New Books Network
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast
Geography October 15, 2021

Extraction Ecologies and the Literature of the Long Exhaustion

Elizabeth Carolyn Miller

Hosted by Stentor Danielson
The 1830s to the 1930s saw the rise of large-scale industrial mining in the British imperial world. Elizabeth Carolyn Miller examines how literature of this era reckoned with a new …

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast

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Interviews with authors of Princeton University Press books.

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast October 15, 2021

Career and Family

Women’s Century-Long Journey toward Equity

Claudia Goldin

Hosted by Marshall Poe
A century ago, it was a given that a woman with a college degree had to choose between having a career and a family. Today, there are more female college …
General History October 13, 2021

The Last Muslim Conquest

The Ottoman Empire and Its Wars in Europe

Gábor Ágoston

Hosted by Charles Coutinho
The image of the Ottoman Turks and their interaction with the Christian West, has undergone many changes in the past: from William Gladstone's famous comment that: “[The Turks] one and …
European Studies October 13, 2021

New Lefts

The Making of a Radical Tradition

Terence Renaud

Hosted by Mathias Fuelling
In the 1960s, the radical youth of Western Europe’s New Left rebelled against the democratic welfare state and their parents’ antiquated politics of reform. It was not the first time …
Digital Humanities October 7, 2021

Along Came Google

A History of Library Digitization

Deanna Marcum and Roger C. Schonfeld

Hosted by Sarah Kearns
When Google announced that it planned to digitize books to make the world's knowledge accessible to all, questions were raised about the roles and responsibilities of libraries, the rights of …
General History October 6, 2021

The End of Ambition

The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era

Mark Atwood Lawrence

Hosted by Zeb Larson
Histories of the Vietnam War are not in short supply. In U.S. history, it ranks alongside the Civil War and World War Two in terms of author coverage. The aftermath of the war …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast October 1, 2021

Plagues upon the Earth

Disease and the Course of Human History

Kyle Harper

Hosted by Marshall Poe
Kyle Harper's book Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History (Princeton UP, 2021) is a monumental history of humans and their germs. Weaving together a grand …
Psychology September 28, 2021

What Makes Us Smart

The Computational Logic of Human Cognition

Samuel Gershman

Hosted by Robert Tosswill
At the heart of human intelligence rests a fundamental puzzle: How are we incredibly smart and stupid at the same time? No existing machine can match the power and flexibility …
Mobilities and Methods September 24, 2021

A City Is Not a Computer

Other Urban Intelligences

Shannon Mattern

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
Computational models of urbanism—smart cities that use data-driven planning and algorithmic administration—promise to deliver new urban efficiencies and conveniences. Yet these models limit our understanding of what we can know …
Science September 23, 2021

Delicious

The Evolution of Flavor and How It Made Us Human

Rob Dunn and Monica Sanchez

Hosted by Hussein Mohsen
Nature, it has been said, invites us to eat by appetite and rewards by flavor. But what exactly are flavors? Why are some so pleasing while others are not …
History of Science September 22, 2021

The Cheating Cell

How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer

Athena Aktipis

Hosted by Hussein Mohsen
When we think of the forces driving cancer, we don’t necessarily think of evolution. But evolution and cancer are closely linked because the historical processes that created life also created …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast September 17, 2021

Princeton UP's Pedia Series

Beautiful, Short Books About Big, Important Subjects

Robert Kirk

Hosted by Marshall Poe
Today I talked to Robert Kirk, the publisher of Princeton University Press's "Pedia" book series. Encyclopedic in nature and miniature in form, these books explore the wonders of the natural world, from …
Intellectual History September 15, 2021

Wollstonecraft

Philosophy, Passion, and Politics

Sylvana Tomaselli

Hosted by Tejas Parasher
Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, first published in 1792, is a work of enduring relevance in women’s rights advocacy. However, as Sylvana Tomaselli shows, a full …
Journalism September 10, 2021

All the News That’s Fit to Click

How Metrics Are Transforming the Work of Journalists

Caitlin Petre

Hosted by Jenna Spinelle
Over the past 15 years, journalism has experienced a rapid proliferation of data about online reader behavior in the form of web metrics. These newsroom metrics influence which stories are …
Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas with Renee Garfinkel September 6, 2021

Christian Globalism at Home

Child Sponsorship in the United States

Hillary Kaell

Hosted by Renee Garfinkel
Child sponsorship, originally a project of nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries, has become one of today’s most profitable private fund-raising tools for global organizations, including World Vision, Compassion International, and ChildFund. Christian …
Anthropology September 6, 2021

In Humboldt's Shadow

A Tragic History of German Ethnology

H. Glenn Penny

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
The Berlin Ethnological Museum is one of the world's largest and most important anthropological museums, housing more than a half million objects collected from around the globe. In Humboldt's Shadow: A …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast September 1, 2021

Ice Rivers

A Story of Glaciers, Wilderness, and Humanity

Jemma Wadham

Hosted by Marshall Poe
The ice sheets and glaciers that cover one-tenth of Earth’s land surface are in grave peril. High in the Alps, Andes, and Himalaya, once-indomitable glaciers are retreating, even dying. Meanwhile …
National Security August 27, 2021

Nonstate Warfare

The Military Methods of Guerillas, Warlords, and Militias

Stephen Biddle

Hosted by John Sakellariadis
From the Taliban to Hezbollah, armed nonstate actors and civil warfare have dominated the US national security debate for much of the last 20 years. Yet, most analysis shares a …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast August 16, 2021

Moving Up Without Losing Your Way

The Ethical Costs of Upward Mobility

Jennifer Morton

Hosted by Marshall Poe
Upward mobility through the path of higher education has been an article of faith for generations of working-class, low-income, and immigrant college students. While we know this path usually entails …
Political Science August 12, 2021

The Great Demographic Illusion

Majority, Minority, and the Expanding American Mainstream

Richard Alba

Hosted by Lilly Goren
Richard Alba, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, has written an intriguing new book on our understanding of American demographic data, and how …