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
9676
Jennifer Bain, “Hildegard of Bingen and Musical...
Hildegard of Bingen was many things: a religious leader, a prolific letter-writer, a visionary prophet, possibly a compiler of medical lore, and certainly one of the most important composers of the 12th century. In recent years,
77 min
9677
Joan Judge, “Republican Lens: Gender, Visuality...
Joan Judge‘s wonderful new book takes readers into the pages of the Funu shibao (the Women’s Eastern Times), a “Shanghai-based, nationally distributed, protocommercial, gendered journal that was closely attuned to the concerns of its readers,
61 min
9678
Arthur Dudney, “Delhi: Pages From A Forgotten H...
Delhi: Pages From A Forgotten History (Hay House India, 2015) by Arthur Dudney tells the story of India’s capital and beyond through the lens of Persian literary culture. A lively read written for a mass readership,
69 min
9679
Patrick Bowen, “A History of Conversion to Isla...
In the current political moment there is widespread anti-Muslim rhetoric and it would be easy to conclude that a large portion of white Americans see Islam at odds with American values. But a longer view of history reveals a long-standing appreciation ...
63 min
9680
Luke Nichter and Douglas Brinkley, “The Nixon T...
Luke Nichter and Douglas Brinkley are the editors of The Nixon Tapes: 1973 (Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt 2015). Nichter is associate professor of history at Texas A&M University and Brinkley is professor of history at Rice University.
16 min
9681
Howard Brick and Christopher Phelps, “Radicals ...
Christopher Phelps is an associate professor at the University of Nottingham and co-author of Radicals in America: The U.S. Left since the Second World War (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Phelps and Howard Brick have written a comprehensive history...
62 min
9682
Eric Foner, “Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden His...
In this podcast I talk with Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University about his book, Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad (W. W. Norton & Company, 2015). Per the book jacket,
46 min
9683
James A. Benn, “Tea in China: A Religious and C...
James A. Benn‘s new book is a history of tea as a religious and cultural commodity in China before it became a global commodity in the nineteenth century. Focusing on the Tang and Song dynasties (with brief extensions earlier and later),
61 min
9684
Erik Linstrum, “Ruling Minds: Psychology in the...
In Ruling Minds: Psychology in the British Empire (Harvard University Press, 2016), Erik Linstrum examines how the field of psychology was employed in the service of empire. Linstrum explores the careers of scientists sent to the South Pacific, India,
57 min
9685
Heath W. Carter, “Union Made: Working People an...
Heath W. Carter‘s new book Union Made: Working People and the Rise of Social Christianity in Chicago (Oxford University Press, 2015) offers a bold interpretation of the origins of the American Social Gospel by highlighting the role of labor in both art...
62 min
9686
Christopher Rea, “The Age of Irreverence: A New...
Christopher Rea‘s new book explores five kinds of laughter that emerged from the tumultuous first decades of China’s twentieth century: jokes, play, mockery, farce, and humor. The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China (University of Ca...
68 min
9687
John Casey, “The Nonprofit World: Civil Society...
The nonprofit sector is growing, not just in the United States, but globally. In The Nonprofit World: Civil Society and the Rise of the Nonprofit Sector (Kumarian Press, 2015), John Casey demonstrates the extent to which nonprofits,
17 min
9688
John M. Kinder, “Paying with Their Bodies: Amer...
76 min
9689
Janet Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World: ...
Janet Gyatso‘s new book is a masterfully researched, compellingly written, and gorgeously illustrated history of medicine in early modern Tibet that looks carefully at the relationships between medicine and religion in this context.
67 min
9690
Sarah Maza, “Violette Noziere: A Story of Murde...
On August 21, 1933, the teenaged Violette Noziere attempted to kill both her parents. At first, seemingly so clearcut, the case ultimately came to be characterized by a “troubling ambiguity” that unsettled Paris for years.
47 min
9691
Paul Bjerk, “Building a Peaceful Nation: Julius...
Let’s begin with what Paul Bjerk’s new book isn’t: “a biography or evaluation of Julius Nyerere.” Instead, according to a letter that Bjerk sent me in advance of our interview, Building a Peaceful Nation: Julius Nyerere and the Establishment of Soverei...
82 min
9692
Guntis Smidchens, “The Power of Song: Nonviolen...
In the late 1980s, the Baltic Soviet Social Republics seemed to explode into song as Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian national movements challenged Soviet rule. The leaders of each of these movements espoused nonviolent principles,
63 min
9693
Daniel Tortora, "Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees,...
An interview with Daniel Tortora
56 min
9694
Michael Kimmel, “Angry White Men: American Masc...
Michael Kimmel is the Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at Stony Brook University. He is also executive director of the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities. His book Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an...
44 min
9695
Peter Thorsheim, “Waste into Weapons: Recycling...
In Waste into Weapons: Recycling in Britain during the Second World War (Cambridge University Press 2015), Peter Thorsheim explores the role of waste and recycling in Britain under conditions of total war. Thorsheim argues wartime salvage efforts linke...
57 min
9696
Julie M. Weise, “Corazon de Dixie: Mexicanos in...
Julie M. Weise‘s new book Corazon de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South Since 1910 (UNC Press, 2015) is the first book to comprehensively document Mexicans’ and Mexican Americans’ long history of migration to the U.S. South.
64 min
9697
Shane Strate, “The Lost Territories: Thailand’s...
In The Lost Territories: Thailand’s History of National Humiliation(University of Hawaii Press, 2015), Shane Strate tracks the movements of two competing narratives of national identity in nineteenth and twentieth-century Siam, subsequently Thailand.
58 min
9698
Brian P. Copenhaver, “Magic in Western Culture:...
Belief in magic was pervasive in Greco-Roman times, persisted through the Renaissance, and then fell off the map of intellectual respectability in the Enlightenment. What happened? Why did it become embarrassing for Isaac Newton to have sought the phil...
69 min
9699
Francesca Bray et al.,eds., “Rice: Global Netwo...
The new edited volume by Francesca Bray, Peter Coclanis, Edda Fields-Black and Dagmar Schafer is a wonderfully interdisciplinary global history of rice, rooted in specific local cases, that spans 15 chapters written by specialists in the histories of A...
69 min
9700
Ted Merwin, “Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed Hi...
In Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli (New York University Press, 2015), Ted Merwin, Associate Professor of Religion and Judaic Studies at Dickinson College, serves up the first full-length history of the New York Jewish deli.
29 min