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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10426
Mark Steinberg, “St. Petersburg: Fin de Siecle”...
Public discourse in the final decade of Imperial Russia was dominated by images of darkness and dread. Discussions of “these times” and “times of trouble” captured the sense that Russians were living on the “edge of abyss” from which there was “no exit...
60 min
10427
Par Cassel, “Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritor...
Extraterritoriality was not grafted whole onto East Asian societies: it developed over time and in a relationship with local precedents, institutions, and understandings of power. Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteent...
66 min
10428
Brendan C. Lindsay, “Murder State: California’s...
Brendan C. Lindsay‘s impressive if deeply troubling new book centers on two concepts long considered anathema: democracy and genocide. One is an ideal of self-government, the other history’s most unspeakable crime. Yet as Lindsay deftly describes,
57 min
10429
Guy Fraser-Sampson, “Cricket at the Crossroads:...
During the 1960s attendance fell at cricket grounds across England. Just as the Church of England lost members in droves in the same period, it appeared that this other pillar of English tradition was becoming irrelevant amidst the social and cultural ...
46 min
10430
James M. Banner, Jr., “Being a Historian: An In...
What is a historian? How are they trained? What do they do? What should they do? Are they doing it well? These important questions addressed in James M. Banner, Jr.‘s excellent Being a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History (Ca...
50 min
10431
Andrew P. Haley, "Turning the Tables: Restauran...
An interview with Andrew P. Haley
50 min
10432
Alan Christy (trans.), Amino Yoshihiko, “Rethin...
We don’t often make the chance to properly acknowledge the importance of translation to the understanding of history, let alone to talk about it at any length. Alan Christy has done a wonderful service in his careful, elegant,
71 min
10433
Cory MacLauchlin, “Butterfly in the Typewriter:...
If you’ve spent any time in New Orleans, you can appreciate the challenge of putting the city’s joie de vivre into words.However, as a New Orleans native, John Kennedy Toole was steeped in the traditions and flavor of his hometown and, therefore,
43 min
10434
Gregory Crouch, “China’s Wings” (Bantam Books, ...
When I was a kid I loved the movie “The Flying Tigers.” You know, the one with John Wayne about the intrepid American volunteers sent to China to fight the Japanese before the United States really could fight the Japanese.
53 min
10435
Carolien Stolte, “Philip Angel’s Deex-Autaers: ...
In 1658, a Dutch East India Company merchant by the name of Philip Angel presented a gift manuscript to Company Director Carel Hartsinck. It was intended to get into Hartsinck’s good books; Angel had been recalled to the VOC-headquarters at Batavia in ...
66 min
10436
Marnie Anderson, “A Place in Public: Women’s Ri...
In the late nineteenth century the Japanese elite embarked on an aggressive, ambitious program of modernization known in the West as the “Meiji Restoration.” In a remarkably short period of time, they transformed Japan: what was a thoroughly traditiona...
45 min
10437
Miryam Sas, “Experimental Arts in Postwar Japan...
Miryam Sas’ Experimental Arts in Postwar Japan: Moments of Encounter, Engagement, and Imagined Return (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011) is an exceptionally rich study that has a great deal to offer scholars across the humanities.
63 min
10438
Anne M. Blackburn, “Locations of Buddhism: Colo...
In this important contribution to both the study of South Asian Buddhism as well the burgeoning field of Buddhist modernity, Anne Blackburn‘s Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka (The University of Chicago Press,
59 min
10439
Angela Pulley Hudson, “Creek Paths and Federal ...
Most historians have understood Native American history through the use of the “middle ground” metaphor. Notably, historian Richard White used this metaphor to explain the social relationships between Native American with European Americans in the Grea...
31 min
10440
Kenneth Brashier, “Ancestral Memory in Early Ch...
If New Books in East Asian Studies were an All-Powerful Force of Good In The Universe and if one of the perks that came along with being an All-Powerful Force of Good In The Universe were to ensure that certain books got major awards,
73 min
10441
Robert Bucholz and Joseph Ward, “London: A Soci...
Not long ago I had a discussion (prompted, I think, by a poll in The Economist) with my colleague about which city on earth could boast that it was the true ‘World City’. We threw around a couple of ideas – it seems obligatory to mention something conn...
45 min
10442
Minkah Makalani, “In the Cause of Freedom: Radi...
Minkah Makalani is the author of a new intellectual history on the efforts of early twentieth century black radicals to organize an international movement, one that would address both racial and class oppression around the globe.
65 min
10443
Avner Ben Zaken, “Cross-Cultural Scientific Exc...
In Cross-Cultural Scientific Exchanges in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1560-1660 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010) and Reading Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan: A Cross-Cultural History of Autodidacticism (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010),
67 min
10444
Steven H. Jaffe, “New York at War: Four Centuri...
Many people – including myself – are no doubt surprised to learn about New York City’s rich four hundred year military history. I teach in Flushing, New York, deep in the heart of Queens, at one of the country’s largest public universities.
87 min
10445
Roel Sterckx, “Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in...
Roel Sterckx‘s book Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in Early China (Cambridge University Press, 2011) had me at drunken seances. (Drunken seances! Do you really need another excuse to read it?) It is a compelling and engaging read,
68 min
10446
Lisa Bier, “Fighting the Current: The Rise of A...
American women dominated the swimming competition at the London Olympics, earning a total of sixteen medals in seventeen events. This template of success was set already at the 1920 Games, the first Olympics in which American women swimmers competed.
48 min
10447
Kate Buford, “Native American Son: The Life and...
If you watched the U.S. broadcast of the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony, you may have heard Matt Lauer and Bob Costas mention Jim Thorpe during Sweden’s entrance. Thorpe, arguably the best all-around athlete in U.S. history,
33 min
10448
John Burnham, “After Freud Left: A Century of P...
Perhaps most of us interested in psychoanalysis in the United States have the idea that, in 1909, when Freud lectured at Clark University, his first and only visit to this country, the profession was launched.
54 min
10449
Michael Haykin, “The Reformers and Puritans as ...
Michael Haykin‘s book The Reformers and Puritans as Spiritual Mentors (Joshua Press, 2012) attempts to create a “useable past” by highlighting the lives of several Reformers and Puritans. Dr. Haykin combines the narrative of the past with issues that a...
35 min
10450
Isaac Campos, “Home Grown: Marijuana and the Or...
Isaac Campos is the author of Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs (University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Campos is an assistant professor of history at the University of Cincinnati.
37 min