The Harvard Brief

The Harvard Brief

episodes

Interviews with authors of Harvard UP books.

Entrepreneurial Work Ethic

March 16, 2026

Entrepreneurial Work Ethic

In this episode of High Theory, Saronik talks with Erik Baker about the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic. The dominant work ethic of our current moment, it …

Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Adrian Masters, "The Radical Spanish Empire: How Paperwork Politics Remade the New World" (Harvard UP, 2026)

March 13, 2026

The Radical Spanish Empire

Hosted by Freddy Dominguez

The Radical Spanish Empire: How Paperwork Politics Remade the New World by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Adrian Masters (Harvard UP, 2026) is a groundb…

Guoqi Xu, "The Idea of China: A Contested History" (Harvard UP, 2026)

March 8, 2026

The Idea of China

Guoqi Xu
Hosted by Lucas Tse

What counts as China, and who counts as Chinese? China became a capitalist superpower by investing in globalization. Now that it has established its …

Rian Thum, "Islamic China: An Asian History" (Harvard UP, 2025)

March 5, 2026

Islamic China

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon

Can someone be Chinese and Muslim? For some academics, this has been a surprisingly fraught question, with some asserting that Chinese Muslims are not…

Michelle Jackson, "The Division of Rationalized Labor" (Harvard UP, 2025)

February 21, 2026

The Division of Rationalized Labor

Michelle Jackson
Hosted by Dave O'Brien

How have jobs changed in the last 150 years? In The Division of Rationalized Labor (Harvard UP, 2025) Michelle Jackson, an Associate Professor in the …

Mélanie Lamotte, "By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire" (Harvard UP, 2026)

February 18, 2026

By Flesh and Toil

Mélanie Lamotte
Hosted by Lewis Wade

From the beginning of the seventeenth century, French colonies and trading posts sprawled across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In the first pan-impe…

Sugata Bose, "Asia after Europe: Imagining a Continent in the Long Twentieth Century" (Harvard UP, 2024)

February 15, 2026

Asia after Europe

Sugata Bose
Hosted by Lucas Tse

The balance of global power changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century, above all with the economic and political rise of Asia. Asia …

Ruixue Jia et al., "The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China" (Harvard UP, 2025)

February 15, 2026

The Highest Exam

Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li with Claire Cousineau
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China (Harvard UP, 2025), provides a detailed, research-driven survey of the gaokao, China's high-stakes colle…

Hang Tu, "Sentimental Republic: Chinese Intellectuals and the Maoist Past" (Harvard UP, 2025)

February 11, 2026

Sentimental Republic

Hang Tu
Hosted by Camellia Pham

How does emotion shape the landscape of public intellectual debate? In Sentimental Republic: Chinese Intellectuals and the Maoist Past (Harvard UP, 20…

Joshua D. Zimmerman, "Jozef Pilsudski: Founding Father of Modern Poland" (Harvard UP, 2022)

February 8, 2026

Jozef Pilsudski

Joshua D. Zimmerman
Hosted by Piotr Kosicki

In the 1920s, Józef Piłsudski was a household name not just in Poland, but across Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean as well. Yet this complex and c…

Leslie James, "The Moving Word: How the West African and Caribbean Press Shaped Black Political Thought, 1935-1960" (Harvard UP, 2025)

February 6, 2026

The Moving Word

Leslie James

In the 1930s and 1940s, amid intensifying anticolonial activism across the British Empire, dozens of new West African and Caribbean newspapers printed…

Jennifer Vail, "Friction: A Biography" (Harvard UP, 2026)

February 3, 2026

Friction

Jennifer R. Vail
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Friction, the force that resists motion, is synonymous with difficulty and complication. If you’ve ever replaced tires worn smooth by the road or reac…

Peter H. Wilson, "Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples Since 1500" (Harvard UP, 2023)

January 31, 2026

Iron and Blood

Peter H. Wilson
Hosted by AJ Woodhams
Listen:

German military history is typically viewed as an inexorable march to the rise of Prussia and the two world wars, the road paved by militarism and the…

Rishi Rajpopat, "Panini's Perfect Rule: A Modern Solution to an Ancient Problem in Sanskrit Grammar" (Harvard UP, 2025)

January 29, 2026

Panini's Perfect Rule

Rishi Rajpopat
Hosted by Raj Balkaran

Around 500 BCE, the Indian scholar Pāṇini wrote a treatise on Sanskrit, the Aṣṭādhyāyī, describing a kind of language machine: an algebraic system of …

Dagomar Degroot, "Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean: An Environmental History of Our Place in the Solar System" (Harvard UP, 2025)

January 13, 2026

Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean

Dagomar Degroot
Hosted by Gregory McNiff

Our solar system is a dynamic arena where asteroids careen off course and solar winds hurl charged particles across billions of miles of space. Yet we…

Andrew I. Port, "Never Again: Germans and Genocide After the Holocaust" (Harvard UP, 2023)

January 11, 2026

Never Again

Andrew I. Port
Hosted by Kelly McFall

As reports of mass killings in Bosnia spread in the middle of 1995, Germans faced a dilemma. Should the Federal Republic deploy its military to the Ba…

Marcy Norton, "The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492" (Harvard UP, 2024)

January 11, 2026

The Tame and the Wild

Marcy Norton
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

In The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492 (Harvard University Press, 2024), Dr. Marcy Norton offers a dramatic new interpretation of the…

John Samuel Harpham, "Intellectual Origins of American Slavery: English Ideas in the Early Modern Atlantic World" (Harvard UP, 2025)

January 9, 2026

Intellectual Origins of American Slavery

John Samuel Harpham
Hosted by Ryan Tripp

The period from 1550 to 1700 was critical in the development of slavery across the English Atlantic world. During this time, English discourse about s…

Philip J. Stern, "Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism" (Harvard UP, 2023)

January 4, 2026

Empire, Incorporated

Philip J. Stern
Hosted by Thomas Kingston
Listen:

Philip Stern places the corporation―more than the Crown―at the heart of British colonialism, arguing that companies built and governed global empire, …

Marcus Willaschek, "Kant: A Revolution in Thinking" (Harvard UP, 2025)

December 24, 2025

Kant

Marcus Willaschek

Immanuel Kant is undoubtedly the most important philosopher of the modern era. His Critique of Pure Reason, “categorical imperative,” and conception o…