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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Society & Culture
History
9051
Ricardo A. Herrera, “For Liberty and the Republ...
Citizenship, identity, and legitimacy are the cornerstones of Ricardo A. Herrera’s book, For Liberty and the Republic: The American Citizen as Soldier, 1775-1861 (New York University Press, 2015). Drawing from hundreds of letters, memoirs, editorials,
58 min
9052
James Forman Jr., “Locking Up Our Own: Crime an...
In this podcast I talk with James Forman Jr. about his book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017). Mass incarceration and the carceral state are hot topics in law and criminology,
55 min
9053
Marion Deshmukh, “Max Liebermann: Modern Art an...
In her new book, Max Liebermann: Modern Art and Modern Germany (Routledge 2015), Marion Deshmukh, the Robert T. Hawkes Professor of History Emeritus at George Mason University, examines the life and career of the prolific German artist Max Liebermann.
66 min
9054
Lisa M. Corrigan, “Prison Power: How Prison Inf...
In the black liberation movement, imprisonment emerged as a key rhetorical, theoretical, and media resource. Imprisoned activists developed tactics and ideology to counter white supremacy. Prison Power: How Prison Influenced the Movement for Black Libe...
30 min
9055
Andrea L. Turpin, “A New Moral Vision: Gender, ...
Andrea L. Turpin is an Associate Professor of History at Baylor University. Her book, A New Moral Vision: Gender, Religion and the Changing Purposes of American Higher Education, 1837-1917 (Cornell University Press, 2017),
54 min
9056
Leigh Straw, “After the War: Returned Soldiers ...
In her new book, After the War: Returned Soldiers and the Mental and Physical Scars of World War I (UWA Publishing, 2017), Leigh Straw, a Senior Lecturer in Aboriginal Studies and History at the University of Notre Dame,
14 min
9057
Alexander Prusin, “Serbia under the Swastika: A...
In Serbia under the Swastika: A World War II Occupation (University of Illinois Press, 2017), Alexander Prusin delineates the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia during World War II. He starts from the medium-term background,
53 min
9058
Julia Fawcett, “Spectacular Disappearances: Cel...
“How can the modern individual maintain control over his or her self-representation when the whole world seems to be watching?” This is the question that prompts Julia Fawcett‘s new book, Spectacular Disappearances: Celebrity and Privacy,
33 min
9059
Justin R. Ritzinger, “Anarchy in the Pure Land:...
In his recent monograph, Anarchy in the Pure Land: Reinventing the Cult of Maitreya in Modern Chinese Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2017), Justin R. Ritzinger examines the cult of Maitreya as developed during the Republican period by the Chinese m...
52 min
9060
Bryant Simon, “The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story ...
On September 3, 1991, a fire erupted at the Imperial Foods factory in the small town of Hamlet, North Carolina. Twenty-five people died behind the factory’s locked doors that morning. Most of the victims were women, and about half of them were black.
42 min
9061
Steve Sheinkin, “The Port Chicago 50: Disaster,...
On July 17, 1944, a massive explosion rocked the segregated Navy base at Port Chicago, California, killing more than 300 sailors who were at the docks, critically injuring off-duty men in their bunks, and shattering windows up to a mile away.
54 min
9062
John Fea, “The Bible Cause: A History of the Am...
I own many Bibles, but curiously, I didn’t purchase any of them. They were all given to me, almost all by Protestant Christians. And, considering the history of Protestant Christianity, that impulse to freely offer “God’s word” makes a lot of sense.
59 min
9063
Andrew Smith, “Terror and Terroir: The Winegrow...
Andrew Smith‘s Terror and Terroir: The Winegrowers of the Languedoc and Modern France (Manchester University Press, 2016) is a political history of wine radicalism. Focused on the producers rather than the consumers of what Roland Barthes famously refe...
1 min
9064
Rebecca Jones, “Slow Catastrophes: Living with ...
In Slow Catastrophes: Living with Drought in Australia (Monash University Publishing, 2017), Rebecca Jones, a senior research fellow at Monash University, explores the natural and cultural dimensions of drought in southeastern Australia.
14 min
9065
Robert W. Cherny, “Victor Arnautoff and the Pol...
Best remembered today for his work as a muralist, the Russian-American artist Victor Arnautoff lived a life worthy of Hollywood. In Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art (University of Illinois Press, 2017),
54 min
9066
Yakov M. Rabkin, “What Is Modern Israel?” (U. C...
In What is Modern Israel? (University of Chicago/Pluto Press, 2016), Yakov Rabkin, a professor of history at the University of Montreal, discusses some of the most fundamental issues pertaining to the history and socio-politics of Israel.
42 min
9067
Michael Wintroub, “The Voyage of Thought: Navig...
If you are an enthusiast of The Cheese and the Worms (1976), The Great Cat Massacre (1984), or The Return of Martin Guerre (1983), then Michael Wintroub‘s The Voyage of Thought: Navigating Knowledge Across the Sixteenth-Century World (Cambridge Univers...
56 min
9068
Vincent J. Intondi, “African Americans Against ...
For the first time, African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement (Stanford University Press, 2015) tells the compelling story of those black activists who fought for nuclear disarmament by connecting ...
30 min
9069
Astrid Noren-Nilsson, “Cambodia’s Second Kingdo...
Billed as “an exploration of the role of nationalist imaginings, discourses, and narratives in Cambodia since the 1993 reintroduction of a multiparty democratic system,” Cambodia’s Second Kingdom: Nation, Imagination,
42 min
9070
Cyrus Schayegh, “The Middle East and the Making...
The question of how to write the history of the modern Middle East is a much contested one. Do we write national histories, focused on modern-nation states? Do we treat the Middle East as an integrated unit? What even constitutes the Middle East?
74 min
9071
Linda Simon, “Lost Girls: The Invention of the ...
What are your impressions when you think of the flapper? Who is she in your mind? When and where does she exist? In her new book Lost Girls: The Invention of the Flapper (Reaktion Books, 2017), Linda Simon tracks the historical narrative surrounding th...
40 min
9072
Jane McCabe, “Race, Tea and Colonial Resettleme...
In her new book, Race, Tea and Colonial Resettlement: Imperial Families, Interrupted (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), Jane McCabe, Lecturer in the Department of History and Art History at the University of Otago, explores the tale of the “Kalimpong Kids,
16 min
9073
Harry Bennett, “The Royal Navy in the Age of Au...
Great Britain’s victory in the First World War brought with it the competing challenges of defending an expanded empire while reducing military expenditures. In The Royal Navy in the Age of Austerity, 1919-22: Naval and Foreign Policy under Lloyd Georg...
49 min
9074
Barry W. Holtz, “Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmu...
Born in the Land of Israel around the year 50 C.E., Rabbi Akiva was the greatest rabbi of his time and one of the most important influences on Judaism as we know it today. Traditional sources tell how he was raised in poverty and unschooled in religiou...
51 min
9075
Rachel Seelig, “Strangers in Berlin: Modern Jew...
In Strangers in Berlin: Modern Jewish Literature between East and West, 1919-1933 (University of Michigan Press, 2016), Rachel Seelig, Visiting Scholar in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto,
32 min