New Books in Science, Technology, and...
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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2401
N. M. Sambaluk, “The Other Space Race: Eisenhow...
Many people place the beginning of the American space program at 7:28pm, October 4, 1957 – the moment the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik I, into orbit. This event prompted the United States to open up its own crash program to put f...
85 min
2402
Hugh Cagle, “Assembling the Tropics: Science an...
Assembling the Tropics: Science and Medicine in Portugal’s Empire, 1450-1700 (Cambridge University Press, 2018) by Hugh Cagle is an exciting analysis of the production of the tropics as an idea and as a dimension of imperialism through the development ...
57 min
2403
Lee Humphreys, “The Qualified Self: Social Medi...
Physical journals, scrapbooks, and photo albums all offer their owners the opportunity to chronicle both mundane and extravagant events. But unlike social media posting, this analog memorializing of life happenings is not encumbered with the negative t...
25 min
2404
Wade Roush, ed., “Twelve Tomorrows” (MIT Press,...
Science fiction is, at its core, about tomorrow—exploring through stories what the universe may look like one or 10 or a million years in the future. Twelve Tomorrows (MIT Press, 2018) uses short stories to fit nearly a dozen possible “tomorrows” into ...
39 min
2405
Yulia Frumer, “Making Time: Astronomical Time M...
Yulia Frumer’s new book follows roughly three hundred years of transformations in how time was conceptualized, measured, and materialized in Japan. Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan (University of Chicago Press,
69 min
2406
Robert A. Wilson, “The Eugenic Mind Project” (M...
For most of us, eugenics — the “science of improving the human stock” — is a thing of the past, commonly associated with Nazi Germany and government efforts to promote a pure Aryan race. This view is incorrect: even in California, for example,
65 min
2407
Rachel Z. Arndt, “Beyond Measure” (Sarabande Bo...
Our world today is full of algorithms and metrics designed to help us keep up, to keep track, to keep going. New devices, such as the smartwatch, now make it possible to quantify and standardize every conceivable human activity,
29 min
2408
Dániel Margócsy, et al., “The Fabrica of Andrea...
The Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius: A Worldwide Descriptive Census, Ownership, and Annotations of the 1543 and 1555 Editions (Brill, 2018) is a masterful new book that will long be on the shelves of anyone working on the history of anatomy,
62 min
2409
Theodore M. Porter, “Genetics in the Madhouse: ...
In Genetics in the Madhouse: The Unknown History of Human Heredity (Princeton University Press, 2018), Theodore Porter uncovers the unfamiliar origins of human genetics in the asylums of Europe and North America.
53 min
2410
Hervé Guillemain, “Schizophrenics in the Twenti...
Schizophrènes au XXe siècle: des effets secondaires de l’histoire [Schizophrenics in the Twentieth Century: The Side Effects of History] is a strong argument in support of the history of psychiatry “from below.
39 min
2411
Benjamin R. Siegel, “Hungry Nation: Food, Famin...
In his first book Hungry Nation: Food, Famine, and the Making of Modern India (Cambridge University Press 2018), historian Benjamin Robert Siegel explores independent India’s attempts to feed itself between the 1940s and 1970s.
40 min
2412
Peter Harries-Jones, “Upside-Down Gods: Gregory...
The work of polymath Gregory Bateson has long been the road to cybernetics travelled by those approaching this trans-disciplinary field from the direction of the social sciences and even the humanities. Fortunately for devotees of Bateson’s expansive ...
62 min
2413
Byron Reese, “The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Con...
In his new book, The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity (Simon & Schuster, 2018), futurist, technologist, and CEO of Gigaom, Byron Reese makes the case that technology has reshaped humanity just three times in his...
71 min
2414
Cameron B. Strang, “Frontiers of Science: Imper...
Cameron Strang’s Frontiers of Science: Imperialism and Natural Knowledge in the Gulf South Borderlands, 1500-1850 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) examines how colonists, soldiers, explorers, and American Indians created and circulated knowle...
40 min
2415
P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, “LikeWar: ...
LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), by P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, outlines the history of social media platforms and their use in popular culture and modern conflict.
48 min
2416
Hilary A. Smith, “Forgotten Disease: Illnesses ...
Hilary A. Smith’s new book examines the evolution of a Chinese disease concept, foot qi (jiao qi) from its documented origins in the fourth century to the present day. However, at its heart Forgotten Disease: Illnesses Transformed in Chinese Medicine (...
69 min
2417
Megan Raby, “American Tropics: The Caribbean R...
American science and empire have a long mutual history. In American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), Megan Raby takes us to Caribbean sites that expanded the reach of American ecology and ...
37 min
2418
Andrew J. Hogan, “Life Histories of Genetic Dis...
How did clinicians learn to see the human genome? In Life Histories of Genetic Disease (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), Andrew J. Hogan makes the subtle argument that a process described by scholars of biomedicine as “molecularization” took plac...
32 min
2419
Rebecca Reich, “State of Madness: Psychiatry, L...
In her new book, State of Madness: Psychiatry, Literature and Dissent After Stalin (Northern Illinois University Press, 2018), Rebecca Reich argues that Soviet dissident writers used literary narratives to counter state-sanctioned psychiatric diagnoses...
52 min
2420
Megan Ward, “Seeming Human: Artificial Intellig...
Artificial intelligence and Victorian literature: these two notions seem incompatible. AI brings us to the age of information and technology, whereas Victorian literature invites us to the world of lengthy novels, to the world of the written word.
33 min
2421
N.A.J. Taylor and R. Jacobs, eds., “Reimagining...
N.A.J. Taylor and Robert Jacobs,’s edited volume Reimagining Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Nuclear Humanities in the Post-Cold War (Routledge, 2017) developed out of a special journal issue of Critical Military Studies organized on the occasion of the 70th a...
120 min
2422
G. Mitman, M. Armiero and R. S. Emmett (eds.), ...
Future Remains: A Cabinet of Curiosities for the Anthropocene (University of Chicago Press, 2018) curates fifteen objects that might serve as evidence of a future past. From a jar of sand to a painting of a goanna,
32 min
2423
Michelle Perro and Vincanne Adams, “What’s Maki...
Pediatrician and integrative medicine practitioner Michelle Perro, MD, has been treating an increasing number of children with complex chronic illnesses that do not fit into our usual diagnostic boxes. She has spent years treating and disentangling why...
86 min
2424
Paul Offit, “Bad Advice: Or Why Celebrities, Po...
You should never trust celebrities, politicians, or activists for health information. Why? Because they are not scientists! Scientists often cannot compete with celebrities when it comes to charm or evoking emotion.
49 min
2425
Julie A. Cohn, “The Grid: Biography of an Ameri...
Though usually a background concern, the aging U.S. electric grid has lately been on the minds of both legislators and consumers. Congress wants to ensure the technological security of this important infrastructure.
20 min