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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10326
John Dickie, “Mafia Brotherhoods: The Rise of t...
John Dickie is an historian of Italian organized crime who has a fairly unique perspective as he writes in English but is able to read the Italian sources. This allows him to bring new points of view and information to Anglo-American audiences.
49 min
10327
Azar Gat, “Nations: The Long History and Deep R...
When I went to college long ago, everyone had to read Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto (1848). I think I read it in half-a-dozen classes. Today Marx is out. Benedict Anderson, however, is in. You’d be hard-pressed to get a college degree without re...
51 min
10328
Nicholas Popper, Walter Ralegh’s History of the...
Nicholas Popper‘s new book is a thoughtfully crafted and rich contribution to early modern studies, to the history of history, and to the history of science. Walter Ralegh’s History of the World and the Historical Culture of the Late Renaissance (Unive...
69 min
10329
Jonathan E. Abel, “Redacted: The Archives of Ce...
There is much to love about Jonathan Abel‘s new book. Redacted: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan (University of California Press, 2012) brilliantly takes readers into the performance of different modes of censorship in the early and mid-twe...
74 min
10330
Andrew Newman, “On Records: Delaware Indians, C...
Can the spoken word be a reliable record of past events? For many Native people, the answer is unequivocally affirmative. Histories of family, tribe, and nation, narratives of origin and migration, foodways and ceremonies,
58 min
10331
Lisa Chaney, “Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life”
As a reader, biography offers not simply an opportunity to read about the life of another, but also an invitation to ponder the choices that are available in life, the choices that comprise a life. Towards the end of Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life(Pengu...
51 min
10332
Cheryl Misak, “The American Pragmatists” (Oxfor...
Pragmatism is American’s home-grown philosophy, but it is not widely understood. This partly is due to the fact that pragmatism emerged out of deep philosophical disputes among its earliest proponents: Charles Sanders Peirce, William James,
66 min
10333
Sean Cocco, “Watching Vesuvius: A History of Sc...
The story starts on a high-speed train and ends with six men in a crater, with hundreds of years and a number of explosions in between. Sean Cocco‘s rich new book uses Vesuvius as a focal point for exploring the histories of natural history, travel,
67 min
10334
Mary Heimann, “Czechoslovakia: The State That F...
Americans love Prague. They visit and have even moved there in considerable numbers. They like the place for a lot of reasons. One is that Prague is a very beautiful city. But another is that the Czech Republic has a widespread reputation in the U.S.
63 min
10335
Aminda M. Smith, “Thought Reform and China’s Da...
Aminda M. Smith‘s fascinating new book traces the history of transformations in the way that the PRC understood social control, deviance, and thought reform. Thought Reform and China’s Dangerous Classes: Reeducation, Resistance,
70 min
10336
Lawrence M. Principe, “The Secrets of Alchemy” ...
What is alchemy? Who were the alchemists, what did they believe and do and dream, and what did they accomplish? Lawrence M. Principe‘s new book explores these questions and some possible answers to them in a wonderfully written and argued introduction ...
63 min
10337
Melissa R. Klapper, “Ballots, Babies, and Banne...
Many people have probably heard of Betty Friedan, Bela Abzug, Gloria Steinem, and Andrea Dworkin, all stars of Second Wave Feminism. They were also all Jewish (by heritage if not faith). As Melissa R. Klapper shows in her new book Ballots, Babies,
56 min
10338
Stanley Payne, “The Spanish Civil War” (Cambrid...
The Spanish Civil War is one of those events that I have always felt I should know more about. Thanks to Stanley Payne‘s concise, lucid new work on the subject, I feel less that way. I do not exaggerate when I say that Payne,
55 min
10339
Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, “American Umpire” (Har...
Is there an “American Empire?” A lot of people on the Left say “yes.” Actually, a lot of people on the Right say “yes” too. But Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman says “no.” In her stimulating new treatment of the history of American foreign policy American Umpir...
54 min
10340
Joy Wiltenburg, “Crime & Culture in Early Moder...
Many people complain about sensationalism in the press. If a man slaughters his entire family, a jilted lover kills her erstwhile boyfriend, or a high school student murders several of his classmates, it’s going to be “all over the news.
46 min
10341
Endymion Wilkinson, “Chinese History: A New Man...
There are some books that are so fundamental to work in an academic field that practitioners refer to them simply by the author’s last name. Many of us had respectfully and affectionately referred to Endymion Wilkinson‘s Chinese History: A Manual,
70 min
10342
Eric Lohr, “Russian Citizenship: From Empire to...
Russians have a reputation for xenophobia, that is, it’s said they don’t much like foreigners. According to Eric Lohr‘s new book, Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union (Harvard University Press, 2012),
58 min
10343
Gennifer Weisenfeld, “Imaging Disaster: Tokyo a...
Gennifer Weisenfeld‘s gorgeous and thoughtful new book explores the visual culture that emerged in the wake of the Kanto earthquake of 1923. Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 (University of California Pr...
66 min
10344
Roslyn Weiss, “Philosophers in the Republic” (C...
Contemporary philosophers still wrestle mightily with Plato’s Republic. A common reading has it that in the Republic, Plato’s character Socrates defends a conception of justice according to which reason should rule the soul and philosophers should rule...
66 min
10345
John E. Murray, “The Charleston Orphan House” (...
There were always and will always be orphans. The question is what to do with them. In his terrific new book The Charleston Orphan House: Children’s Lives in the First Public Orphanage in America (University of Chicago Press, 2013),
57 min
10346
Bernard Kelly, “Returning Home: Irish Ex-Servic...
The Republic of Ireland (aka The Irish Free State, Eire) declared neutrality during the Second World War. That wasn’t particularly unusual: Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland did too. Yet around 60,000 “neutral” Irish volunteered to fight on one ...
55 min
10347
Willem J. M. Levelt, “A History of Psycholingui...
The only disappointment with A History of Psycholinguistics: The Pre-Chomskyan Era (Oxford UP, 2012) is that, as the subtitle says, the story it tells stops at the cognitive revolution, before Pim Levelt is himself a major player in psycholinguistics.
56 min
10348
E. C. Spary, “Eating the Enlightenment: Food an...
By focusing on food and eating from the dinner table to the laboratory, E. C. Spary‘s new book shows how an increasingly public culture of knowledge shaped the daily lives of literate Parisians in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
63 min
10349
Carl Rollyson, “Hollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews”...
Dana Andrews was one of the major films stars of the 1940s, and yet he was never nominated for an Academy Award. The posterboy for the ‘male mask’ archetype that typified the decade, Andrews portrayed the ‘masculine ideal of steely impassivity’ in such...
54 min
10350
R. M. Douglas, “Orderly and Humane: The Expulsi...
I imagine everyone who listens to this podcast knows about the Nazi effort to remake Central and Eastern Europe by expelling and murdering massive numbers of Slavs, Jews, and Gypsies. The results, of course, were catastrophic.
58 min