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
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
1727
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
1728
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
1729
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
1730
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
1731
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
1732
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
1733
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
1734
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
1735
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
1736
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
1737
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
1738
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
1739
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
1740
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
1741
Tony Collins, “The Oval World: A Global History...
The 2017 Six Nations rugby tournament concluded this weekend. England successfully defended its championship, despite losing the last match against a strong Ireland side in Dublin–England’s only loss of the competition. Meanwhile,
52 min
1742
Daniel Immerwahr, “Thinking Small: The United S...
Modernization dominates development’s historiography. Historians characterize moments in development’s history–from the Tennessee Valley Authority to US-led “nation-building”in the Third World–as high-modernist attempts to industrialize, urbanize,
56 min
1743
Phoebe Chow, “Britain’s Imperial Retreat from C...
At the start of the twentieth century Britain’s relationship with China was defined by the economic and political dominance Britain exerted in the country as an imperial power, a dominance that would ebb over the next three decades.
44 min
1744
David F. Lancy, “The Anthropology of Childhood:...
Developmental psychology seems to tell us how to best to raise our children into competent and decent adults. However, comparing our theories and practices to those of other cultures raises questions about whether our ideas are ethnocentric.
46 min
1745
Brian T. Edwards, “After the American Century: ...
American culture is ubiquitous across the globe. It travels to different social contexts and is consumed by international populations. But the relationship between American culture and the meanings attached to the United States change over time.
56 min
1746
Ryan Muldoon, “Social Contract Theory for a Div...
The idea that a political order derives its authority, legitimacy, and justification from some kind of initial agreement or contract, whether hypothetical or tacit, has been a mainstay of political philosophy, at least since Hobbes. Today,
61 min
1747
Raphael Dalleo, “American Imperialisms Undead: ...
As Raphael Dalleo demonstrates in his wide-ranging and compelling American Imperialism Undead: The Occupation of Haiti and the Rise of Caribbean Anti-colonialism (University of Virginia Press, 2016), the US occupation of Haiti reverberated throughout t...
29 min
1748
Iza Hussin, “The Politics of Islamic Law: Local...
In her fascinating new book The Politics of Islamic Law: Local Elites, Colonial Authority, and the Making of the Muslim State (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Iza Hussin, Lecturer of Politics at University of Cambridge examines the transformation o...
34 min
1749
Laura Madokoro, “Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migran...
Laura Madokoro’s new book is a timely and important study of movement across national borders, migrants, and the refugee label in the global Cold War. Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migrants in the Cold War (Harvard University Press,
67 min
1750
Meghan Elizabeth Kallman and Terry Nichols Clar...
Meghan Elizabeth Kallman and Terry Nichols Clark are the authors of The Third Sector: Community Organizations, NGOs, and Nonprofits (University of Illinois Press, 2016). Kallman is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute at Brown for Environment and...
16 min