New Books Network
General History
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

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Interviews with historians about their new books.

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 …
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 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 …
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 …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast January 14, 2022

Ravenna

Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe

Judith Herrin

Hosted by Mark Klobas
At the end of the fourth century, as the power of Rome faded and Constantinople became the seat of empire, a new capital city was rising in the West. Here …
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 …
Asian Review of Books January 13, 2022

Kashmir at the Crossroads

Inside a 21st-Century Conflict

Sumantra Bose

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
“Kashmir” carries the burden of being known as one of the world’s biggest flashpoints. If a novel, TV show, or video game wants an easy international crisis, there’s a good …
Literary Studies January 13, 2022

Places of Mind

A Life of Edward Said

Timothy Brennan

Hosted by Bryant Scott
Timothy Brennan is Professor of Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, and English at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of several seminal books in literary studies, including Borrowed Light …
Jewish Studies January 13, 2022

Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin

A Fugitive Modernism

Marc Caplan

Hosted by Lea Greenberg
In Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin: A Fugitive Modernism (Indiana UP, 2021), Marc Caplan explores the reciprocal encounter between Eastern European Jews and German culture in the days following World War …
LGBTQ+ Studies January 12, 2022

The Life and Comics of Howard Cruse

Taking Risks in the Service of Truth

Andrew J. Kunka

Hosted by Morris Ardoin
In this episode of QUEER VOICES OF THE SOUTH, I talk with ANDREW J. KUNKA, who is a professor of English and division chair at the University of South Carolina …
History of Science January 11, 2022

Flashes of Creation

George Gamow, Fred Hoyle, and the Great Big Bang Debate

Paul Halpern

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
Today, the Big Bang is so entrenched in our understanding of the cosmos that to doubt it would seem crazy. But as Paul Halpern shows in Flashes of Creation: George …
Economic and Business History January 10, 2022

Nature′s Evil

A Cultural History of Natural Resources

Alexander Etkind

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
In Nature′s Evil: A Cultural History of Natural Resources (Polity Press, 2021), Alexander Etkind views the history of humankind through the prism of natural resources – how we acquire them, use …
Russian and Eurasian Studies January 10, 2022

The Life Cycle of Russian Things

From Fish Guts to Fabergé, 1600 - Present

Matthew Romaniello, Alison Smith, and Tricia Starks

Hosted by Daniel Peris
This collection of articles, edited by Matthew Romaniello, Alison Smith, and Tricia Starks, takes up the history of material culture over the past several centuries of Russian history. Widely diverse objects such as …
Military History January 6, 2022

Fighting for Time

Rhodesia's Military and Zimbabwe’s Independence

Charles Melson

Hosted by Boris Karpa
From the 1960s through 1970s there were a series of conflicts in Africa involving Rhodesia, South Africa, and Portugal in conflict with the so-called Frontline States. There was an international …
Political Science January 6, 2022

Uncivil Mirth

Ridicule in Enlightenment Britain

Ross Carroll

Hosted by Lilly Goren
Political Theorist Ross Carroll takes the reader through Enlightenment conversations about the use of ridicule and laughter in politics and political engagement in his new book, Uncivil Mirth: Ridicule in …
Art January 5, 2022

Tree of Pearls

The Extraordinary Architectural Patronage of the 13th-Century Egyptian Slave-Queen Shajar Al-Durr

D. Fairchild Ruggles

Hosted by Tanja Tolar
Shajar al-Durr--known as "Tree of Pearls"--began her remarkable career as a child slave, given as property to Sultan Salih of Egypt. She became his concubine, was manumitted, became his wife …