women: Philosophies of Community in the Russian and Soviet Imagination, 1860–1940 (Northwestern University Press, 2019), Anne Eakin Moss examines idealized relationships between women in Russian literature and …
Science

Viral BS

Medical Myths and Why We Fall for Them

Seema Yasmin

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
Can your zip code predict when you will die? Should you space out childhood vaccines? Does talcum powder cause cancer? Why do some doctors recommend e-cigarettes while other doctors recommend …
History

A New History of England

Jeremy Black

Hosted by Charles Coutinho
'Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life.' Cecil Rhodes's characteristically nineteenth-century confidence rings rather hollow as England enters the twenty-first …
Russian and Eurasian Studies

The Imperial Russian Army in Peace, War, and Revolution, 1856-1917

Roger R. Reese

Hosted by Aaron Weinacht
Roger Reese’s recent book, The Imperial Russian Army in Peace, War, and Revolution, 1856-1917 (University of Kansas, 2019), takes a deep dive into the internal workings of the Russian army …
Book of the Day/ African American Studies

Women's War

Fighting and Surviving the Civil War

Stephanie Mccurry

Hosted by Jerrad Pacatte
In Women's War: Fighting and Surviving the Civil War (Harvard UP, 2019), the award-winning author of Confederate Reckoning challenges the idea that women are outside of war, through a trio of dramatic stories revealing women's transformative role in the American Civil War. We think of war as a man's world, but women have always played active roles in times of violence and been left to pick up the pieces in societies decimated …
Christian Studies

Yours, Till Heaven

The Untold Love Story of Charles and Susie Spurgeon

Ray Rhodes Jr.

Hosted by Zachary McCulley
Enter the remarkable untold love story of Charles and Susie Spurgeon.  Charles Spurgeon is esteemed for his writing, preaching, and passion for the Lord. But behind the great man was …
National Security

Strategic Instincts

The Adaptive Advantages of Cognitive Biases in International Politics

Dominic D. P. Johnson

Hosted by Kyle Beadle
In Strategic Instincts: The Adaptive Advantages of Cognitive Biases in International Politics (Princeton University Press, 2020), Dominic Johnson challenges the assumption that cognitive biases led to policy failures, disasters …
Jewish Studies

How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish

Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert

Hosted by Zalman Newfield
Is it possible to conceive of the American diet without bagels? Or Star Trek without Mr. Spock? Are the creatures in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are based on …
Literature

The Good Luck Stone

A Novel

Heather Bell Adams

Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb
Heather Bell Adams’ first novel, Maranatha Road (West Virginia University Press 2017), won the gold medal for the Southeast region in the Independent Publisher Book Awards and was selected for …
German Studies

Diagnosing Dissent

Hysterics, Deserters, and Conscientious Objectors in Germany During World War One

Rebecca Ayako Bennette

Hosted by Michael O'Sullivan
Although physicians during World War I, and scholars since, have addressed the idea of disorders such as shell shock as inchoate flights into sickness by men unwilling to cope with …
Popular Culture

Can't Nobody Do Me Like Jesus!

Photographs from the Sacred Steel Community

Robert L. Stone

Hosted by Rebekah Buchanan
Folklorist Robert L. Stone presents a rare collection of high-quality documentary photos of the sacred steel guitar musical tradition and the community that supports it. The introductory text and extended …
African American Studies

Liner Notes for the Revolution

The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound

Daphne A. Brooks

Hosted by Amanda Joyce Hall
Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound (Harvard University Press, 2021) by Dr. Daphne Brooks is a lyrical masterpiece that takes readers on an exhilarating …
Eastern European Studies

Empire of Friends

Soviet Power and Socialist Internationalism in Cold War Czechoslovakia

Rachel Applebaum

Hosted by Jill Massino
The familiar story of Soviet power in Cold War Eastern Europe focuses on political repression and military force. But in Empire of Friends: Soviet Power and Socialist Internationalism in Cold …
American West

This Land Is My Land

Rebellion in the West

James R. Skillen

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
On January 6th, 2021, when right wing supporters of Donald Trump staged an insurrection at the US Capitol building, they were participating in a long tradition of conservative rebellion with …
Literary Studies

Fictions of America

The Book of Firsts

Ulrich Baer and Smaran Dayal

Hosted by Miranda Corcoran
In this episode of New Books in Literary Studies, Miranda Corcoran speaks to Ulrich Baer and Smaran Dayal about their unique anthology, Fictions of America: The Book of Firsts (Warbler Press …
Book of the Day/ Christian Studies

God's Cold Warrior

The Life and Faith of John Foster Dulles

John D. Wilsey

Hosted by Zachary McCulley
When John Foster Dulles died in 1959, he was given the largest American state funeral since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s in 1945. President Eisenhower called Dulles—his longtime secretary of state—“one of the truly great men of our time,” and a few years later the new commercial airport outside Washington, DC, was christened the Dulles International Airport in his honor. His star has fallen significantly since that time, but his influence remains …
Neuroscience

The Puzzle Solver

A Scientist's Desperate Hunt to Cure the Illness That Stole His Son

Tracie White and Ronald W. Davis

Hosted by Victoria Reedman
Based on a viral article, the gripping medical mystery story of Ron Davis, a world-class Stanford geneticist who has put his career on the line to find the cure for …
East Asian Studies

A Roundtable on the History of the Japanese Student Movement

A Discussion with Naoko Koda and Chelsea Szendi Schieder

Naoko Koda and Chelsea Szendi Schieder

Hosted by Nathan Hopson
Chelsea Szendi Schieder’s Co-Ed Revolution: The Female Student in the Japanese New Left and Naoko Koda’s The United States and the Japanese Student Movement, 1948-1973: Managing a Free World provide new …
Science, Technology, and Society

The Innovation Delusion

How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most

Lee Vinsel and Andrew L. Russell

Hosted by Matthew Jordan
It’s hard to avoid innovation these days. Nearly every product gets marketed as being disruptive, whether it’s genuinely a new invention or just a new toothbrush. But in this manifesto …
East Asian Studies

Buddhism after Mao

Negotiations, Continuities, and Reinventions

Zhe Ji, Gareth Fisher, André Laliberté

Hosted by Daigengna Duoer
With over 100 million followers, Buddhism in the People's Republic of China now fosters the largest community in the world of individuals who self-identify as Buddhists. Although Buddhism was harshly persecuted …
Chinese Studies

Writing for Print

Publishing and the Making of Textual Authority in Late Imperial China

Suyoung Son

Hosted by Aliki Semertzi
Suyoung Son’s book Writing for Print: Publishing and the Making of Textual Authority in Late Imperial China (Harvard UP, 2018) examines the widespread practice of self-publishing by writers in late imperial …
Japanese Studies

African Samurai

The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan

Geoffrey Girard and Thomas Lockley

Hosted by Jingyi Li
The remarkable life of history's first foreign-born samurai and his astonishing journey from Northern Africa to the heights of Japanese society. When Yasuke arrived in Japan in the late 1500s …
American West

Cinematic Settlers

The Settler Colonial World in Film

Janne Lahti and Rebecca Weaver-Hightower

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The medium of cinema emerged during the height of Victorian-era European empires, and as a result, settler colonial imperialism has thematically suffused film for well over a century. In Cinematic …
Critical Theory

Penguin Books and Political Change

Britain's Meritocratic Moment, 1937–1988

Dean Blackburn

Hosted by Dave O'Brien
Why do books and publishing matter to the contemporary history of Britain? In Penguin Books and Political Change: Britain's Meritocratic Moment, 1937–1988 (Manchester UP, 2020), Dean Blackburn, a Lecturer in Modern …
Scholarly Communication

Writing in Disciplines

A Discussion with Shyam Sharma

Shyam Sharma

Hosted by Daniel Shea
Listen to this interview of Shyam Sharma, Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at Stony Brook University. We talk about how mutually appreciative …
Indian Religions

Education and Modernity in Colonial Punjab

Khalsa College, the Sikh Tradition and the Webs of Knowledge, 1880-1947

Michale P. Brunner

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Michael P. Brunner's Education and Modernity in Colonial Punjab: Khalsa College, the Sikh Tradition and the Webs of Knowledge, 1880-1947 (Palgrave, 2020) explores the localisation of modernity in late colonial India.  As a …
Book of the Day/ Political Science

Madam President?

Gender and Politics on the Road to the White House

Lori Cox Han and Caroline Heldman

Hosted by Lilly Goren
Lori Cox Han and Caroline Heldman, both scholars of gender and politics as well as scholars of the American Presidency, have assembled a wide array of essays[*] to revisit the question about whether “we” are ready for the first female president of the United States, and what the path might look like to arrive at that glass-ceiling shattering event. Cox Han and Heldman had edited a previous version of this …
Law

Protecting Art in the Street

A Guide to Copyright in Street Art and Graffiti

Enrico Bonadio

Hosted by Nick Pozek
There has recently been a sharp increase in cases where corporations have been sued by street and graffiti artists because their artworks had been used and exploited without the artists’ …
Science

Gory Details

Adventures from the Dark Side of Science

Erika Engelhaupt

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
Would your dog eat you if you died? What are face mites? Why do clowns creep us out? In this illuminating collection of grisly true science stories, journalist Erika Engelhaupt …
Science Fiction

The Phlebotomist

Chris Panatier

Hosted by Rob Wolf
Humans have found many ways to divide and stratify—by skin color, ancestry, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, health status, body type or size, and so on. The list is …
Performing Arts

Maybe the People Would Be the Times

Luc Sante

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Maybe the People Would Be the Times (Verse Chorus Press, 2020) could be described as a memoir in essay form. Collecting pieces from the past two decades, this book covers Luc Sante's …
Academic Life

Exploring STEM, Insulin Research, and Why We Get Sick

A Discussion with Benjamin Bikman

Benjamin Bikman

Hosted by Christina Gessler
Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts …
Asian Review of Books

Bombay Hustle

Making Movies in a Colonial City

Debashree Mukherjee

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
In 1935, the writer Baburao Patel writes the following about Bombay’s film industry: “In India, with financing conditions still precarious, the professional film distributor thrives. . . . He comes …
Indian Religions

The Mahabharata

Bibek Debroy

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Dispute over land and kingdom may lie at the heart of this story of war between cousins the Pandavas and the Kouravas but the Mahabharata is about conflicts of dharma …
Dan Hill's EQ Spotlight

Overground Railroad

The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America

Candacy Taylor

Hosted by Dan Hill
Today I talked to Candacy Taylor about her book Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America (Abrams Press, 2020) Taylor is an award-winning author …
SSEAC Stories

A Thai Contemporary Artist on Identity, Power, and the Space In-Between

A Discussion with Phaptawan Suwannakudt

Phaptawan Suwannakudt

Hosted by Natali Pearson
As a Thai-Australian woman artist, Phaptawan Suwannakudt has long battled prejudice and discrimination relating to her gender. This disappointment with society’s dictates features at the heart of Phaptawan’s artistic practice …
Book of the Day/ History

Pirating and Publishing

The Book Trade in the Age of Enlightenment

Robert Darnton

Hosted by Zachary McCulley
In the late-18th century, a group of publishers in what historian Robert Darnton calls the "Fertile Crescent" — countries located along the French border, stretching from Holland to Switzerland — pirated the works of prominent (and often banned) French writers and distributed them in France, where laws governing piracy were in flux and any notion of "copyright" very much in its infancy. Piracy was entirely legal and everyone acknowledged — …
History

Ruling Culture

Art Police, Tomb Robbers, and the Rise of Cultural Power in Italy

Fiona Greenland

Hosted by Jana Byars
Today we are joined by Fiona Greenland, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, to talk about her new book, Ruling Culture: Art Police, Tomb Raiders, and the …
Christian Studies

@ Worship

Liturgical Practices in Digital Worlds

Teresa Berger

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
Digital dualism, or a sharp division between online and offline activity as "virtual" or "real" has long been a feature of liturgical studies and discussions around worship gatherings for theorists and …
National Security

Reset

Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society

Ronald J. Deibert

Hosted by John Sakellariadis
Ronald Deibert is a professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto and the Director of The Citizen Lab, a public interest research organization that uncovers privacy and human …
Ethnographic Marginalia

Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation

Sovereignty, Witnessing, Repair

Deborah A. Thomas

Hosted by Sneha Annavarapu
How can ethnographers use multimedia presentations of their work to reach new audiences, build different relationships with their participants, and promote new practices of witnessing and representation? On today’s episode …
Islamic Studies

Terror Epidemics

Islamophobia and the Disease Poetics of Empire

Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb

Hosted by Kristian Petersen
Terrorism is a cancer, an infection, an epidemic, a plague. For more than a century, this metaphor has figured insurgent violence as contagion in order to contain its political energies …
East Asian Studies

The Sea and the Sacred in Japan

Aspects of Maritime Religion

Fabio Rambelli

Hosted by Daigengna Duoer
In The Sea and the Sacred in Japan: Aspects of Maritime Religion (Bloomsbury 2018), Fabio Rambelli invites various fifteen scholars of Japanese religions to reflect on a well taken-for-granted fact: although the sea …
Australian and New Zealand Studies

Eating with My Mouth Open

Sam van Zweden

Hosted by Bede Haines
Wow! Food, family, memory, insight, body, mind - worth the effort this one. Eating with My Mouth Open (NewSouth, 2021) is food writing like you’ve never seen before: honest, brave, and …
South Asian Studies

Rethinking Markets in Modern India

Embedded Exchange and Contested Jurisdiction

A. Gandhi, B. Harriss-White, D. E. Haynes and S. Schwecke

Hosted by Saronik Bosu
Modern markets and exchange, compared with other social and political spheres, are seen through technical abstractions. This intellectual compartmentalization has political consequences: if capitalism operates through arcane, objective, and rational …
Religion

Dangerous Religious Ideas

The Deep Roots of Self-Critical Faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Rachel S. Mikva

Hosted by Yakir Englander
Dangerous Religious Ideas: The Deep Roots of Self-Critical Faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Beacon, 2020) reveals how faith traditions have always passed down tools for self-examination and debate, because …
The Common Magazine

Weeds and Flowers

Bina Shah

Hosted by Emily Everett
Bina Shah speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her short story “Weeds and Flowers,” which appears in Issue 19 of The Common magazine. In this conversation, Shah talks about …