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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8676
Simeon Man, “Soldiering through Empire: Race an...
Simeon Man‘s book Soldiering through Empire: Race and the Making of the Decolonizing Pacific (University of California Press, 2018) focuses on the role of Asians who worked within the making of U.S. global power after 1945.
44 min
8677
Matthew R. Pembleton, “Containing Addiction: Th...
It’s common to place the start of the War on Drugs with the Nixon or Reagan Administrations, but as Matthew Pembleton tells us, those are only phases II and III of a much longer drug war that began in the 1930s with the long-forgotten Federal Bureau of...
32 min
8678
Tarak Barkawi, “Soldiers of Empire: Indian and ...
Tarak Barkawi, a Reader in International Relations at the London School of Economics, has written an important book that will cause many of us to rethink the way we understand the relationships between armies and societies.
37 min
8679
Anika Walke, “Pioneers and Partisans: An Oral H...
How did Soviet Jews respond to the Holocaust and the devastating transformations that accompanied persecution? How was the Holocaust experienced, survived, and remembered by Jewish youth living in Soviet territory? Anika Walke,
61 min
8680
Jeffrey Tulis and Nicole Mellow, “Legacies of L...
Donald Trump famously said “We’re going to win so much you may even get tired of winning.” Tell that to the losers of politics; those who have lost major elections or key political debates. We rarely focus on those who have lost,
24 min
8681
Jeffrey Ahlman, “Living with Nkrumahism: Nation...
In 1957 Ghana achieved its independence from Great Britain under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah. In Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, State, and Pan-Africanism in Ghana (Ohio University Press, 2017), Jeffrey Ahlman uses a wide range of archival and prin...
51 min
8682
Donni Wang, “Before the Market: The Political E...
Did capitalism exist in ancient Greece, the cradle of democracy and western civilization? I was joined to discuss this and other issues with Donni Wang, the author of Before the Market: The Political Economy of Olympianism (Common Ground, 2018).
35 min
8683
Lydia Kang, “Quackery: A Brief History of the W...
What won’t we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth? Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine—yes,
55 min
8684
Ethan L. Menchinger, “The First of the Modern O...
Ethan L. Menchinger‘s The First of the Modern Ottomans: The Intellectual History of Ahmed Vasif (Cambridge University Press, 2017) traces the life and career of Ahmed Vasif (ca. 1735-1806), a prominent diplomat, historian,
32 min
8685
Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts, “Denmark Vese...
A book that strikes at the source of the recent flare-ups over Confederate symbols in Charlottesville, New Orleans, and elsewhere, Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts‘ Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy (The New Pr...
46 min
8686
John Munro, “The Anticolonial Front: The Africa...
John Munro’s new book, The Anticolonial Front: The African-American Freedom Struggle and Global Decolonization (Cambridge University Press, 2017) is a transnational study that traces the persistence and continuities of Black radicalism from the end of ...
46 min
8687
Donatella della Porta, “Legacies and Memories i...
How do transitions to democracy affect the shape and participation of social movements in the present? In their new book, Legacies and Memories in Movements: Justice and Democracy in Southern Europe (Oxford University Press, 2018),
64 min
8688
Elaine Fisher, “Hindu Pluralism: Religion and t...
Elaine Fisher’s Hindu Pluralism: Religion and the Public Sphere in Early Modern South Asia (University of California Press, 2017) sheds light on the variegated, pluralistic texture of Hinduism in precolonial times. Drawing on Sanskrit, Telugu,
34 min
8689
Shira Klein, “Italy’s Jews From Emancipation to...
What was Italy’s role in the Holocaust? Why is it that Italy is known as the Axis power that was benevolent to Jews, despite a scholarly consensus that many Italians actively participated in anti-Jewish persecution?
54 min
8690
Martha Few, “For All Humanity: Mesoamerican and...
Professor Martha Few’s For All Humanity: Mesoamerican and Colonial Medicine in Enlightenment Guatemala (University of Arizona Press, 2015) describes the implementation of public health reforms in late eighteenth-century Guatemala and the diverse ways t...
63 min
8691
Peter Hoar, “The World’s Din: Listening to Reco...
In his new book, The World’s Din: Listening to Records, Radio and Films in New Zealand 1880–1940 (Otago University Press, 2018), Peter Hoar, a senior lecturer in radio and media history at Auckland University of Technology,
16 min
8692
Gillian B. Fleming, “Juana I: Legitimacy and Co...
Labeled in history as “mad,” Juana of Castile was in fact a complex figure whose sometimes emotional nature was exploited by the men around her as a way of limiting her ability to exercise her power as queen. Gillian B.
4 min
8693
James Wright, “Enduring Vietnam: An American Ge...
There’s been something of a revival of interest in the Vietnam War in the past years. Perhaps it’s the influence of Ken Burns’ documentary miniseries, perhaps it’s just the distance from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For whatever reason, 2016,
48 min
8694
Katharine Gerbner, “Christian Slavery: Conversi...
Could slaves become Christian? If so, did their conversion lead to freedom? If not, how could perpetual enslavement be justified? In her recent book, Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Pr...
45 min
8695
Gillian M. Rodger, “Just One of the Boys: Femal...
In the 1870s, one of the most popular forms of entertainment attended by American working-class men was variety—a succession of unrelated bawdy acts that preceded its tamer later nineteenth-century cousin, vaudeville. Gillian M. Rodger,
65 min
8696
Kate Skinner, “The Fruits of Freedom in British...
In her book, The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland: Literacy, Politics and Nationalism, 1914-2014 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Kate Skinner examines the history behind the failed project that sought the reunification of Togoland.
60 min
8697
Toufoul Abou-Hodeib, “A Taste for Home: The Mod...
Toufoul Abou-Hodeib‘s A Taste for Home: The Modern Middle Class in Ottoman Beirut (Stanford University Press, 2017) is a welcome addition to the scholarship on the urban history of Beirut precisely because it exceeds the disciplinary boundaries of urba...
33 min
8698
Erik Jensen, “Barbarians in the Greek and Roman...
Today the word “barbarian” has a derogatory connotation for most people. Yet in the classical world it was one that was often used not as a pejorative but as a means of denoting people of different cultural backgrounds,
48 min
8699
Matthew Karp, “This Vast Southern Empire: Slave...
Most people know that slavery was foundational to the economic development of the United States in the antebellum period. Fewer people are aware that slavery was also important for American foreign policy in the period.
66 min
8700
Paul Cartledge, “Democracy: A Life” (Oxford UP,...
The Western concept of democracy has a lineage dating back to the classical world. Paul Cartledge’s book Democracy: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2016) details its origins in ancient Greece and its evolution of it as a theory over the course of the ...
62 min