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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1776
Chris Miller, “The Struggle to Save the Soviet ...
One of the most interesting questions of modern history is this: Why is it that Communist China was able to make a successful transition to economic modernity (and with it prosperity) while the Communist Soviet Union was not?
50 min
1777
“Best New Books in Political Science 2016: Inte...
Last week featured a year-end-round up of books in American politics. This week I looked back to the past year on the podcast in other subfields. I start with an interview I enjoyed with Prerna Singh. Her book examines sub-nationalism in India.
11 min
1778
Marc Sageman, “Misunderstanding Terrorism” (U. ...
In Misunderstanding Terrorism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) Marc Sageman provides an important reassessment of the global neojihadi threat to the West. He argues that inaccurate evaluations of the threat and overreactions to a limited threat...
52 min
1779
Ruth Rogaski, “Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of ...
Since it was published in 2004, Ruth Rogaski’s Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (University of California Press, 2014 reprint) has won four major prizes in fields ranging from history of medicine to East Asian his...
47 min
1780
Coll Thrush, “Indigenous London: Native Travele...
Coll Thrush’s new book is an imaginative and beautifully-written history of London framed by the experiences of indigenous travelers since early modernity. Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire (Yale University Press,
63 min
1781
James Alexander Dun, “Dangerous Neighbors: Maki...
James Alexander Dun is an assistant professor of history at Princeton University. His book Dangerous Neighbors: Making the Haitian Revolution in Early America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) provides a detailed examination of how the Haitian R...
57 min
1782
Carrie Booth Walling, “All Necessary Measures: ...
Why does the UN intervene in some cases of mass violence and not others? Why and how have public attitudes toward humanitarian intervention changed over the past decades? And how do the stories we tell each other about cases of violence and civil war i...
71 min
1783
Coll Thrush, “Indigenous London: Native Travele...
Scholars have long treated cities as spaces in which indigenous people have little presence and less significance. This notion that urbanity and indignity stand at odds results from a potent mix of racist essentialism and the historical myth of progres...
47 min
1784
Patrick Wolfe, “Traces of History: Elementary S...
Widely known for his pioneering work in the field of settler colonial studies, Patrick Wolfe advanced the theory that settler colonialism was, “a structure, not an event.” In early 2016, Wolfe deepened this analysis through his most recent book,
48 min
1785
Sally Engle Merry, “The Seduction of Quantifica...
Quantification is not usually the first thing that comes to mind when hearing or reading about the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights (OHCHR). Yet in the 21st century, a wide range of policy and advocacy agendas begin with numbers.
54 min
1786
Robert Peckham, “Epidemics in Modern Asia” (Cam...
Robert Peckham’s Epidemics in Modern Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores the crucial yet under-explored role that epidemics have played in both colonial and postcolonial Asia. At once broad in sweep and nuanced in analysis,
47 min
1787
Charlotte Mathieson, ed. “Sea Narratives: Cultu...
What is the relationship between the sea and culture? In Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present (Palgrave, 2016) , Charlotte Mathieson, a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Surrey,
46 min
1788
Jessamyn R. Abel, “The International Minimum: C...
Jessamyn R. Abel’s new book carefully traces the rise and transformations of an internationalist worldview in modern Japan, from its withdrawal from the League of Nations and admission into the UN, to successive attempts (both failed and successful) to...
59 min
1789
Nile Green, “Terrains of Exchange: Religious Ec...
The historical convergence of European imperialism and technological innovation in communication and travel made multiple social sites of intersection between the local and global possible. Nile Green, Professor of South Asian and Islamic history at UC...
62 min
1790
Michael David-Fox, “Crossing Borders: Modernity...
It’s been a quarter century since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This anniversary marks a good occasion to ask a seemingly simple question: “What was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?” Was it Russia in a new wrapper?
56 min
1791
John Prados, “Storm Over Leyte: The Philippine ...
Narratives of the Pacific War frequently examine the 1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf from the operational perspective, focusing on the desperate actions of the US Seventh Fleets escort carriers, Task Unit 77.4.3 (“Taffy 3”) against the much larger Japanese C...
52 min
1792
Elizabeth Reich, “Militant Visions: Black Soldi...
Elizabeth Reich is an assistant professor of film studies at Connecticut College in New London. Militant Visions: Black Soldiers, Internationalism, and the Transformation of American Cinema (Rutgers University Press, 2016) examines how,
32 min
1793
Carina E. Ray, “Crossing the Color Line: Race, ...
In Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana (Ohio University Press, 2015), Carina E. Ray interrogates the intersections of race, marriage, gender and empire in this thought-provoking study that challenges t...
58 min
1794
James Waller, “Confronting Evil: Engaging Our ...
Today is the third of our occasional series on the question of how to respond to mass atrocities. Earlier this summer I talked with Scott Straus and Bridget Conley-Zilkic. Later in September I’ll talk with Carrie Booth Walling.
65 min
1795
Jade Doskow, “Lost Utopias” (Black Dog Publishi...
Since 2007, American photographer Jade Doskow has been documenting the remains of World’s Fair sites, once iconic global attractions that have often been repurposed for less noble aspirations or neglected and fallen into decay.
55 min
1796
Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, “Am...
A decade and a half of exhausting wars, punishing economic setbacks, and fast-rising rivals has called into question America’s fundamental position and purpose in world politics. Will the US continue to be the only superpower in the international syste...
64 min
1797
Isabelle Hesse, “The Politics of Jewishness in ...
In The Politics of Jewishness in Contemporary World Literature: The Holocaust, Zionism and Colonialism (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), Isabelle Hesse, Lecturer in English at the University of Sydney, reads a wide range of novels from post-war Germany to I...
22 min
1798
Sandra Harding, “Objectivity and Diversity: A N...
Is the scientific value of objectivity in conflict with the social justice commitment to diversity? In her latest book, Objectivity and Diversity: A New Logic of Scientific Inquiry (University of Chicago Press, 2015),
68 min
1799
Neil Kent, “Crimea: A History” (Hurst/Oxford UP...
In 2014 Crimea shaped the headlines much as it did some 160 years ago, when the Crimean War pitted Britain, France and Turkey against Russia. Yet few books have been published on the history of the peninsula. For many readers,
64 min
1800
Marc-William Palen, “The ‘Conspiracy’ of Free T...
Accounts of late-nineteenth-century US expansionism commonly refer to an open-door empire and an imperialism spurred by belief in free trade. In his new book The “Conspiracy” of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle over Empire and Economic Globaliza...
40 min