New Books in World Affairs
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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1626
Quinn Slobodian, “Globalists: The End of Empire...
The relationship between neoliberals and the state is one that has been endlessly debated. Are neoliberals anti-statist? Or are they advocates of a strong state? The seeming vagueness of neoliberalism has led some to even call for the word’s abolition....
76 min
1627
Ellen R. Wald, “Saudi Inc.: The Arabian Kingdom...
Ellen R. Wald’s timely, well-written history of the Saudi national oil company, Saudi Inc. The Arabian Kingdom’s Pursuit of Power and Profit (Pegasus Books, 2018), is as much the story of the Saudi oil industry as it is of the ruling Al Saud family’s r...
56 min
1628
Samuel Moyn, “Not Enough: Human Rights in an Un...
Samuel Moyn’s The Last Utopia traced the evolution of the human rights revolution and argued that human rights as an ideology took the place of socialism and other utopian ideologies that failed. In his new book,
54 min
1629
D. G. Hart, “Calvinism: A History” (Yale UP, 2013)
Today I talked with D. G. Hart, an historian at Hillsdale College, MI, and the author of many books, including Calvinism: A History (Yale University Press, 2013). Listed on the front cover of Time (2009) as one of the ten “ideas changing the world righ...
39 min
1630
Fabio Lanza, “The End of Concern: Maoist China,...
If you work in Asian studies as a scholarly field, you should read Fabio Lanza’s new book. The End of Concern: Maoist China, Activism, and Asian Studies (Duke University Press, 2017) takes as its central case study the Committee of Concerned Asian Scho...
75 min
1631
Rupali Mishra, “A Business of State: Commerce, ...
Though today the public and private sectors are treated as distinct if not separate, the situation was quite different in early modern England. Back then the two were often intertwined, with one of the best examples of this being the English East India...
58 min
1632
Sean Molloy, “Kant’s International Relations: T...
What does Kant have to tell us about International Relations? In Kant’s International Relations: The Political Theology of Perpetual Peace (University of Michigan Press, 2017), Sean Molloy, a Reader in International Relations at the University of Kent,...
46 min
1633
Melani McAlister, “The Kingdom of God Has No Bo...
Melani McAlister’s The Kingdom of God Has No Borders (Oxford University Press, 2018) is a global history of evangelicals since 1945 and focuses on the complexities and contradictions that encompass the modern evangelical movement in the U.S.
58 min
1634
The Invisible Committee, “Now” (Semiotext(e), 2...
What could the communism of the future be? In Now (Semiotext(e), 2017), The Invisible Committee explores our current crisis by thinking through key critical theory questions, along with specific interventions on French and global politics.
55 min
1635
Stephen Tankel, “With Us and Against Us: How Am...
With Us and Against Us: How America’s Partners Help and Hinder the War on Terror (Columbia University Press, 2018) offers readers a fresh, insightful and new perspective on US counterterrorism cooperation with complex countries like Saudi Arabia,
59 min
1636
Molly Warsh, “American Baroque: Pearls and the ...
The early-modern Atlantic World was a chaotic place over which European empires frequently had little control. In her new book American Baroque: Pearls and the Nature of Empire, 1492-1700 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018),
50 min
1637
Ilene Grabel, “When Things Don’t Fall Apart: Gl...
We spoke with Ilene Grabel, Professor at the University of Denver and Co-director of the MA program in Global Finance, Trade & Economic Integration at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies. Ilene just published a very timely,
51 min
1638
Courtney Fullilove, “The Profit of the Earth: T...
The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture (University of Chicago Press, 2017) examines the social and political history of how agricultural knowledge was created in the 19th century. Over the course of the 19th century,
35 min
1639
Richard Ivan Jobs, “Backpack Ambassadors: How Y...
Ever go backpacking through Europe? In Backpack Ambassadors: How Youth Travel Integrated Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Richard Ivan Jobs traces the postwar cultural history of the making of Europe through the stories and perspectives of t...
56 min
1640
Heather Curtis, “Holy Humanitarians: American E...
The study of Christianity, international relations, and the United States is going through something of a boom period at the moment. Scholars are working to understand how Christians looked at the outside world at various moments in U.S. history,
56 min
1641
Victor Bulmer‑Thomas, “Empire in Retreat: The P...
A respected authority on 19th- and 20th-century Latin American and Caribbean History as well as a past Director at Chatham House, Victor Bulmer‑Thomas, CMG, OBE provides the reader with a most unusual survey and view of the United States as an ‘empire’...
41 min
1642
Jamie Stern-Weiner, “Moment of Truth: Tackling ...
Jamie Stern-Weiner’s new edited volume, Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine’s Toughest Questions (OR Books, 2018) seeks to clarify what it would take to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, to assess the prospects of doing so,
36 min
1643
Guy Laron, “The Six-Day War: The Breaking of th...
The title of Guy Laron’s The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East (Yale University Press, 2017) says it all. As Laron notes in this interview, the fact that the war led to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East is an accepted interpretation of th...
53 min
1644
Sebastian Conrad, “What is Global History?” (Pr...
The last two decades have seen a surge in global histories, be they global histories of food, of ideas, or social movements. But why this move away from strictly national and regional histories? Is it because we think of ourselves as an increasingly g...
57 min
1645
Matthew Casey, “Empire’s Guestworkers: Haitian ...
In the early 20th century, thousands of Haitian men, women and children traveled to Cuba in search of work and wages. In Matthew Casey’s, Empire’s Guestworkers: Haitian Migrants in Cuba During the Age of US Occupation (Cambridge University Press,
43 min
1646
Frank L. Holt, “The Treasures of Alexander the ...
Most studies of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander III focus on the military aspects of his life and reign. Yet Alexander’s campaigns would not have been possible had it not been for the enormous plunder his armies seized in their conquests.
46 min
1647
Craig Symonds, “World War II at Sea: A Global H...
Though there are numerous books about the naval history of the Second World War, very few of them attempt to cover the span of the conflict within the confines of a single volume. Craig Symonds undertakes this challenge in his book World War II at Sea:...
53 min
1648
Zoltan Pall, “Salafism in Lebanon: Local and Tr...
Zoltan Pall‘s Salafism in Lebanon: Local and Transnational Movements (Cambridge University Press, 2018), a just published ethnographic investigation of the rise of Salafism among Lebanese Sunni Muslims is far more than a study of an ultra-conservative ...
51 min
1649
Sarah Snyder, “From Selma to Moscow: How Human ...
Human rights as a concern in U.S. foreign policy and international politics has been well-documented, particularly in studies of the Carter Administration. However, how human rights emerged as an issue in U.S.
55 min
1650
Gordon Mathews, “The World in Guangzhou: Africa...
When we think of globalization and global cities, we might be inclined to think of New York or London. Yet in recent years, Guangzhou, the central manufacturing node in the world, has acted as a magnet for foreign traders.
52 min