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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8726
Pablo Piccato, “A History of Infamy: Crime, Tru...
A History of Infamy: Crime, Truth, and Justice in Mexico (University of California Press, 2017) explores the definitive changes that the justice system as well as criminal ideas and practices underwent during the 1920s-1950s. For his most recent book,
68 min
8727
Averell Smith, “The Pitcher and the Dictator: S...
Today we are joined by Averell “Ace” Smith, The Pitcher and the Dictator: Satchel Paige’s Unlikely Season in the Dominican Republic (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). Smith is a political consultant and a lifelong baseball fan who became enamored wi...
50 min
8728
Sam Kean, “The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeon...
Early studies of the functions of the human brain used a simple method: wait for misfortune to strike—strokes, seizures, infectious diseases, lobotomies, horrendous accidents-and see how the victim coped. In many cases survival was miraculous,
56 min
8729
Keisha N. Blain, “Set the World on Fire: Black ...
Keisha N. Blain teaches African American and gender and women’s history at the University of Pittsburg. Her book Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (University of Pennsylvania Press,
62 min
8730
Catherine Layton, “The Life and Times of Mary, ...
As the thrice-married widow of one of the richest dukes in Victorian Britain, Mary Mitchell lived a life often at variance with the expectations of propriety for her time. In The Life and Times of Mary, Dowager Duchess of Sutherland (Cambridge Scholars...
57 min
8731
Jonah Goldberg, “Suicide of the West” (Crown Fo...
In Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy (Crown Forum, 2018), conservative Jonah Goldberg argues that America’s foundation of democracy and capitalism is a “Mira...
53 min
8732
Aidan Forth, “Barbed-Wire Imperialism: Britain’...
In his new book, Barbed-Wire Imperialism: Britain’s Empire of Camps, 1876-1903 (University of California Press, 2017), Aidan Forth employs a comparative and trans-imperial approach to map a global network of camps established by Britain in the late nin...
66 min
8733
Erik Scott, “Familiar Strangers: The Georgian D...
From Stalin’s inner circle to Soviet dinner menus, the small nation of Georgia had a remarkable influence on the politics and culture of the USSR. Erik Scott, author of Familiar Strangers: The Georgian Diaspora and the Evolution of Soviet Empire (Oxfor...
65 min
8734
David J. Silverman, “Thundersticks: Firearms an...
In Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016), David J. Silverman argues that Indian societies adopted firearm technology not because they were visually impressive or c...
44 min
8735
Sigrid Schmalzer, et. al., “Science for the Peo...
“What is needed now is not liberal reform or withdrawal, but a radical attack, a strategy of opposition. Scientific workers must develop ways to put their skills at the service of the people and against the oppressors.” (Zimmerman, et al. 1972).
57 min
8736
Imani Perry, “May We Forever Stand: A History o...
Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem in August 2016 prior to a preseason game reopened a national conversation about public performances of patriotism. What does a national anthem do to promote unity in a nation with a long runni...
60 min
8737
Brian Tochterman, “The Dying City: Postwar New ...
What does it mean to say that a city can “die”? As Brian Tochterman shows in this compelling intellectual and cultural history, motifs of imminent death—of a “Necropolis” haunting the country’s great “Cosmopolis”—have been a persistent feature of disco...
1 min
8738
Lisa Ze Winters, “The Mulatta Concubine: Terror...
Popular and academic representations of the free mulatta concubine repeatedly depict women of mixed black African and white racial descent as defined by their sexual attachment to white men, and thus they offer evidence of the means to and dimensions o...
36 min
8739
Jonathan Engel, “Unaffordable: American Healthc...
Earlier this year, Jamila Michener visited the podcast to talk about her new book, Fragmented Democracy, about Medicaid and the state-based structure that results in very different experiences of Medicaid recipients from state to state.
28 min
8740
David Atkinson, “The Burden of White Supremacy:...
Recent historical scholarship stresses the transnational linkages between movements to restrict Asian migration in the Anglophone world. David Atkinson’s The Burden of White Supremacy: Containing Asian Migration in the British Empire and the United Sta...
69 min
8741
Marc Hertzman, “Making Samba: A New History of ...
In Making Samba: A New History of Race and Music in Brazil (Duke University Press, 2013), Marc Hertzman revisits the history of Brazil’s quintessential music and dance genre to explore the links between popular music, intellectual property, law,
46 min
8742
Gary Dorrien, “The New Abolition: W.E.B. Du Boi...
The black social gospel–formulated and given voice by abolitionists and post-reconstruction Black men and women–took the United States by storm in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Black Christians were not the only ones involved in the black...
65 min
8743
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, “Indian Muslim Minori...
In her fascinating and path paving new book, Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion: Religion, Rebels and Jihad (I. B. Tauris, 2017), Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Vermont reorients our understa...
35 min
8744
Katelyn Knox, “Race on Display in Twentieth- an...
Katelyn Knox’s book, Race on Display in Twentieth- and Twenty First–Century France (Liverpool University Press, 2016) examines francophone literature, art, dance, music, and fashion, considering how race and national identity intersect in postcolonial ...
56 min
8745
Karen Teoh, “Schooling Diaspora: Women, Educati...
In Schooling Diaspora: Women, Education, and the Overseas Chinese in British Malaya and Singapore, 1850s to 1960s (Oxford University Press, 2018), Karen Teoh relates the history of English and Chinese girls’ schools that overseas Chinese founded and at...
32 min
8746
Anna Zeide, “Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consu...
Most everything Americans eat today comes out of cans. Some of it emerges from the iconic steel cylinders and much of the rest from the mammoth processed food empire the canning industry pioneered. Historian Anna Zeide,
50 min
8747
Joshua Parens, “Leo Strauss and the Recovery of...
In today’s episode, I am joined by Joshua Parens to discuss his innovative and engaging book Leo Strauss and the Recovery of Medieval Political Philosophy (University of Rochester Press, 2016). While one may easily confuse the book with something narro...
40 min
8748
Max Boot, “The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale ...
Counterinsurgency doctrine, the Vietnam War, and the vagaries of politics all come together in Max Boot‘s latest work, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam (Liveright, 2018).
43 min
8749
Allison Varzally, “Children of Reunion: Vietnam...
In Children of Reunion: Vietnamese Adoptions and the Politics of Family Migrations (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), Allison Varzally documents the history of Vietnamese adoption in the United States during the second half of the twentieth ce...
59 min
8750
Sharla Fett, “Recaptured Africans: Surviving Sl...
The Amistad Rebellion is usually remembered as the only instance in which a US court sent re-captured slaves back to Africa. Yet as Sharla Fett shows in her new book Recaptured Africans: Surviving Slave Ships, Detention,
66 min