New Books Network

About Lukas Rieppel

NBN Episodes hosted by Lukas:

Science, Technology, and Society January 22, 2021

Catastrophic Thinking

Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene

David Sepkoski

Hosted by Lukas Rieppel
We live in an age in which we are repeatedly reminded—by scientists, by the media, by popular culture—of the looming threat of mass extinction. We’re told that human activity is …
Chinese Studies November 4, 2020

Tea War

A History of Capitalism in China and India

Andrew B. Liu

Hosted by Lukas Rieppel
After water, tea is the most widely consumed drink in the world. It is beloved by consumers in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, and it comes in a bewildering …
Chinese Studies July 17, 2020

Vernacular Industrialism in China

Local Innovation and Translated Technologies in the Making of a Cosmetics Empire, 1900-1940

Eugenia Lean

Hosted by Lukas Rieppel
In early twentieth-century China, Chen Diexian (1879–1940) was a maverick entrepreneur—at once a prolific man of letters and captain of industry, a magazine editor and cosmetics magnate. He tinkered with …
History June 17, 2020

The Scientific Method

An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey

Henry M. Cowles

Hosted by Lukas Rieppel
The idea of a single scientific method, shared across specialties and teachable to ten-year-olds, is just over a hundred years old. For centuries prior, science had meant a kind of …
Environmental Studies April 17, 2020

Bird Love

The Family Life of Birds

Wenfei Tong

Hosted by Lukas Rieppel
Wenfei Tong's Bird Love: The Family Life of Birds (Princeton University Press, 2020) looks at the extraordinary range of mating systems in the avian world, exploring all the stages from …
Archaeology March 27, 2020

An Optimist’s Guide to the Historical Sciences

Adrian Currie

Hosted by Lukas Rieppel
The “historical sciences”—geology, paleontology, and archaeology—have made extraordinary progress in advancing our understanding of the deep past. How has this been possible, given that the evidence they have to work …
European Studies January 8, 2020

After the Flood

Imagining the Global Environment in Early Modern Europe

Lydia Barnett

Hosted by Lukas Rieppel
Many centuries before the emergence of the scientific consensus on climate change, people began to imagine the existence of a global environment: a natural system capable of changing humans and …
European Studies November 14, 2019

Sailing School

Navigating Science and Skill, 1550-1800

Margaret E. Schotte

Hosted by Lukas Rieppel
Throughout the Age of Exploration, European maritime communities bent on colonial and commercial expansion embraced the complex mechanics of celestial navigation. They developed schools, textbooks, and instruments to teach the …
African Studies October 10, 2019

The Lived Nile

Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt

Jennifer L. Derr

Hosted by Lukas Rieppel
In October 1902, the reservoir of the first Aswan Dam filled, and Egypt's relationship with the Nile River forever changed. Flooding villages of historical northern Nubia and filling the irrigation …
Science, Technology, and Society August 8, 2019

Accounting for Capitalism

The World the Clerk Made

Michael Zakim

Hosted by Lukas Rieppel
The clerk attended his desk and counter at the intersection of two great themes of modern historical experience: the development of a market economy and of a society governed from …