New Books in World Affairs

Interviews with Scholars of Global Affairs about their New Books

Society & Culture
History
1651
Mahon Murphy, “Colonial Captivity during the Fi...
The First World War was not limited the trenches on the Western Front. Nor was the system of internment camps it spawned. In his new book, Colonial Captivity during the First World War: Internment and the Fall of the German Empire,
56 min
1652
Harrod Suarez, “The Work of Mothering: Globaliz...
Harrod Suarez‘s new book The Work of Mothering: Globalization and the Filipino Diaspora (University of Illinois Press, 2017) focuses on the domestic workers that make up around a third of all overseas Filipino/a workers,
60 min
1653
Brian Jenkins, “Lord Lyons: A Diplomat in an Ag...
Described upon his death in 1887 as the ideal diplomatist, Richard Lyons served Great Britain in a variety of roles over the course of a long and distinguished career. In Lord Lyons: A Diplomat in an Age of Nationalism and War (McGill-Queen’s Universit...
54 min
1654
Laura Engelstein, “Russia in Flames: War, Revol...
Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914-1921 (Oxford University Press, 2017) is a masterful account of the Russian revolutionary era by Laura Engelstein, Professor Emerita at Yale University. Spanning the pre-revolutionary period immediately...
63 min
1655
Andy Bruno, “The Nature of Soviet Power: An Arc...
What can be learned about the Soviet Union by viewing it through an environmental lens? What would an environmental history teach us about power in the Soviet system? What lessons can be drawn from the environmental experience of Soviet communism?
55 min
1656
David Cannadine, “Victorious Century: The Unite...
Sir David Cannadine, Professor of History at Princeton University, president of the British Academy, and the general editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, narrates the century of Pax Britannica in the Victorious Century: The United Kin...
41 min
1657
David Stevenson, “1917: War, Peace, and Revolut...
In 1917: War, Peace, and Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2018), David Stevenson examines a pivotal chapter of the First World War. Two and a half years of death and destruction had brought the belligerents to new nadirs of attrition and zeniths of...
54 min
1658
Alexandra Dellios, “Histories of Controversy: B...
In her new book, Histories of Controversy: Bonegilla Migrant Centre (Melbourne University Publishing, 2017), Alexandra Dellios, a Lecturer in Heritage Studies at the Australian National University, provides a critical reassessment of Bonegilla,
14 min
1659
Herman Salton, “Dangerous Diplomacy: Bureaucrac...
I was in graduate school during Bosnia and Rwanda. Like everyone else, I watched the video footage and journalistic accounts that came from these two zones of atrocity. Like everyone else, I wondered how humans could do such things to each other.
83 min
1660
Andrew McKevitt, “Consuming Japan: Popular Cult...
In Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America (UNC Press, 2017), Andrew McKevitt explores the intense and ultimately fleeting moment in 1980s America when the future looked Japanese.
40 min
1661
Stewart Patrick, “The Sovereignty Wars: Reconci...
The Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the World (Brookings Institution Press, 2017) is an important and in depth study of American interaction with the intricate concept of Sovereignty, from the Founding Fathers to Donald Trump.
64 min
1662
April Mayes, “The Mulatto Republic: Class, Race...
In a perceptive challenge to longstanding assumptions about Dominican anti-Haitianism, April J. Mayes finds fresh ways to think about the production of race in late 19th and 20th century Dominican Republic.
47 min
1663
miriam cooke, “Dancing in Damascus: Creativity,...
The Syrian Revolution, which began in March 2011, has since resulted in what can be described as a civil war, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and the forced migrations of millions of Syrians.
61 min
1664
Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, “The Emergence of Iranian Na...
Over the past century, virtually every Iranian—whether living in Iran or in the diaspora—has been exposed, to one degree or another, to certain commonly held nationalistic beliefs about what it means to be Iranian.
67 min
1665
Michel Leiris, “Phantom Africa” (Seagull Books,...
Between 1931 and 1933, French writer Michel Leiris participated in a state-sponsored expedition to document the cultural practices of people in west and east Africa. The Mission Dakar-Djibouti employed some questionable,
76 min
1666
Kevan Harris, “A Social Revolution: Politics an...
Kevan Harris is the author of A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran (University of California Press, 2017). Harris is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
22 min
1667
Colleen Murphy, “The Conceptual Foundations of ...
Colleen Murphy’s new book, The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2017), argues that attaining some degree of justice is possible in nations transitioning to democratic states.
53 min
1668
Sheshalatha Reddy, “British Empire and the Lite...
Sheshalatha Reddy’s British Empire and the Literature of Rebellion: Revolting Bodies, Laboring Subjects (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) examines historical and literary texts relating to three rebellions in the second half of the nineteenth century: the Sep...
36 min
1669
Mandy Sayer, “Australian Gypsies: Their Secret ...
In her new book, Australian Gypsies: Their Secret History (NewSouth Publishing, 2017), award-winning writer Mandy Sayer explores the neglected history of Gypsies, or Romani people, in Australia, from the earliest European settlement until today.
12 min
1670
Padraic Kenney, “Dance in Chains: Political Imp...
The idea of being a “political prisoner” may seem timeless. If someone was imprisoned for his or her political beliefs, then that person is in some sense a “political prisoner.” Think of the Tower of London and its various occupants. But,
66 min
1671
Monica Ricketts, “Who Should Rule? Men of Arms,...
Monica Ricketts’ new book Who Should Rule? Men of Arms, the Republic of Letters, and the Fall of the Spanish Empire (Oxford University Press, 2017) presents readers with the connected histories of military cadres and intellectuals in Peru and Spain c.
55 min
1672
Marie Grace Brown, “Khartoum at Night: Fashion ...
Marie Grace Brown’s Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan (Stanford University Press, 2017) is in many ways a history of fashion in Sudan, but in so many ways, its much more than that. It is the story of women in Sudan,
49 min
1673
Padraic Scanlan, “Freedom’s Debtors: British An...
What was the British abolition of the slave trade like in practice? Padraic Scanlan, in his beautifully-written first book, Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution (Yale University Press, 2017),
73 min
1674
Nikhil Pal Singh, “Race and America’s Long War”...
From the export of the Chicago Police Department’s interrogation experts to Iraq after 2003, to casual references of the US-Indian Wars by US soldiers in Vietnam, Race and America’s Long War (University of California Press,
69 min
1675
Stephane Robolin, “Grounds of Engagement: Apart...
Writers have long created networks and connections by exchanging letters or writing back to one another in their poetry and fiction. Letters between Ernest Hemmingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, or Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes,
56 min