New Books in World Affairs

Interviews with Scholars of Global Affairs about their New Books

Society & Culture
History
1601
Jade Doskow, “Lost Utopias” (Black Dog Publishi...
Since 2007, American photographer Jade Doskow has been documenting the remains of World’s Fair sites, once iconic global attractions that have often been repurposed for less noble aspirations or neglected and fallen into decay.
55 min
1602
Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, “Am...
A decade and a half of exhausting wars, punishing economic setbacks, and fast-rising rivals has called into question America’s fundamental position and purpose in world politics. Will the US continue to be the only superpower in the international syste...
64 min
1603
Isabelle Hesse, “The Politics of Jewishness in ...
In The Politics of Jewishness in Contemporary World Literature: The Holocaust, Zionism and Colonialism (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), Isabelle Hesse, Lecturer in English at the University of Sydney, reads a wide range of novels from post-war Germany to I...
22 min
1604
Sandra Harding, “Objectivity and Diversity: A N...
Is the scientific value of objectivity in conflict with the social justice commitment to diversity? In her latest book, Objectivity and Diversity: A New Logic of Scientific Inquiry (University of Chicago Press, 2015),
68 min
1605
Neil Kent, “Crimea: A History” (Hurst/Oxford UP...
In 2014 Crimea shaped the headlines much as it did some 160 years ago, when the Crimean War pitted Britain, France and Turkey against Russia. Yet few books have been published on the history of the peninsula. For many readers,
64 min
1606
Marc-William Palen, “The ‘Conspiracy’ of Free T...
Accounts of late-nineteenth-century US expansionism commonly refer to an open-door empire and an imperialism spurred by belief in free trade. In his new book The “Conspiracy” of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle over Empire and Economic Globaliza...
40 min
1607
Jean Chalaby, “The Format Age: Television’s Ent...
Television had been transformed by the rise of the format. In The Format Age: Television’s Entertainment Revolution Jean Chalaby, Professor of International Communication at City University London, charts the beginnings of the format for TV shows,
40 min
1608
Bridget Conley-Zilkic, ed. “How Mass Atrocities...
If you want to know how to bring future mass atrocities to an end, the best place to start is to examine how past mass atrocities have ended. This simple piece of logic is at the heart of Bridget Conley-Zilkic’s new edited collection titled How Mass At...
63 min
1609
Jules Boykoff, “Power Games: A Political Histor...
Since the birth of the modern Olympics movement in the late nineteenth century, its leaders have attempted to maintain a strict separation of athletics and politics. Former International Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage once stated,
59 min
1610
Dov Waxman, “Trouble in the Tribe: The American...
In Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel (Princeton University Press, 2016), Dov Waxman, professor of political science, international affairs, and Israel studies at Northeastern University,
29 min
1611
Rachel Price, “Planet/Cuba: Art, Culture and th...
Cuban artists have been very productive this past decade, producing stunning and surprising works against a backdrop of political and economic transformation as well as continuing scarcity on the island. Planet/Cuba: Art,
45 min
1612
Scott Straus, “Fundamentals of Genocide and Mas...
This podcast is the first of a new occasional series of interviews addressing the question of responding to mass atrocities and genocide. Later in the summer I’ll interview Bridget Conley-Zilkic, James Waller and Carrie Booth Walling. First up,
72 min
1613
Vanessa Ogle, “The Global Transformation of Tim...
From the 1880s onward, Beirut-based calendars and almanacs were in high demand as they packaged at least four different calendars into one, including: “the reformed Gregorian calendar; the unreformed, Julian calendar used by various churches of the Eas...
73 min
1614
William Blum, “America’s Deadliest Export: Demo...
Since World War II, the United States has repeatedly posited itself as a defender of democracy, using its military might to promote freedom abroad even as it ascended to the status of the world’s only superpower.
31 min
1615
Susan Turner Haynes, “Chinese Nuclear Prolifera...
While the world’s attention is focused on the nuclearization of North Korea and Iran and the nuclear brinkmanship between India and Pakistan, China is believed to have doubled the size of its nuclear arsenal, making it the forgotten nuclear power,
54 min
1616
Elizabeth Hurd, “Beyond Religious Freedom: The ...
Among the most frequent demands made of Islam and Muslims today is to become more moderate. But what counts as moderate and who will decide so are questions with less than obvious answers. In her timely and politically urgent new book Beyond Religious ...
46 min
1617
Ayten Gundogdu, “Rightlessness in an Age of Rig...
How does one “rethink and revise the key concepts of Hannah Arendt’s political theory in light of the struggles of asylum seekers, refugees, and undocumented immigrants” (207)? In her new book Rightlessness in An Age of Rights: Hannah Arendt and the Co...
69 min
1618
Gregory F. Domber, “Empowering Revolution: Amer...
As the most populous country in Eastern Europe as well as the birthplace of the largest anticommunist dissident movement, Poland is crucial in understanding the end of the Cold War. During the 1980s, both the United States and the Soviet Union vied for...
85 min
1619
Marc Lynch, “The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and A...
Marc Lynch is the author of The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East (Public Affairs, 2016). Lynch is a professor of political science at George Washington University and blogs at the Monkey Cage. From Tunisia to Egypt to Syria,
20 min
1620
Charles Keith, “Catholic Vietnam: A Church from...
The relationship between religion, imperialism, and national identity can be quite complex. At the same time, nationalist readings of history, particularly when they are combined with other ideological perspectives,
67 min
1621
Cass Sunstein, “The World According to Star War...
Cass Sunstein‘s son, Declan, got dad hooked on Star Wars. And dad, a Harvard Law professor, ended up writing a book about it. “If you’d told me a year ago that I’d write a book about Star Wars,” Sunstein recently told the Boston Globe,
32 min
1622
Rajika Bhandari and Mirka Martel, “Social Justi...
Rajika Bhandari, Deputy Vice President, Research and Evaluation Institute of International Education (IIE), and Mirka Martel, Assistant Director of Research and Evaluation at IIE, join New Books in Education to discuss a new report from the organizatio...
26 min
1623
Ho-fung Hung, “The China Boom: Why China Will N...
Ho-fung Hung‘s new book has two main goals: to to outline the historical origins of Chinas capitalist boom and the social and political formations in the 1980s that gave rise to this boom, and to explore the global effects of Chinas capitalist boom and...
67 min
1624
Amy Randall, “Genocide and Gender in the Twenti...
Any time I prepare to do an interview, I make sure I read the blurb on the back of the book. One of the blurbs on the back cover of Amy Randall’s superb new collection Genocide and Gender in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Survey (Bloomsbury Acade...
61 min
1625
Malcolm James, “Urban Multiculture: Youth, Poli...
How is youth culture changing in a globalised city? In Urban Multiculture: Youth, Politics and Transformations in a Global City Malcolm James, a lecturer at the University of Sussex, introduces the concept of Urban Multiculture as a framework for under...
39 min