About Jonathan Megerian

Jonathan is an educational consultant. He pursued a doctorate in history at Johns Hopkins University, but left with his MA to work outside academia. He works stay connected to the field of history through reading and, of course, interviewing for the New Books Network.

Jonathan Megerian is an educational consultant. He pursued a doctorate in history at Johns Hopkins University, but left with his MA to work outside academia. He works to stay connected to the field of history through reading and, of course, interviewing for the New Books Network.

NBN Episodes hosted by Jonathan:

James Clark, "The Dissolution of the Monasteries: A New History" (Yale UP, 2021)

May 26, 2022

The Dissolution of the Monasteries

James Clark

In a mere four years, England’s monastic tradition—one of the richest in all of Europe—came to an end. The Dissolution of the Monasteries, as it’s com…

Carolina López-Ruiz, "Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean" (Harvard UP, 2021)

March 14, 2022

Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean

Carolina López-Ruiz

Long before Herodotus told the story of the Greeks, the ancient Mediterranean teemed with what the Greeks themselves would recognize as hallmarks of c…

Hannah Barker, "That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260-1500" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019)

May 12, 2021

That Most Precious Merchandise

Hannah Barker

Before the Transatlantic slave trade ravaged the western coast of Africa, immense numbers of persons were taken from their homes and carried across th…

Robert Launay, "Savages, Romans, and Despots: Thinking about Others from Montaigne to Herder" (U Chicago Press, 2018)

March 25, 2021

Savages, Romans, and Despots

Robert Launay

Take a look at a globe. Europe is there in big letters, and, to us, this hardly merits a passing thought. But Europe is a concept, a construct, an i…

Michael Hattem, "Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution" (Yale UP, 2020)

March 9, 2021

Past and Prologue

Michael D. Hattem

Michael Hattem’s Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution (Yale, 2020) is a fascinating new look at how eighteenth-century Am…

Priya Satia, "Time's Monster: How History Makes History" (Harvard UP, 2020)

December 17, 2020

Time's Monster

Priya Satia

How we see the past helps shape our understanding of the present. In the realm of statecraft and empire, understandings of the meaning of history, the…

Adam Kotsko, "Neoliberalism's Demons: On the Political Theology of Late Capital" (Stanford UP, 2018)

November 25, 2020

Neoliberalism's Demons

Adam Kotsko

It’s hard to avoid conversations about ‘neoliberalism’ these days. The meaning of the term—indeed its very existence—is hotly contested. Adam Kotsko a…

Audrey J. Horning, "Ireland in the Virginian Sea: Colonialism in the British Atlantic" (UNC Press, 2017)

November 13, 2020

Ireland in the Virginian Sea

Audrey J. Horning

In Ireland in the Virginian Sea: Colonialism in the British Atlantic (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), Audrey Horning revisits the fraught c…

Alexander Lee, "Humanism and Empire: The Imperial Ideal in Fourteenth-Century Italy" (Oxford UP, 2018)

November 2, 2020

Humanism and Empire

Alexander Lee

Renaissance humanists and the Holy Roman Empire haven’t mixed well in most scholarship. Humanists were supposed to be learned exponents of liberty. Of…

James Simpson, "Permanent Revolution: The Reformation and the Illiberal Roots of Liberalism" (Harvard UP, 2019)

October 20, 2020

Permanent Revolution

James Simpson

The Protestant Reformation looms large in our cultural imagination. In the standard telling, it’s the moment the world went modern. Casting off the sh…

Benjamin D. Hopkins, "Ruling the Savage Periphery: Frontier Governance and the Making of the Modern State" (Harvard UP, 2020)

October 7, 2020

Ruling the Savage Periphery

Benjamin D. Hopkins

Intrinsic to the practice of empire is the creation of boundaries. We tend to think of such boundaries as borders, physical lines of demarcation past …