New Books Network

About Mark Klobas

NBN Episodes hosted by Mark:

Biography February 16, 2021

Vera Rubin

A Life

Jacqueline Mitton and Simon Mitton

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Few astronomers in the 20th century did as much to expand our understanding of the universe as Vera Rubin. To tell her remarkable story in their biography Vera Rubin: A …
History February 11, 2021

Inca Apocalypse

The Spanish Conquest and the Transformation of the Andean World

R. Alan Covey

Hosted by Mark Klobas
The arrival in 1532 of a small group of Spanish conquistadores at the Andean town of Cajamarca launched one of the most dramatic – and often misunderstood – events in …
History February 2, 2021

Hotel London

How Victorian Commercial Hospitality Shaped a Nation and Its Stories

Barbara Black

Hosted by Mark Klobas
During the nineteenth century, the grand hotel emerged as a vital part of London life. Originally catering to elite visitors needing a place to stay in the short term, they …
Biography January 22, 2021

Poet of Revolution

The Making of John Milton

Nicholas McDowell

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Decades before he wrote his epic work Paradise Lost, John Milton was an active republican and polemicist. How Milton came to espouse such radical views is just one of the …
Biography January 4, 2021

Before the Sidewalk Ended

A Walk with Shel Silverstein

Anthony Valerio

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Anthony Valerio's Before the Sidewalk Ended: A Walk with Shel Silverstein (Daisy H. Productions, 2020) is a startling portrait of the great writer of children's books, songs and plays Shel Silverstein. What …
History December 29, 2020

Neighborhood of Fear

The Suburban Crisis in American Culture, 1975–2001

Kyle Riismandel

Hosted by Mark Klobas
One of the lures that drew Americans to the suburbs in the years after World War II was the promise of a secure life. By the mid-1970s, however, it seemed …
History December 18, 2020

Burning the Books

A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge

Richard Ovenden

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Living in an age awash with information can sometimes obscure its extraordinary fragility. Indeed, as Richard Ovenden demonstrates in Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge …
Biography December 16, 2020

Reconsidering Reagan

Racism, Republicans, and the Road to Trump

Daniel S. Lucks

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Ronald Reagan is regarded today as one of the most consequential presidents of the postwar era, yet many aspects of his legacy are largely unappreciated. In Reconsidering Reagan: Racism, Republicans …
Biography December 14, 2020

Legal Sabotage

Ernst Fraenkel in Hitler's Germany

Douglas Morris

Hosted by Mark Klobas
During the mid-1930s, Germans opposed to Adolf Hitler had only a limited range of options available to them for resisting the Nazi regime. One of the most creative and successful …
History December 7, 2020

Rome Is Burning

Nero and the Fire That Ended a Dynasty

Anthony A. Barrett

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Ancient Rome had experienced many fires before 64 CE, yet none of the previous blazes proved as significant as the conflagration that swept through the city that year. In Rome Is …
Biography December 1, 2020

The Life of William Faulkner

This Alarming Paradox, 1935-1962

Carl Rollyson

Hosted by Mark Klobas
By 1935 William Faulkner was well established as an author of critically praised novels, yet the low volume of his sales forced him to seek work in Hollywood. As Carl …
History December 1, 2020

Isolationism

A History of America's Efforts to Shield Itself from the World

Charles A. Kupchan

Hosted by Mark Klobas
In the past few years isolationism, which had long been derided in the national discourse, has been making a comeback as a political force. In Isolationism: A History of America’s …
Biography November 16, 2020

Isabel “Lefty” Alvarez

The Improbable Life of a Cuban American Baseball Star

Kat D. Williams

Hosted by Mark Klobas
For many of its participants, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) offered them an opportunity to change their lives, yet few were as transformed as that of Isabel “Lefty” …
British Studies November 9, 2020

The Bloody Flag

Mutiny in the Age of Atlantic Revolution

Niklas Frykman

Hosted by Mark Klobas
The 1790s were a decade of turmoil and strife across the West. With the French Revolution, a new era of wars began that invoked the language of equal rights. In …
World Affairs October 21, 2020

The New Twenty Years' Crisis

A Critique of International Relations, 1999-2019

Philip Cunliffe

Hosted by Mark Klobas
At the end of the 20th century, the liberal international order appeared unassailable after its triumph over the authoritarian challenges of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Twenty years later, however …
European Studies October 16, 2020

All the Horrors of War

A Jewish Girl, a British Doctor, and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen

Bernice Lerner

Hosted by Mark Klobas
One was a teenage Jewish girl, forcibly transported from her home in Hungary to a Nazi concentration camp. The other was a British doctor, whose experiences serving in two world …
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 …
British Studies September 29, 2020

Churchill's Hellraisers

The Secret Mission to Storm a Forbidden Nazi Fortress

Damien Lewis

Hosted by Mark Klobas
On the night of March 27, 1945, a small group of partisans and British soldiers from the elite Special Air Service (SAS) stormed two villas in northern Italy that were …
Music September 18, 2020

A Social History of Early Rock ‘n’ Roll in Germany

Hamburg from Burlesque to The Beatles, 1956-69

Julia Sneeringer

Hosted by Mark Klobas
The Beatles’ sojourn in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg during the early 1960s is part of music legend. As Julia Sneeringer reveals in A Social History of Early Rock …
British Studies September 11, 2020

Wireless Internationalism and Distant Listening

Britain, Propaganda, and the Invention of Global Radio, 1920-1939

Simon J. Potter

Hosted by Mark Klobas
In the aftermath of the First World War, many people sought to use the new mass medium of radio as a tool for world peace, believing that it could promote …
Biography September 11, 2020

Political Godmother

Nackey Scripps Loeb and the Newspaper That Shook the Republican Party

Meg Heckman

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Despite her nearly two decades as the publisher of the largest newspaper in a politically pivotal state, the role of Nackey Scripps Loeb in American political and media history has …
British Studies September 1, 2020

An Introduction to John Owen

A Christian Vision for Every Stage of Life

Crawford Gribben

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Though theology is often regarded as dealing primarily with abstract issues of belief, the prolific 17th-century English Puritan John Owen focused much of his attention on the role of Christian …
American Studies August 26, 2020

Henry Kissinger and American Power

A Political Biography

Thomas A. Schwartz

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Over the past six decades, Henry Kissinger has been America's most consistently praised--and reviled--public figure. He was hailed as a "miracle worker" for his peacemaking in the Middle East, pursuit …
Middle Eastern Studies August 26, 2020

The Last Empire of Iran

Michael R. Jackson Bonner

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Despite the competition it posed to the Romans’ eastern empire and the longevity it enjoyed compared to its Iranian predecessors, English-language histories of the Sassanian Empire are few and far …