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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10601
Eric Rath, “Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Ja...
Cuisine in early modern Japan was experienced and negotiated through literature and ritual, and the uneaten or inedible was often as important as what was actually consumed. Eric Rath‘s recent book Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan (University of ...
79 min
10602
Michael Neiberg, “Dance of the Furies: Europe a...
As we close in on the centennial of the First World War, no doubt there will be a flood of new interpretations and “hidden histories” of the conflict. Many books will certainly promise much, but in the end deliver little.
47 min
10603
Louis Siegelbaum, “Cars for Comrades: The Life ...
A recent editorial in the Moscow Times declared that in Moscow “the car is king.” Indeed, one word Muscovites constantly mutter is probka (traffic jam). The boom in car ownership is transforming Russian life itself,
60 min
10604
Anthony Penna, “The Human Footprint: A Global E...
One of the most disturbing insights made by practitioners of “Big History” is that the distinction between geologic time and human time has collapsed in our era. The forces that drove geologic time–plate tectonics,
62 min
10605
Dov Zakheim, “A Vulcan’s Tale: How the Bush Adm...
In his new book, A Vulcan’s Tale: How the Bush Administration Mismanaged the Reconstruction of Afghanistan (Brookings Institution Press, 2011) Dov Zakheim, former chief financial officer for the U.S. Department of Defense,
44 min
10606
Deborah Whaley, “Disciplining Women: Alpha Kapp...
Deborah Whaley’s new book Disciplining Women: Alpha Kappa Alpha, Black Counterpublics, and the Cultural Politics of Black Sororities (SUNY Press, 2010) may be the first full-length study of a Black Greek-Letter Organization (BGLO) written by a non-BGLO...
53 min
10607
Malinda Lowery, “Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow...
When an Atlantic Coastline Railroad train pulled into Red Springs, North Carolina, the conductor faced a difficult dilemma. Whom to allow in coach class with whites and whom to relegate to the back? In an effort to clarify the matter,
61 min
10608
Robert Pasnau, “Metaphysical Themes: 1274-1671”...
What was the scholastic metaphysical tradition of the later Middle Ages, and why did it come “crashing down as quickly and completely” as it did towards the end of the 17th Century? Why was the year 1347 a “milestone in the history of philosophy”?
62 min
10609
Tony Collins, “A Social History of English Rugb...
Most modern sports have some creation myth that usually links them to an almost-sacred place of origin. Baseball has its Cooperstown. Golf its St. Andrews. Basketball its Springfield College. If you are a football fan,
75 min
10610
Nile Green, “Bombay Islam: The Religious Econom...
Bombay (Mumbai), India, is a city that has never lacked chroniclers from Rudyard Kipling to Salman Rushdie to Suketu Mehta, bards of pluralism have written about Bombay’s divers religions and peoples and the interactions between them.
66 min
10611
Dov Zakheim, "A Vulcan's Tale: How the Bush Adm...
An interview with Dov Zakheim
44 min
10612
Konrad H. Jarausch, “Reluctant Accomplice: A We...
Konrad H. Jarausch, whose varied and important works on German history have been required reading for scholars for several decades, has published Reluctant Accomplice: A Wehrmacht Soldier’s Letters from the Eastern Front (Princeton University Press,
55 min
10613
Michael Kevaak, “Becoming Yellow: A Short Histo...
In the course of his concise and clearly written new book Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking (Princeton University Press, 2011), Michael Keevak investigates the emergence of a “yellow” and “Mongolian” East Asian identity in eighteenth-...
67 min
10614
Daniel Treisman, “The Return: Russia’s Journey ...
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, journalists, academics, and policymakers have sought to make sense of post-Soviet Russia. Is Russia an emerging or retrograde democracy? A free-market or crony capitalism?
67 min
10615
Todd Denault, “The Greatest Game: The Montreal ...
When sports fans list the greatest games, they talk about close contests, outstanding performances, and dramatic finishes. Think of game six of the 1975 World Series between the Red Sox and the Reds, or Boston College’s 47-45 win over the University of...
73 min
10616
Robert Parthesius, “Dutch Ships in Tropical Wat...
The Dutch broke the Portuguese commercial and colonizing monopoly in the East in 1595; the seal might have been said to have been set on this triumph when they took over the port of Melaka in 1641, effectively replacing the Portuguese as the masters of...
66 min
10617
Katharine E. McGregor, “History in Uniform: Mil...
Nugroho Notosusanto (1930-1985) never pursued a military career; but all the same he did his bit for the Indonesian armed forces. He was co-opted into the Armed Forces History Centre as a young academic, and dedicated the greater part of his life to wr...
66 min
10618
Don Van Natta, Jr., “Wonder Girl: The Magnifice...
My older daughter is twelve years old. Like many girls her age, she has spent countless hours on the soccer field. She has played volleyball and run cross-country at her school. She was the catcher for her Little League baseball team.
55 min
10619
Christopher Krebs, “A Most Dangerous Book: Taci...
Being a historian is a bit of a slog: years in graduate school, more years in dusty libraries and archives, and even more years teaching students who sometimes don’t seem interested in learning what you have to teach.
78 min
10620
Christopher DeRosa, “Political Indoctrination i...
One of the greatest challenges American military leaders have faced since the American Revolution has been to motivate citizens to forego their own sense of private identity in favor of the collective identity needed to wage war effectively.
67 min
10621
Lori Meeks, “Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Fem...
Scholars have long been fascinated by the Kamakura era (1185-1333) of Japanese history, a period that saw the emergence of many distinctively Japanese forms of Buddhism. And while a lot of this attention overshadows other equally important periods of J...
56 min
10622
Richard C. Hall, “The Modern Balkans: A History...
Some parts of the world seem to suffer from rather too much history. The Balkans, that mountainous peninsula situated between the Black Sea and the Adriatic, is most certainly one of them. Perhaps it’s because the Balkans stands on so many of Europe’s ...
55 min
10623
Eric C. Schneider, “Smack: Heroin and the Ameri...
When I arrived at college in the early 1980s, drugs were cool, music was cool, and drug-music was especially cool. The coolest of the cool drug-music bands was The Velvet Underground. They were from the mean streets of New York City (The Doors were fro...
73 min
10624
Tilman Nachtman, “Nabobs: Empire and Identity i...
The many penniless English servants of the East India Company who landed at Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta in the eighteenth-century were not terribly interested in uplifting the natives. They were, however, very keen to enrich themselves. And,
66 min
10625
Gregory Koger, “Filibustering: A Political Hist...
In recent months, we’ve been hearing a lot of talk about filibustering in the Senate, about how Senate Democrats acquired a filibuster-proof majority in the 2008 elections only to lose it by the midterm elections of 2010 when Scott Brown was elected to...
60 min