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About Joshua Tham

Joshua reads International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His interests include economic history, cartography and sociolinguistics.
Joshua has been a host on New Books in History since 2020.

NBN Episodes hosted by Joshua:

General History August 6, 2021

The Red Atlas

How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World

John Davies and Alexander J. Kent

Hosted by Joshua Tham
Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union conducted an ambitious yet clandestine programme to map the world - from big cities like New York and Tokyo, to seemingly-obscure towns like Gainsborough (Lincolnshire) …
General History February 22, 2021

London and the Seventeenth Century

The Making of the World's Greatest City

Margarette Lincoln

Hosted by Joshua Tham
Margarette Lincoln's London and the Seventeenth Century (Yale University Press, 2021) explores the ups and downs of life in Stuart London through the eyes of those who lived through it.  The Gunpowder Plot, the …
General History February 10, 2021

The Boundless Sea

A Human History of the Oceans

David Abulafia

Hosted by Joshua Tham
Building on his 2011 work The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean, David Abulafia's latest book, The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans (Penguin, 2019), traces the history of …
General History January 25, 2021

Bread Winner

An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy

Emma Griffin

Hosted by Joshua Tham
Emma Griffin's Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy (Yale UP, 2020) offers a refreshingly different take on the age of national prosperity in Britain from the 19th to early …
General History November 23, 2020

The Mappae Mundi of Medieval Iceland

Dale Kedwards

Hosted by Joshua Tham
The Icelandic mappae mundi were a series of maps produced in the late medieval period (c. 1225 - c. 1400) that bore witness to fundamental changes in the landscape of …
General History October 15, 2020

On the Judgment of History

Joan Scott

Hosted by Joshua Tham
Joan Scott’s groundbreaking work in gender and French history is essential reading for any aspiring historian. Indeed, she last joined us on New Books in French Studies to talk about …
General History September 23, 2020

The Chile Pepper in China

A Cultural Biography

Brian R. Dott

Hosted by Joshua Tham
In China, chiles are everywhere. From dried peppers hanging from eaves to Mao’s boast that revolution would be impossible without chiles, Chinese culture and the chile pepper have been intertwined …
General History August 31, 2020

A History of the Bible

The Story of the World's Most Influential Book

John Barton

Hosted by Joshua Tham
John Barton is no stranger to Holy Scripture. Having spent much of his academic career as a chaplain and professor of theology at the University of Oxford, his latest book …
General History August 19, 2020

Rulers, Religion, and Riches

Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not

Jared Rubin

Hosted by Joshua Tham
Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not (Cambridge University Press, 2017) addresses one of the big questions in economics and economic history …