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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1726
Ernesto Bassi, “An Aqueous Territory: Sailor Ge...
Where is the Caribbean? In An Aqueous Territory: Sailor Geographies and New Granada’s Transimperial Greater Caribbean World (Duke University Press, 2017) Ernesto Bassi makes the case for a transimperial space shaped by ships’ journeys and sailors’ imag...
44 min
1727
Michael Allan, “In the Shadow of World Literatu...
Michael Allan‘s In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2016) challenges traditional perceptions of world literature: he argues that the disciplinary framework of world literature levels the di...
30 min
1728
Carla Pestana, “The English Conquest of Jamaica...
Carla Pestana’s new book The English Conquest of Jamaica: Oliver Cromwell’s Bid for Empire (Harvard University Press, 2017) is a rousing look at a transformative moment in Caribbean history. Pestana details the various political, economic,
61 min
1729
Alejandra Mancilla, “The Right of Necessity: Mo...
We are accustomed to the thought that individuals facing dire circumstances may rightfully take use of others’ property in order to save their own lives. For example, one thinks it obvious that in order to avoid freezing to death,
64 min
1730
Jatinder Mann, “The Search for a New National I...
In his new book, The Search for a New National Identity: The Rise of Multiculturalism in Canada and Australia, 1890s-1970s (Peter Lang Publishing, 2016), Jatinder Mann, an assistant professor of history at Hong Kong Baptist University,
16 min
1731
Maria Montoya, et. al, eds. “Global Americans: ...
America’s national experience and collective history have always been subject to transnational forces and affected by global events and conditions. In recognition of this reality, the textbook Global Americans: A History of the United States (Cengage,
46 min
1732
Bruce O’Neill, “The Space of Boredom: Homelessn...
In The Space of Boredom: Homelessness in the Slowing Global Order (Duke University Press, 2017) Bruce O’Neill explores how people cast aside by globalism deal with an intractable symptom of downward mobility: an unshakeable and immense boredom.
19 min
1733
Kief Hillsbery, “Empire Made: My Search for an ...
Kief Hillsbery‘s Empire Made: My Search for an Outlaw Uncle Who Vanished in British India (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) follows the career of Nigel Halleck, an English tax assessor in employ of the British East India Company and his travels on the ...
60 min
1734
Kiran Klaus Patel, “The New Deal: A Global Hist...
There are as many New Deals as there are books on the subject. Yet only recently have historians begun to dig into the international dimensions of the New Deal. Kiran Klaus Patel is one of those historians, and his book,
50 min
1735
Dana Mills, “Dance and Politics: Moving Beyond ...
Dance & Politics: Moving Beyond Boundaries (Manchester University Press, 2017) by Dana Mills, considers dance as a political expression from a number of perspectives, situating the analysis within a framework of contemporary political theory.
44 min
1736
Simone Muller, “Wiring the World: The Social an...
Simone Muller’s Wiring the World: The Social and Cultural Creation of Global Telegraph Networks (Columbia University Press, 2016) is a superb account of the laying of submarine telegraph cables in the nineteenth century and the battles over them in the...
53 min
1737
Susanna Forrest, “The Age of the Horse: An Equi...
The history of humanity is intertwined with that of the horse to such a degree that it is no exaggeration to say that the existence of either species as we know it today is a product of its relationship with the other.
47 min
1738
Ronald A. Lindsay, “The Necessity of Secularism...
For the first time in human history, a significant percentage of the world’s population no longer believes in God. While its true that some societies are even seeing nonbelievers outnumber believers, it is extremely unlikely that we will see a total co...
63 min
1739
Leonard Grob and John Roth, “Losing Trust in th...
Every time I teach Comparative Genocide, I distribute a letter to the students preparing them for the particular challenges of taking a course about mass violence. In the letter, I point out a simple fact. People, including academics,
75 min
1740
Jorge Duany, “Puerto Rico: What Everyone Needs ...
Not quite a colony, not quite independent, fiercely nationalist, what is Puerto Rico’s status, exactly? Jorge Duany‘s Puerto Rico: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2017) offers clear answers to complicated questions about Puerto Ri...
29 min
1741
Rajan Gurukkal, “Rethinking Classical Indo-Roma...
Rajan Gurukkal‘s Rethinking Classical Indo-Roman Trade: Political Economy of Eastern Mediterranean Exchange Relations (Oxford University Press, 2016) casts a critical eye over the exchanges, usually and problematically termed trade,
35 min
1742
Or Rosenboim, “The Emergence of Globalism: Visi...
The world order was in crisis at mid-century. Intellectuals in England and the United States perceived the rise of totalitarianism, the Second World War, the invention of the atomic bomb, the start of the Cold War,
60 min
1743
Linda Heywood, “Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warr...
In the capital of the African nation of Angola today stands a statue to Njinga, the 17th century queen of the Ndongo and Matamba kingdoms. Its presence is a testament to her skills as a diplomat, warrior, and leader of her people,
51 min
1744
Michael Bryant,” A World History of War Crimes:...
Michael Bryant’s book is both less and more ambitious than its title. He’s writing less of a history of war crimes than he is a history of the idea and concept of war crimes. He’s most interested in what people have considered a breach of the norms of ...
72 min
1745
Paul Hollander, “From Benito Mussolini to Hugo ...
It’s true that Western “intellectuals” have not always been wrong about dictators fighting for a supposedly “brighter future,” usually (though not always) of the non-capitalist variety. Nonetheless, as Paul Hollander well shows in his readable,
59 min
1746
Cemil Aydin, “The Idea of the Muslim World: A G...
Almost daily in popular media the Muslim World is pinpointed as a homogeneous entity that stands separate and parallel to the similarly imagined West. But even scratching the surface of the idea of a Muslim World reveals the geographic, social,
66 min
1747
Amit Prasad, “Imperial Technoscience: Transnati...
Amit Prasad is widely admired for using Postcolonial Studies to explore questions about science, technology and medicine. In Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India (MIT, 2014),
56 min
1748
Mark P. Bradley, “The World Reimagined: America...
In his farewell address, President George Washington warned his fellow citizens of the dangers of what has come to be known in American political speech as “foreign entanglements.” Whether Washington’s successors heeded this advice is an open question;...
59 min
1749
Phil Gurski, “Western Foreign Fighters: The Thr...
Phil Gurski‘s Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) is his second recent monograph on terrorism, and another useful resource for practitioners and non-specialists alike.
51 min
1750
Robert Jervis, “How Statesmen Think: The Psycho...
Robert Jervis is the author of How Statesmen Think: The Psychology of International Politics (Princeton University Press, 2017). Jervis is the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics at Columbia University.
16 min