New Books Network
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast November 16, 2020

Conspiracy Theories are More Dangerous Than Ever

A Discussion with Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum

Nancy L. Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead

Hosted by Marshall Poe
Conspiracy theories are as old as politics. But conspiracists today have introduced something new—conspiracy without theory. And the new conspiracism has moved from the fringes to the heart of government …

Subscribe to

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast

on the NBN

RSS Spotify Stitcher Apple
Medicine November 16, 2020

Bedeviled

A Shadow History of Demons in Science

Jimena Canales

Hosted by Claire Clark
Science may be known for banishing the demons of superstition from the modern world. Yet just as the demon-haunted world was being exorcized by the enlightening power of reason, a …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast November 12, 2020

College Presidents and the Struggle for Integration

A Conversation with Eddie R. Cole

Eddie R. Cole

Hosted by Marshall Poe
Some of America's most pressing civil rights issues--desegregation, equal educational and employment opportunities, housing discrimination, and free speech--have been closely intertwined with higher education institutions. Although it is commonly known …
Russian and Eurasian Studies November 11, 2020

Stalin

Passage to Revolution

Ronald Grigor Suny

Hosted by Aaron Weinacht
Ronald Suny’s recent biography of the young Stalin, Stalin: Passage to Revolution (Princeton, 2020) covers “Soso” Jughashvili’s life up to the 1917 Revolution. Suny provides a wealth of detail as …
Islamic Studies November 6, 2020

Faces of Muhammad

Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today

John Tolan

Hosted by Shehnaz Haqqani
John Tolan’s latest book Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today (Princeton UP, 2019) is a fascinating and rich survey of …
Philosophy November 2, 2020

Lost in Thought

The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life

Zena Hitz

Hosted by Robert Talisse
We live in a culture that tends to view thought with a degree of suspicion. Thinking is frequently associated with uselessness, idleness, laziness. These suspicions can be somewhat allayed when …
American Studies November 2, 2020

Hate in the Homeland

The New Global Far Right

Cynthia Miller-Idriss

Hosted by Kirk Meighoo
A startling look at the unexpected places where violent hate groups recruit young people. Hate crimes. Misinformation and conspiracy theories. Foiled white-supremacist plots. The signs of growing far-right extremism are …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast November 2, 2020

Conservatism is Always Evolving

A Discussion with Edmund Fawcett

Edmund Fawcett

Hosted by Marshall Poe
For two hundred years, conservatism has defied its reputation as a backward-looking creed by confronting and adapting to liberal modernity. By doing so, the Right has won long periods of …
Eastern European Studies October 21, 2020

The Rebellion of the Daughters

Jewish Women Runaways in Habsburg Galicia

Rachel Manekin

Hosted by Zalman Newfield
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, over three hundred young Jewish women from Orthodox, mostly Hasidic, homes in Western Galicia (now Poland) fled their communities and sought refuge …
Literary Studies October 21, 2020

Black Land

Imperial Ethiopianism and African America

Nadia Nurhussein

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
In Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America (Princeton University Press, 2019), Nadia Nurhussein explores late nineteenth and twentieth century African American cultural engagement with and literary depictions of imperial …
African American Studies October 15, 2020

Why are Blacks Democrats?

An Interview with Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird

Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird

Hosted by Marshall Poe
Black Americans are by far the most unified racial group in American electoral politics, with 80 to 90 percent identifying as Democrats—a surprising figure given that nearly a third now …
Literary Studies October 9, 2020

Utopias of One

Joshua Kotin

Hosted by Aaron Weinacht
Joshua Kotin’s Utopias of One (Princeton University Press, 2017) analyzes a particular and peculiar sub-genre of utopian literature. Kotin identifies works by Thoreau, Dubois, the Mandel’shtams, and the poets Wallace …
Education October 7, 2020

Syllabus

The Remarkable, Unremarkable Document that Changes Everything

William Germano and Kit Nicholls

Hosted by Daniel Shea
Do you teach, or do you care about education? Then you have to read this book. At turns radical in the interventions it proposes in educational practice, at turns perspicacious …
British Studies October 5, 2020

The First Serious Optimist

A. C. Pigou and the Birth of Welfare Economics

Ian Kumekawa

Hosted by Mark Klobas
The work of Alfred Cecil Pigou may not be as well known to people today as that of his contemporary John Maynard Keynes, but as Ian Kumekawa details in his …
Jewish Studies September 29, 2020

Does Judaism Condone Violence?

Holiness and Ethics in the Jewish Tradition

Alan L. Mittleman

Hosted by Hope J. Leman
What exactly does the word “holy” mean in various religious traditions? What is the opposite of it in translations from the Hebrew? Is the antonym of “holy” in the Old …
African Studies September 25, 2020

The Golden Rhinoceros

Histories of the African Middle Ages

François-Xavier Fauvelle

Hosted by Elisa Prosperetti
What are the African Middle Ages? A place, certainly, and a time period, evidently. But also a “documentary regime,” argues François-Xavier Fauvelle. How do we reconstruct these centuries of the …
South Asian Studies September 21, 2020

Indian Sex Life

Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought

Durba Mitra

Hosted by Lakshita Malik
During the colonial period in India, European scholars, British officials, and elite Indian intellectuals—philologists, administrators, doctors, ethnologists, sociologists, and social critics—deployed ideas about sexuality to understand modern Indian society. In …
Architecture September 17, 2020

Hitler’s Northern Utopia

Building the New Order in Occupied Norway

Despina Stratigakos

Hosted by Craig Sorvillo
In her new book Hitler’s Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway (Princeton University Press, 2020), Despina Stratigakos investigates the Nazi occupation of Norway. Between 1940 and 1945 …
Critical Theory September 14, 2020

Metrics at Work

Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms

Angèle Christin

Hosted by Dave O'Brien
How are algorithms changing journalism? In Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms (Princeton University Press), Angèle Christin, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at …
Central Asian Studies September 11, 2020

The War on the Uyghurs

China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority

Sean Roberts

Hosted by Shehnaz Haqqani
In today’s new episode, we speak with Sean Roberts about his brand new book The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority (Princeton University Press, 2020) …