Off the Page: A Columbia University P...

Interviews with Columbia University Press authors.

Books
History
Science
351
Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, “The Massacre in Jedwab...
On July 10, 1941, Poles in the town of Jedwabne together with some number of German functionaries herded nearly 500 Jews into a barn and burnt them alive. In 2000, the sociologist Jan Gross published a book about the subject that,
68 min
352
Blake Mobley, “Terrorism and Counter-Intelligen...
Today we talked to Blake Mobley about his new book Terrorism and Counter-Intelligence: How Terrorist Groups Elude Detection (Columbia University Press, 2012). There have been many books examining the intelligence operations of counter-terrorist agencie...
43 min
353
Justin Thomas McDaniel, “The Lovelorn Ghost and...
When most people think of Buddhism they begin to imagine a lone monk in the forest or a serene rock garden. The world of ghosts, amulets, and magic are usually from their mind. They may even feel some aversion to the notion that the meditative calm of ...
70 min
354
Abdulkader Tayob, “Religion in Modern Islamic D...
Many people believe that the current Islamic resurgence is not necessarily a “return of religion,” but rather a continuation of tradition. According to this line of thought, therefore, Islam is essentially resistant to modernity and incompatible with c...
78 min
355
Carool Kersten, “Cosmopolitans and Heretics: Ne...
Often when we read about new Muslim intellectuals we are offered a presentation of their politicized Islamic teachings and radical interpretations of theology, or Western readings that nominally reflect the Islamic tradition.
60 min
356
Houston A. Baker, “Betrayal: How Black Intellec...
In his new book Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era (Columbia University Press, 2008), Houston A. Baker makes the argument that many contemporary black public intellectuals,
86 min
357
Hans Kundnani, “Utopia or Auschwitz: Germany’s ...
It’s pretty common in American political discourse to call someone a “fascist.” Everyone knows, however, that this is just name-calling: supposed fascists are never really fascists–they are just people you don’t like very much.
51 min
358
James Fleming, “Fixing the Sky: The Checkered H...
In the summer of 2008 the Chinese were worried about rain. They were set to host the Summer Olympics that year, and they wanted clear skies. Surely clear skies, they must have thought, would show the world that China had arrived.
60 min
359
Kip Kosek, “Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonvi...
There’s a quip that goes “Christianity is probably a great religion. Someone should really try it.” The implication, of course, is that most people who call themselves Christians aren’t very Christian at all. And, in truth,
64 min
360
Patrick Manning, “The African Diaspora: A Histo...
Africans were the first migrants because they were the first people. Some 60,000 years ago they left their homeland and in a relatively short period of time (by geological and evolutionary standards) moved to nearly every habitable place on the globe.
61 min