New Books in History
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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8526
Julie A. Cohn, “The Grid: Biography of an Ameri...
Though usually a background concern, the aging U.S. electric grid has lately been on the minds of both legislators and consumers. Congress wants to ensure the technological security of this important infrastructure.
20 min
8527
Gerald Gems, “Sport and the American Occupation...
Today we are joined by Gerald Gems, Professor of Kinesiology at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, and the author of several books on sports history including Sport in American History: From Colonization to Globalization (2017),
54 min
8528
Christina Gish Hill, “Webs of Kinship: Family i...
One summer evening discussion on a front porch sparked Webs of Kinship: Family in Northern Cheyenne Nationhood, Christina Gish Hill’s 2017 book from the University of Oklahoma Press. A friend on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana mentioned th...
59 min
8529
Timothy J. Lombardo, “Blue-Collar Conservatism:...
President Donald Trump is not sui generis. Populist impulses and political actors have been pulsating in the American soul since the nation’s founding. Timothy J. Lombardo’s excellent book, Blue-Collar Conservatism: Frank Rizzo’s Philadelphia and Popu...
58 min
8530
Duane W. Roller, “Cleopatra’s Daughter: And Oth...
For the most part women in the classical world have suffered from what Duane W. Roller terms “near-invisibility,” obscuring the consequential roles that at times they played in government and politics. In his book Cleopatra’s Daughter: And Other Royal ...
41 min
8531
Dorothy H. Crawford, “Deadly Companions: How Mi...
The history of mankind is interlinked with microbes. As humans evolved and became more advanced, microbes evolved right along with us. Through infection, disease, and pandemic they have helped shape human culture and civilization.
48 min
8532
Eve Krakowski, “Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt...
History is only recently opening up to previously marginalized groups: it is only just now that women’s history is being explored across different historical fields. Eve Krakowski in Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt: Women’s Adolescence, Jewish Law,
54 min
8533
Andrew B. Kipnis, “From Village to City: Social...
“When I first went to Zouping in 1988,” writes Andrew B. Kipnis in From Village to City: Social Transformation in a Chinese County Seat (University of California Press, 2016), “I could not have imagined what the place would be like by 2008” (p. 25).
65 min
8534
Molly Warsh, “American Baroque: Pearls and the ...
The early-modern Atlantic World was a chaotic place over which European empires frequently had little control. In her new book American Baroque: Pearls and the Nature of Empire, 1492-1700 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018),
50 min
8535
Shachar M. Pinsker, “A Rich Brew: How Cafés Cre...
The café, long a European institution, was also a stimulant and a refuge for European Jewish culture. In cities across Europe, and later in Palestine, Israel, and the United States, Jewish journalists, poets,
48 min
8536
Allan Greer, “Property and Dispossession: Nativ...
In his Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern North America (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Allan Greer, Canada Research Chair in Colonial North America at McGill University in Montréal,
44 min
8537
Simone Wesner, “Artists’ Voices in Cultural Pol...
Why is the artist’s voice missing from cultural policy? In Artists’ Voices in Cultural Policy: Careers, Myths and the Creative Profession after German Unification (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Dr. Simone Wesner,
43 min
8538
Thomas Ogorzalek, “The Cities on the Hill: How ...
Urban politics scholars have long studied what makes cities interesting. Rarely, however, have these unique qualities of cities been studied in the national context. How do representatives of cities advocate for urban interests in Washington?
23 min
8539
Irina Dumitrescu, “The Experience of Education ...
A sharply observed study of the representations of education found in Anglo-Saxon texts, Irina Dumitrescu’s The Experience of Education in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Cambridge University Press 2018) invites readers to recognize just how often educational ...
50 min
8540
Vanessa Valdés, “Diasporic Blackness: The Life ...
As every scholar of African Americans knows, Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is an essential resource for black history. But who was Schomburg? In Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (SUNY Press,
65 min
8541
Reginald Jackson, “Textures of Mourning: Callig...
Reginald Jackson’s inspiring new book takes a transdisciplinary approach to rethinking how we read, how we pay attention, and why that matters deeply in shaping how we understand the past, live in the present, and imagine possible futures.
77 min
8542
Casey Walsh, “Virtuous Waters: Mineral Springs,...
Water politics have long figured prominently in Mexico, and scholars have addressed such critical topics as irrigation, dam and canal building, and resource management, but few have examined how everyday people think about and use the waters in the dai...
55 min
8543
Rachel Morley, “Performing Femininity: Woman as...
In studying the pre-Revolutionary films of Evgenii Bauer, Dr. Rachel Morley (Lecturer in Russian Cinema and Culture at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London) discovered the ubiquity of the female performer as a cha...
48 min
8544
Kate McDonald, “Placing Empire: Travel and the ...
Kate McDonald‘s Placing Empire: Travel and the Social Imagination in Imperial Japan (University of California Press, 2017) is a thoughtful and provocative study of the spatial politics of Japanese imperialism.
54 min
8545
John M. Curatola, “Bigger Bombs for a Brighter ...
Conventional wisdom has long held the position that between 1945 and 1949, not only did the United States enjoy a monopoly on atomic weapons, but that it was prepared to use them if necessary against an increasingly hostile Soviet Union.
50 min
8546
Jo Weldon, “Fierce: The History of Leopard Prin...
Leopard print has a long history, as Jo Weldon shares in her new book, Fierce: The History of Leopard Print (Harper Design, 2018). In her illustrated text, Weldon chronicles the history of leopard print, situating it throughout popular culture.
45 min
8547
Courtney Fullilove, “The Profit of the Earth: T...
The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture (University of Chicago Press, 2017) examines the social and political history of how agricultural knowledge was created in the 19th century. Over the course of the 19th century,
35 min
8548
Eren Tasar, “Soviet and Muslim: The Institution...
How was the Soviet Union able to avoid issues of religious and national conflict with its large and diverse Islamic population? In his new book, Soviet and Muslim: The Institutionalization of Islam in Central Asia (Oxford University Press, 2017),
53 min
8549
Joanna M. Williams, “Manchester’s Radical Mayor...
Today, the Neo-Gothic Manchester Town Hall stands as one of the notable architectural features of England’s second city. It also serves, however, as a towering monument to the career of Abel Heywood, a businessman and politician who, as Joanna M.
62 min
8550
J. Samuel Walker, “Most of 14th Street Is Gone:...
Fifty years ago, the United States, and many other societies, experienced one of the most turbulent years of the century. In 1968, Americans were deeply divided. The Vietnam War was at its height, an antiwar movement raged,
49 min