New Books in Science, Technology, and...

Interviews with Scholars of Science, Technology, and Society about their New Books

Science
Social Sciences
1801
Trent MacNamara, "Birth Control and American Mo...
MacNamara traces the multiple avenues in which birth control entered the lives of everyday Americans and gained social acceptance...
50 min
1802
Geraldine Heng, "The Invention of Race in the E...
In creating a detailed impression of the medieval race-making that would be reconfigured into the biological racism of the modern era, Heng reaches beyond medievalists and race-studies scholars to anyone interested in the long history of race.
58 min
1803
Joy Lisi Rankin, "A People’s History of Computi...
Rankin makes a compelling case for a social history of computing...
37 min
1804
Jieun Baek, "North Korea's Hidden Revolution: H...
Based on interviews with North Koreans who have settled in the South, Baek shows how everything from television programs to foreign affairs coverage and fashion has made its way into the country from the outside world....
60 min
1805
Peter Hotez, "Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s A...
The alleged link between vaccines and autism has long been disproven, but it is still a belief held onto by the anti-vaccine movement...
39 min
1806
Adrienne Mayor, "Gods and Robots: Myths, Machin...
The first robot to walk the earth was a bronze giant called Talos...
39 min
1807
Matthew Longo, "The Politics of Borders: Sovere...
The Politics of Borders: Sovereignty, Security, and the Citizen after 9/11 (Cambridge University Press, 2017) is not simply about the border because, as the book makes clear, borders are in no way simple...
52 min
1808
John Torpey, "The Three Axial Ages: Moral, Mate...
29 min
1809
Jan English-Lueck, "Cultures@SiliconValley: Sec...
Silicon Valley is understood to be one of the most fast-paced regions on earth, where innovation and upheaval are part and parcel of daily life...
65 min
1810
Is Social Media Killing Democracy? with Regina ...
An interview with Regina Rini
33 min
1811
Nicholas Bauch, "Geography of Digestion: Biotec...
While most people in the US are familiar with the ubiquitous Kellogg cereal brand, few know how it relates to US geography, science and technology around the turn of the 20th century...
59 min
1812
Julian Gill-Peterson, "Histories of the Transge...
With transgender rights front and center in American politics, media, and culture, the pervasive myth still exists that today’s transgender children are a brand new generation...
61 min
1813
Alex Bentley and Michael O'Brien, "The Accelera...
Our evolutionary success, according to co-authors Alex Bentley and Michael O'Brien, lies in our ability to acquire cultural wisdom and teach it to the next generation...
49 min
1814
Megan Finn, "Documenting Aftermath: Information...
Documenting Aftermath is a very timely book, for as global warming promises more frequent catastrophes, large-scale social media and government information systems increasingly dictate how information moves...
53 min
1815
Lindsey Fitzharris, "The Butchering Art: Joseph...
oseph Lister changed the world of medicine...
45 min
1816
Paul A. Offit, "Do You Believe in Magic?: Vitam...
Is alternative medicine quackery?
49 min
1817
Audra J. Wolfe, "Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold...
Science’s self-concept as politically neutral and dedicated to empirical observation free of bias has often been at odds with its collaboration with the purposes of the Cold War state...
58 min
1818
Pamela E. Klassen, "The Story of Radio Mind: A ...
At the dawn of the radio age in the 1920s, Frederick Du Vernet—Anglican archbishop and self-declared scientist—announced a psychic channel by which minds could telepathically communicate across distance...
49 min
1819
Perrin Selcer, "The Postwar Origins of the Glob...
Having been born into a world in which people knew about anthropogenic global warming, I grew up in the “global environment.”
63 min
1820
Suman Seth, "Difference and Disease: Medicine, ...
Suman Seth's new book Difference and Disease: Medicine, Race, and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2018) provides a new angle on the formation of modern ideas of race through the formation of the British Empire....
40 min
1821
Howard Chiang, "After Eunuchs: Science, Medicin...
Howard Chiang’s new book is a masterful study of the relationship between sexual knowledge and Chinese modernity...
66 min
1822
Mark Rice, "Making Machu Picchu: The Politics o...
Speaking at a 1913 National Geographic Society gala, Hiram Bingham III, the American explorer celebrated for finding the “lost city” of the Andes two years earlier, suggested that Machu Picchu “is an awful name, but it is well worth remembering.”
61 min
1823
Paola Bertucci, "Artisanal Enlightenment: Scien...
Paola Bertucci's Artisanal Enlightenment: Science and the Mechanical Arts in Old Regime France (Yale University Press, 2018) is an innovative new look at the role of artisans in the French Enlightenment.
53 min
1824
McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One ...
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention...
61 min
1825
Alireza Doostdar, "The Iranian Metaphysicals: E...
Thoroughly disrupting the common association of the Occult with popular religion and mystical enchantment, this book explores the complex and conflicting rationalities that inform varied metaphysical experimentations occupying a range of Iranian actors.
59 min