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
1876
Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch, “The Making of Glob...
Two Canadian socialist thinkers have published a new book on the successes and failures, the crises, contradictions and conflicts in present-day capitalism. In The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire (Verso, 2013),
65 min
1877
Emilie Cloatre, “Pills for the Poorest: An Expl...
Emilie Cloatre‘s award-winning book, Pills for the Poorest:An Exploration of TRIPS and Access to Medication in Sub-Saharan Africa (Palgrave, 2013), locates the effects–and ineffectualness–of a landmark international agreement for healthcare: the World ...
45 min
1878
Bilyana Lily, “Russian Foreign Policy toward Mi...
The current conflict in Ukraine has reopened old wounds and brought the complexity of Russia’s relationship with the United States and Europe to the forefront. One of the most important factors in relations between the Kremlin and the West has been the...
34 min
1879
Carol Gould, “Interactive Democracy: The Social...
Contemporary advances in technology have in many ways made the world smaller.  It is now possible for vast numbers of geographically disparate people to interact, communicate, coordinate, and plan.  These advances potentially bring considerable benefit...
64 min
1880
David Baker, “The Schooled Society: The Educati...
There has been a dramatic leap in education across the world over the past 150 years–from the importance and longevity to Western-style universities to truth and knowledge production created through schooling,
58 min
1881
Jan Lemnitzer, “Power, Law and the End of Priva...
Jan Lemnitzer‘s new book Power, Law and the End of Privateering (Palgrave, 2014) offers an exciting new take on the relationship between law and power, exposing the delicate balance between great powers and small states that is necessary to create and ...
37 min
1882
Elizabeth Schmidt, “Foreign Intervention in Afr...
Elizabeth Schmidt‘sForeign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror (Cambridge University Press, 2013)depicts the foreign political and military interventions in Africa during the periods of decolonization (1956-75) and the Cold W...
41 min
1883
Michael Kwass, “Contraband: Louis Mandrin and t...
Michael Kwass‘s new book, Contraband: Louis Mandrin and the Making of a Global Underground is much more than an exciting biography of the notorious eighteenth-century smuggler whose name remains legendary in contemporary France.
60 min
1884
Carl H. Nightingale, “Segregation: A Global His...
We often think of South Africa or America when we hear the word ‘segregation.’ Or — a popular view — that social groups have always chosen to live apart.But as Carl H. Nightingale shows in his new book, Segregation: A Global History of Divided Cities (...
52 min
1885
Jules Boykoff, “Activism and the Olympics: Diss...
A new chapter in the history of the Olympic Games appears to be opening. As one city after another has dropped out of the bidding for the 2022 Winter Games, the International Olympic Committee has been faced with the prospect that no one might be willi...
44 min
1886
Lyman Johnson, “Workshop of Revolution: Plebian...
Lyman Johnson‘s book Workshop of Revolution: Plebian Buenos Aires and the Atlantic World, 1776-1810 (Duke University Press, 2011) analyzes the economic, political, and social lives of working people in Argentina’s colonial capital.
57 min
1887
General Daniel Bolger, “Why We Lost” (Houghton ...
During the past several years, numerous books and articles have appeared that grapple with the legacy and lessons of the recent U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This development should surprise few. The emergence of the jihadist group ISIS in Iraq an...
80 min
1888
Henry Nau, “Conservative Internationalism: Arme...
The recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have raised important questions about the future direction of U.S. foreign policy and how Americans can best exercise power abroad in the coming years. Commentators have not shied away from offering advice.
88 min
1889
Kathleen Lopez, “Chinese Cubans: A Transnationa...
Successive waves of migration brought thousands of Chinese laborers to Cuba over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The coolie trade, which was meant to replace waning supplies of slaves, was but the first. In the twentieth century,
66 min
1890
Chris Taylor, “How Star Wars Conquered the Univ...
When George Lucas first began to write “The Star Wars”, as it was originally known, he had no idea that it would become his main life’s work. Beginning as a modern Flash Gordon-style space adventure, the eventual series would become arguably the most s...
63 min
1891
Alexander Cooley, “Great Game, Local Rules: The...
Central Asia is one of the least studied and understood regions of the Eurasian landmass, conjuring up images of 19th century Great Power politics, endless steppe, and impenetrable regimes. Alexander Cooley,
45 min
1892
Ethan Zuckerman, “Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans...
In the early days of the Internet, optimists saw the future as highly connected, where voices from across the globe would mingle and learn from one another as never before. However, as Ethan Zuckerman argues in Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age ...
46 min
1893
Michael Cook, “Ancient Religions, Modern Politi...
Michael Cook, a widely-respected historian and scholar of Islam begins his book with a question that everyone seems to be asking these days: is Islam uniquely violent or uniquely political? Why does Islam seem to play a larger role in contemporary poli...
42 min
1894
Angela Stent, “The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-...
In 2005, the Comedy Central Network aired an episode of “South Park” in which one of the characters asked if any “Third World” countries other than Russia had the ability to fly a whale to the moon. During a press conference that took place two years l...
75 min
1895
Mark Corner, “The European Union: An Introducti...
Some say it should be a loose collection of sovereign nation states; others say it should aspire to be a kind of super-nation state itself. Or is it, in truth, a messy but workable mixture of a number of extremes, ideals and concepts?
41 min
1896
Joel Migdal, “Shifting Sands: The United States...
Any person who turns on CNN or Fox News today will see that the United States faces a number of critical problems in the Middle East. This reality should surprise few. Stunned by the Al-Qaeda attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001, the George W.
69 min
1897
James Martin, “Drugs on the Dark Net: How Crypt...
I am old enough to realise that we have entered a science fiction world in which the old systems of the market place are being sidestepped by new technology. We who follow the tried and true methods are missing out of the brave new world.
27 min
1898
Guy Chet, “The Ocean is a Wilderness: Atlantic ...
Guy Chet, Associate Professor of early American and military history at the University of North Texas, in his book The Ocean is a Wilderness: Atlantic Piracy and the Limits of State Authority, 1688-1856 (University of Massachusetts Press,
52 min
1899
Hideaki Fujiki, “Making Personas: Transnational...
Stardom has a history. Hideaki Fujiki‘s new book traces that history through a story of the transformations of Japanese film stars in the early twentieth century. Taking a deeply transnational approach to understanding the imbrication of film stardom a...
71 min
1900
Randall L. Schweller, “Maxwell’s Demon and the ...
Randall L. Schweller is Professor of Political Science and a Social and Behavioral Sciences Joan N. Huber Faculty Fellow at Ohio State University.  He has written Maxwell’s Demon and the Golden Apple: Global Discord in the New Millennium (Johns Hopkins...
22 min