New Books Network
General History
Children's Literature January 27, 2022

A True Wonder

The Comic Book Hero Who Changed Everything

Kirsten W. Larson

Hosted by Mel Rosenberg
Kirsten Williams Lawson used to work with rocket scientists at NASA. Now she writes books for curious kids. Kirsten is the author of the picture book released several months back …

General History

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Interviews with historians about their new books.

Irish Studies January 27, 2022

Repealed

Ireland's Unfinished Fight for Reproductive Justice

Camilla Fitzsimons, Ruth Coppinger and Sinéad Kennedy

Hosted by Aidan Beatty
Camilla Fitzsimons is an activist and a member of the Dublin West Pro Choice group. She works at Maynooth University and is the author of Community Education and Neoliberalism. Sinéad …
Film January 27, 2022

The 15 Best Films about the Holocaust

Selected by Rich Brownstein

Rich Brownstein

Hosted by Joel Tscherne
In this special follow-up episode in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, I again speak with Rich Brownstein, author of Holocaust Cinema Complete: A History and Analysis of 400 Films …
Asian Review of Books January 27, 2022

Macanese Diaspora in British Hong Kong

A Century of Transimperial Drifting

Catherine S. Chan

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
In Hong Kong’s Ice House Street, in the heart of the city’s Financial District, is Club Lusitano: one of the city’s premier social clubs, nestled at the top of an …
South Asian Studies January 27, 2022

Tata

The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism

Mircea Raianu

Hosted by Shatrunjay Mall
Nearly a century old, the grand façade of Bombay House is hard to miss in the historic business district of Mumbai. This is the iconic global headquarters of the Tata …
General History January 26, 2022

The Fairy Tellers

A Journey into the Secret History of Fairy Tales

Nicholas Jubber

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
In The Fairy Tellers: A Journey into the Secret History of Fairy Tales (John Murray, 2022), Nick Jubber unearths the lives of the dreamers who made our most beloved fairy …
General History January 26, 2022

The Fires of Lust

Sex in the Middle Ages

Katherine Harvey

Hosted by Jana Byars
Today we are with Katherine Harvey, author of The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle Ages (Reaktion Books, 2021). An illuminating exploration of the surprisingly familiar sex lives of ordinary …
General History January 26, 2022

Eaters of the Dead

Myths and Realities of Cannibal Monsters

Kevin J. Wetmore

Hosted by Jana Byars
Spanning myth, history, and contemporary culture, a terrifying and illuminating excavation of the meaning of cannibalism. Every culture has monsters that eat us, and every culture repels in horror when …
General History January 25, 2022

Blood and Iron

The Rise and Fall of the German Empire

Katja Hoyer

Hosted by Charles Coutinho
Before 1871, Germany was not yet nation but simply an idea. Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty-nine individual states under …
Film January 25, 2022

The First True Hitchcock

The Making of a Filmmaker

Henry K. Miller

Hosted by Joel Tscherne
This untold origin story of the filmmaker explores its transatlantic history. Alfred Hitchcock called The Lodger "the first true Hitchcock movie," one that anticipated all the others. And yet, the …
General History January 24, 2022

A Short History of War

Jeremy Black

Hosted by Charles Coutinho
Throughout history, warfare has transformed social, political, cultural, and religious aspects of our lives. We tell tales of wars--past, present, and future--to create and reinforce a common purpose. In A …
Women's History January 21, 2022

Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought

Kristin Waters

Hosted by Jane Scimeca
Kristin Waters' book Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought (U Mississippi Press, 2021) tells a crucial, almost-forgotten story of African Americans of early nineteenth-century America. In 1833 …
Environmental Studies January 21, 2022

Climate Chaos

Lessons on Survival from Our Ancestors

Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
Human-made climate change may have begun in the last two hundred years, but our species has witnessed many eras of climate instability. The results have not always been pretty. From …
General History January 20, 2022

Degrees of Difficulty

How Women's Gymnastics Rose to Prominence and Fell from Grace

Georgia Cervin

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
Electrifying athletes like Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci helped make women’s artistic gymnastics one of the most popular events in the Olympic Games. But the transition of gymnastics from a …
Indian Religions January 20, 2022

Swami Vivekananda

His Life, Legacy, and Liberative Ethics

Rita D. Sherma

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Rita D. Sherma's book Swami Vivekananda: His Life, Legacy, and Liberative Ethics (Lexington Books, 2021) re-assesses the life and legacy of Swami Vivekananda from the vantage point of socially-engaged religion in …
General History January 19, 2022

Quagmire in Civil War

Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
In Quagmire in Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Dr. Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl provides the first treatment of quagmire in civil war, moving beyond the notion that quagmire is intrinsic to …
Art January 18, 2022

Partisan Aesthetics

Modern Art and India's Long Decolonization

Sanjukta Sunderason

Hosted by Holiday Powers
In Partisan Aesthetics: Modern Art and India's Long Decolonization (Stanford UP, 2020), Sanjukta Sunderason explores art's entanglements with histories of war, famine, mass politics and displacements that marked late-colonial and …
Middle Eastern Studies January 18, 2022

Embattled Dreamlands

The Politics of Contesting Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish Memory

David Leupold

Hosted by Ronay Bakan
Embattled Dreamlands: The Politics of Contesting Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish Memory (Routledge, 2020) explores the complex relationship between competing national myths, imagined boundaries and local memories in the threefold-contested geography …
Food January 17, 2022

Power Hungry

Women of the Black Panther Party and Freedom Summer and Their Fight to Feed a Movement

Suzanne Cope

Hosted by Carrie Helms Tippen
Today I talked to Suzanne Cope about her new book Power Hungry: Women of the Black Panther Party and Freedom Summer and Their Fight to Feed a Movement (Lawrence Hill Books, 2021)In …
Anthropology January 14, 2022

Being a Human

Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness

Charles Foster

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
How did humans come to be who we are? In his marvelous, eccentric, and widely lauded book Being a Beast, legal scholar, veterinary surgeon, and naturalist extraordinaire Charles Foster set …