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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Society & Culture
History
1726
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
1727
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
1728
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
1729
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
1730
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
1731
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
1732
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
1733
Roderic Broadhurst et.al., “Violence and the Ci...
The work of sociologist Norbert Elias has had a renaissance in recent times, with Steven Pinker, among others, using it to argue that interpersonal violence has declined globally as states have expanded and subdued restless populations.
38 min
1734
Pasquale Tridico, “Inequality in Financial Capi...
I was joined by Pasquale Tridico, Professor of Political Economy at Roma Tre University in Italy. His latest book, Inequality in Financial Capitalism, was published by Routledge in 2017. The issue of inequality has regained attention in the economic an...
42 min
1735
Jack Greene, “Settler Jamaica in the 1750s: A S...
Settler Jamaica in the 1750s: A Social Portrait (University of Virginia Press, 2016) is the most recent work from distinguished historian Jack Greene. Using a treasure trove of records from the middle of the eighteenth century,
55 min
1736
Lawrence R. Douglas, “The Right Wrong Man: John...
In his new book, The Right Wrong Man: John Demjanjuk and the Last Great Nazi War Crimes Trial (Princeton University Press 2016), Lawrence R. Douglas, the James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought at Amherst College examines t...
45 min
1737
Sujatha Gidla, “Ants among Elephants: An Untouc...
In her searing book Ants among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), Sujatha Gidla traces her family’s history over four generations in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.
38 min
1738
Jayne Persian, “Beautiful Balts: From Displaced...
In her new book, Beautiful Balts: From Displaced Persons to New Australians (NewSouth Publishing, 2017), Jayne Persian, a Lecturer in History at the University of Southern Queensland, explores the history of mass migration of 170,
16 min
1739
Amanda Bidnall, “The West Indian Generation: Re...
Just after World War II, West Indians began moving to London in large numbers. The artists, writers, and musicians among them found a place to create, and they found ways to express their complex notions of belonging to both the Caribbean and to the Br...
44 min
1740
Karen Ross, “Youth Encounter Programs in Israel...
In her new book, Youth Encounter Programs in Israel: Pedagogy, Identity and Social Change (Syracuse University Press, 2017), Karen Ross conducts an in-depth analysis of Jewish-Palestinian youth encounter peace-building programs in Israel.
82 min
1741
Gregory Mann, “From Empires to NGOs in the West...
Today we spoke to Gregory Mann about his book From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel: The Road to Non-Governmentality (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Gregory Mann investigates how the effectiveness of government institutions declined in the...
53 min
1742
Reina Lewis, “Muslim Fashion: Contemporary Styl...
Fashion is often dismissed as trivial, but Reina Lewis‘s Muslim Fashion: Contemporary Style Cultures (Duke University Press, 2015) takes both it and what Muslims specifically wear and devotes and 300+ eye-opening pages to it. Defining it as,
62 min
1743
Keren Weitzberg, “We Do Not Have Borders: Great...
Somalis have lived in Kenya for generations, in many cases since long before the founding of the country. Yet, Kenyan officials and citizens often perceive them as a dangerous and alien presence, with attendant civil and human rights abuses.
38 min
1744
Andrew Copson, “Secularism: Politics, Religion,...
Secularism is an increasingly hot topic in public, political, and religious debate across the globe. It is embodied in the conflict between secular republics—from the US to India—and the challenges they face from resurgent religious identity politics; ...
47 min
1745
Edin Hajdarpasic, “Whose Bosnia? Nationalism an...
It seemed that everyone wanted Bosnia in the late nineteenth century: Serbian and Croatian nationalists; Ottoman, Habsburg, Muslim and Yugoslav movements. At the same time, they all felt frustration with the Bosnian peasants for not living up to their ...
67 min
1746
Johan Swinnen and Devin Briski, “Beeronomics: H...
Beer has been a part of human civilization dating back to its beginnings. In summarizing the role it has played over the millennia, Johan Swinnen and Devin Briski’s book Beeronomics: How Beer Explains the World (Oxford University Press,
34 min
1747
Ricardo D. Salvatore, “Disciplinary Conquest: U...
Ricardo D. Salvatore‘s new book, Disciplinary Conquest: U.S. Scholars in South America, 1900-1945 (Duke University Press, 2016) offers an alternative narrative on the origins of Latin American Studies in the United States.
2 min
1748
Eric J. Pido, “Migrant Returns: Manila, Develop...
The government of the Philippines has for decades encouraged its citizens to seek work abroad and send money back to the country in remittances. But in recent years it has increasingly sought to entice Filipinos who have settled abroad to come home,
36 min
1749
Daromir Rudnyckyj and Filippo Osella, eds., “Re...
Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, there has been a widespread affirmation of economic ideologies that conceive the market as an autonomous sphere of human practice. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis,
2 min
1750
Ryan D. Enos, “The Space Between Us: Social Geo...
Ryan Enos is the author of The Space Between Us: Social Geography and Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Enos is associate professor of government at Harvard University. Scholars have long wrestled with the impact of segregation on politics.
23 min