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.

Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠

Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠

Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork

Society & Culture
History
9201
Armando Salvatore, “Sociology of Islam: Knowled...
Armando Salvatore’s (Professor Global Religious Studies, McGill University) formidable new book Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power, Civility (Wiley, 2016) is a dense yet delightful meditation on the concept of sociology of Islam.
26 min
9202
Ana Miskovska Kajevska, “Feminist Activism at W...
In Feminist Activism at War: Belgrade and Zagreb Feminists in the 1990s (Routledge, 2017), Macedonian researcher, peace-worker, and activist Ana Miskovska Kajevska analyses the way feminists in Belgrade and Zagreb reacted to the (post-)Yugoslav wars,
49 min
9203
Sarah Imhoff, “Masculinity and the Making of Am...
In her new book, Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017), Professor Sarah Imhoff explores the relationship between American identity and American Jewish depictions and definitions of masculinity.
40 min
9204
Mary E. Adkins, “Making Modern Florida: How the...
Mary E. Adkins has written Making Modern Florida: How the Spirit of Reform Shaped a New State Constitution (University Press of Florida, 2016), an account of the reformation of the Florida state constitution in the 1960s.
60 min
9205
Michael J. Turner” Radicalism and Reputation: T...
From humble beginnings James Bronterre O’Brien became one of the leading figures in British radical politics in the first half of the 19th century, thanks in no small measure to his skills as a journalist and writer.
54 min
9206
Clyde Farnsworth, “Tangled Bylines: A Father an...
Journalists intentionally leave themselves out of the stories they cover. In Clyde H. Farnsworth‘s book Tangled Bylines: A Father and Son Cover the Twentieth Century (University of Missouri Press, 2017) he gets the chance to tell not only his own stori...
42 min
9207
Michael Neagle, “America’s Forgotten Colony: Cu...
Cuba’s Isle of Pines has a curious history. In the early twentieth century, hundreds of Americans moved there, hoping to get rich as citrus growers and hoping that one day the island would become part of the United States. Michael E.
51 min
9208
Gregory Reichberg, “Thomas Aquinas on War and P...
When is war justified? What makes a just war? These are difficult questions to answer, but particularly so for Christians, followers of Jesus, who suffered violence without responding in kind. One philosopher-theologian who wrestled with these issues w...
75 min
9209
Prudence Black, “Smile, Particularly in Bad Wea...
In her book, Smile, Particularly in Bad Weather: The Era of the Australian Airline Hostess (University of Western Australia Press, 2017), Prudence Black, a Research Associate in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney,...
18 min
9210
Christopher Mele, “Race and the Politics of Dec...
Urban sociologists typically use a few grand narratives to explain the path of the American city through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. These include industrialization, mass immigration, the “Great Migration,” deindustrialization,
54 min
9211
David M. Ewalt, “Of Dice and Men: The Story of ...
David M. Ewalt‘s book Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons and Dragons and The People Who Play It (Scribner, 2013) is at once a love letter, cultural history, and succinct analysis of the roleplaying game phenomenon that started it all.
43 min
9212
Britt Rusert, “Fugitive Science: Empiricism and...
Traversing the archives of early African American literature, performance, and visual culture, Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture (New York University Press, 2017), uncovers the dynamic experiments of a group of ...
43 min
9213
Marilyn Palmer and Ian West, “Technology and th...
For the aristocracy in Britain and Ireland, country house living was dependent upon the labors of men and women who performed innumerable chores involving cooking, cleaning, and the basic operation of the household. In the 18th century, however,
59 min
9214
Carlo Rotella and Michael Ezra, eds. “The Bitte...
“Boxing has always attracted writers because it issues a standing challenge to their powers of description and imagination, and also a warning–really a promise–that no matter how many layers of meaning you peel away there will always be others beneath ...
48 min
9215
John Bohrer, “The Revolution of Robert Kennedy:...
From the moment he entered politics as the manager of John F. Kennedy’s 1952 Senate campaign, Robert Kennedy’s political career was subsumed into that of his older brother. With President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963 his grief-stricken youn...
62 min
9216
Adair Rounthwaite, “Asking the Audience: Partic...
In Asking the Audience: Participatory Art in 1980s New York (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) Adair Rounthwaite examines the roles of artist, audience and institutional context in the rise of new forms of live art during the Reagan years.
46 min
9217
Patrick J. Hayes, “The Civil War Diary of Rev. ...
During the Civil War Father James Sheeran served as a Catholic chaplain for the 14th Louisiana Infantry. Between his various responsibilities Sheeran kept a journal in which he recounted his experiences with, and observations of,
55 min
9218
Or Rosenboim, “The Emergence of Globalism: Visi...
The world order was in crisis at mid-century. Intellectuals in England and the United States perceived the rise of totalitarianism, the Second World War, the invention of the atomic bomb, the start of the Cold War,
60 min
9219
Linda Heywood, “Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warr...
In the capital of the African nation of Angola today stands a statue to Njinga, the 17th century queen of the Ndongo and Matamba kingdoms. Its presence is a testament to her skills as a diplomat, warrior, and leader of her people,
51 min
9220
Melissa L. Cooper, “Making Gullah: A History of...
Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders, Race, and the American Imagination (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) is a wide-ranging history that upends a long tradition of scrutinizing the Low Country blacks of Sapelo Island by outsiders.
53 min
9221
Ralph Young, “Dissent: The History of an Americ...
Ralph Young is a professor of history at Temple University. His book Dissent: The History of an American Idea (New York University Press, 2015) provides a fast-paced four hundred years people’s history of dissenters in America and the role they played ...
55 min
9222
Michael Bryant,” A World History of War Crimes:...
Michael Bryant’s book is both less and more ambitious than its title. He’s writing less of a history of war crimes than he is a history of the idea and concept of war crimes. He’s most interested in what people have considered a breach of the norms of ...
72 min
9223
Dorothy Ko, “The Social Life of Inkstones: Arti...
Dorothy Ko‘s new book is a must-read. Troubling the hierarchy of head over hands and the propensity to denigrate craftsmen in Chinese history, The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China (University of Washington Press,
63 min
9224
Julie Gottlieb, “‘Guilty Women’: Foreign Policy...
Historically, foreign policy has been seen as a sphere shaped and determined by the concerns of men alone. In ‘Guilty Women’: Foreign Policy and Appeasement in Inter-War Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Julie Gottlieb demonstrates the fallacy of suc...
47 min
9225
Willliam Rankin, “After the Map: Cartography, N...
Policymakers and the public clamored for maps throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Indeed, maps were a necessity for war, navigation, and countless other activities. Yet by the 1960s and 1970s,
40 min